Not just footballs will be in the air
ICE will also share the limelight at the 60th annual Super Bowl
When the Seahawks and Patriots meet in the Super Bowl on Sunday, politics will be in the air every bit as much as the passes tossed by rival quarterbacks Sam Darnold and Drake Maye. With musicians who have been sharply critical of Donald J. Trump slated to appear, it couldn’t be otherwise.
Indeed, the performances by Green Day and Bad Bunny seem likely to further showcase Trump’s slide in pop culture as other events — particularly involving the hard-pressed Kennedy Center — underscore the president’s deterioration in more highbrow realms. Altogether, they focus a spotlight on just how out of touch this geriatric president is, culturally as well as in simple humanitarian terms.
At halftime, Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican rapper properly known as Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, is expected to perform before an audience of about 130 million people worldwide. And whether the global superstar is explicit in his hostility to U.S. immigration policy and Trump or not, his message – even if only implied – will resound.
Bad Bunny has already set the tone. As he won three Grammy awards including Album of the Year on Feb. 1, he took the stage to say: “Before I say thanks to God, I’m gonna say: ICE out. We’re not savages, we’re not animals, we are humans and we are Americans … the only thing that is more powerful than hate is love.”
As yahoo!news reported, the right is seething.
Conservative commentator Eric Daugherty called Bad Bunny “trash,” while Fox News personality Tomi Lahren dismissed the protesting stars at the show (many of whom sported ICE OUT pins). “Overpaid musicians and celebrities at the Grammys say ‘F**k ICE,’ Lahren said on X. “Meanwhile, the hardworking men and women of ICE and border patrol (majority Hispanic) are out on the streets removing public safety threats and protecting communities. The audacity is astounding.”
Bad Bunny’s presence in Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara alone will be a political statement. Last fall, Trump showed how removed he is from popular culture with his reaction to the rapper’s selection for the Super Bowl. “I’ve never heard of him. I don’t know who he is,” Trump said in October. “I think it’s absolutely ridiculous.”
Then, after the NFL announced that the band Green Day will perform at the game’s opening ceremony, Trump dug in deeper, slighting both acts. “I’m anti-them. I think it’s a terrible choice. All it does is sow hatred. Terrible,” he told The New York Post.
Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day has long criticized Trump, decrying Trump’s “fascist overtones if not straight up fascism” and slamming his racism. And Green Day has been turning up the heat. At a recent Los Angeles show, the band updated the lyrics to “Holiday,” one of its classic early 2000s songs, to take a knock at Trump aide Stephen Miller by name.
As HuffPost reported, the song’s original lyrics include the line, “The representative from California has the floor.” Armstrong instead said, “Ladies and gentlemen, Stephen Miller now has the floor,” before launching into the bridge of “Holiday,” which includes the lyric, “Sieg Heil to the President Gasman.”
Armstrong explained: “This song is anti-fascism. This song is anti-war. We stand up for our brothers and sisters in Minnesota.”
“Hey everybody, please look out for your neighbors,” Armstrong added. “Make sure you take care of each other. Make sure you love one another. Protect each other. “Chinga la migra!” (which loosely translates to, “f**k the immigration cops.”)
Of course, in the pop world, Bruce Springsteen recently grabbed the global spotlight with “Streets of Minneapolis,” his angry and sad ode to the city. The Boss bemoaned the murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good and called out Trump and his servile aides by name.
Asked about the song, White House spokeswoman derided what she called “random songs with irrelevant opinions and inaccurate information.” She did not say what was inaccurate in the tune, however. And, as for relevance, the popularity of the song seems to undercut her claim about “irrelevant opinions.”
Within days of its release, the Springsteen song hit No. 1 on the iTunes charts in 19 countries. The anti-ICE track immediately trended on YouTube with millions of views and became Springsteen’s first No. 1 on the Billboard Digital Song Sales chart.
Just how explicit Bad Bunny gets — if at all — in any political message could be problematic for many viewers in another respect. He performs entirely in Spanish, which itself may infuriate conservatives. Distressed by Hispanic immigration, Trump in March issued an executive order designating English as the nation’s official language, something about 30 states have done, most since the 1980s.
About 45 million Americans, or roughly 14 percent, are believed to speak Spanish at home. This is more than double the number from 1990 and makes the U.S. the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world, after Mexico. As Trump and conservatives resist such growth, they seem much like King Canute ordering back the tide.
Many of those Spanish speakers are Roman Catholics, another group with which Trump is lately losing ground. Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, (my hometown, as it happens) recently urged the faithful to press legislators to deny funding to ICE, which he called a “lawless” organization. He encouraged participants in an online interfaith service on Jan. 26 to say “no” to ICE violence.
“One way that we say ‘no’ is that we mourn, we do not celebrate death, and, what is probably worse, we do not pretend it doesn’t happen. We say names. We pray for the dead,” Tobin said, according to the National Catholic Reporter. “We mourn for a world, a country, that allows 5-year-olds to be legally kidnapped and protesters to be slaughtered.”
Coincidentally, in a blistering opinion ordering the release of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Judge Fred Biery of the Federal District Court for the Western District of Texas on Jan. 30 condemned “the perfidious lust for unbridled power” and “the imposition of cruelty” the seizure of the boy and his father represented. As The New York Times reported, the judge chastised the government’s “ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence” and called for “a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place.”
Cardinal Tobin was one of three U.S. cardinals who signed a statement condemning President Donald Trump’s foreign policy aims and calling for the White House to focus on peace. In his recent remarks, Tobin noted that he was speaking within a few miles from two ICE detention centers.
“Everyday people from many faith communities go to Delaney Street here in Newark, and to the Elizabeth Detention Center, and they say ‘no’ by standing at the gates, by talking with the ICE personnel, by insisting on the rights of the detainees within,” he said. “They bring them human comfort, they console the families of those who aren’t always admitted to see their loved ones. How will you say ‘no?’ How?”
But Trump’s cultural and religious shortcomings go beyond splits with anguished clergymen and hostile Spanish-speaking musicians. Consider his disastrous mismanagement of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Washington venue that caters to a broad range of arts interests.
After a flood of cancellations and dwindling attendance, the president said the Kennedy Center would close for two years, beginning July 4, for renovations.
Since Trump’s name was added to the complex’s facade, CNN reported, award-winning composer Philip Glass withdrew the June world premiere of his symphony based on Abraham Lincoln. And the Washington National Opera cut ties with the center.
Even before Trump loyalists at the center moved to rebrand it with Trump’s name along with Kennedy’s, Trump’s efforts drove out a string of performers. After the president’s hand-picked board elected him chair last February, artists including Issa Rae, Renée Fleming, Shonda Rhimes and Ben Folds resigned from their leadership roles or canceled events at the space. And Jeffrey Seller, producer of the hit musical “Hamilton,” canceled the show’s planned run.
Even as the center’s façade has worn Trump’s name since December, many news organizations continue to call it the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Congress named the center as a living memorial to Kennedy in 1964, the year after the president was assassinated, the Associated Press reported. “The law explicitly prohibits the board of trustees from making the center into a memorial to anyone else, and from putting another person’s name on the building’s exterior.”
Kerry Kennedy, a niece of John F. Kennedy, said in a social post on X that she will remove Trump’s name herself when his term ends.
“Three years and one month from today, I’m going to grab a pickax and pull those letters off that building, but I’m going to need help holding the ladder. Are you in?” she wrote on a photo of the center’s new name. “Applying for my carpenter’s card today, so it’ll be a union job!!!”
As for the NFL showcasing Bad Bunny and Green Day at its premiere event, the choices may reflect an organization more in touch culturally than Trump is, but they are loaded with irony. Nearly 95 percent of some $132 million in federal election contributions by North American sports team owners, including many in the NFL, have gone to Republicans since 2020, according to The Guardian.
The owners of both the Seahawks and Patriots have been among GOP supporters, even as Seahawks principal owner Jody Allen has lately stayed on the sidelines. She gave nothing to either party in the 2021-24 period, though Allen and her late brother, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, donated to both major parties in prior years.
They gave $166,100 to Democrats between 2016 and 2020 and $248,700 to Republicans in the same period. Paul notably gave $100,000 in 2018 to a group dedicated to preserving GOP control of the House.
On the Patriots side, Robert Kraft gave $1 million to Trump’s inauguration party in 2017 but he kept his distance from his former longtime friend after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Kraft said he was “upset” about the events. The two appear to have mended fences, however, with Kraft joining Trump in his box at the Kennedy Center at the recent premiere showing of the documentary “Melania.” Kraft has also given modestly to both Democratic and Republican candidates and interests since 2021.
“Melania,” as it happens, seems like yet another bit of cultural deafness by the Trumps, opening to scorching reviews. Consider The Independent’s: “It will exist as a striking artifact — like The Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will — of a time when Americans willingly subordinated themselves to a political and economic oligopoly.”
Perhaps because of the musicians slated for the big game — or maybe because he fears a raft of boos — Trump is staying away from Sunday’s big game. When he attended the 2025 Super Bowl, he was met with a mixture of cheers and jeers. Whether Bad Bunny and Green Day get a similar mix or one tilted toward cheers will make for interesting TV.
As usual, a sharp, well written, truth telling column. It's great to see the cultural community call out our rising fascist government. This needs a full court press, to use an athletic term. It's also good to see Catholics, including the Pope, in the leadership on these issues. Nice work, Joe.
No mention of the Turning Point USA "Alternative Halftime Show" where Kid Rock says they will "play great songs for folks who love America" and sing in English? How is that possible?