Top Democrats refer Noem to DOJ for alleged perjury
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on March 04, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The two top Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary committees are referring outgoing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem to the Department of Justice for perjury due to her testimony to congressional committees earlier this month, according to a letter sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland allege that Noem’s statements on a variety of topics including DHS following judges’ orders and a controversial multimillion-dollar ad campaign “appear to violate criminal statutes prohibiting perjury and knowingly making false statements to Congress.”
In response to the letter, a DHS spokesperson said “Any claim that Secretary Noem committed perjury is categorically FALSE.”
A Justice Department spokesperson said, “The DOJ has received the latest political stunt from the Democrats who should instead vote to reopen the Department of Homeland Security.”
President Donald Trump fired Noem the day after her testimony concluded and announced that he was appointing her to a new role as special envoy to the Shield of the Americas, a coalition of Latin American countries the White House says is committed to cooperating with the U.S. in taking on drug cartels and securing the U.S. border. He said he had nominated Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin to head DHS when Noem’s tenure ended on March 31.
The Democrats allege that Noem misled Congress when she said that DHS had followed court orders while federal judges have ruled a number of times that it had not.
They also cited her testimony over contracts for a $220 million DHS ad campaign and her assertion that Trump had signed off on it. A day later, Trump told Reuters, “I never knew anything about it.”
“New public reporting, however, indicates that those statements may have been false. It has been reported that not only did the Secretary “handpick” four companies for the ad campaign, but procurement records show the “ad work was awarded using ‘other than full and open competition,'” and the four companies were politically connected to Noem and her allies,” according to the letter.
Durbin and Raskin also allege Noem misled Congress when she testified that top adviser Corey Lewandowski had “no authority” to make decisions for the department.
“Secretary Noem’s denial of Corey Lewandowski’s role in DHS contract approval may also have been false. It has been widely reported that Mr. Lewandowski asserts approval authority over contracts and grants that exceed $100,000.27 A similar approval process reportedly exists for policy decisions, and as a recently published document shows, Mr. Lewandowski’s signature is visible above Secretary Noem’s on a February 2025 document reversing temporary protected status for Haitians.”
Lewandowski is reportedly leaving his position as a special government employee. He did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment on his future at DHS.
The Democrats also allege Noem made false statements about conditions in ICE detention centers adhering to federal detention standards while ICE internal audits documented “significant failures to meet medical care standards.”
And they say her assertion that ICE did not detain U.S. citizens is false and cited 170 cases of citizens being detained in some cases for days without an opportunity to prove their citizenship.
“Making false statements to Congress, and making false statements under oath, are federal crimes,” the letter says. “While we have low expectations that you will pursue this matter given your partisan weaponization of the Department of Justice, we note that the statute of limitations for perjury and for knowingly and willfully making false statements to Congress is five years.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis attends the Boom Belt: A Return to First Principles in Public Markets conference on April 7, 2026, in Miami, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday unveiled a proposed new congressional map for the Sunshine State that his office indicates could let Republicans flip up to four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
It’s a move that could help the party gain seats and counter Democrats’ recent redistricting victory in Virginia, if the map passes the Legislature and survives likely legal challenges. But some in the state are concerned about how a new map might backfire on the GOP. It is also another volley in mid-decade redistricting around the country, as another state starts the process usually only done once a decade in the wake of Texas, California and other states doing so.
The new map, provided to ABC News by the governor’s office, appears to aim to allow Republicans to flip up to four seats in the U.S. House, leaving just four Democratic-held districts in the state.
The office did not provide any details on how it conducted its analysis, and DeSantis said the redraw is about representation. “Florida got shortchanged in the 2020 Census, and we’ve been fighting for fair representation ever since. … Our new map for 2026 makes good on my promise to conduct mid-decade redistricting, and it more fairly represents the makeup of Florida today,” DeSantis told Fox News Digital, which was first to report on the new map being unveiled.
Dave Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst for The Cook Political Report, wrote on Monday that the map appears to target Democratic Reps. Darren Soto, Kathy Castor, Jared Moskowitz and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Soto wrote on X, “Gerrymander or Dummymander? This map is an absolutely unlawful violation of the Florida Constitution. The Legislature should reject it. The courts should strike it down. That being said, there are 12+ seats that Democrats could still win under this map in this cycle.”
The speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, Daniel Perez, confirmed in a memo on Monday that the state House had received the new map and would begin considering it on Tuesday.
An aggressive approach
DeSantis has said Florida’s potential redistricting has nothing to do with Virginia’s efforts to redraw its congressional map, which passed last week and could net Democrats four congressional seats if it survives court challenges.
Some within the Republican Party have said Florida should aggressively redraw its map to counter Virginia, although others have hedged.
President Donald Trump, for instance, was asked by Fox News in an interview on Sunday about his reaction to Virginia’s redistricting and if Florida should ‘make a go at it.’ (Florida is Trump’s home state.) “I do, but that Virginia case is terrible,” Trump responded.
A Republican strategist in Florida told ABC News, “I think the people who are interested in taking the most aggressive, fighteresque approach … feel a bit emboldened” by what happened in Virginia. “The people taking a more strategic, long-term take on this whole process — I don’t think what happened in Virginia changes their opinion at all.”
Democrats ready to counter
DeSantis had called a special session that’s currently set to begin Tuesday that will include considering mid-decade redistricting, although he had previously delayed the initial date of the session by a week and expanded it to add other issues.
The Legislature also has a complex relationship with the governor, and legislators have been relatively tight-lipped over how it will vote.
The governor has spoken often about mid-decade redistricting in Florida in recent months, but framed his thoughts in terms of Florida needing to redraw its maps due to population reasons — not for political gain.
But Democrats, flush off of a victory in Virginia, say that they’re ready to counter GOP moves. The Virginia election’s certification is currently being litigated in courts.
Could it backfire?
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, during a press conference last Wednesday, called potential redistricting in Florida a “DeSantis dummymander” that would backfire on the GOP by weakening seats they currently hold.
“Our message to Florida Republicans is, ‘F around and find out’,” Jeffries said. “If they go down the road of a ‘DeSantis Dummymander’, the Florida Republicans are going to find themselves in the same situation as Texas Republicans who are on the run right now.”
DeSantis, responding to Jeffries on Wednesday without bringing up redistricting, taunted, “There’s nothing that could be better for Republicans in Florida than to see Hakeem Jeffries everywhere around this state … please, be my guest to come down in Florida. We would love to have you.”
Some Republicans, however, have openly expressed concerns that any new map in Florida would endanger GOP-held districts because it would weaken those districts politically as it tries to flip other ones, due to how voters could be moved around or respond to redistricting. It’s a key concern in Florida for the GOP, where Hispanic voters — a major bloc — who had moved towards the GOP in 2024’s elections now appear to be moving towards Democrats.
“Don’t do it. I’ve said it from the beginning. I’ve been around enough reapportionments to know it’s a slippery slope,” Florida Rep. Daniel Webster told Punchbowl News last week.
And Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar told NBC News last week, “Look, I may be at a disadvantage, because my lines in district number 27 in the state of Florida may be moved, but there’s nothing I can do about it. And I always look at the bright side. This is American democracy. This is the American electoral system.”
The law and Florida’s Constitution
There are legal considerations at play as well that were not the case in other states such as Texas, California and Missouri that redistricted — as Florida’s state Constitution also has strict restrictions on redrawing constitutional maps for political gain, thanks to provisions known as the Fair Districts Amendments that voters approved in 2010.
The state’s Constitution says that “In establishing congressional district boundaries … No apportionment plan or individual district shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent.”
“It imposes an explicit prohibition on intentionally redrawing districts to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent,” Jonathan Marshfield, a state constitutional law expert at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, told ABC News.
“And so this is significant in Florida, because the United States Supreme Court hasheld … that these were sort of partisan gerrymandering claims are not justiciable in federal court; [there’s] essentially no recourse in the same way in federal court as there is in a state court. One of the challenges, I can imagine, is that these new congressional maps are going to be challenged as not complying with the Fair District Amendment of 2010.”
Marshfield added that “the law is structured such that challenges will, in fact, focus on their actual intent in drawing the lines where they draw them. And so that is a legally relevant inquiry that will be investigated in the course of the litigation.
DeSantis did not address the amendments in his comments to Fox News. But his general counsel, David Axelman, in a letter sent to the Florida Legislature along with the proposed map, argued that the amendments themselves may be unconstitutional.
“Florida’s representation in the U.S. House has also been distorted by considerations of race. Passed in 2010, the Fair Districts Amendments (FDA) to the Florida Constitution require the Legislature to account for race when drawing congressional districts … This requires the use of race in redistricting-something that the U.S. Supreme Court has signaled is unconstitutional.”
A strategist working with Florida House Democrats told ABC News that Democrats in the Legislature don’t have procedural mechanisms or leeway to slow down the process of passing a map, unlike in Texas in 2025 where Democrats were able to depart the state and break “quorum” in order to hold up legislation. But the strategist said that won’t matter, and that it doesn’t matter if the new map benefits Republicans or not.
A strategist working with Florida House Democrats told ABC News that Democrats in the Legislature don’t have the same procedural mechanism or leeway to slow down the process of passing a map, unlike in Texas in 2025 where Democrats were able to depart the state and break “quorum” in order to hold up legislation. But the strategist said that won’t matter, and that it doesn’t matter if the new map benefits Republicans or not.
“Regardless of if it backfires or not, it’s still illegal,” the strategist argued.
But Marshfield said that those drawing the map will likely have taken the amendment into account: “I’m sure in light of that, that the people drawing the lines, I would assume — I think the courts assume — that they have taken care to comply with the law, so that they are taking care to draw the lines in ways that comply with that amendment.”
The US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, April 20, 2026. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled in favor of a U.S. Army veteran wounded in a 2016 suicide bombing in Afghanistan, allowing him to sue a military contractor for damages after it allegedly failed to supervise the attacker who was an employee.
The 6-3 decision reverses lower court rulings which had said the contractor, Fluor Corporation, was immune from lawsuits because it was operating on behalf of the U.S. government and opens the door to other damages suits against war-zone contractors for activities outside the bounds of their responsibility.
The attacker, Ahmad Nayeb, was employed by Fluor to work in a nontactical vehicle yard on Bagram Air Base under an Army contract that required the company to ensure all personnel complied with base security policies, which included their confinement to works sites and “constant view of them.”
In November 2016, Nayeb roamed the base freely for nearly an hour and used U.S. government tools to make his bomb inside the secure base, according to an Army investigation cited in court documents.
The explosion killed five and wounded 17, including then-Army Spc. Winston Hencely, who confronted the attacker just as he detonated his suicide vest. Nayeb was killed; the explosion fractured Hencely’s skull and resulted in permanent disability.
While damages claims against the U.S. government and its military contractors arising out of combatant activities are generally prohibited by federal law, Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the court’s majority, concluded immunity does not apply to cases when “the contractor was not required or authorized to take the action at issue.”
“The government required Fluor to hire Afghan employees and to provide logistics for Bagram Airfield. But, it did not, Hencely contends, require Fluor to leave Nayeb unsupervised, allow him to walk alone for an hour after his shift, or permit him to obtain unauthorized tools with which he could build a bomb,” Thomas wrote.
The decision clears the way for Hencely to pursue a damages case against the company in federal court.
In dissent, Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts said while they believe Hencely deserves “a full measure of support from the American people,” a damages lawsuit is “not the way to give the petitioner what he is due.”
Alito wrote, “War is the exclusive domain of the Federal Government, but the Court [today] allows state (or foreign law) to encroach on that domain. The Constitution precludes that encroachment.”
Fluor Corp, which disputes liability for the bombing, did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment on the court’s decision.
Demolition of the East Wing of the White House, during construction on the new ballroom extension of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. (Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Republicans are aiming to secure $1 billion in funding for security-related aspects of the White House ballroom project as part of a broader, roughly $70 billion funding package for immigration enforcement, which they aim to pass with little-to-no support from Democrats.
Republicans began unveiling aspects of their reconciliation package late Monday night. Included within the bill is a $1 billion allocation to the Secret Service for “the purposes of security adjustments and upgrades … relating to the East Wing Modernization Project, including above-ground and below-ground security features.”
The funding can only be used for security-related aspects of the project, according to the bill text.
The Trump administration has previously said it aims to raise $400 million in private donations to pay for the ballroom, and has said it will cost the taxpayer nothing.
President Donald Trump said in October that the ballroom would be “paid for 100% by me and some friends of mine,” referencing donors.
“The government is paying absolutely nothing,” Trump said.
Democratic lawmakers have introduced legislation that they have titled “The Stop Ballroom Bribery Act” to regulate the project and impose restrictions on donations.
A group of GOP senators led by Sen. Lindsey Graham introduced separate legislation that would provide $400 million in funding. The senators on that bill say their proposal is to offset the cost of the ballroom by using customs fees. Because it is not in a reconciliation bill, it will almost certainly fail to pass if it even gets a vote on the Senate floor.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul put forward a separate bill that would authorize the ballroom but not fund it. He attempted to pass that by unanimous consent last week and it failed.
This bill text comes as Republicans have increasingly called for the construction of the ballroom following the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner last month. They say a secure facility is necessary for the president and Cabinet members to gather with large groups on the White House grounds.
The White House said Tuesday that “Congress has rightly recognized the need for these funds.”
“Due in part to the recent assassination attempt on President Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the proposal would provide the United States Secret Service with the resources they need to fully and completely harden the White House complex, in addition to the many other critical missions for the USSS,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said in a statement. “As President Trump has repeatedly said, the White House must be a safe and secure complex that generations of future presidents and visitors to the People’s house can enjoy.”
In a statement to ABC News on Tuesday, a spokesperson for Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley said the bill does “does not fund ballroom construction,” but “provides funds for Secret Service enhancements that will ensure all presidents, their families and their staffs are adequately protected.”
The ballroom has been the target of a lawsuit filed late last year by historic preservationists, with a federal judge finding it to be illegal without the approval of lawmakers.
In a filing in the case last month, the Trump administration said that the security enhancements to the East Wing project would include “missile resistant steel columns, Military-grade venting, drone-proof ceilings and bullet, ballistic, and blast proof glass,” all aimed at forming a “fortified structural buffer” to protect not only the ballroom, but also the main White House residence and the offices in the West Wing.
That April 27 Justice Department filing, which read in part like a social media post written in the president’s own voice, also said the upgrades would include “bomb shelters, a state of the art hospital and medical facilities, Top Secret military installations, structures, and equipment, protective partitioning, and other features.”
District Judge Richard Leon ruled in late March that building the ballroom without congressional authorization violated the law. While Leon carved out an exception for work that would be necessary to ensure the “safety and security of the White House,” he later clarified his decision to allow for “below-ground construction” on the project, as well as anything above ground that would be “strictly necessary” to secure and protect that work.
Leon’s injunction has been administratively stayed by a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, pending oral argument at a hearing set for next month. The appeals court’s order means that, for now, work on both the ballroom and the project’s security-related features can continue.
For weeks, Republicans have been working to put forward a funding package in response to political gridlock that left Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Border Patrol without their regular annual appropriations. Though these agencies received funding through the previously passed One Big Beautiful Bill, Republicans say more funding is needed, and they’re looking to secure $26 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection and $38 billion for ICE in this just-released bill.
Republicans are aiming to pass the funding using a budgeting tool called reconciliation, which, if successful, would allow Republicans to send this funding to Trump’s desk without the support of a single Democrat and without the possibility of a filibuster. But there are rules governing this process, and it’s not yet clear whether the Senate parliamentarian, who must determine whether items in a reconciliation package are “substantive to the budget,” will green light the ballroom security funding or other items in the bill.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that Republicans are “on a different planet” than American families with their spending priorities.
“Republicans looked at families drowning in bills and decided what they really needed was more raids and a Trump ballroom,” Schumer wrote in a post on X Tuesday.
