SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
propublica
Kristi Noem Took Personal Cut of Political Donations While Governor of South Dakota: Report
"No wonder Pam Bondi gutted the public integrity section of DOJ. To protect utterly corrupt monsters like Kristi Noem."
Jun 30, 2025
The investigative outlet ProPublica revealed Monday that Kristi Noem secretly took a personal cut of funds she raised for a nonprofit that boosted her political career—and then did not disclose the income when President Donald Trump selected her to serve as head of the Department of Homeland Security.
ProPublica reported that in 2023, while Noem was governor of South Dakota, the nonprofit group American Resolve Policy Fund "routed funds to a personal company of Noem's that had recently been established in Delaware." The company is called Ashwood Strategies, and it was registered in June 2023.
"The payment totaled $80,000 that year, a significant boost to her roughly $130,000 government salary," according to the outlet. "Since the nonprofit is a so-called dark money group—one that's not required to disclose the names of its donors—the original source of the money remains unknown."
Experts told ProPublica that the arrangement and Noem's failure to disclose the income were unusual at best and possibly unlawful.
"If donors to these nonprofits are not just holding the keys to an elected official's political future but also literally providing them with their income, that's new and disturbing," Daniel Weiner, a former Federal Election Commission attorney who now works at the Brennan Center for Justice, told ProPublica.
Noem's lawyers denied that she violated the law but did not reply to ProPublica's questions about whether the Office of Government Ethics was aware of the $80,000 payment.
Unlike many Trump administration officials, Noem is not a billionaire. But "while she is among the least wealthy members of Trump's Cabinet, her personal spending habits have attracted notice," ProPublica observed, noting that she was "photographed wearing a gold Rolex Cosmograph Daytona watch that costs nearly $50,000 as she toured the Salvadoran prison where her agency is sending immigrants."
"In April, after her purse was stolen at a Washington, D.C. restaurant, it emerged she was carrying $3,000 in cash, which an official said was for 'dinner, activities, and Easter gifts,'" the outlet continued. "She was criticized for using taxpayer money as governor to pay for expenses related to trips to Paris, to Canada for bear hunting, and to Houston to have dental work done. At the time, Noem denied misusing public funds."
Political scientist Norman Ornstein wrote Monday that it was "no wonder [Attorney General] Pam Bondi gutted the public integrity section of DOJ."
"To protect utterly corrupt monsters like Kristi Noem," he added.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Seeks 90% Cut for Already Underfunded Tribal Colleges
"This would basically be a knife in the chest," said the president of one tribal college, "and I don't know how we can survive these types of cuts."
Jun 04, 2025
The Trump administration is proposing a nearly 90% reduction in federal funding for tribal colleges and universities, a move that would likely force many of the nation's 37 Indigenous institutions of higher learning—which are already severely underfunded—to close, according to a ProPublica report published Wednesday.
On Monday, the U.S. Department of the Interior released its 2026 budget request, which seeks $22.1 million for tribal colleges and universities for the next fiscal year. That's down from $122.4 million allocated for the current fiscal year.
"The numbers that are being proposed would close the tribal colleges," American Indian Higher Education Consortium president and CEO Ahniwake Rose told ProPublica. "They would not be able to sustain."
Matt Krupnick, who authored the ProPublica report, previously revaled that Congress was already underfunding tribal institutions of higher learning by around a quarter-billion dollars per year, based on legislation passed in 1978 under which the government promised inflation-adjusted appropriations for Indigenous colleges and universities based on the number of students enrolled in federally recognized tribes.
Big news: The Trump administration has essentially proposed shutting down tribal colleges and universities, displacing more than 20,000 students. My latest for ProPublica:
[image or embed]
— Matt Krupnick (@mattkrupnick.bsky.social) June 3, 2025 at 12:33 PM
As Krupnick noted:
The colleges have managed, despite the meager funds, to preserve Indigenous languages, conduct high-level research, and train local residents in nursing, meat processing, and other professions and trades. But with virtually no money available for infrastructure or construction, the schools have been forced to navigate broken water pipes, sewage leaks, crumbling roofs, and other problems that have compounded the financial shortcomings.
"I'm shivering in my boots," Manoj Patil, president of Little Priest Tribal College in Nebraska, told ProPublica. "This would basically be a knife in the chest. It's a dagger, and I don't know how we can survive these types of cuts."
The Interior Department's budget proposal comes amid the Trump administration's gutting of federal agencies, which is being spearheaded by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. It is also the latest in a series of administration actions targeting education for Native Americans, who suffered centuries of extermination, land theft, forced displacement, imprisonment in reservations and concentration camps, family separation, and other genocidal policies and practices of Euro-American colonizers.
Since taking office for the second time, President Donald Trump has suspended scholarship and research grants for Native Americans and rescinded a key White House initiative promoting Indigenous educational success.
However, as they always have, Indigenous people are fighting back. In March, Native students and tribal leaders sued the Bureau of Indian Affairs in a bid to stop the Trump administration's gutting of Indigenous education.
While some Indigenous leaders said they are counting on members of Congress to protect Native education, others expressed skepticism rooted in centuries of broken U.S. promises.
"It is a bit disheartening to feel like our voice is not being heard," Chris Caldwell, president of College of Menominee Nation in Wisconsin, told
ProPublica. "They don't hear our message."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Insiders Say Trump Foreign Aid Cuts Causing 'Violence and Chaos' in Fragile Nations
"It is devastating, but it's not surprising," said one former senior State Department official. "It's all what people in the national security community have predicted."
May 28, 2025
U.S. State Department officials in at least two countries have recently warned that the Trump administration's sudden foreign aid cutoff is fueling "violence and chaos" in some of the world's most vulnerable nations, according to a report published Wednesday.
Internal State Department communications viewed by
ProPublica revealed that U.S. Embassy officials in the southeastern African nation of Malawi sounded the alarm on cuts to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), which have "yielded a sharp increase in criminality, sexual violence, and instances of human trafficking" in the Dzaleka refugee camp.
Meanwhile, dramatically reduced U.S. funding to feed refugees in Kenya has sparked violent protests and other incidents, including the trampling death of a pregnant woman during a stampede for food in which police opened fire on desperately hungry people.
"In Kenya, for example, the WFP will cut its rations in June down to 28% — or less than 600 calories a day per person — a low never seen before...The WFP’s standard minimum for adults is 2,100 calories per day." Just unbelievable suffering as U.S. withdraws foreign aid.
[image or embed]
— Lisa Song (@lisalsong.bsky.social) May 28, 2025 at 1:15 PM
This, as President Donald Trump's administration—spearheaded by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency and its de facto leader, Elon Musk—has taken a wrecking ball approach to vital offices and programs including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), where contracts for programs including those that fed and provided healthcare for millions of people and fought diseases like malaria and HIV/AIDS have been slashed by up to 90%.
Republicans have attempted to justify the cuts under the guise of tackling the staggering U.S. national debt, even as they push a massive tax cut that would disproportionately benefit the ultrarich and corporations while adding trillions of dollars to the deficit, according to a nonpartisan congressional committee.
Although a federal judge ruled in March that Musk's moves to shutter USAID were likely unconstitutional and ordered a halt to the effort, much damage has already been done.
"It is devastating, but it's not surprising," Eric Schwartz, a former State Department assistant secretary and National Security Council member, told ProPublica. "It's all what people in the national security community have predicted."
"I struggle for adjectives to adequately describe the horror that this administration has visited on the world," Schwartz added. "It keeps me up at night."
It is unclear if any of the cables were sent via the official dissent channel set up during the administration of then-President Richard Nixon in an effort to allow State Department personnel to voice opposition to U.S. policies and practices—especially in regard to the Vietnam War—and stop leaks to the press.
The State Department responded to the ProPublica exposé in a statement saying: "It is grossly misleading to blame unrest and violence around the world on America. No one can reasonably expect the United States to be equipped to feed every person on Earth or be responsible for providing medication for every living human."
Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed during a congressional hearing that "no one has died" due to USAID cuts, an assertion refuted by Congressman Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), who displayed photos and harrowing stories of people who have, in fact, died since funding for vital programs was slashed or eliminated.
"It's clear that people are dying because U.S. aid was suspended and then reduced. But it's difficult to come up with a precise death toll that can be tied directly to Trump administration policies," according to a Washington Post analysis by Glenn Kessler published on Tuesday. "The death certificates, after all, aren't marked, 'Due to lack of funding by U.S. government.'"
Last month, the international medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said that there will be "more preventable deaths and untold suffering around the world" due to the Trump administration.
"These sudden cuts by the Trump administration are a human-made disaster for the millions of people struggling to survive amid wars, disease outbreaks, and other emergencies," Avril Benoît, who heads the U.S. branch of MSF, said last month.
"We are living off the fumes of what was delivered in late 2024 or early 2025."
On the ground in Kenya, WFP country director Lauren Landis told ProPublica that her organization is cutting daily aid rations to less than 600 calories per person—far less than the standard minimum 2,100 calories per day under agency guidelines.
"We are living off the fumes of what was delivered in late 2024 or early 2025," Landis said, describing children who look like "walking skeletons" due to severe malnutrition.
Meanwhile, enough food to feed more than 1 million people in some of the world's most fragile places through most of the summer is moldering in storage as USAID funds run dry and workers are laid off.
This,
warned WFP last month, "could amount to a death sentence for millions of people facing extreme hunger and starvation."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular