Sex, Lies, and Washington Red Tape

By Jeffrey Blehar

Tuesday, February 17, 2026

 

Long-time readers are by now well familiar with my negative opinion of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, which probably solidified back in April of 2024 — somewhere around the time I suggested seeking a warrant to search her backyard as an illegally unregistered pet cemetery. My take on her abilities as a political memoirist having thus been set quite firmly, I was never enthusiastic about the idea of her becoming secretary of homeland security anyway. Why give a key domestic portfolio to the lightweight governor of a small and noncompetitive Plains state?

 

I had my own theory — Donald Trump’s TV-addled lizard brain requires his administration be represented by his idea of “glamorous dames” whenever possible — but that was irrelevant. (His pick, not mine.) Two years later, however, in the wake of her performance after the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, my view now is that Noem should be launched in a SpaceX rocket into the heart of the sun. You might therefore justifiably regard me as a biased commentator.

 

But with the publication of last week’s enormous Wall Street Journal investigative piece on Noem’s tenure as DHS secretary, I’d like to claim at least a bit of vindication. “A Pilot Fired Over Kristi Noem’s Missing Blanket and the Constant Chaos Inside DHS,” reads the headline, and it is quite the intentional undersell.

 

For the record, the Journal

 

·         describes Noem as addicted to headlines and completely out of her depth when it comes to immigration enforcement and homeland security issues — but then, you knew that already.

 

·         strongly hints that Noem is conducting a long-term affair with ex-Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who is also depicted as her thinly veiled Svengali and inner-circle patron in Trump World. (Both are married to other people; the Journal reports that their own attachment dates as far back as 2019, which means I’m holding him personally responsible for greenlighting the publication of the “Cricket” anecdote.)

 

·         reports that Noem’s primary enemy within the administration is Tom Homan, whom she regards as more competent and experienced than her — and thus, a mortal threat to her reputation with Donald Trump.

 

·         alleges that Lewandowski has abused his 130-day, time-limited role as a “special government employee” — he’s unconfirmable by the Senate, for transparent reasons — beyond all elasticity of law.

 

·         claims that Lewandowski and Noem are responsible for massive mismanagement of funding at the Department of Homeland Security, holding up disbursements of cash for projects like the border wall, among other things, in a tangle of self-imposed red tape. The reason? Lewandowski wants to personally oversee and approve all money.

 

·         reports on Lewandowski’s unceasing attempts to be designated a “law-enforcement officer” and issued a government badge and weapon — despite his obvious inability to qualify for either.

 

There are many other scandalous details within the Journal’s remarkable, lengthy chronicle of Noem’s incompetence and self-importance. Several of them would have been firing offenses in any previous administration. But of course, the punch line is that nobody cares nowadays, because we all understand Donald Trump is the last person to fire anyone on morals charges.

 

Noem and Lewandowski may still be wedded to others, but they’re clearly now joined to one another at the hip, at least politically. She needs him to be the “brains” — I use this term advisedly — of the operation; he needs her to be the “front.” It strangely reminds me of the relationship Trump has to his own adviser Stephen Miller, increasingly dependent on his unconfirmed amanuensis to translate his ill-formed impulses into something resembling policy, though not always for the better. (The parallels really are striking; it’s turtles all the way down with this administration in many ways, as Trump’s subordinates end up recreating his own dysfunctional style.)

 

The true import of the WSJ piece about Noem’s incompetence is not necessarily what it reveals. What matters is that you’re reading about it in the pages of the Journal now. This kind of piece can only come from deep sourcing within the administration — the Trump-friendly part of the administration, mind you, not “deep state hacks.” (Complain about anonymous sourcing all you wish — I have long learned to read between the lines when it comes to journalists elevating the parochial gripes of bureaucratic infighters — but the fire-to-smoke ratio here is convincing.) She has lost the allegiance of those she works with, from top to bottom. Corey Lewandowski won’t be able to save her from that.

 

My assumption is Noem will not be fired by Donald Trump — she can’t be; nobody is going to sit through a DHS confirmation battle in the Senate with midterms approaching — but she has been back-benched, and it looks to be permanent. Now she limps along in public, like a horse with a shattered leg, waiting only for a dignified moment to be properly put down. Don’t lament. Instead, remember Cricket. It feels like karmic justice to me.

 

Giant Metaphor Alert

 

I regret to inform you that Washington, D.C., is currently full of sh**. I know, I know — this is nothing new. But this time the matter feels a bit more acute: Nearly a month ago, on January 17, a 72-inch sewer pipe broke along the border of our nation’s capital and the state of Maryland — very close to where I grew up, near the Clara Barton Parkway exit of the Beltway — and sent over 240 million gallons of raw sewage straight into the Potomac River.

 

Worry not, D.C. and Maryland residents! Most of the fecal and waste material apparently has been safely quarantined in the C&O Canal, which I have to imagine will make your next stroll upon the canal path even more pleasant than it usually is once you get to Glen Echo. Anyway, the Potomac River south of Carderock is more or less off-limits to human beings for the foreseeable future, and D.C. authorities are warning that it will take up to ten months to repair the broken pipe.

 

This isn’t getting enough attention. The nation’s capital has been hit with an ecological and engineering disaster, and it’s largely been a topic for Twitter journos and local news radio, while attracting some national coverage. On the one hand, I think, “Well, the Washington Post sure picked a bad time to axe their Metro desk staff.” On the other hand, I can’t imagine they’d be too interested in what amounts to an indictment of the blue-state governance of everyone in the region. The real story here is that denizens of the nation’s capital are being taxed at blue-state rates for the privilege of receiving third-world utilities and public safety.