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Tonight, leaked messages suggest former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s rumored boyfriend, Corey Lewandowski, was effectively running the agency alongside Noem despite never being confirmed by the Senate. Mississippi’s Republican secretary of state fired off multiple social media posts, which he has since deleted, threatening to sue a major credit bureau after it publicly warned him against using its data to remove voters’ registrations. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland says he would get rid of the filibuster if Senate Democrats elect him as the next majority leader. And a local restaurant in Ohio is now losing longtime customers after its decision to host an event for failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
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Newly released text messages from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are putting a spotlight just how much power former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski had while former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was at the helm.
The Trump administration officially classified Lewandowski — who is a rumored paramour of Noem — as an unpaid “special government employee.” But according to emails and Signal messages obtained by the watchdog group American Oversight through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show Lewandowski was regarded as a top DHS official on par with Noem herself despite him not having gone through the same Senate confirmation process.
Though many of the messages were redacted, the ones that weren’t paint a fairly damning picture. Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar once emailed his senior aide a list of items to report to “S1 and Corey,” with “S1” referring to Noem. Lewandowski was also included in many of the same briefings as Noem and Edgar, including those pertaining to deportation cases and federal operations in the African nation of Djibouti.
Lewandowski was also apparently involved in planning deportations of immigrants to so-called “third countries,” meaning countries they had never visited and had no ties to. He also gave input on the controversial deportation of Kilmar Armando Ábrego García to El Salvador, where he was jailed for several months in the CECOT mega-prison known for rampant human rights abuses and torture. According to some of the email exchanges and Signal chats, Lewandowski was fully in charge while Noem was away, getting updates on agency projects from DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, ICE deputy director Madison Sheahan, and senior DHS staffer Joseph Mazzara.
He also seemed to take pleasure in the cruelty the Trump administration inflicted on immigrants. After an immigrant was deported to South Sudan despite having no ties to the notoriously poor and unstable country, Lewandowski wrote, “Praise Jesus.” A week later, he wrote, “I love deportations.”
Democrats made the move months ago to preserve all DHS records pertaining to Lewandowski. And now that they’re in the majority in both the House and Senate, both he and Noem could soon be dragged before committees and ordered to testify under oath.
Mississippi Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson recently took to social media to threaten a lawsuit against credit bureau Experian. Watson wrote in a now-deleted post that he may litigate over faulty address data his office used to mark thousands of voters inactive ahead of the Magnolia State’s nail-biter U.S. Senate race. Democratic candidate Scott Colom ultimately won that race by just a few thousand total votes, ousting incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith.
Watson’s office classified more than 230,000 Mississippi voters as inactive prior to Election Day, though Watson says that figure amounts to several years’ worth of inactive registrations. State law requires county officials to mark voters inactive when they mail voters a notice about a possible address change. Some of those notices went to wrong addresses Watson’s office obtained from Experian, meaning many eligible voters were unaware that their status had changed. Most of their votes were eventually counted, but the flood of affidavit ballots — which sometimes need to be “cured” by voters after Election Day — led to chaos and confusion as Mississippi took more than a week after the election to count.
Experian is making sure to keep its distance from the Mississippi election. Company spokesperson Scott Anderson told The Atlantic its product “was not designed or intended to validate voter records.” Watson responded in another post, accusing Experian of “crawfishing away from Mississippi” and pointing out that the company took part in a federal Election Assistance Commission (EAC) pilot program that tested its product for maintenance of state voter rolls.
Watson’s 2024 contract with Experian listed voter roll maintenance as its purpose, though that contract also included legal disclaimers that the company was unable to guarantee the accuracy of its data. The federal study Watson keeps referencing highlighted concerns over the quality of data compiled by credit bureaus, and it recommended officials use it as a way to supplement existing data, rather than as a replacement.
Watson has also heaped blame on county election officials. Rankin County Election Commissioner Tonya Rivers told the outlet Democracy Docket that the state supplied bad information, and that local officials weren’t told Experian data was involved. She described voters whose suggested new addresses were in states they’d never visited. According to Rivers, “they’re upset. And now they don’t trust us.”
Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland is officially running against Senator Chuck Schumer of New York for majority leader, and is promising to officially kill the filibuster if he’s elected to lead Senate Democrats in the 120th Congress.
On Friday, Van Hollen told reporters during a conference in Denver, Colorado that he could repeal the filibuster with a simple majority vote. He also called the 60-vote threshold needed to bypass a filibuster an “antidemocratic” tool that isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, saying it was “put in there by senators to enhance their power over the power of the people.”
The Maryland Democrat — who made national headlines after flying to El Salvador to rescue his constituent, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, from the CECOT prison — said ending the filibuster is essential in order to pass “democracy protection measures” like safeguarding voting rights. He also added that he’s no longer considering a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.
In January 2022, most of the Senate Democratic caucus, including both Van Hollen and Schumer, voted for a filibuster carve-out in order to pass voting rights and campaign finance reform legislation. That bill was ultimately blocked by then-Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Schumer, hasn’t yet committed to whether he would keep the filibuster in place. Democrats are about to take control of the Senate in January with at least 55 seats, and possibly 56 depending on the Alaska Senate race, which is still too close to call as of this writing.
Our last story tonight: a locally owned restaurant in Medina, Ohio is now losing support from the community after hosting an event at their restaurant, P.J. Marley’s, for failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Ramaswamy lost last week’s election to Democrat Amy Acton, who won with 52.3 percent of the vote to Ramaswamy’s 44.4 percent, making her the first woman ever elected to Ohio’s highest office. Late in the campaign, Ramaswamy put $4 million into an ad featuring his opponent’s estranged mother calling Action a “liar.” The backstory the ad never told was that Acton was sexually abused as a child by her mother’s late husband. Her mother took her husband’s side and lost custody of her children, and stayed married to her daughter’s alleged rapist until his death in 2004.
Patty and Jon Stahl, who own P.J. Marley’s, call themselves “small-business Republicans.” They told The New York Times that Ramaswamy’s visit on Halloween was organized before the controversial ad was released. They told the paper they thought the ad was in bad taste, and that they would have hosted a Democratic candidate too if asked. They were hoping Ramaswamy would follow through on his campaign promises to cut property taxes and utility costs.
But since the event, the restaurant’s phones have been blowing up with angry calls from customers, and P.J. Marley’s is being bombarded with dozens of negative reviews, with some reviewers calling the owners “pedophile supporters.” Bartender Anthony Buchanan — a third-grade teacher who works a second job at the restaurant — said one protester outside confronted him, asking him how he could justify working there. He told the Times, “I’m just trying to get my money.”
The Stahls say despite everything, they still don’t regret hosting Ramaswamy’s event. Acton’s victory ends 16 years of Republican governors in Ohio, with Ted Strickland being the last Democrat elected governor in 2006.
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