Prominent Republicans and gun rights advocates helped elicit a White House turnabout this week after bristling over the administration’s characterization of Alex Pretti, the second person killed this month by a federal officer in Minneapolis, as responsible for his own death because he lawfully possessed a weapon.

The death produced no clear shifts in U.S. gun politics or policies, even as President Donald Trump shuffles the lieutenants in charge of his militarized immigration crackdown. But important voices in Trump’s coalition have called for a thorough investigation of Pretti’s death while also criticizing inconsistencies in some Republicans’ Second Amendment stances.

If the dynamic persists, it could give Republicans problems as Trump heads into a midterm election year with voters already growing skeptical of his overall immigration approach. The concern is acute enough that Trump’s top spokeswoman sought Monday to reassert his brand as a staunch gun rights supporter.

“The president supports the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens, absolutely,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

Leavitt qualified that “when you are bearing arms and confronted by law enforcement, you are raising … the risk of force being used against you.”

Videos contradict early statements from administration

That still marked a retreat from the administration’s previous messages about the shooting of Pretti. It came the same day the president dispatched border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota, seemingly elevating him over Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who had been in charge in Minneapolis.

Within hours of Pretti’s death on Saturday, Bovino suggested Pretti “wanted to … massacre law enforcement,” and Noem said Pretti was “brandishing” a weapon and acted “violently” toward officers.

“I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign,” Noem said.

White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump’s mass deportation effort, went further on X, declaring Pretti “an assassin.”

Bystander videos contradicted each claim, instead showing Pretti holding a cellphone and helping a woman who had been pepper sprayed by a federal officer. Within seconds, Pretti was sprayed, too, and taken to the ground by multiple officers. No video disclosed thus far has shown him unholstering his concealed weapon -– which he had a Minnesota permit to carry. It appeared that one officer took Pretti’s gun and walked away with it just before shots began.

As multiple videos went viral online and on television, Vice President JD Vance reposted Miller’s assessment, while Trump shared an alleged photo of “the gunman’s gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!).”

Swift reactions from gun rights advocates

The National Rifle Association, which has backed Trump three times, released a statement that began by casting blame on Minnesota Democrats it accused of stoking protests. But the group lashed out after a federal prosecutor in California said on X that, “If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.”

That analysis, the NRA said, is “dangerous and wrong.”

FBI Director Kash Patel magnified the blowback Sunday on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo.” No one, Patel said, can “bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”

Erich Pratt, vice president of Gun Owners of America, was incredulous.

“I have attended protest rallies while armed, and no one got injured,” he said on CNN.

Conservative officials around the country made the same connection between the First and Second amendments.

“Showing up at a protest is very American. Showing up with a weapon is very American,” state Rep. Jeremy Faison, who leads the GOP caucus in Tennessee, said on X.

Trump’s first-term vice president, Mike Pence, called for “full and transparent investigation of this officer involved shooting.”

A different response from the past

Liberals, conservatives and nonpartisan experts noted how the administration’s response differed from past conservative positions involving protests and weapons.

Multiple Trump supporters were found to have weapons during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump issued blanket pardons to all of them.

Republicans were critical in 2020 when Mark and Patricia McCloskey had to pay fines after pointing guns at protesters who marched through their St. Louis neighborhood after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. And then there’s Kyle Rittenhouse, a counter-protester acquitted after fatally shooting two men and injuring another in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during the post-Floyd protests.

“You remember Kyle Rittenhouse and how he was made a hero on the right,” Trey Gowdy, a Republican former congressman and attorney for Trump during one of his first-term impeachments. “Alex Pretti’s firearm was being lawfully carried. … He never brandished it.”

Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who has studied the history of the gun debate, said the fallout “shows how tribal we’ve become.” Republicans spent years talking about the Second Amendment as a means to fight government tyranny, he said.

“The moment someone who’s thought to be from the left, they abandon that principled stance,” Winkler said.

Meanwhile, Democrats who have criticized open and concealed carry laws for years, Winkler added, are not amplifying that position after Pretti’s death.

Uncertain effects in an election year

The blowback against the administration from core Trump supporters comes as Republicans are trying to protect their threadbare majority in the U.S. House and face several competitive Senate races.

Perhaps reflecting the stakes, GOP staff and campaign aides were reticent Monday to talk about the issue at all.

The House Republican campaign chairman, Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, is sponsoring the GOP’s most significant gun legislation of this congressional term, a proposal to make state concealed-carry permits reciprocal across all states.

The bill cleared the House Judiciary Committee last fall. Asked Monday whether Pretti’s death and the Minneapolis protests might affect debate, an aide to Speaker Mike Johnson did not offer any update on the bill’s prospects.

Gun rights advocates have notched many legislative victories in Republican-controlled statehouses in recent decades, from rolling back gun-free zones around schools and churches to expanding gun possession rights in schools, on university campuses and in other public spaces.

William Sack, legal director of the Second Amendment Foundation, said he was surprised and disappointed by the administration’s initial statements following the Pretti shooting. Trump’s vacillating, he said, is “very likely to cost them dearly with the core of a constituency they count on.”

___

Associated Press writer Kimberlee Kruesi in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.

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By Karen Garcia, Los Angeles Times

Starting next month, travelers who want to board a domestic flight without a Real ID will have to pay $45 to have their identity verified through the Transportation Security Administration’s new security screening program.

On Feb. 1, if you attempt to get through an airport security checkpoint without a Real ID, or another TSA-approved form of identification, you have the option to verify your identity through the modernized alternative-verification program, officially called TSA Confirm.ID.

If you choose to use Confirm.ID you will be charged a $45 fee.

TSA announced the new identification verification program in December, saying it is essential to traveler safety.

“Because it keeps terrorists, criminals, and illegal aliens out of the skies and other domestic transportation systems such as rail,” said Adam Stahl, acting deputy administrator for the agency. “The vast majority of travelers present acceptable identification like Real IDs and passports, but we must ensure everyone who flies is who they say they are.”

More than 94% of passengers currently use their Real ID or other acceptable form of identification, according to TSA. About 58%, more than 19 million, of all driver’s license and ID cardholders in California have a Real ID, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

Opting to use Confirm.ID, here’s how to pay the $45

If you don’t have a Real ID or another TSA-approved form of identification you’ll be presented with the option to confirm your identity with Confirm.ID at a TSA checkpoint, before entering security lines.

Anyone 18 and older must show TSA their Real ID or another TSA-approved form of identification. Children under 18 do not have to provide a form of identification for domestic flights, according to TSA.

To use the Confirm.ID option you’ll need to submit a form and make a payment online either before you arrive or when you’re at the airport.

The form and payment can be submitted through the website pay.gov.

To make a payment you’ll need to provide:

—Your full legal name

—Your travel start date

—A valid form of payment. The website accepts payments via bank, Venmo or PayPal or a debit or credit card.

Once the form and payment are submitted online you’ll receive a receipt in your email. TSA recommends you keep this email, take a screenshot or print the receipt because you’ll need to present this at a TSA checkpoint as proof of payment.

The identity verification takes place at the airport.

How Confirm.ID works

After travelers alert TSA that they’re going to use the Confirm.ID option and provide proof of payment, they will need to provide their full legal name, address and date of birth.

In a November filing with the Federal Register, TSA said the proposed program will use a new biometric kiosk system to verify identification before each traveler without a Real ID or other acceptable form of identification is allowed past the TSA checkpoint.

It’s unclear whether the kiosks have been implemented at airports yet.

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“Travelers will process with a kiosk system that captures their biometric data and compares it to TSA’s Secure Flight watch lists,” said Tom Spagnola, senior vice president of partner relations at CheapOair.

Biometrics uses physical characteristics, such as fingerprints, facial recognition software and retinal scans to verify an identity. TSA already uses such methods for verifying digital IDs using facial recognition software.

If your identity is validated through Confirm.ID, that approval is valid for 10 days, allowing travelers to use it as much as they want within that period.

©2026 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By ADI BONI

Every type of pasta has a purpose, and often a sauce to match. This recipe, which comes from the cookbook “The Talisman of Happiness,” matches tortiglioni with peppers and eggplant.

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Of course, many pasta types are interchangeable. To cook and prepare dried pasta, there are a series of steps that have to be done carefully and need your undivided attention.

The water must be carefully measured. The calculation is easy: 10 cups of water for every 1 pound of pasta. Add the salt as soon as the water starts to boil. It is important to ensure that the pasta does not overcook, and to remove it from the heat as soon as it reaches the point that cooks call “al dente,” which is when the pasta has lost its stiffness but still offers a certain resistance as you bite into it.

It is a good idea to prepare everything you will need to add to the pasta in advance. It is also particularly useful to have a warm serving dish on hand, as well as sauce and grated cheese.

As soon as you have drained the pasta, turn it into the serving dish and immediately toss with the prepared sauce or seasoning.

Tortiglioni with Peppers and Eggplant (TORTIGLIONI CON PEPERONI E MELANZAN)

Ingredients

2 yellow bell peppers

1 small eggplant

1 celery heart

1 carrot

Parsley

Olive oil

1 lb tomatoes

1 lb 5 oz tortiglioni

1 cup grated Parmesan

Salt

Directions

Roast the peppers, turning frequently so the outer skin blackens without cooking the flesh too much, When the peppers are charred cool and gently rub off the skin, rinse, and remove the stem and seeds. Cut into strips. Slice the eggplant in half and cut into strips as you have done with the peppers. Trim the celery heart (the white part) and cut into fine batons. Peel the carrot, removing any woody parts, and finely chop together with parsley.

Lightly heat the oil in a pan and add all the prepared vegetables. Sauté slowly until they take on a beautiful golden color. Pour the tomatoes — peeled, seeded, and chopped — into the pan. Cover and cook over medium heat for about 20 minutes. Keep a careful watch and add a little boiling water if necessary, and a touch of salt.

Cook the pasta in plenty of lightly salted boiling water until al dente. Drain, turn into a bowl, and toss with the sauce. Sprinkle with grated Parmesan.

Ada Boni (1891-1973) was one of Italy’s first food writers. In 1915, she and her husband (a close friend of chef Augustus Escoffier) founded Preziosa, a food magazine, and a few years later, Boni opened a cooking school for aristocratic Roman women. She published “The Talisman of Happiness” in 1929 and it has never been out of print. It has sold more than 1 million copies.

Excerpted from “The Talisman of Happiness,” by Ada Boni. Copyright (copyright) 2025 by Elwin Street. Used with permission of Voracious, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. New York, NY. All rights reserved.

By ADITHI RAMAKRISHNAN

NEW YORK (AP) — What does it mean to have breast self-awareness?

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It’s a more general, flexible approach to breast cancer prevention that involves staying familiar with how your breasts look and feel. It goes along with other early detection measures like getting regular mammograms.

Doctors suggest breast self-awareness as an alternative to self-exams — those monthly, methodical checks for any changes while applying pressure or lying down.

Two decades ago, the American Cancer Society stopped recommending self-exams for people with average breast cancer risk because there wasn’t strong evidence they helped if people were taking other preventative measures like regular mammograms. And the monthly checks made some patients anxious about every change, especially those with dense or naturally bumpy breast tissue.

“Let’s say you bring 100 women into an auditorium and you teach them how to do it, and then they go home and do it. We don’t find any more cancers than if all of those women had mammograms according to our guidance,” said Dr. Arif Kamal, chief patient officer for the American Cancer Society.

Over 300,000 U.S. women and about 2,600 men will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in 2026, according to the cancer society.

While mammograms are critical, especially for finding early, otherwise undetectable cancers, it’s important to notice breast changes between screenings or before you are old enough to qualify — and get those checked by a doctor, just in case.

So what does that awareness look like in daily life? Here’s what to know.

How to practice breast self-awareness

The point of breast self-awareness is to “know what your breasts normally look and feel like. And if something changes and you have a new lump or a new thickening, you could bring it to a doctor’s attention,” said Dr. Shari Goldfarb with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Unlike monthly self-exams, there’s no set routine for breast self-awareness. Instead, it’s a general practice that integrates into daily life. That could mean noticing a change in shape while putting on a sports bra to exercise, or feeling pain when lying down for bed.

Dr. Megan Schneiderman’s patients have brought up shifts they saw when looking in the mirror. Sometimes, their partner was the one who noticed.

The point of this general awareness “is to try to make things a little less scary for patients,” said Schneiderman, who works at Mount Nittany Health in Pennsylvania.

FILE – People hold a large pink feather ribbon for emphasis while gathering for a rally on the State Capitol Building steps to bring awareness to Breast and Cervical Cancer screening budget cuts Wednesday March 28, 2012, in Baton Rouge, La. ( Bill Feig/The Advocate via AP, File)

Other important changes to look out for besides lumps are an inverted nipple, nipple discharge, skin dimpling, changes in breast size, skin redness or constant pain from a single area. If something feels off, call a doctor to get it checked out.

Remember that knowledge is power

Checking for changes can lead to anxiety over whether every new development could be cancerous. But experts say it’s important to remember that it’s better not to be caught off guard.

Most lumps aren’t cancer — they could be normal fluctuations in breast tissue or a benign cyst — but it’s always a good idea to check just to be safe, especially if it persists or worsens, said Dr. Pouneh Razavi, a breast radiologist with Johns Hopkins Medicine.

“You definitely want to have it assessed, but do not worry unless there’s a reason to worry,” she said.

It’s also important to maintain a normal screening routine since being breast self-aware isn’t protective enough on its own. That means getting mammograms yearly or every other year starting at age 40 or 45, as recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and the American Cancer Society.

People who are at higher risk due to family history or genetic mutations or people with dense breasts may have earlier or different screening schedules or require additional imaging.

“It’s just about really knowing yourself and recognizing if something changes,” Razavi said.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.