Noem threatens legal action against CNN for report on ‘ICEBlock' app
The DHS secretary's comments come after Trump administration border czar Tom Homan called for an investigation into CNN for publishing a story about the creation of an app that would alert users to ICE activity near them, as immigration sweeps and detentions have dramatically risen under the Trump administration's push to increase deportations.
'This is horrendous, that a national media outlet would be out there trying to forecast law enforcement operations across the country,' Homan told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson in an interview that aired on Monday. 'I think DOJ needs to look at this.'
But CNN maintained that nothing about its report was unlawful, noting in a statement that the ICEBlock app is publicly available and the network's story did not promote its use.
'This is an app that is publicly available to any iPhone user who wants to download it. There is nothing illegal about reporting the existence of this or any other app, nor does such reporting constitute promotion or other endorsement of the app by CNN,' a statement from a network spokesperson read.
After Noem discussed the possibility of legal action against the network over its ICEBlock story, Trump also jumped in to suggest that 'they may be prosecuted also for having given false reports on the attack on Iran.'
Trump has long railed against the media for what he has claimed are 'fake news' stories, recently targeting both CNN and The New York Times for reporting that the American bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites only set back the country's program by several months, rather than entirely obliterating it, as the Trump administration has touted.
In a post to Truth Social last week, Trump claimed that 'the Democrats are the ones who leaked the information on the PERFECT FLIGHT to the Nuclear Sites in Iran.'
'They should be prosecuted!' the president added, without clarifying who should be prosecuted, and for what.
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Layered structures of intimidation protected those with power by keeping regular people silent, stressed out, and poor. Now half of America seems to be naïvely embracing similar treatment from our own government. I wish those who rage against illegal immigrants would ask themselves: Isn't it better to live in a country that people are sneaking into than one they sneak out of? If we continue following Trump down his embarrassing gold-tone escalator, it will be a tragic fate for our once-great nation. People who live surrounded by fear are not free. Conflicted, worried, but still proud Joshua, data technician, Newton I've long held contradictory feelings as an American. There is a great democratic heritage in this country to be proud of: the But hypocrisy, inequality, and ignorance are American, too. We've fallen for demagogues and snake-oil salesmen before. Reconstruction was followed by a century of terror against freedmen; our democracy has been stunted by disenfranchisement; the financial oligarchy has now totally captured the state and is using it to claw back all the working-class gains of the past century. Despite everything, despite feeling some days like America neither wants me, its native son, nor my wife, an immigrant, I'm proud of the America of Tom Paine and Sam Adams, of Frederick Douglass and John Brown, of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, of Eugene Debs and John Reed, of Medgar Evers and Viola Liuzzo, of Editors: Jim Dao, Rebecca Spiess. Digital editor: Rami Abou-Sabe. Audience engagement editor: Karissa Korman. Copy editor: Karen Schlosberg. Podcast: Katelyn Harrop and Shirley Leung.
