MAGA Freaks Out About Bad Bunny Headlining the Super Bowl

MAGA is losing it after renowned Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny was announced as the Super Bowl halftime show performer on Sunday.

“I’ve been thinking about it these days, and after discussing it with my team, I think I’ll do just one date in the United States,” he wrote on X, referring to the Super Bowl.

Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, had previously canceled his U.S. tour dates due to fears of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at his concerts. Now he’ll have a chance—if he chooses to take it—to give Trump and ICE the finger on perhaps the biggest stage in America.

“This is Bad Bunny. He was just announced as the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show. Massive Trump hater, Anti-ICE activist, No songs in English. He even canceled his entire U.S. tour for this reason: ‘F***ing ICE could be outside my concert. And it’s something that we were talking about and very concerned about,’” right-wing talking head Benny Johnson wrote on X. “The NFL is self-destructing year after year.”

“Bad Bunny is a demonic Marxist who was been granted the largest stage with the greatest audience in the middle of a Christian revival,” a large account by the name of “the Redheaded libertarian” said. “This is by design. We are in a spiritual war and once you see it you can’t unsee it.” She attached a TikTok from a conspiracy theorist saying that the singer had essentially sold his soul to the devil.

“Roger Goodell and the NFL just decided to make the Super Bowl political by picking Bad Bunny as the 2026 Super Bowl music act. The guy literally says he isn’t touring the US because of Trump’s ICE raids and just released a video mocking President Trump,” conservative Cuban American commentator Robby Starbuck chimed in. “Also, most of his songs aren’t even in English. This is not a pick designed to unite football fans or let people just enjoy the show. It was a pick designed to divide fans and no doubt Bad Bunny will find some way to push a woke message.

“Are NFL owners in on this idiocy or are they just culturally that disconnected from reality and how Roger uses the NFL to push left wing social issues?” Starbuck continued. “Is it that hard to pick a unifying music act who doesn’t want to peddle woke propaganda? Does this guy really scream American football to anyone? Be for real with me. No one thinks he does. This isn’t about music, it’s about putting a guy on stage who hates Trump and MAGA.”

Bad Bunny is easily one of the most popular artists in the entire world. He has won three Grammys, 11 Latin Grammys, eight BillBoard Music awards, and 13 Lo Nuestro Awards. He was named Billboard Artist of the Year in 2022, was the most streamed artist on Spotify for two years straight, and has sold over seven million records. He is more than qualified to headline the Super Bowl halftime show.

The MAGA-verse had a similar crashout when 22-time Grammy winner Kendrick Lamar’s performance earlier this year centered Black American history and culture. Bad Bunny will likely make it seethe even more.

The Super Bowl is on February 8, 2026.

Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune admitted that American farmers will need a bailout from President Donald Trump’s tariffs.

Speaking on NBC News Sunday, the top Republican said that farmers would need support in the face of markets that were “not open to some of our commodities,” referring to foreign tariffs on U.S. goods that had resulted in response to Trump’s sweeping tariffs on nearly every country in the world.

“As a consequence of that, we’ve got a big harvest coming in here in South Dakota, corn and soybeans, and no place to go with it. So, what the president has said is, ‘I’m gonna support and I’m gonna help our farmers,’” Thune said. “And so we are looking at—I’m a member of the [Agriculture Committee] and have been for some time—we are looking at potential solutions to make sure that we can help support farmers until some of those markets come back.”

“They are anxious, they want to see markets open up,” he noted.

Thune said that he believed Trump wanted to establish “reciprocity” with other countries—but it’s not clear that is even the president’s objective. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick previously said that the U.S. accepting a reciprocal zero-percent tariff deal with a country was “the silliest thing we could do.”

Meanwhile, foreign countries are reportedly already filling the gap left by missing American goods. For example, China, the largest buyer of U.S. soybeans, has not purchased any American soybeans since May, pivoting to suppliers in Latin America as Trump struggles to land an actual deal with Beijing.

Last week, Trump debuted his new plan to give farmers a cut of his “tariff money,” but recklessly mixed up “billions” and “millions” when talking about how much money would actually be available.

The state of Oregon is taking the president to court for sending the troops to its door.

One day after Donald Trump said he would issue the national guard to Portland, the Beaver State filed a 41-page legal complaint accusing the country’s leader of having “trampled” the U.S. Constitution by federalizing Portland’s law enforcement. The city of Portland also joined the lawsuit.

“Our nation’s founders recognized that military rule—particularly by a remote authority indifferent to local needs—was incompatible with liberty and democracy,” the lawsuit said. “Foundational principles of American law therefore limit the president’s authority to involve the military in domestic affairs.”

The lawsuit further condemned Trump’s “provocative and arbitrary actions,” which it argued legitimately threaten Portland’s peace by “inciting a public outcry.”

Rather than rely on data before commanding the National Guard across the country, Trump decided earlier this month to target Rose City after he claimed he witnessed its “destruction” when he “watched television.” On Saturday, he directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to “provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland” in order to defend ICE. He also supported their use of “full force.”

Hours later, Oregon Governor Tina Kotek publicly undercut the White House’s rhetoric, insisting there was no need to invite the military to solve the state’s problems.

“The president does not have the authority to deploy federal troops on state soil,” Kotek said. “There is no insurrection. There is no threat to national security, and there is no need for military troops in our major city.”

Kotek further emphasized that the National Guard’s needless deployment sullied their commitment to national defense, and that they would be a wasted resource in Portland.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said that Trump’s solution to the fictional threat of violence was unpresidential and would never serve to solve any legitimate problems facing communities across America.

“If you really wanted public safety, you wouldn’t threaten to send the United States military into any city,” Rayfield said in a video statement Sunday. “I know for a fact, from talking to cities across Oregon and across the country, that if you pick up the phone and ask, ‘What do you need? What could be helpful?’ the answer would not be the United States military.”

After failing to correctly read and understand a batch of documents, Republicans have revived an old conspiracy theory that the so-called “deep state” staged the January 6 insurrection.

The GOP-led House Select Subcommittee on January 6 announced on X Friday that the FBI had “finally” revealed that it deployed 276 agents to the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

A closer look at the document revealed that the agents were responding to the rioters, not inciting them. “This number includes agents that responded to the Capitol grounds as well as inside the Capitol, the pipe bombs, and the red truck that was believed to contain explosive devices as well as CDCs/ADCs.”

Crucially, Republicans have still provided no evidence that those working with law enforcement were involved in planning the deadly riot or instigating violence that day.

Not only is this not a bombshell—it’s not even new. The Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General already reported in December 2024 that the FBI had deployed agents to the Capitol as part of a review of its handling of the incident.

“After the Capitol had been breached on January 6 by rioters, and in response to a request from the USCP, the FBI deployed several hundred Special Agents and employees to the U.S. Capitol and the surrounding area,” the report said.

Still, Just the News, a conservative blog, reported that plainclothes agents had been “secretly” deployed, though the after-action report the it referenced said absolutely nothing about what they were wearing. President Donald Trump shared the article on Truth Social, writing “Wow: A Radical Left Democrat Scam!” And failed Arizona Republican Kari Lake shared Trump’s post on X, saying, “They staged a riot on January 6 to frame patriotic Americans and cover-up a stolen election. Justice is coming.”

But Republicans have never needed any proof to fuel this particular conspiracy theory. In July 2023, Trump shared a meme on Truth Social claiming, “JANUARY 6 WILL GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS THE DAY THE GOVERNMENT STAGED A RIOT TO COVER UP THE FACT THAT THEY CERTIFIED A FRAUDULENT ELECTION.”

Superintendent Ian Roberts of Des Moines Public Schools was detained Friday by federal agents. The reason for his detention was not clear, according to the school district.

An email issued Friday afternoon by DMPS Board President Jackie Norris announced that Associate Superintendent Matt Smith would take over Roberts’s role effective “immediately” and “until further notice.”

“This action follows Dr. Ian Roberts being detained by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents this morning,” Norris wrote in an email obtained by Iowa Public Radio. “We have no confirmed information as to why Dr. Roberts is being detained or the next potential steps.”

Roberts’s whereabouts are also, alarmingly, unclear. A list of detainees on ICE’s website lists the educational administrator in the Pottawattamie County Jail in Council Bluffs, but an employee at the jail told Iowa Public Radio that Roberts was “not located there.”

The ICE website claims that Roberts was born in Guyana. Roberts’s district profile states that the educator’s parents were immigrants from Guyana and that he grew up in Brooklyn.

Roberts has been responsible for the largest public school district in Iowa since 2023. At the time of his hiring, Roberts’s “focus on creating equitable experience for students” was openly celebrated by then–school board Chair Teree Caldwell-Johnson. Roberts was named a top 100 education influencer by a K-12 magazine, District Administration, earlier this summer for his Reimagining Education program, a plan to modernize the district’s classrooms as requested by local residents.

It’s not the first instance of federal immigration officers throwing their weight around to neutralize their dissenters’ influence. In June, masked ICE agents detained New York City Comptroller Brad Lander after he tried to escort a defendant out of immigration court.

Justice Clarence Thomas cast doubt on the Supreme Court’s commitment to following legal precedent Thursday, as the high court gears up to revisit major rulings holding back Donald Trump’s sweeping policy agenda.

Speaking at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C., Thursday evening, Thomas said it was time to rethink a commitment to “stare decisis,” a legal principle that the court should stand by things decided previously.

“It’s not some sort of talismanic deal where you can just say ‘stare decisis’ and not think, turn off the brain, right?” Thomas said.

“We never go to the front, see who’s driving the train, where is it going. And you could go up there in the engine room, find it’s an orangutan driving the train, but you want to follow that just because it’s a train,” Thomas said, ostensibly comparing decades of previous decisions by justices sitting in his very same position to the attitudes of apes.

“I don’t think that I have the gospel,” Thomas said, “that any of these cases that have been decided are the gospel, and I do give perspective to the precedent. But ... the precedent should be respectful of our legal tradition, and our country, and our laws, and be based on something, not just something somebody dreamt up and others went along with.”

If Thomas’s remarks are anything to go by, the conservative majority is set to flip major precedents during the upcoming session.

In December, the Supreme Court is expected to weigh the 1935 case Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, in which the court rejected Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s attempt to fire a conservative commissioner appointed by President Herbert Hoover overseeing FDR’s New Deal policies.

Earlier this week, Justice Elena Kagan slammed the Supreme Court’s conservative majority for approving Trump’s emergency request to remove Rebecca Slaughter, a Democratic commissioner on the Federal Trade Commission. The court had previously allowed Trump to oust Gwynne Wilcox at the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris at the Merit Systems Protection Board—whose terms weren’t due to expire until 2029—as well as three Democratic appointees on the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Breaking with precedent on Humphrey will allow Trump to continue his unfettered campaign of firing Democratic appointees.

The Supreme Court is also set to consider whether to roll back anti-gerrymandering rules established by the 1986 case Thornburg v. Gingles, as part of Louisiana’s suit challenging the use of race in redistricting efforts. Trump’s Department of Justice filed an amicus brief Wednesday arguing that the Voting Rights Act does not provide “a compelling interest that can justify race-predominant districting” and urging the court to lay waste to the landmark decision.

Pete Hegseth’s big, urgent military summit will just be a “pep rally” for what he calls the “warrior ethos.”

Earlier this week, the defense secretary ordered a mass gathering of every senior military offier—a group of admirals and generals that could total well over 1,000—in Quantico, Virginia. Rumors swirled about what the reason could be. Some said a mass firing, others said a fitness test. But the meeting, which is set to take place next week, will actually just be an opportunity for Hegseth to do some pompous grandstanding about the “warrior ethos” he’s been so obsessed with for years, CNN reported Friday.

“It’s about getting the horses into the stable and whipping them into shape,” an anonymous defense official told the outlet. “And the guys with the stars on their shoulders make for a better audience from an optics standpoint. This is a showcase for Hegseth to tell them: Get on board, or potentially have your career shortened.”

The meeting announcement was sudden and ambiguous, and will pull these senior military leaders away from their previous assignments.

Hegesth’s “warrior ethos” hinges on his belief that the military is too woke. He is expected to use Tuesday’s meeting to go over new fitness and grooming standards for officers.

“Yes, totally worth the cost and time and effort to pull hundreds of people away from their commands to listen to Hegseth and his deep thoughts about being a warrior,” Tom Nichols wrote.

Hegseth plans to have his speech recorded and later released.

An ICE agent has been “relieved of his duties” after he was caught on camera assaulting a woman in a Manhattan immigration court Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security announced Friday.

The woman, identified by ProPublica as Monica Moreta-Galarza, was pleading with officers at 26 Federal Plaza to release her detained husband when the masked agent picked her up, shoved her into the wall, and pushed her to the ground. Moreta-Galarza was taken to the hospital for a head injury and discharged shortly afterward, reported the investigative outlet.

The federal officer who attacked Moreta-Galarza was put on leave pending an investigation, according to Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin. In a statement, McLaughlin condemned the officer’s actions as “unacceptable and beneath the men and women of ICE.” She refused to elaborate, however, as to whether the unidentified agent had been suspended or fired over his violent actions.

Videos taken right before the attack depict Moreta-Galarza shouting at ICE agents in Spanish as they pried her husband away from his children.

“You guys don’t care about anything!” she shouted, to which an agent responded, “Adios, adios.”

Moreta-Galarza told ProPublica that her family had experienced similar violence in Ecuador before they came to America.

“I didn’t think I’d come here to the United States and the same thing would happen to me,” Moreta-Galarza said.

ICE agents across the country have taken to wearing masks in an attempt to shield their identities from public scrutiny as they ransack American communities. DHS has provided federal support to their anonymizing decision, openly acknowledging that officers would continue to violate agency-specific mask bans put in place by state governments.

But the agent who attacked Moreta-Galarza had his full face on display, allowing NPR to identify him as the same officer involved in the arrest of a court observer last month.

“The agent, who was unmasked and had been sitting in the waiting area earlier, yelled at NPR: ‘Stop fucking following me! Why are you fucking following me?’ before turning and yelling the same thing at the court observer,” the radio outlet reported.

The court reporter was then taken into an enclosed elevator bay, taken into federal custody, and ultimately received two citations, according to NPR—trespassing in a secure area and failing to follow lawful commands from an officer.

An Arizona state legislator called for the execution of Democratic U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal for her statements advocating for peaceful protest, which were clipped out of context.

Republican state Representative John Gillette wrote of Jayapal on Wednesday: “Until people like this, that advocate for the overthrow of the American government are tried convicted and hanged … it will continue.” (“It” seemingly referring to political violence.)

Gillette’s threat came in response to an X account with the name “Patriot Oasis,” which shared a video notably cut to mischaracterize Jayapal’s statements in a March Zoom session, during which the congresswoman spoke about organizing peaceful protests against the MAGA agenda.

In context, Jayapal said:

We want to help you seed, participate, and coordinate these nonviolent resistance actions that are going to make a difference over the next coming months. If we were in the labor movement—and shout out to any of our union members that are on this call—we might call this getting strike ready. I think of it as getting us strike ready, or street ready, and part of that is understanding our own strength.

The “Patriot Oasis” version starts with Jayapal saying, “We might call this getting strike ready. I think of it as getting us strike ready, or street ready, and part of that is understanding our own strength.” The user tagged FBI Director Kash Patel and posted an inflammatory caption: “BREAKING: Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D) calls on Democrats to be ‘strike ready’ and ‘street ready.’ This is a CLEAR call to violence!”

The contextless clip has circulated widely in right-wing corners of social media since the spring, as users attempt to advance the baseless notion of Democratic lawmakers inspiring violence with their rhetoric. It has reemerged as Republicans have sought to advance that narrative in the wake of the fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

In this instance, the only elected official guilty of calling for political violence was Gillette.

Sinclair Broadcast Group on Friday announced the end to its embargo on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

The company had previously refused to air Kimmel’s show on its nearly 40 ABC affiliates over a joke the late-night host had made about MAGA and President Trump’s reaction to the death of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk—even as ABC reversed its decision to cancel it.

Sinclair had gone so far as to demand Kimmel “issue a direct apology to the Kirk family” and “make a meaningful personal donation” to Kirk’s family and organization.

In a statement Friday, Sinclair said that “it will end its preemption of Jimmy Kimmel Live! and the show will return this evening on Sinclair’s ABC affiliates.”

“Over the last week, we have received thoughtful feedback from viewers, advertisers, and community leaders representing a wide range of perspectives,” the statement said, and also mentioned a shooting at an ABC affiliate in Sacramento last week. “These events underscore why responsible broadcasting matters and why respectful dialogue between differing voices remains so important.”

It also mentioned “ongoing and constructive discussions with ABC,” in which Sinclair offered proposals “to strengthen accountability, viewer feedback, and community dialogue” that ABC and Disney have not adopted.

The statement lashed out against the obvious conclusion that many drew from the incident—that the company’s censorship of Kimmel stemmed from threats made publicly by Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr.

Sinclair insists its actions were “independent of any government interaction or influence,” and included in the statement a prickly response to those who saw Sinclair’s move after Carr’s threat as a violation of Kimmel’s free speech: “It is simply inconsistent to champion free speech while demanding that broadcasters air specific content.”