White House Responds To Ariana Grande Over Absurd ICE Video Criticism

In this week’s Elie v. US , our justice correspondent warns of a potential ICE invasion of New York. Plus: The administration escalates its assault on trans rights.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents run out of Delaney Hall Immigration Detention Center on June 7, 2026 (Adam Gray / Getty Images)

Border security czar and future truth and reconciliation commission defendant Tom Homan has spent the past week saber-rattling about his foot soldiers’ impending invasion of New York City. He told Fox News that he has reviewed “operational plans” to send ICE into the city to carry out a threat he made to New York Governor Kathy Hochul. Homan had vowed to send in the jackboots should Hochul sign legislation barring local law enforcement from cooperating with Homan’s goons. She did sign that legislation.

It is flatly inappropriate for the federal government to threaten a state with violence in an effort to influence that state’s legislative process. It should be unconstitutional for the Trump administration to send its paramilitary to a state because it disagrees with that state’s laws. That is the kind of stuff that could spark a civil war and will spark civil unrest.

And New York is about to host the World Cup Finals—the largest international sporting event on Earth—at the end of the month. Immigrant rights groups have actually issued travel warnings to people planning to visit New York for the game.

Why is this happening now? One reason: The Trump administration wants violence. Violence that could help Trump politically. Trump is incredibly unpopular. He has thrust the country into an unpopular war. He looks weak and, frankly, laughable, on the world stage. His border thug could be just saber-rattling, but waging violence against Black and brown immigrants during the world’s greatest sporting event is likely a good way to rile his gross and evil base supporters to his side.

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Think of it this way: Homan wants to invade a city full of immigrants who will resist him, so the pictures on television are of ICE cracking the skulls of minorities instead of killing white people like Renée Good and Alex Pretti. He wants New York’s popular, socialist, Muslim mayor to be the face of the resistance to Trump’s gestapo forces.

Homan is also willing, and perhaps eager, to put ICE agents in danger. He’s willing to use them as bait. If ICE’s violence sparks counterviolence, the administration might try to install martial law.

Whether or not it works depends, sadly, yet as always, on white folks. ICE will commit violence. New York will resist. When ICE kills people here, it might not be a “perfect” victim—a white mom or a white nurse—in the views of white media. It might be a Latino mom or a Black nurse.

If Trump sends his goons in, it’s going to get ugly.

The Bad and the Ugly

Former New York City comptroller and current congressional candidate Brad Lander has been cleared of obstruction charges stemming from his attempt to inspect one of the federal concentration camps being used to store immigrants. Lander is a real one, and I expect him to be on the front lines resisting any coming invasion.

MAGA prosecutors in Virginia are refusing to enforce Virginia’s new assault weapons ban.

Apparently, the Seventh Circuit thinks it’s OK to execute people in secret. It’s upheld an Indiana ban that prevents journalists from chronicling the state’s executions.

A court appeared inclined to reject the Trump administration’s latest argument for pushing through his ballroom. For those who have lost the thread of this story, the administration has taken to arguing that courts can’t stop the ballroom from being built—or even stop the destruction of the Statue of Liberty—should Trump wish it.

While we’re talking about Trump’s attempts to deface our national monuments, a court ordered that his stupid name be taken off the Kennedy Center.

Inspired Takes

I was traveling last week, so I didn’t get to flag Joan Walsh’s must-read piece in The Nation about Graham Platner and the wholesale adoption of white-male identity politics. I agree with the piece in full. That said, now that Platner has won the primary, I would hold my nose and vote for him over Susan Collins. She was one of the critical votes to put alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court for life, so… she’s worse. But, man, I am happy I don’t live in Maine.

Amy Littlefield has a really thoughtful piece in The Nation about Turning Points USA’s annual leadership conference for conservative women, a weekend-long confab where they wrestled with supporting a party that clearly hates them. The women mostly don’t seem to understand that the party hates them and instead seem to internalize the hate. I’m not surprised, though: Conservative women are willing to accept the sexism in order to participate in the racism.

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