The Words We Choose When Lives Are at Stake

Tricia McLaughlin called it a "PR war." As the face of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement, she framed deaths, defended shootings, and labeled a slain U.S. citizen a "domestic terrorist"—a claim her own agency's leaders later could not substantiate. Now she's stepping down, and we're left with an uncomfortable question: What responsibility do we bear for the words we use to describe other human beings?

The biblical tradition understood something we've forgotten in our age of spin: words have creative and destructive power. They don't just describe reality; they shape it. When Proverbs warns that "death and life are in the power of the tongue," it's recognizing that how we name people changes how we see them, and how we see them determines how we treat them.

McLaughlin described her work as winning a PR debate. But public relations about human lives is not an abstract game. When officials frame someone as a "terrorist" before facts emerge, when they celebrate arrests and encourage self-deportation, they're not just messaging—they're creating permission structures for violence.

The Christian tradition calls this bearing false witness, and it's listed among the gravest sins because it destroys both the one spoken about and the one speaking. We cannot dehumanize others without dehumanizing ourselves.

The question isn't partisan. It's ancient: Will we use our words to protect human dignity, or to erode it? Every spokesperson, every citizen sharing posts, every person commenting online faces this choice. McLaughlin's departure won't answer it. Only we can.