The Quiet Part
Week of June 26-July 2, 2026
Published in conjunction with The Nation magazine, TRACKING THE CRISIS is a weekly round-up from The Democracy Collaborative tracking the administrative, legislative, and other actions of the Trump Administration as well as the many forms of legal and movement response from across a broad range of social, political, and economic actors. TDC is providing this service for collective informational purposes, as a tool for understanding the times during a period of disorientingly rapid flux and change in the U.S. political economy. This round-up is produced by humans, not by Artificial Intelligence. TDC should not be understood as endorsing or otherwise any of the specific content of the information round-up.
TRUMP TRACKER: Administration actions
ICE steps up raids across U.S., arresting 10,000 immigrants in 5 days in national sweeps. ICE has quietly doubled its immigrant arrest quota, arresting over 10,000 migrants in just five days in sweeping raids across the country. According to the New York Times, ICE officials were told earlier this week to ramp up their daily arrest quotas to 2,000 per day. DHS head Markwayne Mullin has pledged a less visible enforcement approach than the public threats and highly militarized spectacles that sparked mass protests in several cities last year and the Minneapolis general strike in January.
As part of the new strategy, raids are being spread out around the country, a change from the former tactic of politically targeting one Democratic-controlled sanctuary city at a time. This is helping to avoid the kind of media spectacle and community backlash that presaged the more visible immigration sweeps last year. Homeland Security officials told CNN that they have increased the number of “criminal investigations targeting fraud” in regards to immigrants, and that this would generate more targets at individual workplaces. The LA Times has also reported that the Trump Administration is exploring other "quieter" tactics such as using “rules and red tape” to push immigrants out of the country, including those who are in the United States lawfully under current immigration standards.
Alt National Park Service, a social media-based network of current and former federal employees that grew to national prominence last year amid the DOGE firings, posted that it has received an “overwhelming” amount of reports of intensified raids in Los Angeles, San Diego, Houston, Dallas, McAllen, Brownsville, New York City, Newark, Passaic, Plainfield, Milwaukee, Waukesha, Nashville, Charlotte, Chicago, and Minneapolis as ICE agents have targeted people at immigration check-ins, traffic stops, workplace operations, and in public spaces.
Among the raids being reported in local media are a mass arrest of more than 30 workers at the Scholar Crafts plant in Birmingham, Alabama; workplace raids at two laundromats in Madison, Wisconsin; courthouse immigration arrests in South Florida; a Mexican father who was arrested while driving to a soccer game in Salt Lake City, Utah; arrests of dairy farm workers in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia; arrests of several workers across Montana; dozens of ICE arrests throughout Kansas City during its hosting of World Cup games; and the arrest of a 56-year-old Catholic nun on her way to Mass in McAllen, Texas. ICE agents also arrested at least three people during immigration check-ins at New York City courthouses this week in violation of federal court orders that explicitly barred such arrests.
Immigrant advocates and communities are also bracing for the consequences of a Supreme Court ruling this week that upheld the Trump Administration’s revoking of Temporary Protected Status for asylum seekers from Haiti and Syria, affecting at least 356,000 people. Activists and immigrant communities in Springfield, Ohio, where many Haitian asylum seekers have settled, are bracing for “the mother of all ICE raids” after Stephen Miller voiced his enthusiastic support for “finally removing all those Haitian illegal immigrants” after the Supreme Court decision. The Illinois Secretary of State also issued a statement warning of intensified ICE enforcement activity throughout the state, and advised residents to alert the state’s PlateWatch hotline if they see illegally altered license plates on cars, which has been identified as a common ICE tactic as the state has refused to issue temporary government plates to federal ICE agents.
Protestors and community defense groups are also bracing for increased crackdowns, particularly after the conviction of eight activists on domestic terrorism charges after an incident last year in which a police officer was shot during an anti-ICE protest outside a detention center in Prairieland, Texas. A ninth defendant in that case, Ines Soto, was sentenced Wednesday to 50 years in prison for "providing material support to terrorists" because he had transported political pamphlets in his car.
Fifteen Minnesota protestors also pled not guilty this week to conspiracy charges stemming from protests in January. Activist and healthcare worker Isaac Sant, one of the accused, said the trial was “a naked attempt to silence our voices, to squash dissent and to have a chilling effect on organizing here in the Twin Cities,” which, he noted, “is not going to work.” Separately, ICE agents reportedly showed up to a U.S. citizen’s house in Rochester, NY recently with a warning after the resident wrote a three-paragraph email to Tom Homan criticizing ICE’s mass deportation program and comparing Homan to a Nazi. Mother Jones also reported this week on a previously unpublicized letter to Congress penned by Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Maxwell Frost demanding information on a rumored database of protestors labeled “domestic terrorists” by DHS.U.S., Iran trade strikes over Strait of Hormuz before resuming talks in Doha as regional relations remain fraught; region braces as Israel threatens to kill Khamenei, heightening tensions around his father’s state funeral. The fragile “ceasefire” between the United States and Iran again looked on the verge of collapse this week as the U.S. and Iran traded tit-for-tat strikes in the Strait of Hormuz. On Thursday evening, an “unknown projectile” struck the Ever Lovely, a Singapore-flagged cargo ship traversing the Strait on the "open" route near the coast of Oman. CENTCOM claimed to confirm an Iranian drone hit the ship near the bridge with no casualties reported, which has fit the pattern of Iranian "warning strikes" in the Strait over the past few weeks. The IRGC did not confirm or deny responsibility for the attack, however the incident was enough for the UN to pause its evacuation plan, under which over 100 ships crossed the Strait using the Oman route last week.
In response, the U.S. commenced strikes on what CENTCOM claimed were Iranian “military surveillance infrastructure, communications systems, air defense sites, drone storage facilities, and mine-laying capabilities” on Sirik and Qeshm islands over Friday and Saturday, prompting Iran to launch retaliatory strikes on eight U.S. military facilities in Kuwait and Bahrain on Saturday.
As each side accused the other of breaking clauses in the recently signed “Memorandum of Understanding” (MoU), Trump threatened to "annihilate" Iran again on Saturday, posting on Truth Social that “there may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started,” and warning that “if that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist.” JD Vance took a more moderate tone in an interview with Bill Maher on Friday, saying: “If we make the final deal, then great…if we don’t make the final deal, their nuclear program is still destroyed. They’re still much weaker as a country, so my attitude is America wins either way.”
On Sunday, Axios reported that the U.S. and Iran had mutually agreed to halt the exchange of strikes and return to the negotiating table in Qatar on Tuesday. Iran denied agreeing to further face-to-face talks but said a delegation would be sent to Doha to continue negotiations to secure the release of frozen Iranian assets held in Qatari banks. Iranian President Pezeshkian reiterated that Tehran would fulfill its obligations under the MoU provided that the United States “does the same.”
Iranian officials continued to assert Iran’s right to control the Strait this week, as it remains their primary leverage in negotiations. Iran deputy foreign minister Kazem Gharibibaldi insisted that “any credible framework must be based on coordination with Iran and the provisions of paragraph five of the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding,” under which Iran is to “conduct dialogue with Oman over the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz.” Iranian officials also denounced as “interventionist” a joint U.S.-Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) statement issued on Friday after Marco Rubio’s diplomatic visit to the region last week, which rejected “any tolls, fees, or attempts to assert control over the Strait.” Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei’s advisor, Ali Akbar Velayati, issued a public statement saying that the stability of Gulf states “is indebted to Iran’s century-long management of the Strait of Hormuz,” and that the West “has brought nothing but plunder and violence.”
Despite the heightened confrontation with the U.S. over the Strait and ire from some Gulf states over the retaliatory attacks, Iran continued to pursue diplomatic efforts aimed at building a new regional security architecture that could present an alternative to the existing but fraying military alliance between the U.S. and Gulf states. That process was initiated by the Saudis, who floated the prospect of a regional non-aggression pact last month. The Kingdom has also started to deepen efforts at diplomatic engagement with Iran, with calls between Araghchi and Saudi FM Faisal bin Farhan al Saud, and the announcement of intentions to hold reconciliation talks between Iran and the Gulf states. The high-stakes efforts appeared to be shaken but not broken by the exchange of strikes over the weekend, as Saudi authorities denounced the attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain but continued preparations for reconciliation talks.
Since the start of the war, Saudi Arabia has taken a "pragmatic" approach, quietly hedging its bets on both sides while reducing its dependence on the U.S. military for security and reaching out to regional powers such as Pakistan, Turkiye and Egypt for military cooperation. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Saudi Arabia was reportedly responsible for ending the Trump Administration’s "Operation Freedom" push in the Strait of Hormuz last month, opening a rift between Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman and Trump; as a result, the Pentagon is weighing reducing its military footprint in the country and shifting resources to Israel and Jordan.
On Sunday, Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi arrived in Baghdad for a round of bilateral talks with senior Iraqi officials in the newly formed government, which has made friendly overtures to Tehran since taking power. In a joint press conference Sunday, Araghchi, a veteran of the Iran/Iraq war in the 1980s, congratulated the new Iraqi government and expressed thanks to the Iraqi people for their support of Iran during the recent war, invoking the long-standing mutual suffering of civilians in both countries due to U.S. and Israeli aggression. He also hailed the "historic" ties being developed between the two countries and former adversaries.
On Monday, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein reinforced Araghchi’s call for an “Indigenous Persian Gulf Security Framework” that would emphasize regional cooperation and exclude "external" actors (namely the United States) from having undue influence on decisions affecting the region. Araghchi also welcomed Iraq’s intention to organize a "regional forum" involving Iran, Iraq, and the six countries of the GCC in an "effort to build a broader regional security dialogue." Analysts believe Iran is pursuing a carrot-and-stick approach to the GCC, simultaneously leveraging the threat of military retaliation for continued cooperation with the U.S. and diplomatic efforts aimed at “offering economic cooperation, guarantees against Iranian strikes and access to the Strait of Hormuz” in return for the GCC’s commitment to a collective regional security arrangement that would exclude the United States.
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that Iran and Oman continued to move forward with plans to jointly collect fees for ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz despite U.S. objections, although their visions appear to differ slightly at the moment. Oman appears to favor voluntary service fees to cover the costs of “maintaining safe navigation practices” in the Strait of Hormuz, similar to the model established by Singapore in the Strait of Malacca, while Iran continues to insist that the fees be mandatory. A limited amount of commercial traffic continues to operate in the Strait, with maritime trackers reporting 31 vessels crossing the Strait on July 1.
Major international associations of shipping employers and maritime unions announced Wednesday that they will continue to designate the Strait of Hormuz as a war zone until at least July 9. Iranian state media reported that a commercial ship ran aground attempting to traverse the Omani route on Wednesday, highlighting the difficulty of making an end run around Iranian territorial waters.
Both U.S. and Iranian delegations announced on Wednesday that a round of indirect talks had been conducted and concluded in Doha, although little concrete progress had been made towards a final and lasting peace deal. Qatari mediators reported that “positive progress” had been made in the talks, while Vance remained upbeat, saying the talks had gone "extremely well," though he let slip on Wednesday that Trump sees it as more of a strategic pause, saying Trump “told us” to use the MoU as a way to “refill the world’s oil economy...and then to see where the hand is.” Tehran said Wednesday it had agreed to establish a “communication channel” with the U.S. to deal with perceived breaches of the MoU, with both sides agreeing to resume talks after the state funeral for the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, which is scheduled to begin in Tehran on Saturday and is projected to be the largest state funeral in its history, spanning both Iran and Iraq over six days.
Israel has again destabilized the fragile peace by threatening Iran, with Israeli defense minister Israel Katz issuing a threat against Mojtaba Khamenei, saying the leader, who was reportedly seriously injured in the attack early in the war that killed his father, was “marked for death.” Araghchi replied to the threats on X by saying that “POTUS has committed the U.S. to muzzling its pets in Tel Aviv” and “if they ignore their master, Iran will school them.” He went on to warn that “any threat against our people and leadership will receive [an] immediate and powerful response.” Along with top leaders from over 40 countries, China’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that senior Chinese lawmaker He Wei, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s top legislative body, will represent Beijing at the funeral beginning this weekend. This heightens the geopolitical stakes of any planned or threatened violence at the event, which is set to be attended by an estimated 50 million people.June jobs report misses expectations as just 57,000 jobs added and job prospects dim for struggling workers. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its June jobs report on Thursday morning with disappointing results, showing job growth of just 57,000 jobs in June, well below economists’ expectations of around double that number. Actual jobs numbers for April and May were also revised downward, with 31,000 fewer jobs reported for April and 43,000 fewer jobs reported in May.
While the unemployment rate declined slightly to 4.2%, a key figure for the labor market – the labor force participation rate – showed a contraction of 0.3 percent to 61.5%. This is the lowest rate since March 2021 and the lowest rate in 50 years outside of the COVID era, as 720,000 workers stopped looking for work entirely in June, and household employment contracted by 507,000 jobs. Key to this decline is the loss of so-called “prime-age” workers between the ages of 25 and 54, which plunged 0.6% to 83.3%, its lowest rate since December 2023. This means that the fall in the unemployment rate was not due to a surge in hiring, but more people leaving the labor force as hiring prospects remain difficult.
An expected bump in tourism and hospitality sector jobs related to the U.S. hosting of the World Cup failed to materialize, as leisure and hospitality jobs actually declined by 61,000 jobs. Most of June’s job growth was driven by professional and business services, followed by jobs in social assistance. Hiring in the healthcare sector, which has carried nearly all of the labor market’s job growth over the past year, slowed to just 22,000 jobs added in June, dropping below its 38,000 average over the past year. Private sector data from Challenger, Gray, and Christmas painted an even more dire picture for teen and entry-level workers, with summer hiring expectations at 790,000 jobs, falling below last year’s stark number of just 801,000 jobs, the lowest summer hiring number recorded in the firm’s 77-year history of tracking such data and the worst year for young workers since 1948.
The current 15-month average for hiring is now just 35,000 jobs per month, down from the previous 15 months (January 2024 to March 2025), which saw a comparative average of 156,000 jobs per month. Hourly wage growth also decelerated in June to just 3.5%. While the Trump Administration claimed this is delivering “greater wages for workers,” the increase continues to lag behind the rate of inflation, which has risen to 4.2% since the Iran war-related energy price shock, indicating an actual decline in workers’ purchasing power.
A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York indicates that credit card delinquencies among U.S. consumers have risen to a 15-year high at 13.12% in the first quarter of 2026, up from just over 12% from last year. CBS News reports that American workers’ share of national income is just 54.1%, the lowest it has been since the Federal Reserve began tracking the labor share of income in 1947. Debt pressure on the average American worker is only expected to rise with new federal student loan servicing guidelines that took effect July 1, which forces nearly 7 million borrowers to transition to private servicing agencies with higher monthly repayment plans.
Despite these concerning macro indicators, the Trump Administration attempted to portray the jobs numbers in a positive light, with National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett saying the labor market is on a “strong upward trajectory” over the last three months compared to the three months prior, during which the labor market suffered a deep decline. Acting Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling released a statement saying that “Manufacturing employment, which was devastated under the Biden Administration, continues to grow as we secure historic investments and reshoring of critical industries.” This is despite data from EPI analyst Elise Gould that shows 75,000 fewer manufacturing jobs than when Trump took office for his second term. Economist Dean Baker notes that manufacturing jobs have actually fallen 25% below their previous peak in May 2024, indicating that the manufacturing boom Trump had hoped to drive with his tariff policies has not only failed to materialize, but has gone in the opposite direction.
JP Morgan analyst David Kelly said that the June jobs report represents a "reality check" for the economy, which he called a “tortoise” marked by sluggish growth. He emphasized the “tremendous divergence” between the AI bubble-driven historic stock market rallies touted by the Trump Administration and the struggling real economy, warning that "the lower middle-income consumers really aren't okay” and without continued momentum in the tech sector, "we could find ourselves in a more serious problem." New data also shows that the Iran war has cost American households an average of $1,000 since the war began on February 28.
Voters are also expressing their concern, with a recent YouGov/Economist poll showing that 60% say Trump has not paid attention to the biggest problem facing the country, which continues to be the affordability crisis. Former DOL official Angela Hanks opined that “until working people can actually afford their lives—groceries, housing, healthcare, childcare—claims of a ‘strong economy’ will continue to ring hollow.”
MOVEMENT TRACKER
Supreme Court issues rulings on birthright citizenship and mail-in voting. The Supreme Court finished out its term this week by dealing a rare rebuke to the Trump Administration. On Tuesday, the Court voted 6-3 to uphold birthright citizenship, rejecting Trump’s executive order that would have ended the automatic granting of citizenship to people born on U.S. soil – which has been guaranteed since the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. Birthright citizenship was the path to citizenship for the descendants of over 20 million European immigrants who arrived in the U.S. between 1885 and 1920 and now consider themselves “Americans,” including Trump himself.
Chief Justice John Roberts, in writing the majority opinion, noted that there was “scant evidence” for the Trump Administration’s reinterpretation of how the law had been understood for decades, saying that: “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community,” and that the ruling upholds the 14th Amendment’s “promise” to ensure that “every free-born person on this land” would have those rights. Five of the six judges voting in the majority considered the executive order to be unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, while Brett Kavanaugh, who also voted with the majority, noted that the order may violate federal law but not the Constitution. The three judges who voted in Trump’s favor were Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch.
While civil rights groups applauded the decision as a win for the Constitution and a rare break from the Court’s generally supportive stance toward the Trump Administration, Trump-aligned officials decried the decision. This included House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called the ruling “disappointing,” and acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, who announced shortly after the ruling that the DOJ will focus on cracking down on so-called “birth tourism,” a statistically rare occurrence that has nonetheless become a popular conspiracy theory. Stephen Miller, also a beneficiary of birthright citizenship having descended from Russian Jewish immigrants who arrived in the early 1900s, slammed the decision as “one of the most outrageous and destructive decisions” in the history of the Supreme Court, and proposed that pregnant women be barred from entering the United States. Trump said the ruling was “too bad” but vowed to try to end birthright citizenship through Congressional means.
The ruling also sparked controversy among the justices themselves, with Ketanji Jackson Brown slamming Clarence Thomas for his “myopic” interpretation of the 14th Amendment, which Thomas had opined was only applicable to enslaved African-Americans freed after the Civil War; she wryly noted that “despite his longstanding endorsement of a "colorblind" Constitution, Justice Thomas now surprisingly suggests that the Citizenship Clause was a race-conscious remedial measure.” Conservative justice Amy Comey Barrett also reported receiving sexist attacks after ruling in favor of birthright citizenship, with memes calling her a “DEI hire” spreading on social media.
In a 5-4 vote Monday, the Court also upheld a Mississippi law that allows mail-in ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked by and received within five days of Election Day. The ruling deals a blow to Trump’s campaign to ban or limit mail-in voting ahead of the midterm elections in November, and was seen as a surprise to many analysts after the Court’s decision to strike down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act last month.Delaney Hall protests end after ICE changes detention standards; NJ Dems pass tax on ICE facility, force DHS to back down on new construction. Detainees at New Jersey’s Delaney Hall ICE facility ended their month-long hunger and labor strike this week. Activists supporting the detainees said that the strikers had been beset with “intimidation tactics” including solitary confinement, transfers, and being pepper-sprayed by guards. In June, ICE changed its policy to no longer require the facility’s private prison operator, Geo Group, to comply with local and state labor laws. This change removed protections for detainees and helped break the strike.
While advocates were disappointed and enraged by the changes, the protests, which have been ongoing for a month both inside and outside the facility, shone a "spotlight" on the grievous conditions inside ICE detention centers, which has prompted action from local, state and federal officials demanding more oversight and accountability for the privately-run detention facilities. Nayna Gupta, director of the American Immigration Council, said that the protests meant “these private prison companies are having to manage oversight interest engagement from elected officials, not only from the federal level now, but state and local governments, and that is more of a spotlight and transparency than they’re used to.”
Delaney Hall has been a flashpoint for intense on-the-street protests over the past month, beginning with the protest of a detainee’s wife, Gabriela Soto, and escalating to several incidents, including the pepper-spraying of U.S. Senator Andy Kim, and a protestor who was hit by a car driven by an ICE guard, only to return to the site undaunted several hours later. The Freedom of the Press Foundation is also calling on the community to demand the dropping of criminal charges against journalists arrested while covering the protests.
On Tuesday, the New Jersey State Assembly passed a bill aimed at imposing up to $16 million dollars in fees and taxes on privately-run prison facilities in the state, a measure that lawmakers said was aimed at “accountability” for private prison operators who have “figured out a way to profit off of detention” in ways that negatively “impact our communities.” The Trump Administration also backed down from plans to open a new ICE detention facility in New Jersey’s Roxbury Township. The agency had spent $130 million to acquire a warehouse complex with the intention of converting it into a 1,500-bed detention facility as part of its nationwide expansion efforts. New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill and Attorney General Jennifer Davenport issued a joint statement calling the project cancellation a "major victory" for state and local government, which sued to block the facility’s conversion on zoning grounds. The statement said in part: "Converting a warehouse for packages into a detention center for thousands of people would not only be inhumane but also have devastating local and environmental impacts — and it would not make New Jersey any safer….That’s why we took the Department to court and forced the Trump administration to abandon its plans.”
