Trump continues to defend Homan, Noem amid immigration enforcement backlash
Border czar Tom Homan speaks during a news conference about ongoing immigration enforcement operations on January 29, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump took to social media to show his support for two of his administration leaders amid the leadership shakeup following last week’s fatal shooting in Minneapolis.
The president praised the work of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who came under fire following the deaths of Minneapolis residents Alex Pretti and Renee Good at the hands of federal agents, and thanked Border Czar Tom Homan, who he sent to Minneapolis this week to smooth over boiling tensions.
Despite several videos showing the 37-year-old Pretti did not have a firearm in his hands when he encountered federal agents on Jan 24, Noem initially claimed, without evidence, that the nurse brandished a weapon, was “wishing to inflict harm” and the officers were “attacked.”
Multiple videos of the incident taken by civilians show that Pretti, a licensed gun owner, was disarmed by a law enforcement officer just before the first shot rang out.
The FBI is leading the investigation into Good’s shooting on Jan. 7. DHS said that Good was allegedly attempting to run over law enforcement officers when an ICE agent shot her, which local leaders and her family have disputed.
Trump, who has backed Noem all of this week, lashed out at her critics in a social media post posted early Saturday.
“The Radical Left Lunatics, Insurrectionists, Agitators, and Thugs, are going after Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, because she is a woman, and has done a really GREAT JOB!,” he said.
Noem walked back her initial comments on the shooting of Pretti later in the week, contending that DHS were getting information from “what we knew to be true on the ground.”
Homan was sent to Minneapolis this week and Border Patrol Commander Greg Bovino was ordered by the administration to return to California, sources told ABC News.
Although Homan said he had “productive” discussions with Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, he criticized sanctuary city laws and called on local leaders to assist with federal immigration law enforcement. Homan announced a “draw down” of federal agents in Minneapolis later in the week.
“Border Czar (Plus!) Tom Homan is doing a FANTASTIC JOB. He is one of a kind. Thank you Tom!!!,” Trump said in another post.
Sen. Mark Warner speaks to reporters as he walks into the Senate Chamber, Dec. 11, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters on Friday that the type of munitions used by the military in a Sept. 2 boat strike — including on survivors in a second strike — were “anti-personnel” and designed to ensure the people on board did not survive, not just stop the drug shipment.
In question has been whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s orders to the military was to kill the people on board, stop the drug shipment — or both.
Warner, who has received classified briefings on the strike, also said that U.S. intelligence identified all 11 people on board and each person killed was linked to the drug trade, although the level of their involvement was unclear.
“It’s one thing to be a ‘narco-terrorist’ and another thing to be a fisherman that’s getting paid 100 bucks [who a] couple times a year, runs on one of these boats to supplement his income,” Warner said at a Defense Writers Group event, sponsored by George Washington University.
The Trump administration has defended the military operation as legal because it considers drug cartels “foreign terrorist organizations” that pose an imminent threat to Americans. Since Sept. 2, the military has launched 22 strikes against vessels accused of smuggling illicit narcotics, killing 87 people.
Many legal experts say President Donald Trump’s argument that criminal organizations selling drugs to Americans are “terrorists” is a stretch, although it will likely take months for a federal judge to weigh in.
Warner and other lawmakers have called on the administration to release the full video of the Sept. 2 strikes, which some Democrats have called a potential war crime because it killed two survivors. Lawmakers say they were told the military admiral who ordered the strike said they believed the survivors still posed a threat and were granted legal authority to kill them.
Warner said he wants other documentation too, including the legal opinion that justified the Sept. 2 strike. Warner said the legal opinion shared with lawmakers in a classified briefing was drafted Sept. 5 — three days after the initial boat strike — and was not shared with Congress until late November.
“I have real questions … Was it altered between Sept. 2 and Sept. 5 because of some of the actions that took place?” he asked.
Warner said he is reluctant to call the Sept. 2 strikes a “war crime” until he has more information, and said he would like to see congressional hearings.
“I am very reluctant, unlike some of my folks, to get to assertions of illegality by Americans or war crimes, because once you make that claim, you can’t take it back,” he said. “And what it would do to morale, what it would do to how Americans view our military, what it would do to how the world views us, is really chilling.”
Hegseth has not held a press briefing to answer questions about the campaign since it begun and he has not testified publicly.
He has defended the administration’s efforts to attack alleged drug boats.
“We’ve only just begun striking narcoboats and putting narcoterrorists at the bottom of the ocean because they’ve been poisoning the American people,” he said at a Cabinet meeting earlier this month.
Hegseth has also expressed support for Adm. Mitch Bradley, the four-star officer who ordered the Sept. 2 military strikes, and his decision that day.
“Adm. Bradley made the correct decision to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat. He sunk the boat, sunk the boat, and eliminated the threat. And it was the right call. We have his back,” Hegseth added.
Bradley is being asked by lawmakers to return to Capitol Hill next week to testify.
An aide to the House Armed Services Committee, chaired by Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, said the panel is working to arrange a classified briefing for its members.
(WASHINGTON) — The shooting of two National Guard personnel allegedly by an Afghan refugee in a bustling downtown neighborhood in Washington, D.C., has reopened a debate over a Biden-era program that rushed to resettle thousands of Afghans who had worked with the U.S. government during its 20-year war in Afghanistan.
The Biden administration brought some 76,000 Afghan refugees to the U.S. in 2021, according to a report at the time by the Department of Homeland Security. It’s likely that the suspect officials have identified, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was one of only 3,300 of those refugees that year who were granted a “special immigrant visa,” a document that would have expedited his entry because of his employment with the Central Intelligence Agency and other U.S. agencies.
Officials say Lakanwal came to the U.S. from Afghanistan in 2021 during the Biden administration and applied for asylum in 2024. According to three law enforcement sources, Lakanwal was granted asylum in April 2025 under President Donald Trump.
FBI Director Kash Patel said in a news conference Thursday morning that the Biden administration did “absolutely zero vetting” of the refugees.
That isn’t accurate, though some questions remain around how thorough the vetting process would have been for Lakanwal in 2021 and again this year when the Trump administration granted him asylum.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe said the suspect had worked with the CIA during the war — an arrangement that would have almost certain required him to be vetted by the agency at the time.
It’s also likely he was vetted before being granted asylum this year. According to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, there have been 8,000 such individuals since Trump took office. Noem and Patel have both suggested in recent congressional testimony that the administration had carefully scrutinized all of them.
“During my tenure, we are going through the databases to make sure that no known or suspected terrorists enter this country to harm our nation,” Patel told the Senate Judiciary Committee in September.
In 2021, Alejandro Mayorkas, then President Joe Biden’s Homeland Security secretary, insisted in a document to Congress that all Afghans were vetted before entering the U.S.
“Prior to entering the United States, Afghan evacuees must successfully complete a rigorous and multi-layered screening and vetting process that includes biometric and biographic screenings conducted by intelligence, law enforcement, and counterterrorism professionals from multiple federal agencies,” he wrote in a 2021 briefing on the program.
The question is how comprehensive that vetting was, considering the rush to settle Afghans who were hastily airlifted to Doha, Qatar, and Europe in the wake of the chaotic U.S. troop withdrawal. Shortly after U.S. troops left Afghanistan, the government in Kabul collapsed and the Taliban took control.
FBI and other U.S. officials have warned for years that vetting refugees from certain war-town countries can be difficult when the U.S. has limited capabilities to gather intelligence in those countries.
According to a New York Times report, the process of resettling Afghan refugees spurred a humanitarian crisis in Doha as refugees packed into airport hangars and tents at a military base there. Flight manifests were at times incomplete or missing, visa or citizenship status was unknown, and there was a lack of demographic data, the Times reported.
Biden administration officials defended the program at the time as a moral imperative, providing protection to Afghans who would have otherwise been killed by the Taliban for cooperating with Americans during the war.
Anti-immigrant conservatives seized on the idea of resettling tens of thousands of desperate Afghans in a matter of months as dangerous.
“Just because an Afghan works with us, and is friends with us, does not actually mean they are safe to bring here,” Sean Parnell, now the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, said in 2021.
Advocacy groups say there’s no evidence that the vetting process failed.
AfghanEvac, which works to resettle Afghan refugees who helped the U.S. government during the war, said the immigrants undergo some of the most extensive security vetting of any population in the U.S.
“This individual’s isolated and violent act should not be used as an excuse to define or diminish an entire community,” AfghanEvac President Shawn VanDiver said in a statement.
A view of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts which was recently renamed The Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the performing arts in Washington, DC on December 29, 2025. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s plan for a “Complete Rebuilding” of the Kennedy Center in Washington has sparked a legal debate over whether he — or Congress — has the power to control the high-profile cultural institution.
The battle began in December, when Trump’s name was added to the building’s facade — above the existing signage that reads “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts” — following a unanimous vote by Trump’s hand-picked board of center trustees.
It escalated recently, when Trump announced it would close in July for two years — to make major renovations he said were necessary.
Some members of Congress are pushing back, including in court, alleging Trump’s actions are unlawful and should be reversed.
What does the law say? Here’s a closer look at what the law and history say on the question:
Since Congress created the cultural institution in a federal statute, designating it as a living memorial in 1964 shortly after President John F. Kennedy’s death and then through its expansion in the 2010s, it has been operated by both the executive and legislative branches — contributing to the legal debate.
While the executive branch oversees the appointments of the center’s board of trustees, Congress has the ultimate say on what money gets appropriated and what projects get approved.
The House Appropriations subcommittee overseeing the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies grants the center’s board the power to act on any proposed and approved changes.
According to the top Democrat on the subcommittee, Rep. Chellie Pingree, the panel has historically controlled all funding, project management and security, separate from the executive branch or what is voted on by the center’s trustees.
Congress has proposed and authorized expansive construction projects, such as the REACH expansion adjacent to the Kennedy Center, designed for artist collaboration, to smaller standard year-to-year maintenance costs.
When Trump’s signature legislation passed in July, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” it circumvented the subcommittee, instead directly appropriating $256,657,000 for “necessary expenses for capital repair, restoration, maintenance backlog, and security structures of the building.”
In a statement, the Kennedy Center’s new president, Richard Grenell, a Trump appointee, said, “I am grateful for President Trump’s visionary leadership. I am also grateful to Congress for appropriating an historic $257M to finally address decades of deferred maintenance and repairs at the Trump Kennedy Center.”
The Trump administration has suggested these already appropriated funds will cover any costs of his proposed major renovation.
“It desperately needs this renovation and temporarily closing the center just makes sense — it will enable us to better invest our resources, think bigger and make the historic renovations more comprehensive,” Grenell said. “It also means we will be finished faster.”
Limits on the president’s power? Georgetown University law professor David Super told ABC News that even though the money for those changes is already appropriated by Congress, Trump and his administration do not have total freedom to make decisions.
“The Constitution says that no money shall be drawn for the Treasury except in accordance with an appropriation passed by Congress,” Super said. “He can spend that money for any of the purposes Congress provided it for, and that includes deferred maintenance, repair, restoration, renovation. It does not allow him to rebuild it.”
While Trump has suggested major renovations, no plans have been officially released or shared with the congressional subcommittee overseeing the center. During an Oval Office photo, Trump said the steel would be “fully exposed” but not removed.
“I’m not ripping it down. I’ll be using the steel,” he said. “So, we’re using the structure. We’re using some of the marble and some of the marble comes down, but when it’s opened, it’ll be brand new and really beautiful. It’ll be at the highest level.”
Super said if those renovations align with the language of the law Congress has passed, it is within Trump’s legal right both as president — and chair of the Kennedy Center’s board — to go forward. If the renovations go beyond what the law spells out and allows, Super said, his moves would be unconstitutional.
“Some of his remarks about ‘maybe, they will use the marble, maybe they won’t’, imply that he’s planning something much more than renovation or repair,” Super said. “If so, then he would be violating the language of the appropriation, and therefore the Constitution.”
When asked whether the president would keep his plan within the constraints laid out by Congress, White House spokeswoman Liz Hudston told ABC News: “While the Democrats neglected the Trump-Kennedy Center for years, President Trump immediately stepped up to rescue and revitalize the institution.”
Hudston also included some intended uses of the funds for maintenance, including “repairing and, where necessary, replacing elements on the exterior of the building,” and “work to bring the Trump-Kennedy Center into compliance with current life safety codes and security standard.”
So far, there are no lawsuits alleging Trump’s proposed renovations to the center are illegal.
The renaming The center’s controversial renaming presents another legal question.
When the building was designated a living memorial in 1964, Congress wrote in explicit language on how the center should be named and operated.
U.S. Public Law 88-260 dictates the U.S. must “be held to designate or refer to such Center as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”
“They really left very little to the imagination, and detailed what they wanted the Kennedy Center to be,” Super said, adding, “there are many things Congress creates that it doesn’t name, and that’s left to the president to name, but here is a law saying it shall be known as the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”
Super said that regardless of what the board of trustees decides, the name will legally remain as written in the statute.
“And as a duly passed law of Congress, this binds you, it binds me, and it binds the president,” Super said. “The money that the president says he wants to spend on renovating the Kennedy Center is money that was appropriated for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, not for the Trump-Kennedy Center. So, if he in fact uses that money, he is acknowledging that its name did not change.”
A former Kennedy Center trustee, Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, has filed a lawsuit to stop Trump and the board of trustees from changing the Kennedy Center’s name and wants Trump’s name removed.
U.S. Code § 76j states that “the Board shall assure that after December 2, 1983, no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.”
“Because Congress named the center by statute, changing the Kennedy Center’s name requires an act of Congress,” Beatty’s lawsuit said. “But on December 18 and 19, 2025 — in scenes more reminiscent of authoritarian regimes than the American republic — the sitting President and his handpicked loyalists renamed this storied center after President Trump.”
Pingree said her subcommittee has been told little about Trump’s plans and that she had instead learned about his proposed changes through social media.
“What’s going to happen now?” Pingree told ABC News, adding,” he tore down the East Wing. Does this mean he thinks he’s going to tear down the Kennedy Center and just rebuild it as a monument to himself?”
With lawmakers beginning discussions on funding for 2027, Pingree said she is working with her Republican counterpart to demand information.
“We will certainly say to them, we’re not going to allocate any money in this cycle until you give us more information about what you’re doing,” Pingree said.
“If that money is currently being used just to keep the place afloat because ticket sales are off and performers won’t perform, then it’s not going to go to the desperately needed. I believe there are some really important things that need to be done to that building,” she said.
