BREAKING: DHS now classify terrorism as “driving a car in a manner Kristi Noem finds suspicious.” Congrats America. Parallel parking is now a national security threat.

BREAKING: DHS now classify terrorism as “driving a car in a manner Kristi Noem finds suspicious.” Congrats America. Parallel parking is now a national security threat.

In a development that exists only in the fertile imagination of America’s culture wars, the Department of Homeland Security has *supposedly* expanded its definition of terrorism to include “driving a car in a manner Kristi Noem finds suspicious.” According to this entirely fictional update, actions such as hesitant lane changes, aggressive parallel parking, or—most egregiously—using a turn signal “incorrectly” could now trigger national security scrutiny.

The parody reflects a growing public anxiety about the ever-expanding language of “threats” in modern politics, where routine behavior is often recast as dangerous intent. In this imagined America, a three-point turn becomes a three-letter-agency concern, and backing into a parking spot draws the kind of attention once reserved for far more serious matters.

Of course, no such DHS policy exists. But the joke lands because it plays on a real fear: that vague standards and subjective suspicion can turn ordinary life into a minefield of over-policing and performative security. When everything is framed as a threat, nothing is—and the public is left wondering whether safety has become more about optics than outcomes.

Until then, drivers can rest easy. Parallel parking remains difficult, not dangerous—and the only real threat is still denting the bumper.