The Dropkick Murphys’ have been “Fighting Nazis Since 1996.” Ken Casey, singer of the Boston Irish punk band, says don’t believe it when Republican politicians “cosplay” as working-class white males.
For three decades, the Dropkick Murphys have played their riotous brand of Boston Irish Celtic punk for legions of tattooed, mosh-pitting fans, but it wasn’t until last month that they found a new following among an unlikely demographic: C-SPAN viewers.
Washington policy wonks and political junkies who tuned in to watch former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith testify before the House last month were treated to lurid details about President Trump’s alleged involvement in 2020 election meddling and the Jan. 6 insurrection. What they didn’t bargain for were the animated actions of former D.C. cop Michael Fanone, who was in the chamber wearing a Dropkick Murphys T-shirt that read “Fighting Nazis Since 1996.”
Fanone, who was brutally attacked by a pro-Trump mob while defending the Capitol in 2021, was impossible to miss. He was seated directly behind Smith and the only guy visible in a band T-shirt. Also notable were his reactions to GOP suggestions that the attack on the Capitol never happened, or was everyone’s fault but Trump’s: He coughed out expletives and flashed colorful hand gestures. Dropkick Murphys T-shirt sales spiked.
“It was this crazy, organic thing,” says Ken Casey, lead singer of the band. “We never put up a poster saying, ‘Hey, wear our shirt!’ But over the course of the next week, we sold like 6,000 of those shirts.” And for those who want one now? The shirt is on back order.
Casey, who speaks in a thick, working-class Boston accent (think “The Departed” meets a Ben Affleck Dunkin’ Donuts commercial), isn’t a stranger to mixing music and politics. He has been outspoken onstage and in the recording studio about his opposition to MAGA’s immigration policy, racist rhetoric and war on the working class. And the band announced Tuesday they’re parting ways with the Wasserman Music agency because the namesake of the agency turned up in the Epstein files.
Casey spoke with The Times about challenging MAGA through the rebellion of punk rock.
The Dropkick Murphys’ “Fighting Nazis Since 1996” T-shirt is a hot item now thanks to its appearance on Capitol Hill, via Fanone. He’s been very active and adamant about countering MAGA’s Jan. 6 narratives, including testifying with his colleagues in front of the House select committee investigating the insurrection.
Ken Casey: “Michael is an old friend. He was at our very first Dropkick show in D.C. in 1996, so it’s not like he’s some kind of jump-on-the-bandwagon guy. I appreciate just how vocal he is. It’s one thing to talk the talk, but it’s another to walk the walk and be showing up at all those events, and really putting himself out there.
But why is it important for the Dropkick Murphys to speak out? You’ve no doubt lost fans.
I hate to say it, but in some ways, MAGA needs to be countered with a mirror of them, like in physical appearance. They love painting themselves as righteous warriors and the rest of the country as immigrants, or whatever other stupid s— they come up with. But it seems to trigger them more when someone like Michael Fanone and the Dropkick Murphys speak up to them because it just like explodes their mind. It’s like, “You’re supposed to be on my side!” It’s like no, remember when you were on our side? Before you got twisted up by this lying con man?
In some ways, no band has more to lose because our fan base is the population that might jump into MAGA. But there is that middle ground — the people who don’t have time for politics. Who don’t follow it as closely as you or I do. They hear things about Biden, hear things about Trump, and it’s like “I don’t know what to believe.” That’s where voices like [mine] are important. You’re hearing it from someone who really doesn’t have skin in the game. I’m an American citizen, not a politician. I don’t have corporate interest involved in this.
And then there’s the new interest in your band, from folks who are just discovering you, or maybe just know your material from film soundtracks like “The Departed” (“I’m Shipping Up to Boston”).
It’s also brought back fans and there’s this [renewed] punk rock urgency and importance to our shows. It’s gained us a lot of new fans, in theory, like people who don’t necessarily listen to punk rock, or who wouldn’t listen to our music or come to our shows, they now speak out and say, “I support Dropkick Murphys for what they’re doing.” It’s support in solidarity. For the [longtime] fans, it’s rekindled this new dedication. It’s reconnected us with some old fans who had drifted away.
What do you say to other music artists who are afraid to speak out against what they see as an injustice or wrongdoing?
We’ve already had every death threat, every friggin’ cancellation threat. So what would we say to other bands and other people who are keeping their head down because they don’t want to deal with all the drama that comes along with speaking up? Come on in. The water is great. There’s nothing to worry about. The [trolls] are a vocal minority — online is bots and paid influencer types. Don’t let anybody silence you.
At this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony, every other acceptance speech contained anti-ICE sentiment, so it does appear that more musicians are speaking out against Trump’s policies.
Listen, if executions in the streets of your citizens [by ICE agents] doesn’t get people to speak out, then nothing will. But it’s nice to finally see there’s a wave starting to peak, out of frustration and realization. I can also tell from the amount of attacks we get that there’s some backpedaling. Obviously, there’ll always be the die-hards — Trump could be molesting someone in front of their eyes, and they’d still stick with him. But there’s a lot of people trying to quietly distance themselves.
Ken Casey of Dropkick Murphys
(Riley Vecchione)
If we’re being historically accurate, the Dropkicks have always had something to say about what’s going on in this country.
The very first line sung on our very first album was in regards to how Reagan started the dismantling of unions and [created a] wealth gap, so we’ve been about it the whole time. We’ve been showing up on picket lines the whole time. Social justice, we’ve always been about it. But before Trump, we weren’t necessarily having to make it a social media presence type of thing. But we’re in a different time now.
The Republicans started to cosplay as working-class white males, and people bought right into it. There’s a portion of this country that is sick and twisted and MAGA has been a great vehicle for them, but then there’s also a big portion of the country that just got caught up in the lies and the bull— and the rhetoric.
Your band is part of a new initiative aimed at getting more punk bands to speak truth to power.
The Dropkick Murphys and Michael Fanone, along with the guys in Rise Against, have started a collaborative called Down for the Cause. It’s basically going to be kind of a punk rock collaborative because years from now, we don’t want punk rock to be disgraced by the silence. Just kind of get involved, not necessarily supporting candidates but more like taking back the air waves let people know that we don’t have to accept this unacceptable behavior. Also reminding people to vote, because if all those people didn’t stay on the sidelines in the last election, we probably wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.
Your band just released a new song, “Citizen I.C.E.” But is it new?
The song is actually 20 years old. It was called “Citizen CIA.” It was basically a mock recruitment song for the CIA, poking fun at the damage the CIA has done around the world. Now we flipped it to a mock ICE recruitment song, with lines like “Too scared to join the military, too dumb to be a cop.” It’ll be out on a split album, “New England Forever,” that we did with a younger Boston band called Haywire. We’re touring with them now [ on the “For The People…In the Pit St. Patrick’s Day Tour”].
What do you say to people who say shut up and sing.
I get that even people who aren’t necessarily MAGA don’t want to listen to someone [on a] soapbox. But I view where we are as five-alarm fire, and if you got a microphone in front of your mouth, you better damn well be talking into it.
President Trump told the New York Post that music artist Bad Bunny was a “terrible choice” to headline the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show and that the NFL’s selection of the Puerto Rican singer and rapper sows “hatred.”
Department of Homeland Security adviser Corey Lewandowski suggested that Bad Bunny loathes the U.S. “It’s so shameful that they’ve decided to pick somebody who just seems to hate America so much to represent them at the halftime game,” he told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said on Monday that Bad Bunny disseminates “anti-American propaganda.”
The upshot: Bad Bunny (aka Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) is an enemy of the state. An outsider who doesn’t possess American values. A Super Bowl wrecker.
Bad Bunny took home multiple trophies from the 68th Grammy Awards last weekend in Los Angeles, including for album of the year. Very American, sir.
(Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images for the Recording Academy)
Heated debate around who is worthy to perform the halftime show is an American tradition (Prince, yes. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, no). But now, unsurprisingly, politics are part of that debate, so the mere fact that Bad Bunny is brown and Latino and sings in Spanish is seen by some as an affront to the right. Clearly the “Woke Bowl” is disrespecting the tough-on-immigration president, and in Español, no less.
But Bad Bunny is an American citizen, as are most people born in Puerto Rico after 1898, thanks to the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917. Bad Bunny, born in 1994, made the deadline with 96 years to spare. If the fear is that foreigners are coming here to take our jobs and ruin beloved American traditions, there are plenty of nonnative artists to grouse about.
For decades, outsiders have foisted their foreign music upon us at the Super Bowl between commercials for Doritos and Budweiser.
The United Kingdom’s Phil Collins played the 2000 Super Bowl XXXIV Halftime Show, as did Enrique Iglesias, who is from Spain. The Irishmen of U2 stole jobs away from Americans when they played the 2002 Super Bowl. The following year it was sneaky Canadian Shania Twain and a sus character from England referred to only as Sting.
Then came bad hombre after bad hombre from the UK: Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Coldplay. And don’t even get me started on Shakira, gyrating her Colombian self into 2020’s Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show, or the following year, the Weeknd using his sweet voice to distract from the fact he’s Canadian.
Remember all the anti-immigrant furor around those aforementioned performances? Of course not — because there was none. And this year, if the delicately reunited U.K. duo Oasis was to pull things together for 2026 and play the Super Bowl, it most certainly wouldn’t inspire the same kind of vitriol.
The right remembers that Bad Bunny criticized the Trump administration for its handling of Puerto Rico’s hurricane recovery, and that that he has spoken out against ICE’s inhumane treatment of immigrants. But calling Bad Bunny a dissenter is too direct, too Stalinist. It’s better to cast doubt upon the singer’s loyalty to America via thinly veiled racist rhetoric.
Turning Point USA, the right-wing group founded by Charlie Kirk and helmed by his wife, Erika Kirk, following his assassination, has organized its own counter-concert called the “All-American Halftime Show”. It will star rap-rocker Kid Rock and country artists Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett. The show is counter-programmed to compete with the Super Bowl halftime show, airing on X and conservative networks such as TBN and OAN around the same time as Bad Bunny’s set.
When the “alternative” show’s lineup was announced this week, Kid Rock took a jab at Bad Bunny in a statement: “He’s said he’s having a dance party, wearing a dress, and singing in Spanish? Cool. We plan to play great songs for folks who love America.”
Kid Rock isn’t known to wear dresses on stage, as Bad Bunny has done, but it’s unclear which songs of his he’ll play in the name of “loving America.”
Turning Point spokesman Andrew Kolvet said the show will reflect conservative values such as “faith, family, and freedom,” so Kid Rock likely won’t perform his 2001 track “Cool, Daddy Cool,” where he sings “Young ladies, young ladies, I like ‘em underage see / Some say that’s statutory, but I say it’s mandatory.” It’s also unlikely he’ll bust out his 2007 song “Lowlife (Living the Highlife)”: “I make Black music for the white man / Keep cocaine upon my nightstand.”
One thing is certain: He’ll continue to sing Trump’s praises, in English.
I am talking about a coordinated campaign launched by the religious right to overturn gay marriage, arguing it harms children. The effort is a direct attack on the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell vs. Hodges decision making same-sex marriage a fundamental right of equality under the 14th Amendment, but also seeks to engage churches on the issue and change public opinion.
Good luck with that last part. Most Americans support marriage equality. But the Supreme Court? That’s much iffier these days.
But what disturbs me the most, while we wait for litigation, is that the campaign is yet another disingenuous ploy by MAGA to use children as an excuse for attacking civil rights, and attempting, Christian nationalist-style, to impose religious values on general society.
MAGA frames so much hate — especially around immigrants and diversity — as protection of children, and through decades’ worth of conspiracy theory has attempted to paint LGBTQ+ parents as deviant and predatory. (QAnon, for example, was all about saving kids from gay and Democratic predators.)
In reality, it’s the MAGA folks who are traumatizing children.
“Our children are afraid. They’re terrorized,” Chauntyll Allen told me. She’s the St. Paul, Minn., school board member who was arrested recently for her part in the church protest of a pastor who is also an ICE official.
“And we’re not just talking about immigrants,” she continued. All kids “are watching this, they’re experiencing this, and they’re carrying the terror in their body. What is this going to do for our society in 20 years?”
This campaign to undo marriage equality, far from protecting kids, is just another injury inflicted on them for political gain. It features twoCalifornia cases that are meant to show how terrible any form of same-sex parenting is, but mischaracterizes the facts for maximum outrage.
The campaign also specifically targets in vitro fertilization and surrogacy as dangerous gateways to promoting LGBTQ+ families, an increasingly common position in far-right religious circles that would like to see more white women having babies through sex with white husbands.
Attacking marriage equality isn’t about protecting children any more than deporting immigrants is about stopping crime. Allowing it to be framed that way actually puts in danger the stability of the approximately 300,000 kids nationwide who are being raised by about 832,000 couples in same-sex marriages.
It endangers the physical and mental health of LGBTQ+ kids in any family who are growing up in a world that is increasingly hostile to them — with gender and identity hate crimes on the rise.
And it endangers everyone who values a free and fair democracy that separates church and state by eroding the rights of the vulnerable as precedent for eroding the rights of whomever ticks them off next. If LGBTQ+ marriages aren’t legally protected, how long before racists come for the Loving decision, which legalized interracial marriage?
If you doubt the MAGA agenda extends that far, when Second Lady Usha Vance recently announced her fourth pregnancy, one lovely fellow on social media wrote, “There is nothing exciting about this. We will never vote for your race traitor husband.”
Hate is a virus that spreads how it pleases.
Those behind the effort to undo marriage equality say that by legalizing the ability for LGBTQ+ folks to tie the knot, America put “adult desires” ahead of children’s well-being, which is dependent on being raised in a home that includes a married man and woman.
Never mind the millions of kids being raised by single parents, grandparents (looking at you, JD Vance) or other guardians who aren’t the biological John-and-Jane mommy and daddy of conservative lore. Never mind the many same-sex marriages that don’t include kids.
“Americans need to understand the threat that gay marriage poses to children and that natural marriage is directly connected to children protection,” Katy Faust, the leader of the campaign, said in an interview with a Christian news website.
Of course, the campaign also makes no mention of the hundreds of children currently held in detention camps around the country — on some days, the number of children locked up just by ICE (not Border Patrol or in the care of other agencies) has skyrocketed to 400 under Trump, according to the Marshall Project.
Outside of lockup, Black and brown children are being traumatized daily by the fear that they or their parents will be taken or even killed by federal agents. Thousands of kids across the country, including in California, have stopped going to school and other public places for fear of endangering themselves or their families. Don’t expect to see these folks campaigning to protect those kids.
The campaign also ignores the fact that U.S. Department of Justice funding to combat sex crimes against children was just slashed, leaving victims and prosecutors without crucial resources to fight that real and undoubtedly harmful exploitation of our youth by sex traffickers.
And Epstein. I cannot even start on save-the-children folks who seemingly ignore the victims of the sex crimes detailed in those files — many of them children at the time — while wringing their hands over families who don’t look like their own. It is a mind-blowing amount of hypocrisy.
But of course, none of this is about saving children — yours, mine or anyone’s.
But framing it around protecting children is a powerful manipulation — a last-ditch effort as same sex marriage does in fact become more accepted. Because who doesn’t want to save our kids? From whatever.
Don’t be surprised if this effort gains traction in coming months. As we head into elections, the MAGA machine will attempt to turn the lens away from immigration and back to old-school issues such as feminism, abortion and same-sex marriage, which time and again its base has been willing to vote on regardless of what else is happening.
Because they actually don’t care about kids. They care about power, and they’re perfectly willing to exploit kids to get it.
In Trevor Noah’s final opening monologue at the Grammys, the joke that got the loudest laugh in the room was directed at Nicki Minaj’s MAGA alliance.
After six consecutive years of hosting the Grammys, the comedian is stepping down from the emcee role. Last year, Noah’s monologue was focused on the resilience of Los Angeles and paid tribute to the victims of the Palisades and Eaton fires. This year, he poked fun at attending celebrities and commented on the country’s political climate.
When he addressed the fact that Nicki Minaj was not in attendance, the audience applauded in response. He joked that “she is still at the White House with Donald Trump discussing very important issues: ‘Actually, Nicki, I have the biggest ass, I have it. Everybody’s saying it, Nicki, I know they say it’s you, but it’s me. WAP, WAP, WAP. Look at it, baby,’” Noah said in his best Trump impression.
Last week, Minaj appeared at a U.S. Treasury event, where she stood on stage with President Trump and said, “I am probably the president’s No. 1 fan, and that’s not going to change.”
While detailing what the night ahead entails, Noah compared this year’s Grammys to the 1999 ceremony.
“The last time Lauryn Hill performed at the Grammys was in 1999,” said Noah. “Back in 1999 the president had a sex scandal, people thought computers were about to destroy the world and Diddy was arrested. Boy, how times have changed.”
Noah also poked fun at Jelly Roll, asking if he was able to unlock fellow face-tatted singer Teddy Swims’ phone. He also mentioned that the arena stuffed with A-listers felt somewhat like billionaire Jeff Bezos’ wedding, “but with way more Black people.”
In addition to it being Noah’s final hosting gig, this year’s ceremony is also the last to air on CBS, its home network since 1973. After tonight, it kicks off a 10-year run with Disney. The Grammys will air on ABC, Hulu and Disney+ beginning in 2027.
Commentary: Boston Irish punk band the Dropkick Murphys could pass for Proud Boys. But look again.
The Dropkick Murphys’ have been “Fighting Nazis Since 1996.” Ken Casey, singer of the Boston Irish punk band, says don’t believe it when Republican politicians “cosplay” as working-class white males.
For three decades, the Dropkick Murphys have played their riotous brand of Boston Irish Celtic punk for legions of tattooed, mosh-pitting fans, but it wasn’t until last month that they found a new following among an unlikely demographic: C-SPAN viewers.
Washington policy wonks and political junkies who tuned in to watch former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith testify before the House last month were treated to lurid details about President Trump’s alleged involvement in 2020 election meddling and the Jan. 6 insurrection. What they didn’t bargain for were the animated actions of former D.C. cop Michael Fanone, who was in the chamber wearing a Dropkick Murphys T-shirt that read “Fighting Nazis Since 1996.”
Fanone, who was brutally attacked by a pro-Trump mob while defending the Capitol in 2021, was impossible to miss. He was seated directly behind Smith and the only guy visible in a band T-shirt. Also notable were his reactions to GOP suggestions that the attack on the Capitol never happened, or was everyone’s fault but Trump’s: He coughed out expletives and flashed colorful hand gestures. Dropkick Murphys T-shirt sales spiked.
“It was this crazy, organic thing,” says Ken Casey, lead singer of the band. “We never put up a poster saying, ‘Hey, wear our shirt!’ But over the course of the next week, we sold like 6,000 of those shirts.” And for those who want one now? The shirt is on back order.
Casey, who speaks in a thick, working-class Boston accent (think “The Departed” meets a Ben Affleck Dunkin’ Donuts commercial), isn’t a stranger to mixing music and politics. He has been outspoken onstage and in the recording studio about his opposition to MAGA’s immigration policy, racist rhetoric and war on the working class. And the band announced Tuesday they’re parting ways with the Wasserman Music agency because the namesake of the agency turned up in the Epstein files.
Casey spoke with The Times about challenging MAGA through the rebellion of punk rock.
The Dropkick Murphys’ “Fighting Nazis Since 1996” T-shirt is a hot item now thanks to its appearance on Capitol Hill, via Fanone. He’s been very active and adamant about countering MAGA’s Jan. 6 narratives, including testifying with his colleagues in front of the House select committee investigating the insurrection.
Ken Casey: “Michael is an old friend. He was at our very first Dropkick show in D.C. in 1996, so it’s not like he’s some kind of jump-on-the-bandwagon guy. I appreciate just how vocal he is. It’s one thing to talk the talk, but it’s another to walk the walk and be showing up at all those events, and really putting himself out there.
But why is it important for the Dropkick Murphys to speak out? You’ve no doubt lost fans.
I hate to say it, but in some ways, MAGA needs to be countered with a mirror of them, like in physical appearance. They love painting themselves as righteous warriors and the rest of the country as immigrants, or whatever other stupid s— they come up with. But it seems to trigger them more when someone like Michael Fanone and the Dropkick Murphys speak up to them because it just like explodes their mind. It’s like, “You’re supposed to be on my side!” It’s like no, remember when you were on our side? Before you got twisted up by this lying con man?
In some ways, no band has more to lose because our fan base is the population that might jump into MAGA. But there is that middle ground — the people who don’t have time for politics. Who don’t follow it as closely as you or I do. They hear things about Biden, hear things about Trump, and it’s like “I don’t know what to believe.” That’s where voices like [mine] are important. You’re hearing it from someone who really doesn’t have skin in the game. I’m an American citizen, not a politician. I don’t have corporate interest involved in this.
And then there’s the new interest in your band, from folks who are just discovering you, or maybe just know your material from film soundtracks like “The Departed” (“I’m Shipping Up to Boston”).
It’s also brought back fans and there’s this [renewed] punk rock urgency and importance to our shows. It’s gained us a lot of new fans, in theory, like people who don’t necessarily listen to punk rock, or who wouldn’t listen to our music or come to our shows, they now speak out and say, “I support Dropkick Murphys for what they’re doing.” It’s support in solidarity. For the [longtime] fans, it’s rekindled this new dedication. It’s reconnected us with some old fans who had drifted away.
What do you say to other music artists who are afraid to speak out against what they see as an injustice or wrongdoing?
We’ve already had every death threat, every friggin’ cancellation threat. So what would we say to other bands and other people who are keeping their head down because they don’t want to deal with all the drama that comes along with speaking up? Come on in. The water is great. There’s nothing to worry about. The [trolls] are a vocal minority — online is bots and paid influencer types. Don’t let anybody silence you.
At this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony, every other acceptance speech contained anti-ICE sentiment, so it does appear that more musicians are speaking out against Trump’s policies.
Listen, if executions in the streets of your citizens [by ICE agents] doesn’t get people to speak out, then nothing will. But it’s nice to finally see there’s a wave starting to peak, out of frustration and realization. I can also tell from the amount of attacks we get that there’s some backpedaling. Obviously, there’ll always be the die-hards — Trump could be molesting someone in front of their eyes, and they’d still stick with him. But there’s a lot of people trying to quietly distance themselves.
Ken Casey of Dropkick Murphys
(Riley Vecchione)
If we’re being historically accurate, the Dropkicks have always had something to say about what’s going on in this country.
The very first line sung on our very first album was in regards to how Reagan started the dismantling of unions and [created a] wealth gap, so we’ve been about it the whole time. We’ve been showing up on picket lines the whole time. Social justice, we’ve always been about it. But before Trump, we weren’t necessarily having to make it a social media presence type of thing. But we’re in a different time now.
The Republicans started to cosplay as working-class white males, and people bought right into it. There’s a portion of this country that is sick and twisted and MAGA has been a great vehicle for them, but then there’s also a big portion of the country that just got caught up in the lies and the bull— and the rhetoric.
Your band is part of a new initiative aimed at getting more punk bands to speak truth to power.
The Dropkick Murphys and Michael Fanone, along with the guys in Rise Against, have started a collaborative called Down for the Cause. It’s basically going to be kind of a punk rock collaborative because years from now, we don’t want punk rock to be disgraced by the silence. Just kind of get involved, not necessarily supporting candidates but more like taking back the air waves let people know that we don’t have to accept this unacceptable behavior. Also reminding people to vote, because if all those people didn’t stay on the sidelines in the last election, we probably wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.
Your band just released a new song, “Citizen I.C.E.” But is it new?
The song is actually 20 years old. It was called “Citizen CIA.” It was basically a mock recruitment song for the CIA, poking fun at the damage the CIA has done around the world. Now we flipped it to a mock ICE recruitment song, with lines like “Too scared to join the military, too dumb to be a cop.” It’ll be out on a split album, “New England Forever,” that we did with a younger Boston band called Haywire. We’re touring with them now [ on the “For The People…In the Pit St. Patrick’s Day Tour”].
What do you say to people who say shut up and sing.
I get that even people who aren’t necessarily MAGA don’t want to listen to someone [on a] soapbox. But I view where we are as five-alarm fire, and if you got a microphone in front of your mouth, you better damn well be talking into it.
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Bad Bunny is American; Coldplay is not. Still, MAGA flips out
President Trump told the New York Post that music artist Bad Bunny was a “terrible choice” to headline the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show and that the NFL’s selection of the Puerto Rican singer and rapper sows “hatred.”
Department of Homeland Security adviser Corey Lewandowski suggested that Bad Bunny loathes the U.S. “It’s so shameful that they’ve decided to pick somebody who just seems to hate America so much to represent them at the halftime game,” he told conservative podcaster Benny Johnson.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said on Monday that Bad Bunny disseminates “anti-American propaganda.”
The upshot: Bad Bunny (aka Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) is an enemy of the state. An outsider who doesn’t possess American values. A Super Bowl wrecker.
Bad Bunny took home multiple trophies from the 68th Grammy Awards last weekend in Los Angeles, including for album of the year. Very American, sir.
(Matt Winkelmeyer / Getty Images for the Recording Academy)
Heated debate around who is worthy to perform the halftime show is an American tradition (Prince, yes. The Red Hot Chili Peppers, no). But now, unsurprisingly, politics are part of that debate, so the mere fact that Bad Bunny is brown and Latino and sings in Spanish is seen by some as an affront to the right. Clearly the “Woke Bowl” is disrespecting the tough-on-immigration president, and in Español, no less.
But Bad Bunny is an American citizen, as are most people born in Puerto Rico after 1898, thanks to the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917. Bad Bunny, born in 1994, made the deadline with 96 years to spare. If the fear is that foreigners are coming here to take our jobs and ruin beloved American traditions, there are plenty of nonnative artists to grouse about.
For decades, outsiders have foisted their foreign music upon us at the Super Bowl between commercials for Doritos and Budweiser.
The United Kingdom’s Phil Collins played the 2000 Super Bowl XXXIV Halftime Show, as did Enrique Iglesias, who is from Spain. The Irishmen of U2 stole jobs away from Americans when they played the 2002 Super Bowl. The following year it was sneaky Canadian Shania Twain and a sus character from England referred to only as Sting.
Then came bad hombre after bad hombre from the UK: Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Coldplay. And don’t even get me started on Shakira, gyrating her Colombian self into 2020’s Super Bowl LIV Halftime Show, or the following year, the Weeknd using his sweet voice to distract from the fact he’s Canadian.
Remember all the anti-immigrant furor around those aforementioned performances? Of course not — because there was none. And this year, if the delicately reunited U.K. duo Oasis was to pull things together for 2026 and play the Super Bowl, it most certainly wouldn’t inspire the same kind of vitriol.
The right remembers that Bad Bunny criticized the Trump administration for its handling of Puerto Rico’s hurricane recovery, and that that he has spoken out against ICE’s inhumane treatment of immigrants. But calling Bad Bunny a dissenter is too direct, too Stalinist. It’s better to cast doubt upon the singer’s loyalty to America via thinly veiled racist rhetoric.
Turning Point USA, the right-wing group founded by Charlie Kirk and helmed by his wife, Erika Kirk, following his assassination, has organized its own counter-concert called the “All-American Halftime Show”. It will star rap-rocker Kid Rock and country artists Brantley Gilbert, Lee Brice and Gabby Barrett. The show is counter-programmed to compete with the Super Bowl halftime show, airing on X and conservative networks such as TBN and OAN around the same time as Bad Bunny’s set.
When the “alternative” show’s lineup was announced this week, Kid Rock took a jab at Bad Bunny in a statement: “He’s said he’s having a dance party, wearing a dress, and singing in Spanish? Cool. We plan to play great songs for folks who love America.”
Kid Rock isn’t known to wear dresses on stage, as Bad Bunny has done, but it’s unclear which songs of his he’ll play in the name of “loving America.”
Turning Point spokesman Andrew Kolvet said the show will reflect conservative values such as “faith, family, and freedom,” so Kid Rock likely won’t perform his 2001 track “Cool, Daddy Cool,” where he sings “Young ladies, young ladies, I like ‘em underage see / Some say that’s statutory, but I say it’s mandatory.” It’s also unlikely he’ll bust out his 2007 song “Lowlife (Living the Highlife)”: “I make Black music for the white man / Keep cocaine upon my nightstand.”
One thing is certain: He’ll continue to sing Trump’s praises, in English.
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MAGA can’t stop pretending it cares about kids
The latest nauseant from MAGA types pretending to care about children was dished up last week, but amid the internment of kindergartners, the slashing of funds to catch child predators and a measles outbreak at a detention center, you are forgiven for missing it.
I am talking about a coordinated campaign launched by the religious right to overturn gay marriage, arguing it harms children. The effort is a direct attack on the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell vs. Hodges decision making same-sex marriage a fundamental right of equality under the 14th Amendment, but also seeks to engage churches on the issue and change public opinion.
Good luck with that last part. Most Americans support marriage equality. But the Supreme Court? That’s much iffier these days.
But what disturbs me the most, while we wait for litigation, is that the campaign is yet another disingenuous ploy by MAGA to use children as an excuse for attacking civil rights, and attempting, Christian nationalist-style, to impose religious values on general society.
MAGA frames so much hate — especially around immigrants and diversity — as protection of children, and through decades’ worth of conspiracy theory has attempted to paint LGBTQ+ parents as deviant and predatory. (QAnon, for example, was all about saving kids from gay and Democratic predators.)
In reality, it’s the MAGA folks who are traumatizing children.
“Our children are afraid. They’re terrorized,” Chauntyll Allen told me. She’s the St. Paul, Minn., school board member who was arrested recently for her part in the church protest of a pastor who is also an ICE official.
“And we’re not just talking about immigrants,” she continued. All kids “are watching this, they’re experiencing this, and they’re carrying the terror in their body. What is this going to do for our society in 20 years?”
This campaign to undo marriage equality, far from protecting kids, is just another injury inflicted on them for political gain. It features two California cases that are meant to show how terrible any form of same-sex parenting is, but mischaracterizes the facts for maximum outrage.
The campaign also specifically targets in vitro fertilization and surrogacy as dangerous gateways to promoting LGBTQ+ families, an increasingly common position in far-right religious circles that would like to see more white women having babies through sex with white husbands.
Attacking marriage equality isn’t about protecting children any more than deporting immigrants is about stopping crime. Allowing it to be framed that way actually puts in danger the stability of the approximately 300,000 kids nationwide who are being raised by about 832,000 couples in same-sex marriages.
It endangers the physical and mental health of LGBTQ+ kids in any family who are growing up in a world that is increasingly hostile to them — with gender and identity hate crimes on the rise.
And it endangers everyone who values a free and fair democracy that separates church and state by eroding the rights of the vulnerable as precedent for eroding the rights of whomever ticks them off next. If LGBTQ+ marriages aren’t legally protected, how long before racists come for the Loving decision, which legalized interracial marriage?
If you doubt the MAGA agenda extends that far, when Second Lady Usha Vance recently announced her fourth pregnancy, one lovely fellow on social media wrote, “There is nothing exciting about this. We will never vote for your race traitor husband.”
Hate is a virus that spreads how it pleases.
Those behind the effort to undo marriage equality say that by legalizing the ability for LGBTQ+ folks to tie the knot, America put “adult desires” ahead of children’s well-being, which is dependent on being raised in a home that includes a married man and woman.
Never mind the millions of kids being raised by single parents, grandparents (looking at you, JD Vance) or other guardians who aren’t the biological John-and-Jane mommy and daddy of conservative lore. Never mind the many same-sex marriages that don’t include kids.
“Americans need to understand the threat that gay marriage poses to children and that natural marriage is directly connected to children protection,” Katy Faust, the leader of the campaign, said in an interview with a Christian news website.
Of course, the campaign also makes no mention of the hundreds of children currently held in detention camps around the country — on some days, the number of children locked up just by ICE (not Border Patrol or in the care of other agencies) has skyrocketed to 400 under Trump, according to the Marshall Project.
Outside of lockup, Black and brown children are being traumatized daily by the fear that they or their parents will be taken or even killed by federal agents. Thousands of kids across the country, including in California, have stopped going to school and other public places for fear of endangering themselves or their families. Don’t expect to see these folks campaigning to protect those kids.
The campaign also ignores the fact that U.S. Department of Justice funding to combat sex crimes against children was just slashed, leaving victims and prosecutors without crucial resources to fight that real and undoubtedly harmful exploitation of our youth by sex traffickers.
And Epstein. I cannot even start on save-the-children folks who seemingly ignore the victims of the sex crimes detailed in those files — many of them children at the time — while wringing their hands over families who don’t look like their own. It is a mind-blowing amount of hypocrisy.
But of course, none of this is about saving children — yours, mine or anyone’s.
But framing it around protecting children is a powerful manipulation — a last-ditch effort as same sex marriage does in fact become more accepted. Because who doesn’t want to save our kids? From whatever.
Don’t be surprised if this effort gains traction in coming months. As we head into elections, the MAGA machine will attempt to turn the lens away from immigration and back to old-school issues such as feminism, abortion and same-sex marriage, which time and again its base has been willing to vote on regardless of what else is happening.
Because they actually don’t care about kids. They care about power, and they’re perfectly willing to exploit kids to get it.
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Trevor Noah blasts Nicki Minaj’s MAGA ties in Grammys monologue
In Trevor Noah’s final opening monologue at the Grammys, the joke that got the loudest laugh in the room was directed at Nicki Minaj’s MAGA alliance.
After six consecutive years of hosting the Grammys, the comedian is stepping down from the emcee role. Last year, Noah’s monologue was focused on the resilience of Los Angeles and paid tribute to the victims of the Palisades and Eaton fires. This year, he poked fun at attending celebrities and commented on the country’s political climate.
When he addressed the fact that Nicki Minaj was not in attendance, the audience applauded in response. He joked that “she is still at the White House with Donald Trump discussing very important issues: ‘Actually, Nicki, I have the biggest ass, I have it. Everybody’s saying it, Nicki, I know they say it’s you, but it’s me. WAP, WAP, WAP. Look at it, baby,’” Noah said in his best Trump impression.
Last week, Minaj appeared at a U.S. Treasury event, where she stood on stage with President Trump and said, “I am probably the president’s No. 1 fan, and that’s not going to change.”
While detailing what the night ahead entails, Noah compared this year’s Grammys to the 1999 ceremony.
“The last time Lauryn Hill performed at the Grammys was in 1999,” said Noah. “Back in 1999 the president had a sex scandal, people thought computers were about to destroy the world and Diddy was arrested. Boy, how times have changed.”
Noah also poked fun at Jelly Roll, asking if he was able to unlock fellow face-tatted singer Teddy Swims’ phone. He also mentioned that the arena stuffed with A-listers felt somewhat like billionaire Jeff Bezos’ wedding, “but with way more Black people.”
In addition to it being Noah’s final hosting gig, this year’s ceremony is also the last to air on CBS, its home network since 1973. After tonight, it kicks off a 10-year run with Disney. The Grammys will air on ABC, Hulu and Disney+ beginning in 2027.
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