{"id":509817,"date":"2026-03-07T19:47:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T19:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/509817\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T19:47:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T19:47:10","slug":"15-blockbuster-movies-cheaper-than-kristi-noems-220m-dhs-ads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/509817\/","title":{"rendered":"15 Blockbuster Movies Cheaper Than Kristi Noem’s $220M DHS Ads"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kristi Noem might not be a Hollywood star, but her department spent like the big studios<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security was ousted from her post on Thursday, following months of controversy over her handling of immigration enforcement<\/a> in Trump’s mass deportation campaign.<\/p>\n

During Noem’s appearance before Congress on Tuesday, Senator John Kennedy, among other lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle, pressed Noem about the department’s spending of taxpayer dollars, including a $220 million ad contract<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The ads, which Noem said were intended to encourage undocumented immigrants to leave the US, included footage of the now-former secretary riding a horse in front of Mount Rushmore while delivering stern messages about border enforcement.<\/p>\n

Lawmakers scrutinized the bidding process<\/a> for the contracts behind the ad campaign, as well as the firms selected, raising questions about how taxpayer dollars were awarded and spent.<\/p>\n

In her testimony, Noem defended the ads as “effective” and said President Donald Trump had approved the $220 million in spending. “We went through the legal processes, went through it correctly,” she said.<\/p>\n

Trump later disputed that account, telling Reuters on Thursday, “I never knew anything about it.”<\/p>\n

On social media, “The View” host Meghan McCain compared the DHS ad costs to the production budget for “Sinners.” The Ryan Coogler-directed movie, which recently set an Oscars record with 16 Academy Award nominations, had an estimated budget of $90 million, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Kristi Noem’s DHS vanity videos cost $130 million more than Sinners,” McCain wrote in an X post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Sinners” isn’t the only movie with a smaller budget than the department’s ad spending.<\/p>\n

The $220 million price tag \u2014 which also accounted for media buying and placement, consulting fees, and related administrative expenses \u2014 surpasses the budgets for a list of blockbuster movies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here are 15 of them, as well as their reported budgets, which have been adjusted for inflation to reflect what those costs would be today.<\/p>\n

And spoiler: some of your favorite movies might be included.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kristi Noem might not be a Hollywood star, but her department spent like the big studios. The former…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-509817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509817\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}