What Is ICE Hiding?
New rules raise constitutional questions. Plus: Trump keeps LA troops. Did Trump nationalize US Steel? And finding your fire with Shannon Watts.
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This week, I sat down with the incredible Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action and author of the brand new book "Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age."
Shannon and I dove into something I know so many of you struggle with — that gap between feeling the spark of something you want to do but you keep hesitating, waiting until you have all your ducks in a row. Whether it's a career move, a difficult personal conversation, or figuring out how to respond to the current state of the world when you feel called to act but don't know where to start.
Shannon's "fire triangle" approach — identifying your values, abilities, and desires — gives you the practical tools to finally move from hesitation to action in your work, your personal life, and yes, even political engagement. So many of you tell me you don't know what to DO about the state of the world. Well, her framework shows you exactly how to channel that frustration into meaningful action.
Our conversation and her book are packed with practical advice, from handling inevitable blowback to taking that terrifying first step (trust me, there's a hilarious story about my first video attempt that’ll make you smile).
Watch the full conversation below and grab Shannon's book — link to purchase is here. It's a guide for turning inspiration into action.
In today’s newsletter we cover a number of stories that aren’t receiving the attention they deserve. Plus, the latest on the conflict with Iran. And for our paid subscribers, the weekly news quiz.
Interview: Finding Your Fire With Shannon Watts
Here Are Your Headlines:
ICE Wants a Save-The-Date: The Department of Homeland Security quietly implemented a new policy requiring members of Congress to provide 72 hours’ notice before visiting one of ICE’s 25 field offices and 24 hours’ notice before entering ICE detention facilities. Lawmakers must also notify ICE which individuals they want to speak with in advance.
The problem? Federal law explicitly grants lawmakers the power to visit ICE facilities that “detain or otherwise house aliens” without advance notice — a power designed to ensure genuine oversight of conditions and treatment. By requiring advance warning, DHS is essentially allowing ICE to prepare for visits, potentially hiding problems or coaching staff before lawmakers arrive. (Think about telling your teenager you're going to search their room with 72 hours’ notice….)
Suspicious: A group of lawmakers fired back today, pointing to recent incidents of “overaggressive and excessive force used to handcuff and detain elected officials in public.” They argue DHS’s new policy prevents Congress from being able to truly “observe the conditions for immigrants behind closed doors,” which “begs the obvious question: What are you hiding?”
The Implications: This policy appears to directly contradict congressional authority established by federal statute, potentially setting up a constitutional showdown over separation of powers and legislative oversight.
Detention Center Sweatshops: There’s woefully limited information about the conditions inside detention centers. Based on our own reporting and research so far we know this: Immigrants in many detention across the country work for as little as $1 a day (13 cents an hour); they have to earn enough to afford phone calls to their relatives. A day’s work scrubbing toilets, washing laundry, or preparing meals, sometimes without proper safety equipment, might earn you enough for a two-minute call with your family. This saves the private companies running most of the country’s detention centers about $40 million a year. In the past, lawsuits have accused these companies of forcing tens of thousands of detainees to work for nothing at all, in violation of anti-slavery laws.
Billion-Dollar Drywall Jail: Here’s another window into the standards/quality inside these detention centers: Four inmates in a billion-dollar, 1,000-bed, for-profit detention facility in Newark escaped last week — by punching a hole through an exterior wall that Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) described as “essentially just drywall with some mesh inside.” According to immigration lawyers and relatives of those inside, the escape began with a riot sparked by detainees being given just slices of bread instead of a meal. “People were desperate,” the sister of one detainee said.
Reminder: Some of the people held in these centers are US citizens or people legally in the United States swept up in ICE raids.
No Badges, No Warrants: ICE agents (many of whom seem to lack basic law enforcement training) are operating with unprecedented boldness—and impunity. Here are incidents from this week that caught our attention:
No Warrant, No Problem: Immigration agents in Rochester, New York were videoed smashing a car window and detaining a US citizen on his way to work. “My brother kept saying that he wanted to see a warrant,” the man’s sister said, but agents “would refuse.” “We pay our taxes, we go to work. We’re not criminals. Nothing like this has ever happened to us.”
No Interference: A 20-year-old US citizen who joined others attempting to help a worker being detained by immigration enforcement in Los Angeles, was tackled to the ground and dragged into a truck by a group of agents. In video footage of the incident, one of the agents can be heard cocking his weapon. “He was pointing it at us,” a witness said. “I told him, I’m a US citizen and I’m exercising my rights to record. That’s when the guy swatted the phone from my hand.”
Certain Targets: In Montebello, agents arrested a different US citizen working in a tow yard. “It just seems like there’s no due process,” the mayor of Montebello said. “They’re going for a specific look [and] asking questions after.… This is not the country that we all know it to be, where folks have individual rights and protections.”
Conflict Dodged: Officials at the Dodger Stadium say they denied entry to immigration agents in unmarked vehicles who attempted to enter the stadium parking lot yesterday. Some of the agents had covered faces, none had any identifying badges, and they refused to explain why they were there when asked. Two of the vehicles had the same license plates as those involved in an immigration raid at Home Depot that morning; one agent reportedly told a community member they “bring the detainees here to process them and conduct our investigation without public interference. We can’t do it in the Home Depot parking lot because the public makes it dangerous.”
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Trump Keeps Troops: An appeals court yesterday unanimously permitted Trump to retain control of National Guard troops deployed in LA. The judges noted that presidents can’t seize control of a state’s National Guard whenever, but concluded Trump had presented enough evidence to justify his decision to do so in LA. Two of the judges on the three-person panel were appointed by Trump during his first term. All three judges found that there was enough evidence that protesters were trying to impede immigration enforcement efforts to justify Trump’s deployment of the Guard.
Case Ongoing: A separate judge today heard arguments in a San Francisco courtroom over what, exactly, Trump can order troops to do. Trump has deployed 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines in LA. “This case is far from over,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said.
The Model: Remember, Trump said his deployment of troops to LA could be “the first, perhaps, of many.”
Released: A federal judge today ordered the Trump administration to release Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestine protestor and Columbia graduate, after over 3 months in immigration detention. The administration attempted to justify Khalil’s arrest, and pushed for his deportation, by invoking an obscure Cold War-era statue and arguing his presence in the US would impede the government’s ability “to combat antisemitism around the world.” Officials also refused to grant Khalil temporary release for the birth of his first child. The judge concluded that Khalil’s detention appeared to have been retaliation against his past advocacy for Palestine. “Of course, that would be unconstitutional,” he noted.
Give Me Your Students: A federal judge today indefinitely blocked the administration from preventing Harvard from hosting international students and scholars through the Student and Visitor Exchange Program. This is separate from Trump’s attempt to stop Harvard from enrolling international students in general, which was temporarily blocked earlier this month.
Let Them Have Guns: The Justice Department is planning on firing two-thirds of the inspectors monitoring gun sales at federally licensed dealers. These inspectors ensure dealers aren’t allowing guns to be bought by traffickers, criminals, and so on. This is the latest in a string of moves by Attorney General Pam Bondi to roll back gun control measures. You can hear about how Shannon Watts worked successfully to combat rules like this in our conversation at the top of this newsletter.
Turning Steel to Gold: Nippon Steel and US Steel today signed a national security pact that grants the US government — or, rather, the president — extraordinary control over a purportedly private company.
Context: Nippon Steel, a Japanese company, has been trying to buy the struggling US Steel for over a year. Trump initially opposed foreign ownership of a company that provides crucial materials for US infrastructure and construction. But this week the Trump administration approved the acquisition — with the caveat that US Steel essentially be nationalized.
The Deal: Under the deal, the US government gets a “golden share” in US Steel. “That gives you total control,” Trump claimed. Not quite, but not far off. With this golden share, the president can veto almost a dozen business activities, including a name change, moving headquarters, offshoring jobs or manufacturing, closing domestic facilities, and more. The president can also directly appoint one of the company’s three independent directors and reject appointments for the other two positions. The golden share is perpetual and can’t be transferred or sold, even by future presidents.
Hypocrisy? Conservatives and libertarians are furious about the deal, which they see as essentially socialist. “US Steel may not be state-owned,” a professor at the moderate Atlantic Council concluded, “but it is certainly now controlled by the US government.” Critics are worried this could dampen interest in investing in the US. Or create precedent for the government to use its approval power to gain control of other private companies.
Strongman: This is far from the first time Trump has asserted arbitrary power over business decisions. Think tariffs, tax carveouts for certain industries, and his attacks on individual firms that he views as rebellious or insufficiently obedient.
Few Byrds With One Stone: The Senate parliamentarian has removed several controversial parts of the “Big Beautiful Bill” finding them in violation of the so-called Byrd Rule. Among the provisions that will be removed: defunding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Office of Financial Research; reducing the pay of Federal Reserve staff; eliminating the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board; and the repeal of vehicle emissions standards set by the Inflation Reduction Act.
More to Come: The parliamentarian has yet to decide if several other controversial provisions will remain in the bill. These include defunding Planned Parenthood; putting a 10 year moratorium on new regulations for AI; and a provision that would protect Trump officials from contempt findings in court.
What’s Next: Under the Byrd Rule, only matters directly related to the budget may be included in certain budget bills. The parliamentarian rules on whether specific provisions meet that test. Republicans could technically force the nixed provisions through with 60 votes, but that would require Democratic votes — so once nixed, the items are out.
Cut Confirmed: House Republicans voted to confirm $9.4 billion in DOGE cuts to foreign aid and public broadcasting, making these reductions permanent. The measure seemed set to fail, but at the last minute House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) pulled a couple moderate Republicans aside and convinced them to vote yes. What exactly he promised them is unclear, but is likely related to state and local tax breaks in the “Big Beautiful Bill.”
Real Cost: The $9.4 billion figure includes funds for USAID. You can read more about what USAID does here and the impacts of the administration’s attack on it here. To add yet another, more recent example to the list: Cuts to foreign aid have caused food rations to be halved in one of Africa’s largest refugee camps, which houses some 300,000 refugees.
Context: Remember, DOGE cut money approved by Congress. DOGE lacked the authority to rescind the spending. So this vote gives Congressional approval to DOGE’s efforts to claw back the funding. It’s a rarely used tool called “rescissions.” Lawmakers will need to vote on similar rescissions packages to confirm other DOGE cuts.
Size Matters: For context, Elon Musk and DOGE originally promised $1 trillion in cuts this year. This package is 0.94% of that.
What’s Next: The Senate needs to vote for the rescissions package by July 18 at the latest. They likely won’t get to it until after the “Big Beautiful Bill” is dealt with. And some Senate Republicans are unsure. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), for example, said that she’s “made it very clear that I do not like the cuts in the global health programs.”
Two Weeks To Midnight: Trump will decide whether to go to war with Iran “within two weeks,” the White House said yesterday. Why the delay? The White House says that’s because officials believe “there is a chance for substantial negotiations” with Iran. Second, the administration is worried a military engagement could lead to another forever war in the Middle East. Third, officials are unsure whether strikes would actually destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity. (Some experts argue it would only set the program back by a couple years.)
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