Jon Wiener: From The Nation magazine, this is Start Making Sense. I’m Jon Wiener. Later in the show: The Super Bowl is by far the biggest entertainment event of the year, and this Sunday the halftime show will feature Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny, who has been demanding “ICE Out!” How did the Super Bowl halftime show become the center of resistance to ICE? Dave Zirin, The Nation’s sports editor, will explain .But first – the Democrats and the budget for ICE — John Nichols will comment, in a minute.
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This is one of those rare moments when everybody is paying attention to the same thing. Even people who usually avoid politics are talking about what ICE has been doing in Minnesota. Polling over the last week or two shows that three-quarters of Americans have seen some or all of the video of the murder of Alex Pretti. That is stunning. You can’t persuade people without getting their attention and getting people’s attention is the hardest thing to do in politics. Well, we have it now. And the Democrats in Congress have put forward several demands about limiting or restricting ICE operations. For comment, we turn to John Nichols. Of course, he’s executive editor of The Nation. John, welcome back.
John Nichols: It’s good to be with you, Jon.
JW: The Democrats say they won’t fund any of the Department of Homeland Security unless the funding bill includes several restrictions. The Senate on Friday passed the rest of the budget with a two-week appropriation for Homeland Security. And as we speak here on Tuesday afternoon, the House is passing the same bill. That means for the next two weeks, we will be talking about reining in ICE and how much we can get the Democrats to do and how much they can get the Republicans to agree to.
So I want to look at what the Democrats demands are at this point: Masks off, body cameras on; ending random sweeps, instead requiring judicial warrants; requiring that ICE agents follow the same use of force standards as police departments; and an independent investigation of the two fatal shootings in Minneapolis.
In some ways, the biggest of these demands, it seems to me, is for no arrests without individualized warrants signed by judges, not signed by ICE administrators. That would really change the way ICE operates in the streets. Do you have the same sense that this is the biggest one?
JN: That’s a really big deal. There are cases where ICE agents are literally filling out the so- called warrants literally minutes before they’re jumping into action. This is not a deliberative process. This isn’t a place where evidence is brought in and a judge weighs it and says, “Well, what about this” or “what about that?”
I think going to a circumstance where judges have to be a part of this process does two things. Number one, it brings it more in align with what we would want to have in any kind of country that respects the Constitution, the rule of law. It also undoubtedly slows the process down. It makes it less likely that you can have this sort of haphazard, freewheeling approach.
JW: Yeah. The way they work now here in Los Angeles where we record our show, they go to a carwash and just grab everybody. They go to a Home Depot and they pick up all of the people who are looking for work as day laborers. That would be impossible if you require individualized warrants with particular people’s name on them.
I want to note that in the House, the Progressive Caucus, which has about a hundred people, has some additional demands which go beyond what the Democratic leadership wants. Their number one demand is “ICE out of Minneapolis immediately.” Number two, “end arrests at sensitive locations like churches, schools, hospitals, and courthouses.” Number three, “end the detention and deportation of US citizens.” And number four, “ensure minimum standards of care at detention facilities, including access to medical care, clean water, edible food, and protections against abuse, and ensure independent investigations of deaths at detention facilities.” The Progressive Caucus list is a pretty good list.
JN: It’s a pretty good list, although honestly, Jon, we shouldn’t even have to be saying some of these things. The notion that a detention center should be clean, the notion that you shouldn’t be grabbing people out of churches or around churches. I think most Americans would be very comfortable with having that as a standard. And I also think that at this point, most Americans would be very, very comfortable with getting ICE out of Minneapolis.
But we still end up in this situation where many folks will say, “Yeah, but you still got ICE.” This seems to have been established as an organization, at least in the current moment that is so out of control, so irresponsible in its leadership that there’ll be a continuing discomfort. You can do some things in this moment, and certainly you should. That’s no reason not to try and act on every level that you can.
But it’s fair to say that ultimately, as many members of Congress have said, we really need to dismantle ICE and replace it with something that is not only under oversight, but is respectful of the Constitution.
JW: So we have seen the Trump people taking some big steps back in response to the public outrage over what ICE has been doing in Minneapolis. Kristi Noem ordered ICE agents in Minneapolis to wear body cameras. Of course, Greg Bovino was removed from his position as ICE commander in Minneapolis and replaced with the border czar Tom Homan who promised to deescalate the situation there. The Department of Justice agreed to begin a civil rights investigation into the murder of Alex Pretti. These seem significant, but lots of people like Senator Tina Smith warn us, nothing has actually changed in the streets of Minneapolis. So how do we balance out the apparent step back in response to public pressure and the continuing operation of ICE in the streets?
JN: I think we have to adopt the language of Mayor Jacob Frye in Minneapolis who says, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” The administration has sent very mixed signals, not just initially, and then when, as we suggest, Trump has tried to back off some of this, Trump has himself said that we aren’t back. We’re changing some of our language. He sends some relatively more moderate signals. And then he says, “But we’re not backing off.”
ICE in Minneapolis has gone so far beyond the bounds. It has gotten so out of control. It is such a presence throughout the city. Remember, you’ve got more than 3,000 ICE agents there. That’s more than the police forces of Minneapolis and St. Paul combined. And in a situation like that, if you deescalate a little bit, you’ve still got a situation where there’s an overwhelming ICE presence in the city. And a lot of these ICE agents are getting up every morning, going out, trying to round up somebody someplace. And that has created such a level of chaos.
When I have spoken to all sorts of folks, religious leaders, union leaders, elected officials, what they say is that the impact on the city is everywhere. People are afraid to go to work. People are afraid to go to church. People are afraid to send their kids to school. There is so much going on at this point that is destabilizing for the day-to-day life of the city that a minor de-escalation might sound good nationally, but for people in Minneapolis, I think what they really are sincere about is saying that it’s time for ICE to leave.
JW: You talked about people far away who are taking a stand. The most striking example of people far away turning against Trump is this state Senate election in Texas, a district Trump won by 17 points. The Democrat there won that district by 14 points, which I think is a 30-point shift. The Democrat was also outspent 20 to one. What do you know about this thing that happened in Texas?
JN: It’s a very significant result. The winning candidate is a union leader, union activist who ran a very economic populist campaign in a state where we’re testing how well that does. We’re trying to figure out how far you can get on a message that is economic populous in its focus, not just on the soft term affordability, but on the deeper reality of economic injustice and economic unfairness in a moment where corporations are jacking up prices at the same time that they are running record profits. And this was a candidate who was willing to talk about some of that.
On the other hand, the Republican candidate was a very prominent figure in the region who had been extremely active in a host of right-wing initiatives and had massive support from within the Republican Party, from within conservative circles, and all the way up to President Trump himself.
The result was that the Republican dramatically outspent the Democrat, and yet the Democrat won. And when you put all that into the mix and you look at the fact that you have a shift from a 17-point Trump district to a 14-point Democratic win, what this tells me is that in Texas and around the country, we have to expand our map as regards congressional races and Senate races at the federal level, but also as regards to legislatures around the country, because it looks like people are really ready to show up. Democrats very ready to show up. Republicans in this district, by the way, showed up as well. But when you get a substantial turnout of people, the shift is that the Independents now appear to be siding very strongly with the Democrats, and even maybe some Republicans getting shakier. That, Jon, points to a possibility, not the certainty, that November 2026, which is, I’ll admit, a long time away, but November 2026 could produce a genuine blue wave election.
JW: So getting back to Congress right now, there’s this two-week pause to debate restrictions on ICE in the funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. The Republicans are obviously hoping that people will start to forget about the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
And certainly Trump is doing everything he can frantically to give us lots of other things to think about that are outrageous and terrible and upsetting. What’s it going to take for the Democrats to keep up the pressure on the ICE issues in the DHS budget for the next two weeks?
JN: Well, you’re right to focus on that, Jon, and it is challenging. Just since January 1, we’ve been in the midst of crises regarding Venezuela and Greenland and government shutdowns.
Yeah, Trump has a lot of space in which to shoot off in other directions, and he’s very good at that because our national media is not good on sticking to a story. I think for the Democrats, one of the critical things is to develop a coherent plan. One of the things that you talked about was where the Democrats are overall and where the Progressive Caucus is.
What you’ve got to do is figure out how to take some of those progressive caucus stances, which are very popular, incorporate them into the Democratic position. The Democrats shouldn’t be asking for a little, they should be asking for a lot. They should be pushing hard on a big, bold agenda on this.
You need to nationalize the discussion about what ICE is doing. It is very important to remember that while we know the names of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, we don’t necessarily know the names of the many other people who have died in ICE detention, who have been killed by ICE agents or in Chicago, down in Texas and other places. And I think that the more that we recognize that this is a broad issue that doesn’t just occur in Minneapolis, although Minneapolis is central to it, that will help.
The other thing is too, to understand that it’s unlikely that they’re going to be – we talk about debating this. It’s unlikely that they’re actually going to be debating it for two weeks. What we’re really talking about is a situation where Congress will be in session for certain amounts of time and there’ll be maybe some hearings and maybe some discussions.
But the reality is that these members of Congress will go back to their districts during this period. And it is absolutely vital that progressive forces deliver the message at the district level to Democrats that they expect them to remain as a united force, not to spin off in one way or another, not to lose sight of what they’re focusing on.
I know there is a great anger at the Republicans, but at this point, the critical thing is to keep the Democrats united because that unity, if they can be a firmly grounded force in this Congress where the shift of one or two Republican votes can trip up the Republicans, then you get there, but you don’t get to that possibility of winning over a Thomas Massie of winning over some other Republican to this fight if you don’t have the Democrats fully united.
JW: My last thought here is about Trump. He seems obviously kind of stunned by the size and the commitment and the strength of the resistance that he has provoked. Just one example from last week, the group Indivisible and its partners in the No Kings Coalition did an online training last week for observers of ICE. They called it the Eyes on ICE training. 200,000 people showed up for the online training of Indivisible to learn how to observe and record ICE. This is inconceivable to Trump. Why would people do this? They still kind of can’t believe that it’s real, but the fact is it is real. It is inspiring. You can read all about it at thenation.com. John, I understand you have some travel plans for the next couple days.
JN: Yeah, I’ll be in Minneapolis and talking to folks up there. And I think that you’re right about when you talk about the trainings and the activism that is really exploded around the country, I can’t begin to emphasize to you that one of the reasons why Minneapolis has emerged as such a counterforce to ICE and to Trump is because they’ve done an immense amount of training. I’ve talked to people up there who even in recent weeks, and some of this training goes back for months, even years, but even in recent weeks, they’ve announced a training session, expected maybe a hundred folks, few hundred folks, and they’ll be getting a thousand. People want to respond to this. They want to respond to this in Minneapolis. They also, and I’ve seen it around the country, they want to respond to it in other cities as well. There is so much organizing around this issue going on.
And I do think it is rooted in the tragic reality that we have lost lives, those of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. But I also think that it is rooted in a realization that what ICE is doing in Minneapolis targeting vulnerable communities there could become a national reality if we don’t push back now. And so we’re at a critical juncture. It’s exciting to be in Minneapolis, but it’s also exciting to be in places all over this country because the fact of the matter is students are walking out of schools, unions are organizing rallies, mutual support organizations and networks are being developed. This is a very electric time politically in this country. While we’re all focused, as Bruce Springsteen says, on the streets of Minneapolis, this isn’t just a Minneapolis fight, this is a national fight.
JW: John Nichols – read him at thenation.com. John, we look forward to your reports from Minneapolis, and thanks for talking with us today.
JN: It’s an honor to be with you, brother.
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Jon Wiener: Now it’s time to talk about the Super Bowl. It’s back this Sunday night and the halftime show this year is Bad Bunny, the gender fluid, Puerto Rican singer and wrapper. At the Grammy’s last Sunday night. He said, “before I say thanks to God, I’m going to say ICE out.”
That was at the Grammys with audience of 15 million people. The Super Bowl is much, much bigger.
The Oscars have an audience of 20 million. The last Super Bowl had 130 million viewers, so the Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday will become the national center of opposition to ICE and to Trump, how did this happen?
For comment, we turn to Dave Zirin. He’s The Nation’s longtime sports editor, host of the Edge of Sports podcast, and the author of 11 books on the politics of sports, including a People’s History of Sports in the United States. He’s also co-producer and writer on the documentary Behind the Shield: The Power and Politics of the NFL. It’s streaming now on Roku, on Tubi, and other places. Dave Zirin, welcome back.
Dave Zirin: Hey, it’s great to be here, Jon. I mean, I’m just a big fan of the podcast and a big fan of your work.
JW: We’ve complained a lot here about NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, but this year it’s the people on the other side who are doing the complaining. They’re complaining that Bad Bunny sings in Spanish and that he’s known internationally as a critic of ICE and Trump. And the president himself has complained about the halftime show. So how did this happen? How did the NFL pick Bad Bunny for the halftime show?
DZ: I’m not too concerned about what the complainer, the loser in chief has to say about Bad Bunny, and no one else should be either. I mean, they were angry about Bad Bunny being chosen to be the halftime show because his songs are in Spanish, period. It wasn’t about him being a critic of ICE. They don’t even understand that he’s from Puerto Rico, which is of course a commonwealth of the United States. They say, “I can’t believe a foreigner is doing the halftime” — I mean, this is just pure, or maybe they do know he’s from Puerto Rico, but this is just pure white supremacist racism, the kind of which we’re so very used to at this point from this administration. It’s disgusting.
I mean, the same reason why people are being killed in the streets of Minneapolis is why they’re complaining about Bad Bunny. It’s all one big connective tissue of white grievance.
Now, as for Bad Bunny, why did they choose him? It’s because Roger Goodell on the National Football League, I think love the color green more than even they love the color white. I mean, there’s a lot of racism in the NFL. They just did a massive round of coach hirings. Not one Black head coach – not one Black coach was hired. It was all a bunch of white dudes hired for all the jobs. Again, if you look at front offices, it’s an embarrassment. There are no Black owners of any teams, only one non-white owner. But yet, what does Bad Bunny represent? He represents being one of the biggest stars on Earth, not in the United States, on Earth. And so the best way to understand this is that the NFL is desperate to be an international brand.
The National Basketball Association is an international brand. Major League Baseball is an international brand, and yet the world has been much more stubborn over the course of a century about embracing what they call American football because of course their football is soccer. Now for the National Football League, who is always thinking growth, growth, growth, growth, there are a lot of people behind the scenes who are worried that they’ve tapped out their US audience, and so they’re looking internationally. They just signed a contract. Gee, do you think this is a coincidence, Jon, to play a game next year in Madrid?
Now, I don’t want to shock your listeners, but in Madrid, the language is Spanish. So you have a Spanish speaking halftime performer who’s considered just the king of Latin trap music, as he’s called, considered one of the best Latino/Latina rappers ever. And let’s also, let’s not overlook the fact that Bad Bunny just won Album of the Year. He’s hugely popular in the United States as well.
So this is about the NFL trying to go international, but also responding to the fact that this is one of the biggest artists on Earth. Bad Bunny is chosen, all these people are complaining about it, white grievance, white grievance, and then the NFL gets another performer and it’s Green Day who’ve basically been saying F you to Trump from the day he went down on that idiotic escalator to be a racist. So I found that to be very interesting. That felt like a kind of thumb in the eye to all the people who were complaining about Bad Bunny.
JW: Well, I just want to quote Trump’s complaint here. He did attend the Super Bowl last year. I think he was maybe the first president ever to attend a Super Bowl in person, but now he says he’s so unhappy about Bad Bunny doing the halftime show, he’s not even going to watch the game on tv. He says, “I don’t know who he is. I don’t know why they’re doing it. It’s crazy. They blame it on some promoter they hired to pick up entertainment. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous.” Any comment on statement?
DZ: No. Except to say that it’s all one tapestry. As I said before, with the killings of Pretti and Good in Minneapolis, this is about white grievance. This guy has no interest in anything but a broken United States of America that’s built on a supremacist basis.
JW: Well, at the NFL, the chief marketing Officer, his name is Tim Ellis, told the press in response to questions about the criticisms of the picking Bad Bunny. I don’t think I’ve ever been as proud to work for the NFL as when Roger Goodell got in front of all the journalists and said, about the choice of Bad Bunny for the halftime show, “We’re committed to diversity and inclusion because it makes us better. It makes us stronger.” But now Roger Goodell himself has spoken on Monday, he gave his annual State of the League address, and he reassured fans that Bad Bunny “understands that his stage at the Super Bowl should be used to unite people and bring people together.” What does Goodell mean by “bring people together”? You mean bring people together to resist Trump and ICE?
DZ: What I think Roger Goodell means, I’ve been a student of these Super Bowl press conferences for many, many years, and Roger Goodell has used them over the years to deflect, deny, and distract and get fired, actually, shout out to my friend Jim Trotter, reporters who have something to say about the hiring practices of the league.
I mean, if Roger Goodell wants more unity, he can start by putting his foot on the neck of some of these owners to get them to hire some Black personnel either in the coaching booth or in the executive suites. I mean, his peons to unity just ring very hollow, given the racist hiring practices of the league, which I’m not putting on Goodell. I think it’s because the ownership of the National Football League, and you can tell this by the people who chart their political givings, I mean, they’re bankrolls of Trump, and I’m sure a lot of them if asked would not be thrilled about Bad Bunny being the halftime show. But I bet other ones are very happy about it for the reasons I said before, aka Bad Bunny just won Album of the year at the Grammys and Madrid.
But make no mistake, what Roger Goodell is saying to Bad Bunny and to the world is “shut up and play.” And so there are openings for Bad Bunny and for Green Day to be political, even if they feel that pressure from the NFL to not get up there and say “ICE out.”
JW: Well, I’ve been puzzled myself, and I know something you’ve thought about a lot, why pro football and the NFL is just so much bigger than everything else in America. We said like the World Series gets 20 million people. The NBA Championships get 20 million people, the Super Bowl gets 130 million people. How do you explain the tremendous audience for pro football in America?
DZ: Well, it’s remarkable. I think American football, it’s the last vestige of the monoculture. I mean, we live in a time when you and I were coming up, Jon, the Oscars that was half the country at least, would be tuning in. I mean, there were people, 40 million people would watch The Cosby Show every Thursday, I mean, there was this monoculture that existed in this country, which is what happens when you only have three channels, four channels.
But today with our ridiculous enshittified buffet of choices to entertain ourselves, that enshittify, that’s from Enshittification, the recent book by Corey Doctorow, whose central argument is for all the progress we’re making, everything has just worse. So it’s like despite all the choices that we have, for some reason, the NFL has just gotten bigger and bigger over the last generation, which is why I call it the last vestige of the monoculture. And that’s why Donald Trump went to the Super Bowl last year because he wanted to stand above it and as stride it. While he’s too much of a racist to do that, if Bad Bunny’s going to be on the field, and frankly, he didn’t want to go to where the game is going to be played, which is the Bay Area.
I mean, I guarantee you it would not have been pretty if he had tried to go there. So you could call Donald Trump not being at the Super Bowl as a tactical and cultural retreat. Now, why has the NFL gotten bigger and bigger? I’ll just put it like this. I mean, three hours of commodified violence in the United States, you’re always going to do very well.
JW: Okay, okay, that says it all. I understand Bad Bunny canceled his recent tour of the continental United States, even though he tours everywhere else in the world because the fears that ICE raids would put his fans in danger. And at this show, a Trump administration official has said ICE agents will be at the game, Corey Lewandowski, the chief advisor to—
DZ: Oh, he’s a piece of garbage.
JW: Kristi Noem, your favorite Secretary of Homeland Security, Lewandowski said, “there is nowhere you can provide safe haven to people who are in this country illegal, not the Super Bowl. We will find you. We will put you in a detention facility and we will deport you.” How do you picture ICE agents operating at a stadium with 68,000 people?
DZ: Before I answer let us assume that I think that Corey Lewandowski, who’s been a stone-cold thug for the last 10 years in the public eye, can absolutely, positively eat shit. Now, how does ICE operate in this climate? I mean, already the securitization of the Super Bowl is beyond anything that you get outside of, say, the Olympics, or the World Cup. I mean, there’s going to be drone planes overhead, and this is typical, there’s going to be, of course, people who are undercover agents everywhere. Of course, what makes ICE different is what they represent in terms of being masked, badge, less armed, untrained and absolutely vicious. And according to a story I read today, not necessarily getting paid, which is absolutely hilarious, I hope they all starve, but the way they’ll operate is a real concern. I mean, let’s hope with Lewandowski, as has been in the case in the past, his bark is worse than his bite.
But I’ll tell you, if they start arresting people en masse at the Super Bowl, the political backlash to that is going to be very real. Trump attacks the Super Bowl. I mean, it’s like good. Do it. Do seriously. And with, like I said, football, it’s one of the last things that does bring people together, even though it’s run by right-wingers, it is the last vestige of the monoculture. And if Trump tries to put a stake in the heart of that too. Wow. Good luck to you in the midterms, buddy. That is, if we have them,
JW: The Super Bowl halftime show on Sunday – it’ll become the national center of opposition to Trump. You can read Dave Zirin and listen to his podcast @thenation.com. Dave, thanks for talking with us today.
DZ: Thanks so much, Jon.
