Incoming Trump border czar Tom Homan reacted to news of death threats against Trump nominees on Wednesday and said he now takes the death threats he has previously received seriously. 

“I have not taken this serious up to this point,” Homan told Fox News anchor Gillian Turner on “The Story” on Wednesday, referring to previous death threats made against him and his family. 

“Now that I know what’s happened in the last 24 hours. I will take it a little more serious. But look, I’ve been dealing with this. When I was the ICE director in the first administration, I had numerous death threats. I had a security detail with me all the time. Even after I retired, death threats continued and even after I retired as the ICE Director. I had U.S. Marshals protection for a long time to protect me and my family.”

Homan explained that what “doesn’t help” the situation is the “negative press” around Trump. 

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“I’m not in the cabinet, but, you know, I’ve read numerous hit pieces. I mean, you know, I’m a racist and, you know, I’m the father of family separation, all this other stuff. So the hate media doesn’t help at all because there are some nuts out there. They’ll take advantage. So that doesn’t help.”

Homan’s comments come shortly after Fox News Digital first reported that nearly a dozen of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees and other appointees tapped for the incoming administration were targeted Tuesday night with “violent, unAmerican threats to their lives and those who live with them,” prompting a “swift” law enforcement response.

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Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump pumps his fist as he arrives to speak at a campaign event at Nassau Coliseum, Wednesday, Sept.18, 2024, in Uniondale, N.Y. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The “attacks ranged from bomb threats to ‘swatting,’” according to Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman and incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

“Last night and this morning, several of President Trump’s Cabinet nominees and administration appointees were targeted in violent, unAmerican threats to their lives and those who live with them,” she told Fox News Digital on Wednesday. “In response, law enforcement acted quickly to ensure the safety of those who were targeted. President Trump and the entire Transition team are grateful for their swift action.” 

Sources told Fox News Digital that John Ratcliffe, the nominee to be CIA director, Pete Hegseth, the nominee for secretary of defense, and Rep. Elise Stefanik, the nominee for UN ambassador, were among those targeted. Brooke Rollins, who Trump has tapped to be secretary of agriculture, and Lee Zeldin, Trump’s nominee to be EPA administrator, separately revealed they were also targeted. 

Threats were also made against Trump’s Labor Secretary nominee, GOP Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, and former Trump attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz’s family. 

Republican candidate Donald Trump is seen with blood on his face surrounded by secret service agents as he is taken off the stage at a campaign event at Butler Farm Show Inc. in Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13, 2024.  Rebecca Droke/AFP via Getty Images (Rebecca Droke/AFP via Getty Images)

Homan told Fox News that he is “not going to be intimidated by these people” and “I’m not going to let them silence me.”

“What I’ve learned today I’ll start taking a little more serious.”

Homan added that he believes “we need to have a strong response once we find out is behind all this.”

“It’s illegal to threaten someone’s life. And we need to follow through with that.”

The threats on Tuesday night came mere months after Trump survived two assassination attempts.

Fox News Digital’s Brooke Singman contributed to this report

In a major victory for Democrats, first-time candidate Derek Tran defeated Republican Rep. Michelle Steel in a hotly contested Orange County congressional race that became one of the most expensive in the country.

Tran will be the first Vietnamese American to represent a district that is home to Little Saigon and the largest population of people of Vietnamese descent outside of Vietnam.

The race was the third-to-last to be called in the country. As Orange County and Los Angeles County counted mail ballots, Steel’s margin of victory shrank to 58 votes before Tran took the lead 11 days after the election. Tran was leading by 613 votes when Steel conceded Wednesday.

Tran was born in the U.S. to Vietnamese refugee parents. He said his father fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon, but his boat capsized, killing his wife and children. Tran’s father returned to Vietnam, where he met and married Tran’s mother, and the couple later immigrated to the United States.

“Only in America can you go from refugees fleeing with nothing but the clothes on your back to becoming a member of Congress in just one generation,” Tran said in a post on X.

“This victory is a testament to the spirit and resilience of our community,” he said. “My parents came to this country to escape oppression and pursue the American Dream, and their story reflects the journey of so many here in Southern California.”

In a statement Wednesday, Steel thanked her volunteers, staff and family for their work on her campaign, saying: “Everything is God’s will and, like all journeys, this one is ending for a new one to begin.” Steel filed paperwork Monday to seek re-election in 2026.

The 45th District was among the country’s most competitive races, critical to both parties as they battled to control the House of Representatives.

With Steel’s loss, Republicans hold 219 seats in the House, barely above the 218-seat threshold needed to control the chamber.

Two races have yet to be called. A recount is underway in Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, where a Republican incumbent is leading her Democrat challenger by fewer than 800 votes. And in California’s agricultural San Joaquin Valley, Democrat Adam Gray holds a slender lead over GOP Rep. John Duarte, but the race remains too close to call.

Steel and Tran both focused heavily on outreach to Asian American voters, who make up a plurality of the district. The district cuts a C-shaped swath through 17 cities in Orange County and Los Angeles County, including Garden Grove, Westminster, Fountain Valley, Buena Park and Cerritos.

Born to South Korean parents and raised in Japan, Steel broke barriers in 2020 when she became one of three Korean American women elected to the House. She leaned on anti-communist messaging to reach out to older voters who fled Vietnam after the fall of Saigon in 1975.

Tran also focused on Vietnamese American voters and Vietnamese-language media, hoping that voters would leave their loyalty to the Republican Party in order to support a representative who shared their background.

Steel became a prime target for Democrats because, although she is a Republican, voters in the 45th District supported President Biden in 2020. The two-term congresswoman is a formidable fundraiser with deep ties to the Orange County GOP, including through her husband, Shawn Steel, the former chairman of the California Republican Party.

The Republican establishment and outside groups, including the cryptocurrency lobby and Elon Musk’s super PAC, spent heavily to defend Steel.

In a sign of the seat’s importance to Democrats, Gov. Gavin Newsom, former President Clinton and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) all joined Tran on the campaign trail in the weeks before the election.

The race was marked by allegations of “red baiting” after the Steel campaign sent Vietnamese-language mailers to households in Little Saigon that showed Tran next to the hammer-and-sickle emblem of the Chinese Communist Party and Mao Zedong.

Steel’s campaign said that the Tran campaign had been running Vietnamese-language ads on Facebook that accused Steel’s husband of “selling access” to the Chinese Communist Party and that said Steel could not be trusted to stand up to China.

Tran’s win is a key victory for Democrats, who fought to flip five highly competitive seats held by Republicans in California — more than any other state. Republicans were pushing to flip a district in coastal Orange County represented by Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine).

Democrat Dave Min beat Republican Scott Baugh in the costly contest for Porter’s seat and Democrat George Whitesides flipped the district represented by Republican Rep. Mike Garcia in L.A. County’s Antelope Valley.

In the agricultural Central Valley, Republican Rep. David Valadao easily won reelection over Democrat Rudy Salas. The race in the San Joaquin Valley between Gray, the Democrat, and Rep. Duarte, who won two years ago by 564 votes, remained too close to be called.

A runoff election for the state Supreme Court in Mississippi is too close to call between state Sen. Jenifer Branning and incumbent Justice Jim Kitchens as of Wednesday morning. 

Although Mississippi judicial candidates run without party labels, Branning had the endorsement of the Republican Party, while Kitchens had several Democratic Party donors but did not receive an endorsement from the party. 

Branning, who has been a state senator since 2016, led Kitchens by 2,678 votes out of 120,610 votes counted as of Wednesday morning. Kitchens is seeking a third term and is the more senior of the court’s two presiding justices, putting him next in line to serve as chief justice. Her lead had been 518 just after midnight Wednesday.

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Around midnight Wednesday, The Associated Press estimated there were more than 11,000 votes still to be counted. In the Nov. 5 election, 7% of votes were counted after election night.

Branning had a substantial lead in the first round of voting with 42% compared to Kitchens’ 36%. Three other candidates split the rest.

The victor will likely be decided by absentee ballots that are allowed to be counted for five days following an election in Mississippi, as well as the affidavit ballots, according to the Clarion Ledger.

Voter turnout typically decreases between general elections and runoffs, and campaigns said turnout was especially challenging two days before Thanksgiving. The Magnolia State voted emphatically for President-elect Donald Trump, who garnered 61.6% of the vote compared to Vice President Harris’ 37.3%.

Branning and Kitchens faced off in District 1, also known as the Central District, which stretches from the Delta region through the Jackson metro area and over to the Alabama border.

Mississippi Supreme Court justices including Justice Jim Kitchens, seated at right, fourth from top, listen to arguments on July 6, 2023 in Jackson, Mississippi. (Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Branning calls herself a “constitutional conservative” and says she opposes “liberal, activists judges” and “the radical left.” The Mississippi GOP said she was the “proven conservative,” and that was why they endorsed her. 

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She has not previously held a judicial office but served as a special prosecutor in Neshoba County and as a staff attorney in the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Division of Business Services and Regulations, per the Clarion Ledger.

Branning voted against changing the state flag to remove the Confederate battle emblem and supported mandatory and increased minimum sentences for crime, according to Mississippi Today.

Kitchens has been practicing law for 41 years and has been on the Mississippi Supreme Court since 2008, and prior to that, he also served as a district attorney, according to the outlet.

The Magnolia State voted emphatically for President-elect Donald Trump, who garnered 61.6% of the vote compared to Vice President Kamala Harris’ 37.3%. (Getty Images)

He is endorsed by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Action Fund, which calls itself “a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond.” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., also backed Kitchens.

In September, Kitchens sided with a man on death row for a murder conviction in which a key witness recanted her testimony. In 2018, Kitchens dissented in a pair of death row cases dealing with the use of the drug midazolam in state executions.

Elsewhere, in the state’s other runoff election, Amy St. Pe’ won an open seat on the Mississippi Court of Appeals. She will succeed Judge Joel Smith, who did not seek re-election to the 10-member Court of Appeals. The district is in the southeastern corner of the state, including the Gulf Coast.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.