Some More News - Even More News: The Perfect Kristi Noem Story

Episode Date: February 17, 2026

Hi. In today's episode of #EvenMoreNews, Katy, Cody, and Jonathan dig into the SAVE Act and how it could potentially impact tens of millions of Americans’ ability to vote. They also discuss a Wall Street Journal exposé revealing just how inept, destructive, and narcissistic Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski are.And as always, we recorded right before that big thing that happened.Check out our new show STREAMIN' MORE NEWS: https://www.youtube.com/live/a3OYcDbd_EcPATREON: https://patreon.com/somemorenewsMERCH: https://shop.somemorenews.comYOUTUBE MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvlj0IzjSnNoduQF0l3VGng/joinSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, on today's episode, we talk about the GOP's Save America Act and how it would make voting much more difficult for tens of millions of Americans. We also dig into Christy Noem and Corey Lewandowski's misuse of funds and attention-seeking behavior over at DHS. Happy Tuesday! Or whatever day you're watching this, which is maybe Tuesday. Hello and welcome back to Even More News, the first and only only. News podcast. My name's Benny. My name's Katie and this is Benny.

Hi, Benny. Hey, buddy. Benny, sit, speak. Shout. Be cute. Okay. I'm Cody. I don't have my dog with me. She's over there. Yeah, I can't force it. He wanted to join today because it's cold.

He's probably going to hop off. In three, two. He sat. Jonathan is also here. Hi. Hi. Hi. Good morning to everybody.

Good afternoon if you're listening to this at evening. It's sleepy time. What's up? How's it going? Did I already say Jonathan's also here? Yeah. You did. Oh my God.

It was good. Yeah. That was a good one. Sorry I was so distracted by my dog being adorable. To anybody listening, check out the YouTube channel. You'll see my dog being adorable. So we're going to start with the sacred American right to vote and how. Republicans want to take it away

for a large number of people effectively tens of millions of people You've got to get the right people voting Yes Is it because they're confident in their chances In the upcoming election? Sounds like it I mean they know things are bad

And it might be a Hail Mary Because and we'll get to this I'm not convinced this would help them All that much It's still evil to do Because it'll really hinder tens of millions of people from voting. But everybody's saying right and so on. The Save America Act, which has passed

the House, requires proof of citizenship in person to register to vote or update registration. That's a passport. That's a birth certificate. Or the variety of real ID that lists citizenship. The most do not. Mine does not.

And then that bill will add a photo ID requirement across the country when you vote in person and there are a lot of hindrance to voting by mail, and it would require states to run voter rolls through the DHS's systematic alien verification for entitlements database so they can try to take people off voter rolls. And toughest of all, you know how the real ID rollout took like 20 years and still is going on

and a lot of people don't have them? This would take effect immediately and impact the November midterms, no time to set up or educate For people who maybe, I don't know, don't pay attention to the news as much, won't know that this is happening. And for anybody that just, you know, struggles to get the basics done anyway when you're working a 40-hour work week and you've got children and tasks and duties and errands to run. And then you have to jump through five hoops in order to go vote in person when you don't get that holiday to even go vote. The whole thing is just really obviously not what you would do if you wanted everybody to be able to vote effectively. We've talked with this before, but like there's no plan to make sure everybody gets the appropriate ID. They're not putting a bunch of money into making sure that we handing every single person, here's your ID, here's what you do, here's how you vote, here's us helping you.

We need to facilitate the voting. They're not going to do that. They're going to make it hard. this administration especially is going to make it extremely chaotic and convoluted and that may be by design, but it doesn't indicate that they actually care. It doesn't feel constitutional in terms, at least in terms of, well, the midterms, because there's no way to effectively roll this out. And without obviously suppressing the vote, yeah, you need to be organized and thoughtful. if you're going to implement such sweeping changes. I was trying to imagine voting with making everything much more difficult.

It's so easy as my adult experience of voting has been so easy and painless, which is necessary because it is a task that is distra-taking you away from your normal life, like I've already said. So you need to make it as easy and efficient as possible. So it's hard to wrap my mind around it. all these things to make it easy for people to do. I've even seen people saw, was it, is it Representative Michael Cloud posted how they vote in Congress?

And they have a photo ID. You put it in a machine and you put your photo ID in there and you press a button, yay, nay, and so on and so forth. And he's sort of like, see, see, we do it. So why don't you do it? That's not the only way they do the voting. There are other ways to vote also.

you could go up and you write your vote down and you hand it in like we vote. Also, they ensure that everybody has the appropriate ID. Like, they give them the ID. Like, they do all the things to make sure that it is effective. And also, like, the representatives, they do, they, like, pass each other their IDs so they can vote when they're not around. Like, there have been cases where, like, yeah, I took. this representative's ID and used it in the little ID machine to vote for him because he was in Florida or whatever.

Like this, it's just very dishonest how they frame this. They pay you to do that. It's your job. Right. That's your job. If it was someone else's job, they would probably be motivated by the payment to take the time on working hours to get the materials that they needed. This voting is a separate thing, your civic duty, but also it's the thing a lot of people think about the day before or the morning of. And it's not out of carelessness.

They go, oh, God, I've been busy with all this other stuff in my life, my job and my family and stuff. Now I got to, who am I going to vote for? What's the representative? What are the propositions? People care about it. And then it's just like, oh, shit, we have to do it. but now you've got to find your passport if you have one and what half of Americans don't or your birth certificate which as we all know people just keep lying around in case you

need to prove that you were born in America because you're running for president because you're not white those are the reasons you might need it um this is going to make it very difficult because a lot of people are just not going to know they're going to register or show up and they're not going to know and if it's implore the way they wanted to be implemented immediately, and it wouldn't be. This would be like a chaotic mess where they would just say, okay, we'll do it next time. Or even worse, it would be selectively implemented in some places and not in others. It would be chaos nonsense and it would make them look like ass clowns.

You also might even find out like, oh, I'm not even registered anymore. I thought it was registered. I've been purged from the voter rolls, like all this stuff. You could find that out at the last minute for sure. We're also some of the people that would be. hit by this would especially be women who have taken their husband's last name because their name does not match the birth certificate and also trans people who have transitioned. It's just really hard to wrap my mind around why people think this is a good idea. And I know that's

because I'm naive because then I see posts like I saw on a Facebook, this morning from from reloor relearn.org we will repeal the 19th amendment within 10 years women vote with emotion national policy is feminized immigrants flood in sexual immorality is legalized blah blah blah women blame men repeal the 19th there are people that believe this shit do they believe that their actions are taken non-emotionally. Like, everything I've ever done in my entire life is based on I felt something that made an... I feel, I feel sad. I'm going to drink more coffee.

I feel like... But that's your right as a man, Jonathan. Happy to have that right. Wish everyone had it, but I'm not going to give it up. That's the thing about rights. Not everybody can have them. I do want to... Because the people who are going to be most affected by this, you mentioned,

married women and trans people, young people who haven't voted before are going to be swept up in this, people who don't stay up to date on the news, poor people and those without easy access to those documents. I'm not convinced that it would make it so that the GOP wins every election, especially because the voting coalitions have changed over the last 10 years. The GOP has gotten poorer and less educated than it used to be. It used to be if you were a rich, educated person, you vote a Republican, and now that's kind of flipped, they would be disenfranchising a lot of the people that Trump required. Like, they still shouldn't do it. It's like anti-democratic and stupid regardless of who it would help and hurt.

But this feels like a Hail Mary because I don't think it would be the silver bullet that they seem to think it would be. It's kind of like when they were pushing hard for redistricting and maybe some of that swings in their face. ultimately, but at the end of the day, it's a big risk because you're divvying up districts in different way. You're pitting different members that should be getting reelected against each other and that it can blow up in their face. And this is a similar thing. They've got it disproportionately. Not even trying to cast aspersions on their base necessarily. But rural communities, areas where it's hard to access the, just literally the DMV or going wherever you need to go, especially with stuff closing down, you're like, you're shooting yourself in the foot. It's highly possible that

you're shooting yourself in the foot. And our base is riled up for all of the abuses happening. And, you know, I keep thinking about our conversation with Margaret Killjoy a couple weeks ago and the optimism that I took away from that, which is that people are showing up, despite the dangers, in spite of the inconvenience of weather, of personal safety, et cetera. And I do think that even if this comes down the pipeline, we will have a lot of people turning out regardless. Yeah, I think, I mean, they would have to get rid of the filibuster or switch to a standing filibuster in order to get it through. It doesn't look like that's going to happen. So this is kind of theoretical.

But right, like the gerrymandering right now appears to be an own goal, given that California and Virginia are doing it. And like the Supreme Court is letting California's go through. And a year ago, I would have said, oh, they're just going to let Texases go through and come up with some reason why California can't. And they're not doing that. So it feels like it's at least going to be a wash or Democrats might benefit from it. And then this, like politically, whether it goes through or not, or if it does, it could be an own goal for them as well. And you're right, Katie, I agree if the groundswell of enthusiasm among everyone center and left of center to go and vote in November, it's going to be hard to overcome that way. Yeah.

Also, there's, I mean, it's just, it's not interesting. that they've been wanting to do this for a long time, but the Democratic Party, traditionally, generally, is the one that has the most, like, groups out there trying to, like, get people to go vote and, like, register to vote. Like, there are going to be so many organizations that are, like, that are reaching out to people, helping them get the appropriate IDs and, and register appropriately in these parameters. And I don't see the Republican Party having the same kind of operas. just because they don't generally do that anyway. They just have Elon Musk offering to pay people that.

A million dollars? I would love a million dollars to vote. If we are talking about election security and doing things above board, perhaps that shouldn't be allowed. Okay, but he can at least have his own private personal app that has all the tallies of the election rolling in, right? Well, I guess since he owns the world, I can't say no. Okay, good. As long as he gets that. As long as he gets that.

All right. Have you introduced me yet? Did we introduce? Jonathan is also here. Oh, good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hi. Benny, come here, baby.

Let's good. Let's do it. To introduce you too. Benny, speak. Should we talk DHS? This all feels like palace intrigue kind of stuff. They're fascinating these two. So, Christy Noam.

As far as we know, it's still... As far as we gnome. As far as... As we gnome! Can we get... Have already made the joke that I want to get little gnomes to sell in this store? No. But I don't actually.

Oh, well, then, no. But then you need to make even tinier dogs for her to slaughter. Shoot in the face. Save. Yeah. Or I guess because they're tiny would be like a sand pit to scale. You don't have to do that, but... Okay.

Yeah, well, Christy Noem, as everyone knows, is like in this illicit relationship with her second in command, Corey Lewandowski, former Trump advisor, but still that you didn't, you forgot that? Yeah, there's so much. It's like my brain can't contain everything. It ejected that piece of information. And then I remembered it. And I was like, oh, right. Yeah. They're like, or Christy Noem is still married to the former first husband of South Dakota.

and just for years they've lived in different houses and everyone has known that Noam and Lewandowski are together and they go everywhere together and they're each other's support and we just kind of you know whatever. Yeah. Is there each other's support blankets? Lundaski, a lot of accusations of sexual harassment about that guy, he's actually, he assaulted that reporter

at Breitbart which caused our friend, the show, Ben Shapiro, to quit Breitbart. the one stance he took that was solid, solid stuff. Yeah, no, they, they, it's them against the world, apparently at DHS, because they don't like Tom Homan, borders our fake job. You know, they're trying to make sure that Christy Nome is on TV more than he's on TV because it's the being on TV administration. None of them are doing like work.

They've been using a luxury 737 max jet with a private cabin to travel around the country. DHS is leasing the plane and is trying to buy it for seven, million dollars. Nome lied and said it was going to be used for deportations, but no, it's not. It's for you guys to flip around. Also, thank you for using it yourself and not using it for deportations. I appreciate that. Yeah, it does

it's, there's an element of, it's a little palace intrigue, but also I think it is relevant and speaks to the administration and their activities and also just the mindset going on like even, you know, it's a

weird companion piece to the cash Patel stories of like all just the obsession with the posting and the like this sort of the outward pageantry of the job that it shouldn't be part of the job that they think is is the job and their obsession with like wealth and status and just like getting the like abusing their power and position is what they seem to be really interested in. I agree with you completely and reading this piece from the Wall Street Journal um along the same lines of what you're thinking. They are incentivized to be this way.

Christy Nome is obsessed with being on TV and images of wealth because that's what her boss responds to. Is she being trotted out there? Is she getting the message? Is she looking like a certain type of woman on camera? Is she draped in gold enough? And it's, we're making, like, that's funny, but it's, we didn't laugh. But it's the truth. It's the truth.

You're jealous about home. getting time because as soon as our president see something shiny over here, that's where his attention goes, and then she's in the hot seat. Why didn't you get a positive headline? Whatever it is. It's, it's, I mean, these are toxic, terrible people of their own accord, but they are working for a textbook narcissist boss and they're pitted against each other. So it's like a race to the bottom who can be the most cruel, who can be the worst, who can be the most brazen hype man or woman or person for our president? It seems like Trump, because of who he is and because of what he requires as a employer of all

these people, is going against his best interest. He needs them to be effective at running these departments if they're going to look competent and do the authoritarian takeover that he wants. But he can't. They can't do that because they are so focused on pleasing him and trying to make him look good and saying the right thing on TV and on social media. So that's why we got the Pam Bondi performance that we got last week. That's why Nome hates Homan.

None of them care about like the thing that they're trying to do. Like if Donald Trump said deportation's over. We're done with that. and Department of Homeland Security is now completely focused on like maritime threats she'd be out on a boat with like a pirate hat on

with a sword like she'd be walking people off the plank right it doesn't matter the goal doesn't matter and that's like one of the things that is to our advantage that like we care about the things we care about

and in the White House it's kind of scattershot Stephen Miller really cares about his thing you'd be hard pressed to come up with people who truly are trying to meet ideological ends in the next, like, two years. What's his vet? Russell vote for sure, right? Like, there's a couple of them.

You got a vote and we got Miller and that's kind of it in terms of like, and RFK has got his, like, his various, like, projects and ideas. But that's mostly it. Everyone else is just sort of like, I would love to be on TV. I would love to be in this administration so that I can be betrayed eventually. buy it. It's a race to see if they can still be accepted on dancing with the stars in a few years.

My hope is no, but we might get no. You never know. What's also interesting about all of this, I mean, yes, everything we said and you can extrapolate what that means having these types of people running our country and just ruining our lives, being on TV all the time.

But when you read this, it's also just we talk so much about the impossibility of satire these days, you know, weeps or I read this and I think about succession or these these lower level lackeys just being monsters trying to pretend that they have the same level of wealth and trying to fit into this world and that's that they don't belong in and nobody should belong in because it's awful. But the story, the story of the story of the, flying on this private jet and then they had to switch to another plane for some reason and they didn't take her blanket onto the new plane and so they fired the pilot but then they couldn't get another pilot so then they had to get that same pilot to fly them back what are you talking about what is this divo the perfect story for them but it feels like a plot line a B plot line on succession to me oh yeah and and realizing they need to hire him back like that's a whole that's a whole act of the thing, right?

Like, that's the turn in the epic, like, it's absurd. It's absurd, and I almost feel silly bringing it up, except that these are the people running the country. Also, Corey Lewandowski is apparently just really trying to get a badge and a gun of some sort. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's so funny. What? He's like, listen, this is Department of Homeland Security.

They're like, yeah, but you're an administrator, you know, work for the, you're the, executive assistant to the person. He's like, I really need a badge and a gun. What are you talking about? None of our agents even have badges. What are you talking about? Gun is easier to get than badge. Okay, so now I'm going to reference

Patriot, which neither of you guys have watched, but some of you at home have listened. When the brother is getting dispatched one of the government, the brother is like a congressman and his dad gets him a special envoy,

bad designation so that he could go, doesn't matter. All he cared about was the badge. He goes, so does the envoy get a badge? And then he ends up making his own badge. An attache case because, anyway, you can leave it under. You can cut it. If you watch Patriot, you would have a really big laugh. It's just like the brother.

Okay. So when we said it's something out of like VEper succession, we really should have been saying it's like something literally out of the Amazon Prime Show. This is a exact example. The actor's really likable. He's sweet and lovable, but he's like, do I get a badge? Mm-hmm. So no.

It's like that hit show badge and gun about the doctor and the lawyer named badge and gun. He became friends because of their names. Cody's referencing something he did at crack. I'm referencing out of the old song from crack. What is bad jobs incongruous to the types of jobs that you'd expect with names like badge and gun? Which I would have known had I seen all the videos and articles. you guys did a crack. Come on.

Get it together. Maybe. Maybe Cody can bring that song back dedicated to Corey on our next live stream. Oh, that'd be sweet. He deserves it. Yeah, it's, again, like a lot of like silly stories. But like when you step back, remind yourself, okay, these are the people in charge of Homeland Security. It's so ridiculous.

The blanket story, again, is very silly. But come on. Christy, like, you can't be acting like that. I mean, you can, obviously. This is the time and this is the place and this is the job for you to act like that. But it is really, really, really, really embarrassing. And she is one of the few. We've talked about this before.

I feel like we talked about it a little bit in our prediction episode earlier this year. Like, who's, is anyone going to go? Like, who's going to go? Because first term, Trump was very much like, we got to get rid of this guy. We got to get rid of this guy. Too many adults around, you know, so we got to get rid of a, some of the clown-clowny figures. But that's not going on.

But Christy-Nome seems like one of the few that might be. Because even, I mean, there's this part in the article where she talks about like, or they talk about how she wanted and demanded that ICE get these arrests on camera. And I think, like, the phrase is like, the more dramatic, the better. which tells me what a bad person you are you got to get out of here Christy you gotta get out of here

but it also tells me just again that's that's a huge misread of what most people are like and want to see the idea that she's like we got to actually get the most like

these really dramatic arrests on camera where like ice agents are tackling people and the people arrested are crying and all this sort of stuff, the more and more you do that, the more off-putting it is, and the more disgusting people think your actions are. And I think it's just,

it's interesting to see that that was like an order from her. Like she just misreads where we're headed. I mean, she knows where we're headed, but she misreads sort of, I think, what people want to see and... I guess there's an argument to be made that... Because it's been true so far. every time we think people hate this and they do it doesn't really matter if people hate it or not

you just gaslight and double down oh they still do it and they're still exactly you just double down you keep double down you keep double down so misreading the room or not giving a fuck you know it's just at this point if you you just have to keep toe in the line saying the line saying the talking point yeah until people it's just stuff like that stuff like that sort of makes me think that maybe if if anyone if anyone is going to be like the first to go or somebody it would be her um because of that sort of like approach and you can point to it and blame her like yeah people didn't people didn't like the the videos of of ice shooting people in the street um and also i think her her desire to do the pageantry and the cosplay while it is for

Trump and he does like it sometimes. I think there's an element of like her going too far and trying to overshadow him and stuff. I don't know. He wants them to do what they're doing, but do it better. Like it's still, like we've talked a lot about how it's the optics administration, but he just happens to have a lot of people that are bad at optics, bad at reading the room. He wants to be surrounded by Hollywood people who are like professionals, who are like movie

stars when they get out on the red carpet and they're super charming and they look. and they look like that's just who they are. That's why he got Steve Miller out there. Right. And his charming wife. That's why they go out there. No, these people are... That it factor.

The worst. He doesn't have... His bench is like really shallow. And so like Nome or Bondi might end up being out of there because he thinks, oh, they can't cut it the way these other people are good on TV, meaning they get praised on Fox News, right? He thinks Miller's really good on TV because Jesse Waters is like, you're so smart man.

He thinks J.D. Vance is really good. And on the right wing podcasts, I guess he is. But they're really bad at how these things come off to everyone who's not in their little bubble. And they don't have Oscar Isaac running the show here. I had something, but it's gone. Is it how embarrassing they are? Introduce me?

Were you going to, did you forget to introduce me? Did I never introduce you? Yeah, I think. I'm so embarrassed. So maybe it makes sense that you were thinking of something and then it left. Okay. So are you going to then? Fuck.

Jonathan's also here. Okay. Right? Other things have happened. That is true. Over the weekend, I don't know. Epstein files continue to be a thing that are very important and people don't. There's just so frustrating.

There's no. Nothing's going to happen. No direction. But people are. not happy. And now Massey and Marjorie Taylor Green and other people are posting very clearly on Twitter.

I am not suicidal. I am healthy. I am doing it. I do think these people are a little high on their own supply. Oh yeah. You know what? Maybe he'll have you all killed.

But like, if he could snap his people and his finger and have people killed, I think he would do it a lot more. All right. That's it. We're out of here. Like and subscribe.

We love you. Jonathan is also here. Jonathan is also here. God damn it. I'm so sorry, Jonathan. I can't believe you forgot about it until now. It's just really offensive. I've been around for a long time.

Oh, um, much.