Osama bin Laden is applauding from his watery grave.
Cognitive scientist George Lakoff famously argued (contra liberal “best interests” arguments) that people do not vote their interests; they vote their identities. So, just who are we? Americans should do some soul-searching and ask themselves. Do we have any decency? We elected Donald Trump not once but twice, the second time as a twice-impeached, convicted felon. We knew just who and what he was and installed him back in the Oval Office, some say over the price of eggs. (Jonathan Swift could write a biting satire.) What kind of people do that?
The world is asking (The Washington Post, gift link):
Outside the U.S., the perceived havoc wrought by federal agents has also left its mark. This week, Giuseppe Sala, mayor of Milan, spoke out against the expected arrival of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as part of a routine deployment of U.S. personnel to the Winter Olympics in Italy. “I’m sure that the Milanese are unhappy with having this sort of militia” here, “which kills people in the U.S., entering houses without permission,” Sala told my colleagues, referring to recent events in Minneapolis. Of the Italian government, he asked: “Is it possible that you could say ‘no’ once to Mr. Trump? Once! Quite simply.”
Then of course there was the attempted breach of the Ecuadorian consulate in Minneapolis this week. Nations from around the world with diplomatic missions stationed here must be questioning the safety of their personnel.
Trump’s Interior Ministry
Germany has issued a travel advisory to its citizens.
Trump officials balk at criticism of their actions, and have cast descriptions put forward by Democratic lawmakers and activists of ICE as a modern-day “Gestapo” as endangering U.S. federal officers. But viewed from afar, the developments in the U.S. seem familiar. “You have your own Interior Ministry,” an Arab business executive told me on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week.
They were gesturing to the all-powerful policing apparatuses that exist in other countries, especially autocracies where strongmen leaders lean on security forces distinct from the army to consolidate control and suppress dissent. During the upheavals of the Arab Spring more than a decade ago, for example, it was the notorious Interior Ministry of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak that was the focal point of popular rage.
The whole world is watching.
In its cover story this week on the excesses of ICE, the Economist pointed to three “warning signs” of states giving way to “paramilitarism”: “One is when governments start to rely on armed force as a first resort, rather than the last. Another is when internal disciplinary mechanisms cease to function properly,” noted the British publication. “A final red flag is when forces looking for bad guys treat local civilians ‘as support networks of the enemy,’ perhaps because polarizing politicians describe them as such.”
I’ve entertained the notion of creating a protest sign reading HONK IF YOU’RE A DOMESTIC TERRORIST.
Joy Reed early this morning posted a collection of political cartoons inspired by current events. The one at the top struck a nerve and inspired this post.
Federal immigration officers fanning out across Minnesota and other parts of the country are newly equipped with an array of state-of-the-art surveillance technologies, thanks to a bill passed last summer thattransformed Immigration and Customs Enforcement into the country’s most highly funded law enforcement agency. ICE has wasted no time spending its war chest, buying new tools ranging from biometric trackers to mobile phone location databases, spyware and drones, while loosening restrictions on how it uses some of these technologies.
These new surveillance powers come at a time when ICE is also pushing the bounds of its traditional role of immigration enforcement. In recent months, ICE leaders, backed by top Trump administration officials, have asserted the authority to use all available tools to monitor and investigate anti-ICE protester networks, including U.S. citizens. Democratic lawmakers and civil rights groups say the agency’s expanding use of its surveillance tools infringes on privacy and free speech rights of immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.
The Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part, disclosed in an annual report on Wednesday that the agency has significantly expanded the operational scope for its use of facial recognition, AI and other advanced technologies. In a statement to the Washington Post, DHS said ICE’s use of innovative technologies in investigations is “no different” than other law enforcement agencies. “We are not going to divulge law enforcement sensitive methods,” it said.
This is a gift link to the whole article. The Post lays out the full array of tools they are using and it is beyond chilling. It’s like something out of a dystopian Sci-Fi novel.
But what did we expect? They have basically given a secret police agency and unlimited budget and they are going to spend it.
And it’s not only on high-tech spying equipment against Americans. Get a load of this:
Despite protests in small towns and cities across the US, the Trump administration is pushing ahead with the purchase of warehouses it plans to convert into immigration jails in what could be the largest expansion of such detention capacity in US history.
The cost for acquiring two warehouses alone was $172 million. A third in El Paso, Texas, could be among the largest jails of any kind in the country if completed as envisioned, with 8,500 beds. The deals mark the latest turn in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s plan to use as many as 23 warehouses for detaining thousands of immigrants arrested by federal agents in Minneapolis and other cities. Those aggressive enforcement actions have ignited clashes with protesters and led to agents killing two US citizens.
On Jan. 16, the administration paid $102 million for a site near Hagerstown, Maryland, according to a local court filing. A week later, the government paid $70 million in cash for a warehouse in Surprise, Arizona. The price tags — roughly in line with the industry average for the warehouse market — cover just the acquisition of the sites, which are currently empty shells. ICE still has to pay companies to outfit the buildings with toilets, showers, beds, dining and recreation areas and then run them as detention centers.
The El Paso site was purchased by the Department of Homeland Security recently, according to people familiar with the transaction who asked not to be named discussing a confidential process. But the sale price hasn’t yet been made public. Other transactions appear to be near completion. Canadian billionaire Jim Pattison’s company said in a statement that it had accepted an offer to sell its 550,000-square-foot warehouse in Ashland, Virginia, to a US government contractor. “Some time later, we became aware of the ultimate owner and intended use of the building,” it said. “This transaction is still subject to certain approvals and closing conditions.”
It’s a massively corrupt boondoggle. As we knew it would be when they passed that grotesque bill last summer.
They have to get rid of this agency and start over. The expense is obscene and the power they’ve vested in it is enormous. We won’t survive as a democracy if we don’t.
Apparently, she’s also involved in Trump’s 2020 Big Lie project as well. She showed up in Georgia yesterday when the FBI seized the 2020 ballots.
I just like to give a big shout-out to all the lefties who boosted her career because she was cute. The evidence was always there that she was a snake but they didn’t want to see it. (Howie Klein did...)
Trump: "People that own their homes — we're gonna keep them wealthy. We're gonna keep those prices up. We're not gonna destroy the value of their homes so that somebody who didn't work very hard can buy a home." pic.twitter.com/FlyaHZAspa
The rest was no better. He’s promising much more pollution and a nuclear accident and took credit for things that happened before he became president. RFK Jr is pushing a health care bill that doesn’t exist, Lutnick showed why they call him Nutlick, Bessent said the economy is roaring and Witkoff said the Russians deserve a lot of credit.
And he repeated almost word for word an earlier anecdote about telling Macron that he’d better raise drug prices on the French people or he’ll hit them with tariffs on French wines and he fat-shamed an anonymous friend of his again, which he seems to be doing at every appearance these days for some reason, also word for word. That’s very weird.
Anyway:
move over D-Day — Pete Hegseth says Trump's Venezuela coup was "the most sophisticated raid in world history" pic.twitter.com/JsxRCGmZFQ
Loeffler: "Under your leadership you've ended at least eight wars, okay? But probably the most important and under-reported war that this presidency ended was Joe Biden and the Democrats' war on main street." pic.twitter.com/4XYImciqQO
Kelly Loeffler: "Thanks to your leadership you also helped put the fires out. Your executive order got water to the scene in the earliest days of your presidency." pic.twitter.com/4GV4iWZgEJ
Trump to Lee Zeldin on fire-affected homes in California: "I also recommend one other thing. Give them their house plus a 10% bonus. In other words, you can build your house 10% larger." pic.twitter.com/mSrY3jrIHn
"We don't need the grid" — Trump makes stuff up about major companies building nuclear energy plants right on site because he's allowed them to do it on their own pic.twitter.com/BZCjvV0k4Z
Trump lies (or is confused, or both): "China does most of everything they're doing with coal. They make the windmills, but they don't have a lot of wind farms. Somebody ought to look at that." pic.twitter.com/cb7jhldWDL
RFK Jr: "Mr President, we're in the process of implementing your great American healthcare bill." (There is no healthcare bill.) pic.twitter.com/EC2Cv3JqHq
Bessent: "Thanks to you and the Trump Accounts, the next generations of America will benefit from today's record-breaking economy … I think 2026 is going to be the year of the Trump boom" pic.twitter.com/4nQRPFyCFs
Trump: "Because of the cold — extreme cold — I personally asked President Putin not fire on Kyiv and the cities and towns for a week. He agreed to do that." pic.twitter.com/iISVUTA2Sa
Witkoff: "The Russians are doing things maybe that people wouldn't give them the credit for doing, and I think it always comes down to your indomitable spirit" pic.twitter.com/iAMSwuUjXI
Trump: "My friend, who is very successful, seriously overweight person, he takes the fat shot … crude individual but smart as hell, made a lot of money … I told him it wasn't working … very well-known business person." pic.twitter.com/J4MqOcmBgY
Trump: "I spoke with Macron. He was not at that time wearing sunglasses. And he said, 'No no, Donald. I will not do this. You're asking me to double drug prices?' I said, 'You have no choice, you have to do it … if you don't, I'm gonna charge you a 25% tariff on all your wines,… pic.twitter.com/tJo4Ibq7iT
Trump: "Thousands of businesses, plants, equipment, all over the country are being built right now. And they're gonna be opening pretty soon and when they open, you'll see numbers like nobody has ever seen before. The economy is doing amazingly well. I wish the press would report… pic.twitter.com/OavCB5ILDQ
The people behind it are the usual suspects. If you ever believed it was just about killing babies, you were wrong. It’s all the usual suspects:
Gotta make a living, dontcha know?
I wouldn’t think they could get very far with this. After all, even Trump has married gay men with kids in his cabinet. But these people play the long game. They’ll keep at it and the moment there’s a real opening they will go for it.
At the Golden Globes on Jan. 11, allegedly progressive Hollywood barely mentioned the Immigration and Customs Enforcement siege taking place in Minneapolis. Most didn’t gesture to the Trump administration’s war on free speech, particularly in the media. (In fairness, there were some who spoke out on the red carpet, and others wore pins indicating their support for Renee Good, who had been killed four days before by an ICE agent, but it was a very small contingent.)
The reluctance shouldn’t have been too surprising. America’s elite institutions and wealthy individuals have been among the most cowardly of all stakeholders in the country since Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025. Still, of all of them, Hollywood should have been out there saying something. The film industry has experience with blacklists and government witch hunts, and they should have realized what’s at stake — and how much they could stand to lose.
But Saturday’s fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive-care unit nurse at a local Veterans Affairs hospital, by Border Patrol officers in Minneapolis seems to have broken the entertainment industry out of its stupor. In the last few days there have been numerous statements from actors and musicians condemning ICE’s actions and demanding that the Trump administration end its mass deportation campaign and hold the perpetrators accountable. Reddit forums like FauxMoi are featuring anti-ICE statements from celebrities over the past few days — including Glenn Close, Billie Eilish, Ethan Hawke, Natalie Portman, Katy Perry, Edward Norton and many others — while also posting videos and commentary usually confined to political sites.
But it’s not just artists who are speaking out. As the Washington Post reported, “influencers devoted to adventure biking, baseball and Lord of the Rings to travel, sewing and women’s personal finance” have posted their outrage at Pretti’s killing, and their followers are weighing in with similar sentiments. Even a sub-Reddit devoted to playing your cat’s behind like a bongo — which has 800,000 participants! — came out swinging against ICE, with its moderator declaring, “If you still support Trump/ICE even slightly, you’re not welcome in this sub. We can no longer tolerate the people who are supporting or making excuses for this.”
Other cat lovers have also been taking a stand. On his Instagram “Business Cats” feed, comedian Drennon Davis has been posting his cats singing protest songs for the last couple of weeks. He similarly invites his followers who disagree to deport themselves to another forum if they don’t like it. In both cat cases, the up votes far outnumber the down votes. Everyone from fitness influencers to military groups to quilters are weighing in, and there is surprising agreement in the comments. Even a Reddit sex forum devoted to large penises waded into the topic.
Apolitical institutions are speaking out as well. Minnesota’s professional sports teams issued a joint statement calling for the “immediate de-escalation of tensions,” and the National Basketball Players Association announced that they “stand in solidarity with the people in Minnesota protesting and risking their lives to demand justice.” At an NBA game on Sunday, the Minnesota Timberwolves held a moment of silence for Pretti, and fans followed by yelling “F**k ICE!” and holding up protest signs throughout the arena. No altercations were reported.
Even in Silicon Valley, which has famously cozied up to Trump, “more than 800 employees, including those from Google, Microsoft, and Meta, called on their bosses to condemn ICE,” according to a Semafor. A couple of the big bosses, Sam Altman of Open AI and Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei, spoke out against the agency’s authoritarian tactics. (They also bowed and scraped to Trump at the same time, but baby steps.)
Social media is responsible for this swift evolution. In the immediate aftermath of Saturday’s shooting, the administration disseminated a narrative that was belied by the many videos of Pretti’s killing that were circulated across all the platforms. The graphic footage went instantly viral, with trusted influencers all over the internet sharing it and offering their own opinion, which created a permission structure and an invitation for people who are not immersed in politics to take a position.
Suddenly, what had always been apolitical forums have become platforms for the famous and non-famous alike to condemn the Trump administration’s deportation tactics — and that may have marked a turning point in the Trump administration’s assault on democracy. The normies got involved.
With the extreme polarization of our political information ecosystem, most of us exist, at least to some extent, inside media echo chambers. Regular people now pick up on current events in a more random fashion. After the 2024 presidential election, many Americans holding more mainstream, centrist beliefs backed off from participating in the political conversation, and they have been reluctant to join in again because of how chaotic and emotionally charged it has become. But when your quilting group on Facebook starts posting “F**k ICE” quilts and your favorite Instagram cats are singing protest songs, you start to pay attention.
On Wednesday, Bruce Springsteen — who has been a steady voice for the downtrodden throughout his long career — released “Streets of Minneapolis,” a moving protest anthem based on his Academy Award-winning song “Streets of Philadelphia.” The Boss’ lyrics — “Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice / Singing through the bloody mist” — have struck a chord; the track instantly garnered national media attention and has gone viral online.
The people Springsteen is singing about — the thousands of regular folks in Minneapolis who have emerged from their homes in bitterly cold weather to take to the streets in peaceful protest against Trump’s occupying paramilitary force — are a model of courage for the rest of America. And the horror of seeing two of them shot down by masked federal agents has sent a shock wave through the population. Politics has escaped the news silos — the true story of what’s happening in Minneapolis is now out in the world in a way that few stories ever are these days.
Even some Trump voters are starting to rebel. The gun groups, who were slow off the mark, are now condemning the administration’s line, reiterated by Trump on Tuesday, that Pretti shouldn’t have had a gun, despite possessing a conceal-carry permit. Polls show a sharp decline in support for the president’s mass deportation policy, and his approval ratings are continuing their descent into the 30s. The response of focus groups of voters who chose Trump in 2024 after going with Biden in 2020 should send chills down GOP spines. “You know, they killed that young man and they killed that young lady a couple weeks ago too,” one participant said. “They’re out of hand. [Trump’s] main priority, I think, for the last couple of months, [has] been the Nobel Peace Prize which is ridiculous.”
It is indeed ridiculous, as is the fact that the president’s first words after Pretti’s shooting was a lengthy Truth Social screed complaining about a possible delay of his precious White House ballroom.
Average Americans are seeing that Trump is more and more out of touch, and they’re recognizing, as that Trump voter has, that his administration is more and more out of hand. They likely wouldn’t be seeing it now if not for the influencers and others who are using their platforms to share their outrage in online communities where politics isn’t usually discussed. For all its toxicity — and it is profoundly toxic — in this instance, social media actually did some good.
An angry man in a black pickup hung a firm thumbs down out his window at a tiny street-corner sign protest on Tuesday. He doubled back to shout at two activists, turned down a side street, then came back a third time before leaving the scene. On Wednesday, I heard more than the usual number of incoherent shouts and grunts from passing commuters (assumed to be Trump supporters; friendlies mouth “thank you,” smile, honk, and thumbs-up).
If those reactions are any indication, the Border Patrol killing of a licensed gun owner in Minneapolis has shaken the MAGA faithful as it has shaken the White House. It was a deadly attack on a civil liberty that the right thinks of as its own: the Second Amendment.
“I Am One Of The People That Doesn’t Want ILLEGAL ALIENS Here Illegally But This Shit Is Out Of Control,” posted a guy I and a few friends follow for anecdata on how swing voters in my home state are feeling. “People Have NO RIGHTS In This Country With Actions Like These,” he wrote. “FUCK Untrained Ice Officers And FUCK YOUR PRESIDENCY If THIS Is How You RULE,” he added, comparing Trump to Hitler and ICE to the gestapo. A quick look around r/Conservative—the Reddit community for conservatives—shows that this reaction is far from isolated. In each of these cases, it seems people who are in many ways as far removed from a resistance demonstrator as it’s possible to be are coming to the same conclusion as your average No Kings participant: that this regime is dragging the U.S. into authoritarianism.
Whether these events mark a MAGA Waterloo, as Regunberg puts it, will depend in large part on whether Democrats convert this Trump 2.0 turnover into meaningful support for reining in his rogue administration. Multiple members of Congress and Democratic governors harshly condemned the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti: Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, California Rep. Ro Khanna, Govs. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Wes Moore of Maryland, and more. But expressions of outrage — even two impeachments — have not stopped Trump’s gutting of constitutional limits and guaranteed freedoms in the past.
Lauren Egan of The Bulwark asks whether this assault is something the country can withstand for three more years, “or is American democracy truly in peril?” Some Democrats now vow not to provide more funding for the Department of Homeland Security without serious reforms. But is that really meeting the moment?
That’s a significant shift from where Democrats were a little over a year ago, when party leaders had concluded that the Biden administration’s warnings about Trump’s threat to democracy appealed only to an elite audience, and that a narrow focus on affordability was the path back to power.
And yet affordability remains a party mantra heading into the fall elections.
BUT THERE’S NOW AN EMERGING BELIEF among Democrats that voters can be pissed off and motivated by two things at once—namely, the cost of living and Trump’s blatant disregard for the Constitution. In fact, they believe that the connection between the two creates a vulnerability for Trump, that there is a perception among voters that Trump is distracted by his pet projects—from turning ICE into his paramilitary plaything, to gilding the White House in gauche gold leaf—rather than focusing on bringing down the costs of groceries, health care, and housing. Fundamentally, it is all part of the same story.
“Democracy” seems less of an abstraction now. Conservatives seem chronically uninterested in social and civil rights issues until personally touched by them. Alex Pretti may not have been Team MAGA, but as a gun owner with a concealed carry permit, he was “MAGA adjacent.” His brutal killing after being face down and disarmed suddenly makes Trump’s evisceration of the Bill of Rights a live issue for conservatives.
Regunberg urges Democrats to visit Minneapolis to demonstrate solidarity (before DHA pulls back), to grab onto the issue and headlines with it. And not just for a quick photo op. Join observers. Do ridealongs. Don gas masks when fired upon with tear gas. It’s visual. It’s visceral. It conveys seriousness and commitment. Republicans wouldn’t dare match them.
As for “affordability,” it does not get to the nub of voters’ anxieties, especially independents’ worries. Affordability has rubbed me the wrong way for months. Yet Democrats across the board are using it, running on it. I get it. It’s convenient. It’s a one word, a six-syllable shorthand for the economic anxiety voters feel across the country. But it still feels like an abstraction. Clinical. Bloodless. There’s no feeling behind it. It sounds like the kind of policy-speak that turns off potential Democratic voters and tells them that Democrats — to borrow from Bill Clinton — don’t feel their pain.
Affordability continues to be a buzzword candidates and the press use as shorthand for the anxiety Americans feel in an economy wracked by a widening gulf between the elite and the rest. I wish Democrats would drop it. “Affordability” speaks to people’s heads when what people feel is more important. The term lacks — What was it Bruce Lee said to his student in Enter the Dragon? — emotional content.
I don’t have a better way to communicate that, but affordability doesn’t speak to people’s felt concerns:
“My paycheck won’t last out the month.” “I’m buying store-brand foods and my family still goes hungry.” “I’m having to skip meals so my kids can eat.” “I had to stop taking my medications.” “I’m behind on my rent and it just went up.” “I dropped my ACA policy. It increased six times in January, and I have cancer.”
Voters desperately want to be seen. Democrats need to stop thinking with their policies and express themselves in terms of people’s problems.
What’s left of Donald Trump’s “very good brain” is not going to last another three years. “Dangerous” is how Slovakia’s prime minister reportedly described Trump’s mental state. (Is there a betting line on whether his brain or body gives out first?) “Speculation about his fitness for office is rampant; armchair physicians have given him months and sometimes even days to live,” New York magazine reported Monday. Trump was flanked by two doctors when the magazine’s Ben Terris arrived for the interview. His instability is on display almost daily now.
A Daily Beast headline this morning reads, “Sleepless Trump, 79, Launches Manic 6AM Post-a-Minute Rampage.” To wit:
The president fired off almost 31 posts around 6AM Thursday on everything from his prospective invasion of Greenland to his long-running gripes against Barack Obama and his thoroughly debunked claims the 2020 election was rigged.
“TRUMP WON BIG,” Trump wrote of those results. “Crooked Election!”
Much of the MAGA leader’s early morning vitriol appears to have been prompted by the FBI’s raid Wednesday of an election office in Fulton County, Georgia, in search of evidence of widespread voter fraud nearly six years ago.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, was present at the site for the search.
Tulsi? That’s another story. at 7:14 a.m. ET, the Beast flagged Trump’s post rampage as “a developing story,” so he’s likely not done.
It is clear that Trump’s fixation on possessing Greenland, on the 2020 election in Georgia, on his gaudy ballroom and more indicate that he’s checked out on running the executive branch. Deputy Chief of Staff, Shadow President Stephen “Trump’s Brain” Miller is running the show. And directing Trump’s near-pogrom against immigrants.
“It’s just that this is all I care about,” Miller told a White House meeting on immigration policy in November 2019. “I don’t have a family. I don’t have anything else. This is my life.” That’s about that time Miller got engaged to Katie Waldman, so make of that what you will.
Miller is backing away from “the recent fatal shootings in Minneapolis and the administration’s miscalculated response,” according to CNN this morning. He’s described as micromanaging Trump’s deportation program and insistent on underlings delivering on his quotas. He’s known to call Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem multiple times a day “to provide guidance and direction on how Trump’s immigration agenda is being executed,” CNN reports:
Miller, a former Senate aide who has long been fixated on immigration policy, joined Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign during its early stages, and was the rare White House aide to serve the full four years of his first term. He has become even more powerful during Trump’s second term, weighing in on a wide range of issues as Trump and his aides have sought to transform Washington.
This leaves Miller’s sleepy boss more time to focus on important presidential matters like his grievances and firing off angry “Truths.” (His very good brain obviously was not done at 7:14 a.m. ET):
All of this, Digby observed on Wednesday, points to a presidency hollowed out and fading. What’s more, Trump is surrounded by aides who sound like “brainwashed soldiers in ‘The Manchurian Candidate.’” The 25th Amendment is not coming to save us.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is worried that they’ve started sounding like characters from “Dr. Strangelove” and that we are the closest we’ve ever been to catastrophe.
The 2026 Doomsday Clock announcement, captured by photographer Jamie Christiani. IT IS 85 SECONDS TO MIDNIGHT.Watch the 2026 Doomsday Clock announcement: buff.ly/BGu0Zse
A year ago, we warned that the world was perilously close to global disaster and that any delay in reversing course increased the probability of catastrophe. Rather than heed this warning, Russia, China, the United States, and other major countries have instead become increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic. Hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate change, the misuse of biotechnology, the potential threat of artificial intelligence, and other apocalyptic dangers. Far too many leaders have grown complacent and indifferent, in many cases adopting rhetoric and policies that accelerate rather than mitigate these existential risks. Because of this failure of leadership, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board today sets the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to catastrophe.
So drink up. It’s 85 seconds to midnight somewhere.
“Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.”
— Victor Hugo
On April 7, 1968-just 3 days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Nina Simone performed this song in New York:
Simone’s bassist Gene Taylor had composed it right after Dr. King was killed; the song (and Simone’s emotional performance) is all the more remarkable for being at once so timely, and timeless.
In 1968, music was our social media. Otis Spann was another artist who paid musical tribute to Dr. King, writing and performing two songs about the slain civil rights leader just days after his death. His “Blues for Martin Luther King” gives us the news and preaches the blues:
On May 4, 1970, 4 students at Ohio’s Kent State University died when National Guard troops opened fire on protestors. When Neil Young saw the photos of the incident in Life magazine soon afterwards, he was moved to write the now-iconic protest anthem “Ohio”, which was recorded by Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young just two weeks later and rush-released as a single one month to the day after the killings:
The following year, Bob Dylan felt similarly compelled to express outrage in song, after Black Panther leader/author/prison activist George Jackson was shot to death by guards during an escape attempt at San Quentin (there was contention over whether or not his killing was a set-up). Dylan’s single “George Jackson” was released just three months after the incident:
Flash forward to 2026. Folk singer Phil Ochs once said, “A protest song is a song that’s so specific that you cannot mistake it for bullshit.”
When they came for the immigrants I got in their face When they came for the refugees I got in their face When they came for the five year olds I got in their face…
You may be thinking: “Those lyrics could have been written this week!”
If that’s what you’re thinking…you’re right. They were written this week, by political song smith extraordinaire/activist Billy Bragg, who posted this song on YouTube yesterday:
And we got this memo from the Boss today, posted on BlueSky:
I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
Stay free
You can’t mistake that for bullshit. It’s tough not to despair right now, but as Kris Kristofferson advised:“Don’t let the bastards get you down.”
