Noah’s Nightly Newsletter – 5/19/26

Hey everyone,

Noah here with your Tuesday night Newsletter!

We start tonight with this huge news….Thomas Massie is OUT!

Down goes Massie!

BREAKING: Trump-Endorsed Ed Gallrein DEFEATS Thomas Massie in Kentucky

RIP “Pinecone”.

I’m so glad he’s gone!

And this is not a pro-Israel or anti-Israel thing, stop with the nonsense.

This is a “Thomas Massie voted against Trump on EVERY important vote his entire time in office” thing.

That’s all you need to know.

And also the Democrats loved and endorsed him.

Now he’s gone.

Good!

Another big win here:

JUST IN: Trump-Endorsed Andy Barr Wins Kentucky Primary to Replace Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Seat

And this is almost parody at this point:

HILARIOUS: MSNOW Host Badly Butchers The Declaration Of Independence, Shows Her Extreme Ignorance

Is that MSNOW or SNL?

I can’t tell!

Love this from JD Vance:

JUST IN: JD Vance Confirms Ilhan Omar Is Under Federal Investigation!

Don’t miss grabbing this:

Avoid High-Interest and Earn Up to 5% Cash Back with These Cards

President Trump also made a huge endorsement in this race, and this one does not happen until next week.

So no results yet.

BREAKING: President Trump Makes Huge Endorsement In Texas Senate Race

And we end with our top story:

BREAKING: President Trump’s Justice Department Announces Major Arrest of Maduro Regime Ally

Ok, that’s a wrap for the news, but I am really excited to show you something brand new I’m working on down below in the PS section….

Your friend,

NOAH

p.s.

Ok, now for the big announcement.

I am writing a book!

I am so pumped about this, it’s become an absolute passion project of mine.

Here’s the deal…

My favorite author of all time is John Sandford, especially his Lucas Davenport series.  

For a long time now, I’ve always had a dream in mind of trying to write a book like his, almost a tribute to him, trying my best to write in his same style, tone, pacing and unique mix of humor and punchiness.  

Today I finally finished Chapter One.

I’ve mapped out the entire book, all the characters, the plot, and storyboarded all 42 Chapters.

And then today I finally wrote Chapter One.  

With 5+ million readers each month, I know we have to have some John Sandford fans out there, and if that’s you I hope you especially enjoy this.

Even if you don’t know Sandford, I think you should still enjoy this.

It’s a crime drama / murder mystery and I’m so excited to show it to you.

Please enjoy….Chapter One.

And please send me your honest feedback, I’d love to know what you think!

Chapter Two introduces our hero, Logan, and if you liked Chapter One you’re going to really love Logan and the rest of the book.

Here you go:

👇

# Chapter One

Nobody called him The Confessor yet. That would come later, after the police found the pattern and the media found the name. For now, he was just a man standing near a window with the blinds drawn, laying down the next card.

“October fourteenth. Check number four-four-seven-one. Sixty-two thousand dollars to Pacific Ridge Consulting for program evaluation and strategic planning.” He paused. “Pacific Ridge Consulting has never evaluated a program or planned a strategy in its life. Pacific Ridge Consulting is a shell company owned by Coastal Venture Holdings, LLC.” Another pause. “Coastal Venture Holdings has one member. You.”

David Kirsch didn’t say anything. His hands were flat on the desk, pressing down, as if the surface might hold him in place. He’d been behind that desk for forty minutes now — still wearing the white button-down from tonight’s donor dinner, the collar dark with sweat, his blue blazer draped over his chair. His silver hair, always camera-ready, had been raked through more than once. The practiced face — the warm eyes, the fundraiser smile — was all gone. What was underneath it looked older and smaller. Not much to look at, once you peeled the label off.

The desk lamp threw a circle of warm light across the office and caught the edge of a framed photograph: Kirsch shaking hands with the mayor at last year’s Veterans’ Day gala. Beyond the light, shadow. Plaques on the walls. Commendations. Awards that caught just enough glow to read their inscriptions if you already knew what they said. The building was empty, the HVAC off, and the silence had a weight to it — the particular quiet of a place built for daytime noise that now had none.

“November ninth. Another check. Forty-one thousand. This one to Meridian Group Advisors — community impact assessment.” The Confessor watched Kirsch’s face. “Meridian Group Advisors has never assessed anything. Same ownership chain. Same destination. You used different company names because you thought it would look less obvious than repeat payments to the same vendor.” He let that sit. “Your controller processes sixty invoices a month at a foundation that practically runs itself. She doesn’t check. She’s never had a reason to. You knew that when you hired her.”

Kirsch’s jaw tightened, but his eyes stayed on the desk.

The Confessor had been going through the file for twenty minutes, and the numbers filled the room like something physical. Specific dates. Specific amounts. Account numbers that Kirsch had probably never heard spoken aloud by another human being. The foundation had taken in just under four million dollars in the last three fiscal years — donations, corporate sponsors, two federal grants — and roughly six hundred thousand of it had been rerouted through fabricated invoices from companies that didn’t exist. All owned by a holding company that existed only to catch the money and move it along. From there: a brokerage account, a money market, and a two-bedroom condo in Palm Springs deeded to Coastal Venture Holdings but with David Kirsch’s golf clubs in the closet and his reading glasses on the nightstand.

He knew all of it. Every dollar. Every date. Every lie the numbers told.

Kirsch had come to the office tonight on his own, the way he always did after donor events. The Confessor had been watching him long enough to know the pattern. The dinners ran until nine, sometimes nine-thirty. Then Kirsch would drive here — not home, here — and let himself into the empty building to do the work he couldn’t do with staff around. Building the next round of fake invoices. Updating the books for companies that didn’t exist. Reconciling the money as it moved from the foundation through the shells and into his own pocket. The careful architecture of his second life. Careful was generous — a halfway competent auditor would have found it in a month.

Tonight The Confessor had been inside the building for three hours before Kirsch arrived, sitting in the dark of the back hallway, listening to the building settle. The building had no security cameras — a frugal foundation serving homeless veterans didn’t spend donor money on surveillance systems, and the irony of that was not lost on him. He’d been here before — twice in the last month, learning the layout, the locks. The side entrance had a keypad, no alarm — same frugal logic as the cameras. He’d watched Kirsch punch in the code from sixty yards away through binoculars one night, sitting in his car on the cross street. Kirsch never covered the keypad with his hand. Why would he? It was ten o’clock at night at a veterans’ charity. Nobody was watching. Except someone was. He’d sat at this desk on one of those visits, in the dark, and gone through the filing cabinets and the accounting system with the patience of a man who had all night and nothing but time.

The sun had set before five — it was three days from the winter solstice — and he’d waited in his car until the dark was complete. Nothing started until the dark was complete. Then he’d driven to an abandoned lot a few blocks from the building, removed both license plates, and continued on to the residential street where he’d scouted his parking spot. A few blocks without plates, residential streets, no reason to be stopped. He’d parked between a pickup truck and a minivan, killed the engine, and walked the three blocks to the building while the December night settled around him. Dark clothes. Black stocking cap pulled low — December nights in Los Angeles got cold enough to justify one. Black COVID mask — enough people still wore them that it wouldn’t draw a second look. Latex gloves under leather gloves. No fingerprints on the keypad, not on anything he’d touched inside this office. Ring doorbells on both sides of the street — no avoiding all of them. He’d accepted that. Head down, cap low, mask on. If a camera caught him from across the street, it would see a shape in dark clothing — no plates, no face, no prints. Almost nothing. But almost nothing was different from nothing, and he’d thought about that too.

When Kirsch walked into his office at nine-forty and turned on the desk lamp, The Confessor was already in the chair across from him.

The panic had been brief. Kirsch had understood quickly that this wasn’t a negotiation.

“The condo in Palm Springs,” The Confessor continued. “You paid cash. Two hundred and sixty thousand. You furnished it yourself — receipts from Design Within Reach, Restoration Hardware. You drove out on weekends in the Lexus.” The Lexus ES Hybrid was in the parking lot right now, straddling two spaces the way people park when they think no one else is around to care. A sensible vehicle, though. Not flashy, but still luxury. Responsible. “Your wife thinks you golf with a college friend on those weekends.”

Something moved across Kirsch’s face when The Confessor mentioned his wife.

“She’s not part of this,” Kirsch said.

They were the first words he’d spoken in several minutes. His voice was thinner than the one from the gala footage, the TED-style talks, the cable news appearances. Small. A reduced man’s shaky voice barely filling a quiet room.

“She’s not,” The Confessor agreed.

Kirsch looked up. Tried something. The Confessor could see it happening — the straightening of the spine, the steadying of the breath, the attempt to find the version of himself that worked in rooms like this. The public face. The one that made rich people feel virtuous for writing checks they’d forget about by dessert.

“I don’t know where you got your information,” Kirsch said, and his voice found a little of its old warmth, “but you’re looking at this without context. Nonprofit accounting is complicated. Operating reserves, restricted funds, pass-through allocations — money moves in ways that can look irregular on paper but are perfectly—”

“David.”

He stopped.

“Coastal Venture Holdings is the parent company you set up to own your little network of fake vendors — Pacific Ridge, Meridian Group, and however many others there are. It has no employees, no business operations, no tax filings beyond the minimum to keep it active. You created it nineteen months ago using a registered agent in Nevada. The condo in Palm Springs is not an operating reserve. Your brokerage account is not a pass-through allocation.”

The public face collapsed the way a stage set comes down after the final performance — fast, deliberate, everything that looked solid a moment ago revealed as plywood and paint. One moment it was there — the posture, the voice, the practiced calm — and the next it was just David Kirsch, fifty-seven years old, sitting behind a desk in a dark building with someone who knew everything.

The Confessor watched it happen. It was fast. Most people would miss it. He didn’t miss things.

Kirsch tried again, and this time the quality was different. Lower. Closer to the ground.

“I was going to put it back.”

As if intention were a currency you could spend after the fact.

The Confessor said nothing.

“The foundation was hemorrhaging money in 2022. Donations dropped forty percent after Covid. The federal grants were delayed — months of delays, the paperwork alone was—” Kirsch stopped himself. Took a breath. “I moved money to keep the lights on. I know how it looks, but I was trying to save the foundation.”

“And the condo?”

Kirsch’s mouth opened. Closed.

“The brokerage account?”

Nothing.

“The golf weekends while the veterans your foundation was supposed to house slept under the 405 overpass on Wilshire?”

Kirsch put his hands over his face. His shoulders dropped. *I was trying to save it* had lasted less than a minute. The rationalizations were thinner than the denials. The man had three excuses and none of them fit. Like watching someone try on suits at a funeral.

The Confessor gave him time. The truth had to come on its own, the way water finds its level.

The desk clock ticked. Through the drawn blinds, a car passed on the street below — headlights sweeping across the ceiling, then gone. He waited.

“I need you to say it,” The Confessor said. “What you did. Out loud. In your own words.”

Kirsch looked at him through his fingers. His eyes were wet, but he wasn’t crying. Something past crying.

“Why?”

“Because you’ve never said it. Not once. Not to anyone. You’ve lived inside the lie so long that the truth has become the foreign object. I need you to let it out.”

Kirsch stared at him for a long time. The photographs watched from the walls — Kirsch at ribbon cuttings, Kirsch hugging veterans, Kirsch accepting a crystal plaque from the city council. The man in those photos didn’t exist anymore.

When it came, it came quiet.

“I stole the money.”

He said it the way you’d set down something heavy you’d been carrying too long.

“I knew what I was doing,” Kirsch said. His voice steadied as he went, as if the truth, once started, had its own momentum. “It wasn’t about saving the foundation. It was about wanting… things. The condo. The weekends. A life that felt like what I thought I deserved. I told myself it was temporary. I told myself I’d pay it back. But I wasn’t going to pay it back. I knew that. I knew it every time I made a transfer and I did it anyway.”

He looked at the photos on the wall.

“Those people trusted me.”

“Yes.”

“The veterans. The donors. Maria.” His wife. “They all trusted me and I let them because the lie was easier than any version of the truth.”

Something inside The Confessor loosened. A pressure he’d been carrying for months — since he’d first found the discrepancy in the foundation’s public filings — released. A completion.

He set a legal pad on the desk. Yellow, college-ruled. A black pen beside it.

“Write it down,” he said. “Everything you just told me. In your own words.”

Kirsch looked at the legal pad. Looked at The Confessor. The calculation was visible — what this document would mean, who might read it, what it would do to his life. But his life was already over. He’d known that since the account numbers started.

Kirsch picked up the pen. His hand shook, but his handwriting was legible. He wrote slowly, carefully. Nice penmanship for a man confessing to a felony. Probably the same hand that signed the thank-you notes to the donors he was stealing from.

While Kirsch wrote, The Confessor began to circle.

Not quickly. Not with any urgency that would pull attention from the page. He stepped from where he’d been standing near the window and moved along the side wall, past the plaques, past the framed commendation from the city council. Slow. Patient. The way a hand moves around the face of a clock. Kirsch didn’t look up. The pen kept moving, the scratch of it the only sound in the room. The Confessor passed the corner of the office, continued along the back wall, came around behind the desk. He could see Kirsch’s handwriting now — upside down, but legible. Specific amounts. Account names. The condo. His wife’s ignorance. All of it.

He filled one page, turned it, continued on the next. The Confessor completed the circle and stopped directly behind the chair.

Kirsch finished. Set the pen down and straightened up in his chair, rolling his shoulders slightly, the way you do after leaning forward for a long time. The legal pad sat in front of him — two pages, dense with handwriting, the ink still drying on the last line. Signed at the bottom.

He started to turn his head.

The blade was short and very sharp. The Confessor drew it across Kirsch’s throat from behind in a single smooth motion, left to right, fast enough that his expression barely changed. Kirsch’s hands came up — reflex, not decision — and then dropped. He settled into the chair. His eyes stayed open for a moment, looking at the photograph directly across from him — the one from the Veterans’ Day gala, the handshake with the mayor, the smile — and then they didn’t look at anything.

It was over in seconds. The mercy of truth.

He checked his sleeves, his gloves, the toes of his shoes. Nothing wet. Nothing bright. The angle had done what he’d planned for it to do.

The room was very quiet. The desk lamp still threw its circle of warm light across the legal pad, the confession, the dead man’s hands resting on the arms of his chair. Blood moved across the white button-down in a way that looked almost deliberate, like ink spreading on cloth.

He cleaned the blade, folded it, put it away. Positioned the legal pad squarely on the desk in front of Kirsch, where it would be found. Blood had reached the pages — a fine spray across the second sheet, dotting the ink, soaking into the yellow paper. The handwriting was still legible underneath it. Two pages, stained with what they’d cost.

He looked at the photographs one last time. Kirsch at the fundraiser. Kirsch with the veterans. Kirsch accepting awards for compassion from people he was robbing. Six hundred thousand dollars redirected to a condo and a brokerage account while the men it was meant for slept under overpasses.

The photographs would stay on the walls. The confession would stay on the desk.

He turned off the desk lamp. The room went dark except for thin bands of parking lot light coming through the blinds, falling across the floor in pale stripes. He left the way he’d come in — side entrance, keypad, quiet hallway. The building was just a building again.

The back door opened onto the parking lot. Cool air, dry, the faint bite of December in Los Angeles. The Lexus Hybrid sat under a light pole, still straddling its two spaces. Couldn’t even park straight in an empty lot, The Confessor thought. This asshole cheated at everything.

He pulled the stocking cap low, adjusted the mask, and walked. Unhurried. Far side of the street, head down, the same route he’d walked in. A man in dark clothes on a cold night in a city where that meant nothing. He got in, started the engine, and drove the few blocks back to the empty lot. The license plates went back on in under a minute — a screwdriver from the glove box, four screws, done. Then east on a side street, north on Western Avenue, west on Wilshire Boulevard. He drove the speed limit. He signaled his turns. A dark sedan on a wide boulevard at eleven o’clock on a Tuesday night, indistinguishable from the delivery drivers and the night-shift workers and the restless insomniacs going nowhere in particular.

The city moved past the windows. Late-night Los Angeles — strip malls and gas stations, dark stretches between them, billboard faces selling things to people who weren’t paying attention. A city that never fully closed its eyes. Ten million people performing for each other, and none of them any good at it.

He thought about the veterans. Not sentimentally — he didn’t do that. About the ones who’d slept on sidewalks while David Kirsch slept in Palm Springs. About how many more David Kirsches were out there right now, behind their desks, inside their lies, feigning goodness while the people who needed them went without.

More than you’d think. More than anyone wants to believe.

The boulevard stretched ahead of him, long and steady, the Tuesday night traffic thinning as he moved west. Just another set of headlights in the flow. He drove toward home.

There would be others.