They’re Giving The Whole Game Away

You don’t have to squint to see it.

In a lengthy Truth Social post Sunday that you have likely already seen by now, President Trump made clear that his Priority No. 1 Mass Deportation Scheme goes hand in hand with the retribution agenda: invading blue cities, stoking chaos and panic among residents and punishing the Democratic leadership of those jurisdictions.

This is a drum we’ve been beating for over a week now, but it has been stunning (if it is still possible to experience that emotion six months in to Trump II) to watch the Trump administration so blatantly give the game away in recent days. Last week, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem stated, unprompted, that the militarized mission in Los Angeles was rooted in a desire to combat Democratic leadership in the state as she waxed ineloquent about the need to “liberate” the city from “socialists” and policies enacted by politicians whom Trump does not like.

In his Sunday evening Truth Social screed — it seems pretty improbable that the post was actually penned by President Trump himself, it’s a little too coherent for that to be the case, though it does match his typical haphazard grammar and punctuation styles — Trump (or whoever wrote it) acknowledged that his deportation agenda is rooted in retribution against the Dems and vindication of election-related conspiracy theories. In the months leading up to the 2024 election, TPM extensively reported on the MAGA movement’s effort to make the myth of non-citizens voting en masse for Democrats the bogeyman of Big Lie 2.0 conspiracy theories that they ended up not needing. Trump won and, thus, all manufactured outrage about undocumented immigrants helping Dems steal elections from Trump ceased, as well.

“In order to achieve this, we must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside,” read a post on Trump’s Truth Social account Sunday evening. “These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens.”

It goes without saying but I will say it: none of what Trump is saying here is true. His administration is upset that elected Democrats leading states and cities across the U.S. have sanctuary policies that offer some protections to undocumented immigrants — like not allowing ICE to raid schools — and, in some cases, allow people who don’t have papers to still receive health care and other community resources. It’s the lack of cooperation with Trump’s cruelty-first agenda that’s set off the recent crackdown, which also allowed Trump to act on his other fever dream: deploying the military domestically as a show of force against anti-Trump protesters.

That all comes as the Trump administration is also directing ICE to pause, for now, on raids and arrests of undocumented migrants working in the agricultural industry, hotels and restaurants. The New York Times spoke to three administration officials with knowledge of the matter and got its hands on an internal email sent by a senior ICE official, Tatum King, to other ICE officials.

The guidance was reportedly sent around the same time that Trump posted this on Truth Social last week:

“Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”

Additionally, per the Times:

Mr. Trump posted after Brooke Rollins, the secretary of agriculture, informed him of farmers who were concerned about the ICE enforcement affecting their businesses, according to a White House official and a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Trump has for decades owned luxury hotels, an industry with a strong immigrant labor force.

The Retribution Is The Point

Here’s what Trump’s Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy posted in response to the long Truth Social screed unpacked above. It appears to be an escalation of an earlier executive order in which the President called on administration officials to identify federal funding and grants to withhold from sanctuary states and cities.

The @USDOT will NOT fund rogue state actors who refuse to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

And to cities that stand by while rioters destroy transportation infrastructure — don’t expect a red cent from DOT, either. Follow the law, or forfeit the funding. https://t.co/cCRi4ALT23

— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) June 16, 2025

House Dem Named On Shooter’s List Cancels Town Hall

Federal prosecutors have said that dozens of elected Democrats were named on a list found in the possession of the man who shot and killed Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark and injured state Sen. John Hoffman and Yvette, his wife. Others on the list included federal Reps. Angie Craig (D-MN), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Hillary Scholten (D-MI) and Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN).

Scholten’s office put out a statement announcing she’d canceled a town hall that she planned to hold in Muskegon tonight in order to ease the burden on law enforcement.

“After being made aware that my name was on a list connected to the recent tragic shooting in Minnesota, my office has made the difficult decision to postpone our planned town hall in Muskegon,” Scholten said. “Out of an abundance of caution and to not divert additional law enforcement resources away from protecting the broader public at this time, this is the responsible choice.”

In Case You Missed It

My colleague Kate Riga writes on the ways in which the online MAGA scene has tried to push conspiracy theories about the Minnesota shooter to distract from the violence inherit to the movement. My favorite line from her piece, MAGA Whips Up Conspiracy Theories To Muddy An Act Of Right-Wing Violence:

The reluctance to name the movement that claimed two more lives this weekend, and attempted to take more, ensures that Trump will never face accountability for the political environment he’s created. It ensures that the next time a right-wing adherent’s rage curdles into violence, he can act on it — knowing that not only will he not hurt the party, he may even be welcomed warmly back into the MAGA fold.

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