In legal circles, there’s a principle known as “presumption of regularity.” At the risk of oversimplifying matters, the basic idea is that courts have long been deferential toward federal agencies and their leaders, working from the assumption that officials are executing their duties in good faith.
In 2026, that presumption has fallen on hard times. MS NOW reported late last week:
Federal prosecutors are investigating whether two Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers lied under oath about the shooting of a migrant in Minneapolis last month, an ICE spokesperson said Friday.
The about-face on the case, which Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem initially called an ‘attempted murder of federal law enforcement,’ marks the latest instance in which immigration authorities have had to walk back such claims in the face of evidence contradicting them.
About a month ago, a federal immigration agent shot 24-year-old Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, and immediately after the incident, federal officials described Sosa-Celis as a “violent criminal illegal alien” who was part of a group that attacked an officer with a snow shovel and a broom handle during an attempted arrest.
According to the official story, an officer shot Sosa-Celis in the leg in self-defense. Sosa-Celis was charged with forcibly assaulting an ICE officer.
That is, until late last week, when officials conceded that ICE agents might’ve lied about what happened, and the claims Noem brought to the public have unraveled.
The same day the administration’s case against Sosa-Celis unraveled, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons appeared before a Senate committee and testified under oath that local law enforcement personnel in Colorado leaked plans for a law enforcement raid, which in turn allowed gang members to escape.
Soon after, Lyons’ story also collapsed under scrutiny.
This coincided with fresh evidence in the case of Marimar Martinez, a 31-year-old Montessori school teacher in the Chicago area who was shot five times by a Border Patrol agent. The official version of events surrounding this incident has come under question, too.
Complicating matters, while each of these stories emerged over the course of a few days, there’s a broader pattern to consider, with Noem and DHS repeatedly setting their credibility on fire with brazen falsehoods that ultimately collapsed. MS NOW contributor Philip Bump wrote about a month ago, “You cannot trust the Department of Homeland Security. This seems like a political statement, but it isn’t. It is a recommendation rooted in 12 months of presentations and claims from Homeland Security officials and agents — claims that have been proven false at a remarkable rate.”
If the problem were limited to DHS, it would be an enormous political and policy problem, since Americans are supposed to be able to count on the massive federal agency chiefly responsible for domestic security.
The problem, however, isn’t limited to DHS. Bump wrote in early January, “You cannot trust the Department of Homeland Security,” but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find agencies and departments within the Trump administration that Americans can trust.
Trump’s Justice Department is so dishonest, so frequently, that former Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a former federal prosecutor, said on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday, “What you’re seeing now is absolutely the destruction of the credibility of the Justice Department with our judicial system.”
The Department of Health and Human Services and its many agencies are no longer reliable. Government data is suspect in ways without modern precedent. The Environmental Protection Agency is led by a former GOP congressman who thinks the entirety of international climate science is “a con job,” while the Pentagon is led by a former Fox News host whom even other Republicans struggle to trust.
The idea that the public can trust the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is plainly laughable. The idea that the public can trust claims from the White House is almost certainly worse.
This is obviously just a small sampling, but it speaks to a larger truth: Donald Trump is leading a team facing a systemic credibility crisis, which the administration is choosing to ignore and making no effort to resolve. The result is a civics crisis in which Americans have no idea what, if anything, to believe from the federal government that ostensibly exists to serve their interests.
