Homeland Security Spokesperson Leaving Amid Public Backlash to ICE

Loyal MAGA equivocator Tricia McLaughlin is leaving her post as Homeland Security spokesperson amid the widespread unpopularity of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

According to Politico, McLaughlin planned to depart in December but stayed on through the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Most recently, she was asked to explain her boss, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, labeling Pretti as a domestic terrorist, but she refused to use the same words.

“Secretary Noem accused Alex Pretti of being a domestic terrorist. Is the administration standing by that language?” Fox News’s Dana Peroni asked McLaughlin last month.

“So, initial statements were made after reports from CBP on the ground. It was a very chaotic scene. We know that our ICE law enforcement are facing rampant threats of violence against them, a violent campaign, so that is why this investigation is so important, so that we can get accurate facts to the American people,” she replied, avoiding the question.

“Would you use that expression again?”

“I think we have to really have the investigation be leading the way on this, Stuart,” she said. “And again, the early statements that were released was based on a chaotic scene on the ground and we really need to have true, accurate information to come to light, and so, again, Homeland Security investigators are leading that with the FBI supporting.”

Otherwise, McLaughlin has eagerly spouted the Trump administration’s talking points. In December, she made headlines for defending President Trump’s racist attacks on Somali Americans. She is the second senior immigration official to jump ship after Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota, following former Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino’s reassignment last month.

Her deputy Lauren Bis, who previously worked at the Heritage Foundation and the Trump campaign before joining DHS, will be promoted in her place.

This story has been updated.

New Mexico’s state House is looking to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s ranch in the state, unanimously passing a bill on Monday to establish an investigatory subcommittee to see what the convicted sex criminal was up to there.

One of the bill’s co-sponsors, state Representative Andrea Romero, called the committee a “Truth Commission” that will use testimony, subpoena powers, and public records to “put the whole story together.”

New Mexicans “deserve to know the truth about what went on at the Zorro Ranch and who knew about it. We have heard years of allegations and rumors about Epstein’s activities in New Mexico, but unfortunately, federal investigations have failed to put together an official record,” Romero said in a statement. “With this Truth Commission, we can finally fill in the gaps by investigating the failures that led to the horrific allegations of abuse and crime at Zorro Ranch, so we can learn from them and prevent such atrocities from taking place in our state going forward.”

Epstein’s Zorro Ranch was a sprawling 7,500 acres that he bought in 1993, which had its own helipad and airstrip. Court documents say that sex trafficking took place there with the help of Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, but the federal government has never conducted a full search of the property. In 2019, then–New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas said his office conducted its own investigation and found “activity that occurred in New Mexico that was still viable for prosecution, including contact with multiple victims.”

Balderas added that federal prosecutors in New York asked his office to hold back on any investigations or prosecutions related to Epstein, as they had their own ongoing investigation of Epstein. In emails released earlier this month, Manhattan federal prosecutors said in 2019 that they had spoken with the New Mexico attorney general’s office, who they said had “agreed to cease any investigation into sex trafficking and share whatever they had gathered regarding sex trafficking activity with our office.”

Years later, New Mexico authorities are going to be taking a full look at what happened on the ranch. Several of Epstein’s victims have testified that they were abused there, but Epstein successfully managed to keep those activities hidden for many years, even from his neighbors. With this commission, the truth may finally come out.

After staving off major mark-ups during the holiday season, American companies are finally starting to hike prices in response to President Donald Trump’s tariffs and other policies making business more expensive, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

The initial tariff-driven price spike started to dull in October and fell before Black Friday—but it is back for a post-Christmas price reset, according to Alberto Cavallo, a professor at Harvard Business School who tracks online prices of U.S. retailers. Between the end of November and February 10, the prices of most affordable imported goods rose by 2.3 percent, according to Cavallo.

Driven by the rising price of appliances, bedding, computers, electronics, and furniture, online prices posted their largest monthly increase in a dozen years, according to the Adobe digital price index.

American companies aren’t shying away from blaming Trump’s tariffs for the suddenly soaring prices.

After delaying price increases on winter goods, Columbia Sportswear said it intended to up the price of spring and fall merchandise by, on average, a high single-digit percent. Speaking on an earnings call earlier this month, Columbia’s chief executive Tim Boyle said that raising prices, and other mitigation measures like renegotiating prices with its factories, was intended to “offset the dollar impact of high tariffs.”

Levi Strauss raised prices in January in response to Trump’s tariffs, and is continuing to mark up price tags in February. The company said it identified more opportunities to boost prices on new, high-end items, while only moderately increasing the price of entry-level products.

McCormick & Co said that tariff expenses added a whopping $70 million in gross costs last year, and will add $50 million in incremental costs this year. The spice maker initially raised prices in September, and plans to increase prices again this month.

The Supreme Court is expected to issue a ruling on Trump’s disastrous tariff policy as early as Friday. But tariffs aren’t the only Trump administration policies making business more expensive.

Structural Systems Repair Group, a Cincinnati-based construction company, was forced to raise prices by 10 to 15 percent after tariffs and health care costs for its 115 employees both increased by 10 percent. In 2026, the absence of Affordable Care Act subsidies, which elapsed under the Trump administration, has caused health insurance premiums to spike even higher.

A 40-year-old man allegedly walked into a San Diego McDonald’s, asked for the manager, and violently put him in a headlock—all while claiming to be an ICE agent.

“Why do you think your 911 calls aren’t f—king working?” Joshua Cobb can be heard telling McDonald’s employees in a video of the incident last week. “Why do you think that? Why do you think I’m willing to take two punches in the fucking face from some illegal immigrant while I make an arrest for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement?”

“He grabbed me from, from the back, grabbed my neck like really hard,” general manager Daniel Martinez told ABC 10 News. “So when that happened, all my co-workers jumped on him, and he let go, but after that, he just punched me on the side.”

In this case, employees knew Cobb wasn’t an ICE agent because he frequented their McDonald’s. He showed no ICE identification and was wearing just a T-shirt and a backward hat. He was later arrested.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. Police arrested a man in Galveston, Texas, in December for impersonating an ICE agent. Decked out in full (albeit cheap-looking) tactical gear, 44-year-old Joshua Warner allegedly tried to arrest two people, telling the civilians who confronted him that he didn’t need to give them his name or badge number.

“I’ve never seen police in a uniform like that, and his tool belt and all of his stuff … it looked like it had just came in from Temu or Amazon or something,” one witness told reporters.

It seems incredibly, alarmingly easy for any middle-aged loser to create chaos and fulfill whatever racist GI Joe fantasies they have under the guise of being a federal agent. And the aggressive, indiscriminate actions of the real ones aren’t helping.

The president’s total 180 on TikTok was, in no small part, due to the machinations of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

Donald Trump had opposed the social media behemoth for years. Long before Democrats hopped on board with the idea, Trump challenged the app’s presence in the United States based on flimsy national security concerns, attempting to instate a total ban on the video-sharing app. But in the wake of Trump’s 2024 win, Kirk—whose efforts rallying young voters significantly aided the president’s cause—managed to change Trump’s mind.

That November 2024 meeting involved Kirk, Trump, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, and a slideshow with a swath of visual graphics that Kirk knew would sway the incumbent Republican. Kirk and Chew wanted to stall the impending congressional ban on the app, and they succeeded by appealing to the president’s vanity.

One slide, obtained by Axios, depicted the number of views Trump had accrued on the platform. It was staggering: a cumulative 3.8 billion eyes had watched content related to the president. Meanwhile, his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris, was remarkably less popular, generating 1.3 billion views.

Their closest competition was, according to the slide, Kirk himself, Fox News, Tucker Carlson, and pop phenomenon Taylor Swift.

“I’m more popular than Taylor Swift,” Trump remarked, according to Axios.

Trump then rang his son, Barron, to crow over the stat, according to MAGA insiders who spoke with the digital publication.

The undertaking was almost too successful, so much so that it’s caused retrograde amnesia among Trump’s allies. In truth, Trump attempted to eradicate TikTok via an executive order before he left office in 2020, but that effort appears to be in the past. Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump during his campaign, told Axios that the president had always been a fond supporter of the app due to its ability to reach young voters.

“He’d say all the time: ‘You guys are missing it! These young people, they love TikTok. They’re on it all day long,’” Miller told Axios. “And he’d recount stories of Barron talking about it, and also younger people who work with him and for him.”
Last month, TikTok changed ownership in order to avoid the stalled U.S. ban, switching hands from ByteDance to a consortium of U.S.-led investors, including Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX. Together, those three hold an 80.1 percent majority stake in TikTok’s U.S. operations, according to a company announcement. ByteDance still retains a 19.9 percent minority stake.