Hayley Williams Shouts 'F*** ICE' and 'Free Palestine' Mid-Performance During Oakland Solo Tour

Hayley Williams turned her solo tour stop at the Fox Theater in Oakland, California, on Saturday 9 May into a blunt political statement, shouting 'F*** ICE' and 'Free Palestine' mid-song during her performance of Ice in My OJ. Audience-shot footage quickly spread on X, capturing the Paramore frontwoman's attack on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and her latest show of support for Palestinians.

The moment was not an isolated outburst. Williams has been using her At a Bachelor Party Tour to confront US immigration policy and the wider political climate, with fan videos from multiple dates showing her repeatedly stopping Ice in My OJ to denounce ICE. What happened in Oakland appeared to be the clearest expression yet of a message she has been building for months.

Tour Politics

The Oakland performance fits into a broader political line Williams has been developing in public since earlier this year. In February, she published a lengthy Substack essay describing the current US climate as 'exhausting' and directly naming President Donald Trump, ICE, Jeffrey Epstein, 'multiple genocides' and civic mismanagement as part of that picture.

She argued that proposed federal budget cuts would 'do away with music and arts education', framing the move as ideological rather than administrative. 'Fascism hates art and expression because art and expression signal all sorts of freedoms. Art cannot be controlled or contained,' she wrote.

In the essay, Williams reflected on the period around Paramore's 2023 album This Is Why and her decision to become 'more publicly political'. She acknowledged that the choice came with backlash, recalling what she called 'pretty cringe ridicule' from people whose values 'seem to differ starkly' from hers, including 'FOX news pundits or Elon Musk himself'.

Musk did publicly criticise her in 2024 after an anti-Trump speech she gave at the iHeartRadio Music Festival. According to reports, he described her as 'another puppet of the machine' and called her 'so disappointing' after she used Paramore's performance of Big Man, Little Dignity to warn about Project 2025.

During that speech, Williams described Project 2025 as 'Donald Trump's playbook for controlling and punishing women, poor people, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community'. She urged the crowd to confront Trump at the ballot box and framed the election as a test of whether Americans wanted 'to live in a dictatorship'.

'F*** ICE' Becomes A Theme

By her own account, Williams once believed political organising could stop Trump's return. In her February essay, written during his current presidency, she admitted that optimism had faded.

She wrote that she had 'so much hope back then that we'd beat Trump at the polls' but now saw 'Trump, our president once more, still shits his suits and lies through his teeth about everything'. The language was crude, but the message was clear. She sees the political climate as darker and more urgent than before.

Williams also wrote: 'ICE (f*** em), Epstein (f*** em), cities who mismanage and put profits over people (f*** em), multiple genocides (F–KKKK em).' The Oakland chant of 'F*** ICE' and 'Free Palestine' gave that wider worldview a live expression on stage, even if she has not laid out a formal political platform beyond her own commentary.

She also stressed that ICE, Epstein and the rest were 'only a few of the huge issues dominating the news cycle and our collective minds'. She described it as 'an exhausting time to just be human, especially if you are a human on the side of liberty and justice for ALL.'

In one of the essay's few hopeful notes, Williams praised 'the people of Minneapolis' as an example of what patriotism and loving one's neighbour should look like. That contrast between anger and hope has become part of the tone of her solo run.

No Sign Of Softening

For now, Williams appears determined to keep that political edge in her live shows. After Oakland, she is scheduled to play The Wiltern in Los Angeles on 12 and 13 May before heading to Europe for dates in Milan, the Netherlands and Dublin.

There has been no indication from Williams or her team that she plans to tone down the politics of the At a Bachelor Party Tour. There has also been no reported official response from ICE or from Trump's camp to the Oakland remarks. As things stand, her 'F*** ICE' message looks less like a one-night provocation and more like a recurring part of the show.