And officials have indicated that a big reason why is how top members of the Department of Homeland Security botched the response to Alex Pretti’s killing Saturday. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called it “domestic terrorism,” and Trump falsely claimed that Good “willfully and viciously ran over” an ICE agent. The response to Pretti’s killing was also very much in line with how we’ve seen Noem and a top DHS spokesperson operate. Stateline.org last week ran down a number of other instances of official DHS claims about incidents being called into question or contradicted by other evidence. A few hours after his death, McLaughlin got the ball rolling on a very full-throated initial DHS response.

Source: CNN January 27, 2026 14:27 UTC