The Voice in the Deportation Machine
How Tricia McLaughlin defends Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.
A day after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was on the fiftieth floor of One World Trade Center, holding a press conference. While posted in front of three uniformed officers standing stock-still like royal guards, Noem trumpeted recent local action by DHS, which oversees ICE: “We are on offense,” she declared, against “scumbags.” Addressing the events in Minneapolis, Noem insisted that the ICE agent who killed Good was acting in self-defense. And she revealed what she believed to be the underlying culprit for Good’s death: “provocative talk” from public officials critical of ICE that was “inciting people to take action and perpetuate violence.” Just to Noem’s right, wearing a blue blazer, was Tricia McLaughlin, DHS’s assistant secretary for public affairs—who has become a master of “provocative talk.”
Related Knowledge Center: Democracy and politics
News organizations are scrambling to find a coverage approach that adequately informs the American public about the country’s slide from democracy to authoritarian rule.
Related Knowledge Center: Information integrity
In an increasingly fractured media landscape, truth has been a casualty in the public discussion. Coverage has been warped by the business needs of struggling news organizations, and a significant segment of the public relies on bad-faith outlets that are little more than propagandists. While fact-checking has become routine, some organizations are exploring other ways to combat the trends. And misinformation spewed by AI-driven chatbots has become more of a feature than simply a bug.
Fact-checking and its detractors