Kristi Noem Rushed Millions in FEMA Aid After GOP Donor Called Her Up

Naples, Florida, has discovered one easy trick to bypass the bureaucratic delays Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has created at the Federal Emergency Management Agency: Get a wealthy friend and supporter of Noem to reach out to her.

Until August, the city had been exasperatedly waiting on relief to rebuild the Naples Pier, which was damaged by Hurricane Ian in 2022. According to a new ProPublica report, FEMA only finally responded—providing $11 million for reconstruction—once a deep-pocketed friend and supporter of Noem, named Sinan Gursoy, stepped in.

Prior to Gursoy’s intervention, ProPublica reports, the city was trapped in “bureaucratic purgatory.” It’s a story that’s familiar by now, as local and state officials face interminable delays in disaster relief—made worse thanks to a rule instituted by Noem, in which all DHS expenditures exceeding $100,000 require her approval.

In one communication this summer, a city official informed Florida Senator Rick Scott that they’d been told that “Secretary Noem would have to ‘personally’ approve the Pier project before FEMA funding would be obligated,” ProPublica reports.

Naples Mayor Teresa Heitmann was “feeling increasingly helpless” this summer, after she and city officials had pulled out nearly all the stops, including writing to FEMA, hiring Washington consultants, and seeking the help of Scott.

In early August, the mayor decided to fire off some texts to Gursoy, according to ProPublica. A wealthy Naples cardiologist and associate of Noem’s, Gursoy contributed at least $25,000 to Noem’s 2022 gubernatorial reelection bid in South Dakota, placing him among the campaign’s top disclosed donors.

“FEMA is holding us up,” Heitmann told Gursoy. “Kristi Noem could put some fire under the FEMA employees slacking.”

“Okay. I will get on it,” Gursoy replied.

On August 11, he told Heitmann he’d “just” texted Noem, after holding off while she was out of office. Not a day had passed before he told Heitmann she’d hear from Noem’s “FEMA fixer” soon.

“We are now at warp speed with FEMA,” a Naples official reportedly wrote in an email once things got moving. A FEMA representative told the city: “Per leadership instruction, pushing project immediately.”

On August 29, Noem took a government plane to Naples, where she reportedly walked the pier before dining with Gursoy at Bleu Provence, an expensive French restaurant, and staying at the four-star Naples Bay Resort & Marina.

A DHS spokesperson insisted to ProPublica that the Naples Pier aid “has nothing to do with politics.” Gursoy told the publication to “get lost.”

Notably, Noem’s top henchman at DHS, Corey Lewandowski (who is also rumored to be her paramour, which they both deny), reportedly has a house close to the Naples Pier. Lewandowski told ProPublica he was not involved in the decision, nor was he in Naples at the time of Noem’s trip.

While in Naples, Noem shared a self-congratulatory Instagram post of herself assessing the damage to the pier. “The iconic Naples Pier was destroyed in 2022, and the city is still waiting on answers from FEMA,” she wrote, adding, “Americans deserve better than years of red tape and failed disaster responses.” Apparently, some more than others.

Nearly half of the entire United Nations General Assembly walked out when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the podium Thursday, in protest of his ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. 

Dozens and dozens of delegates exited the hall as soon as Netanyahu appeared. Other attendees cheered them on while the assembly leader banged his gavel and called for “order in the hall.”

Netanyahu was forced to deliver his speech to a room that was damn near empty.

Moments like these indicate that Israel’s indiscriminate and grotesque actions in Gaza—over 65,000 dead men, women, and children—are finally shifting the world’s perceptions. The fact that countries like Canada, France, and the U.K. are (finally) acknowledging a Palestinian state is also indicative of that shift.  

Some leaders were even more outspoken at the General Assembly. 

“We need a powerful army of the countries that do not accept genocide,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro said on Tuesday. “We must liberate Palestine.… I invite the armies of Asia, the great Slavic people who defeated Hitler with great heroism, and the Latin American armies of Bolívar.… We’ve had enough words; it’s time for Bolívar’s sword of liberty or death.”

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Lula, made similar comments. 

“No situation is more emblematic of the disproportionate and illegal use of force than the one occurring in Palestine.… The Palestinian people are at risk of disappearing,” he said. “They will only survive with an independent state integrated to the international community.” 

At this point it seems like the United States is the only government that has yet to realize just how atrocious Israel’s actions have been, as our leaders continue to offer financial and rhetorical support. 

Interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan got a grand jury to indict former FBI Director James Comey on two counts. But Halligan showed her inexperience Thursday as the jurors rejected a third charge, and she submitted the wrong documents to the judge.

It was Halligan’s fourth day on the job. She was formerly Trump’s personal lawyer, and recently led the president’s efforts to de-emphasize slavery at the Smithsonian museums.

Having never prosecuted a case before, Halligan scored the position after her predecessor failed to go after Trump’s enemies with sufficient zeal for the president’s liking, seemingly because of, well, sheer lack of evidence against them. Relatedly, in a memo this week, prosecutors advised Halligan not to pursue charges against Comey, citing insufficient evidence.

The newcomer went it alone Thursday, as MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian reports that Halligan “presented the Comey indictment all by herself to the grand jury,” a sign that she “may have a problem finding a prosecutor in office to work on the case.” The indictment was also signed only by Halligan, according to The New York Times, while “typically such filings are also endorsed by career prosecutors who have gathered the evidence in the case.”

The grand jury on Thursday voted to indict Comey on two of three counts sought by Halligan—false statements and obstructing a congressional proceeding.

Halligan failed to convince 12 jurors to vote for another false statements charge, related to Comey’s answers to Senator Lindsey Graham during a September 2020 hearing. (Comey had replied, “That doesn’t ring any bells with me,” when asked by Graham if officials informed the FBI that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign “was going to create a scandal regarding Trump and Russia” to distract from her email scandal.)

After the jury rejected that charge, prosecutors presented U.S. Magistrate Judge Lindsey Vaala with an indictment with just the two others. But, as The Washington Post reports, Halligan accidentally “gave the judge both indictments Thursday evening, prompting confusion.”

“This has never happened before. I’ve been handed two documents ... with a discrepancy,” Vaala said. “I’m a little confused why I was handed two things ... that were inconsistent.”

Halligan, per NBC, insisted she “did not see” the first document with the tossed indictment. Vaala observed, “It has your signature on it.”

The Justice Department is in an uproar against Attorney General Pam Bondi’s indictment of former FBI director James Comey.

Comey, who has drawn the ire of President Trump ever since he led the Russiagate investigation in 2016, has been charged with one count of making a false statement during a Senate hearing and one count of obstructing Congress. Bondi’s office also tried to get Comey on a second charge of making a false statement to Congress, but that was struck down. If convicted, Comey could face up to five years in prison.

But even Bondi’s own staff think this is a weak move designed to make Trump feel better in spite of the fact that the charges will be hard to prove.

“What I am hearing from DoJ sources: The Comey indictment is among the worst abuses in DOJ history,” MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian wrote Thursday on X. “Shocking. It’s hard to overstate how a big a moment this is.”

“Everybody is in shock,” former DOJ Director of Public Affairs Xochitl Hinojosa told CNN’s Erin Burnett OutFront. “It doesn’t surprise them, though, because this is the way the Justice Department has been. Career officials have largely been either pushed out or silenced and are not in meetings about major decisions about cases.”

Hinojosa also commented on Bondi’s reasoning that “no one is above the law” in indicting Comey.

“That is what we all believe in, in that building,” Hinojosa added. “But the reality is that the actions over the last nine months are not the case. Donald Trump was charged on 44 counts. He is the sitting president of the United States.... And now Donald Trump is going after his political enemies.”

“I think this is a tragic day for America,” former White House lawyer Ty Cobb told CNN. “What we have here is a clear vindictive prosecution, a clear selective prosecution. We have a president for the first time in history ordering his Attorney General to indict his enemies,” Cobb said. “And the Attorney General, instead of being the independent force that she’s supposed to be saying: ‘Yes, sir. How fast can I get that done for you?”

Even Bondi herself seems to be feeling hesitant about going after Comey. CNN reported on Thursday that Bondi was apprehensive at best about the indictment, and some of her attorneys indicated similar feelings in a written memo. Bondi denies all of this.

Regardless, it’s clear that this indictment is the result of Trump personally calling for it, rather than some stringent, by the book investigation. Only time will tell how it’ll all play out.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has once again been caught on camera violently arresting people in the halls of immigration court. 

Conservative journalist Elaad Eliahu on Thursday filmed a man desperately holding onto his wife and children as about five ICE agents—all but one masked—surrounded them in a New York City immigration court. Two of them wrapped their arms around the man’s neck, putting in him a chokehold as they attempted to drag him away. The agents eventually ripped him away from his distraught, screaming family and detained him. It’s a gut-wrenching scene. 

After he was dragged away, the man’s wife walked up to the only unmasked ICE officer, pleading with him in Spanish. The agent just yelled “Adios! Adios!” in her face. She continued to beg him, until he quickly shoved  her into the wall, and then the ground, standing over her as her children screamed in horror. 

“I was back at 26 Federal Plaza today, where an ICE agent violently threw this bereft woman to the ground in front of her kids,” New York City Comptroller and former mayoral candidate Brad Lander wrote. “She had not touched him. She did not pose any threat. She had to be taken to the hospital.” 

“Seconds earlier, her husband had been abducted by masked ICE agents who did not identify themselves, did not present a warrant, did not give any lawful grounds for his detention,” Lander continued. “Every day, masked ICE agents are acting violently against our neighbors, illegally abducting them, holding them in cruel and inhumane conditions. Treating them as less than human and not deserving due process.”

There have been so many scenes like this since the Trump administration initiated its deportation campaign. Mothers, fathers, laborers, students, and community members have been ripped off the streets by men who often refuse to identify themselves, and sent to God knows where. And as of right now, there is no end in sight.