SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
maga
Bad Bunny vs. MAGA’s Bigoted Vision of America
The hatefulness and histrionics of Trump's allies exemplify how the ill-formed and culturally biased so easily make fools of themselves.
Nov 08, 2025
The selection of musical megastar Bad Bunny to headline the Super Bowl’s halftime show has ignited a storm of controversy among conservative circles. The ostensive reason is that Bad Bunny (born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) is a Puerto Rican who sings in Spanish, and thus according to his MAGA critics, he does not represent “America.”
For the new form of conservativism known as MAGA, the vision of America and Americans is narrow, and does not include the likes of Bad Bunny. Newsmax host Greg Kelly, for instance, claimed Bad Bunny “hates America, hates President Trump, hates ICE, [and] hates the English language!” Fox News host Tomi Lahren, meanwhile, claimed Bad Bunny is “Not an American artist.” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson not only mislabeled Bad Bunny as “Bad Bunny Rabbit,” he argued Bad Bunny was not a role model, calling for replacing him with someone with “broader Appeal,” like 82-year-old Lee Greenwood.
The Bad Bunny controversy raises the question: what is America and how should it be represented?
The histrionics of MAGA leaders exemplify how the ill-formed and culturally biased so easily make fools of themselves. For instance, the trope that Bad Bunny is not American demonstrates profound ignorance. Bad Bunny was born in Bayamon, Puerto Rico. As such, he was a United States citizen at birth. Puerto Rico has been a US possession since its conquest in 1898, and its residents have been US citizens since the passage of the Jones Act in 1917.
As for Bad Bunny hating America, this claim is nothing short of odd. Though Bad Bunny did not support candidate Trump in 2024, and disagrees with ICE roundups, 75 million Americans did not vote for President Trump (something that residents of Puerto Rico cannot do), and we suspect millions of others, including the authors here, do not support mass ICE roundups. Such free speech stances, which are at the core of the First Amendment of the Constitution, in no way reflect any disdain for this country. As James Baldwin poignantly taught decades ago, and is the case for millions of others today, it is our love for this country that leads us to question it in order to push it towards our laudable goals of freedom and equality.
Further, Bad Bunny singing in Spanish in no way means he hates this country or its dominant language, English. Bad Bunny is fluent in English but prefers to sing in his native tongue of Spanish. While Trump proclaimed English as the country’s official language, such a declaration does not carry the weight of law. That edict also appears to run afoul of a host of US Supreme Court decisions embracing our multicultural and multilingual country, including Meyer v. Nebraska, which held invalid efforts to forbid teaching foreign languages, and Lau v. Nichols. holding that failure to provide non-English instruction violated students’ civil rights.
The United States of America is a multicultural, multiracial nation made up of the descendants of immigrants from all over the world, as well as Indigenous nations and other lands that were conquered during a period of US imperial expansion in the 19th century. Puerto Ricans have fought bravely and died valiantly in America’s wars since WWI, and they contribute in numerous ways to make America great. So, why being a Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican makes of Bad Bunny less of an American in MAGA cohorts?
For months now, we have been witnessing a whitewashing of the American experience spearheaded by the Trump administration. Museums, colleges and universities, and even our very diverse military have all been forced to scrub references to the valuable contributions made by women, people of color, and immigrants (except for white ones).
Puerto Ricans, a Spanish-speaking, Latin American people of color (who also happen to be US citizens), do not fit the MAGA mold, and Bad Bunny’s fame is a reminder that our nation, based on the principle of E pluribus unum (Out of many, one) can be proudly represented by many people in many ways.
Previous Super Bowl halftime performers, many of them foreign-born, have reflected our nation’s best (and diverse) talents, but suddenly, a Puerto Rican is not American enough? Turning Point USA’s “All American” alternative halftime show is quite revealing of MAGA’s cultural whitewashing attempts by promising “Anything in English.”
This piece was first published in the Miami Herald.
Keep ReadingShow Less
A Declaration of Independence From Fear
If we have any chance of saving our Republic, and I believe we do, that chance will have to come from the public itself. And it will take all of us.
Oct 08, 2025
Cruelty, including a lust for vengeance, largely defines President Donald Trump’s character. And with an enemies list that is nearly limitless, he will never lack for targets. Among his self-declared enemies is the entire Democratic Party. Democrats, according to Trump, are a radical, evil, and dangerous lot. Going a step further, he has also declared that Democrats “are the party of hate, evil, and Satan.” The same goes for the political left in general. To Trump’s mind, all these people, representing approximately half of the nation’s population based upon election results, are evil and deserve punishment. They are, as Trump tells us, the enemy within.
But it would be a mistake to assume vengeance is Trump’s ultimate goal. Yes, he is vindictive, and, yes, he enjoys hurting people who he feels crossed him; but he clearly also has grander dreams. His quite transparent goal, one he shares with other authoritarian leaders, is spreading fear: fear of arrest, fear of unjustified prosecution, fear of becoming the target of a federal investigation leading to ruinous legal fees, fear of losing one’s job, fear of being harassed online.
The ultimate point of this, of course, is to frighten his opponents to the point they will back down and remain silent.
Fear is a powerful weapon in the hands of an authoritarian, something Trump and MAGA are proving every day. In the age of Trump, fear can cause people to think twice before speaking out, avoid taking part in peaceful protests, and dropping out of political advocacy altogether. Locking their political doors, pulling down the shades, and hiding.
Donald Trump has made his position clear: Only Democrats and other Trump resisters need worry about federal prosecution.
You can almost smell the fear. It saturates the air around us. And it is working in just the way Trump and his flunkies intended. A politically engaged progressive woman I know recently told me that she had stopped posting political comments on Bluesky or otherwise making political statements. She was afraid that one day she would be punished, or even physically attacked, for speaking her mind.
A man I know slightly, let’s call him Ben, excitedly posted the news that he had accepted employment in a leadership position with a local progressive organization. Shortly after posting this message, Ben received an email from someone he didn’t know suggesting that he should rethink that decision. The man sending the email also said that he knew both Ben’s address and Ben’s daughter’s address. He then included the two addresses in the email to show he wasn’t bluffing. With his family threatened, Ben decided to pass on the job.
Trump has repeatedly said that his political opponents are evil and deserve to be prosecuted and jailed. On occasion he will even suggest they should be executed. On other occasions he says things that seem calculated to encourage his supporters to use violence against those who oppose him. A few examples: “If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of them, would you? Seriously, okay? Just knock the hell—I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise, I promise.”
Here is another oldie but goodie: “I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump—I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”
While there are, of course, other examples of Donald Trump suggesting that the use of violence against his opponents is justified, let’s end with one very recent comment: "It's gonna get worse, and ultimately it's gonna go back on them (the political left). Bad things happen when they play these games. I'll give you a little clue—the right is a lot tougher than the left."
Trump has also made it clear that his followers have little reason to worry about being prosecuted for crimes they commit, at least at the federal level. All that is needed is for the Trump sycophants embedded at the top of the Justice Department to quietly end the investigation or dismiss the charges, something they have been doing with troubling frequency. If that doesn’t happen, Trump can simply pardon the offenders as he has also done often, most notoriously pardoning everyone who took part in the riot at the capital on January 6, including those who viciously assaulted capital police officers.
Donald Trump has made his position clear: Only Democrats and other Trump resisters need worry about federal prosecution. Democratic politicians who have rubbed him the wrong way are to be prosecuted whether or not there is evidence to support the charges. Republican politicians and anyone else who supports Trump, on the other hand, are untouchable.
The message this sends to his most ardent supporters could not be clearer. If you engage in lawless, even violent, actions against his opponents, you need not worry. He has your back.
Given this state of play, it would be foolhardy for any Trump critic to not at least consider the possibility of blowback. I will admit that even with my exceedingly small footprint, making me an unlikely initial target, I have moments of fear thinking about what will happen to me if Trump succeeds in completing his apparent goal of establishing a totalitarian form of governance in America, with him in charge.
The truth is, Trump is already well along in consolidating power into his own hands. It only took a few months for Trump to destroy our vaunted Separation of Powers. So far, at least, neither the Republican-controlled Congress nor our current ultra-conservative Supreme Court have raised a finger to fight back in defense of democracy. Every day the darkness enveloping this nation seems to grow darker.
So, yes, I will confess to moments of fear which have led to thoughts of backing away from speaking out on political issues. I have enough problems already, I have told myself, do I really want to get involved with all this? But I always come back to the same thing. If we have any chance of saving our Republic, and I believe we do, that chance will have to come from the public itself. And it will take all of us.
This essay then is my personal Declaration of Independence from fear. A commitment I am making to myself to never allow fear to stop me from speaking out. Because on the day one too many Americans have given in to their fears and withdrawn from the defense of democracy, the cause is lost.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The NYT's Myopic Analysis of Trump’s Polling Misses the Story by Centering His Base
Focusing only on GOP voters distorts Trump’s real standing, and his party's chances heading into the midterms.
Oct 02, 2025
The New York Times is an incredibly reliable source for anyone seeking to understand the world we live in. In addition, the Times’ polling partner Sienna College is one of the best and most accurate polling organization. So, I was shocked by the analysis in an article “After Volatile Summer, Trump’s Approval Remains Low but Stable, Poll Finds” by Shane Goldmacher and Ruth Igielnik. In their article, Goldmacher and Igielnik argue that:
President Trump’s efforts to send National Guard troops to big cities, punish media organizations, and pressure universities and private businesses are all unpopular with voters. But the continued torrent of policies and tactics has not further weakened Mr. Trump’s overall standing, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Siena University. Instead, Mr. Trump continues to retain the support of roughly nine out of 10 Republican voters. The net result: an unpopular president with an unchanged approval rating of 43 percent.
Now, in all fairness, the Times’ reporting is technically correct. However, it misses the real point: Independent voters have abandoned US President Donald Trump. Saying that Trump is unpopular, but his approval rating is stable is like saying that a student is getting a C minus grade, but he or she has not fallen to a D plus. Let’s look a little deeper into the Times/Sienna College polling.
As the Times reported, 68% of Republican voters strongly approve of Trump’s job performance. On the other hand, 86% of Democrats and 50% of Independent voters strongly disapprove of Trump’s job performance. Furthermore, just under 1 in 3 of Trump’s base, white non-college voters (31%) strongly disapprove of Trump’s job performance.
Overall, 45% of registered voters say that Trump has made the economy worse while 32% say better and 20% are not sure. A 48% plurality of Independent voters think that Trump has made the economy worse. As other polling has found, Trump’s standing with Hispanic voters continues to drop. The Times/Sienna polling finds that fully 58% of Hispanic voters think Trump has made the economy worse.
Rather than drawing the conclusion that “Trump’s polling is bad, but stable,” the Times could have concluded that: “Fully 43 percent of registered voters strongly disapprove of Trump’s performance on his key signature issue of immigration.” The second paragraph of the Times story could have easily argued that “Just 39 percent of Independents approve of Trump’s job performance on immigration.”
Another key point that the Times missed was that among Independent voters, a 49% plurality say they would vote for the Democratic candidate for Congress, while 39% say the GOP and 12% are undecided. While the 2026 midterms are a long time for now and lots of things cad and will happen, a 10-point advantage for a generic Democrat is a substantial advantage.
Thus, while it may be true that Trump’s poll numbers have stabilized, they have stabilized at a very low level. Voters are critical of Trump’s stewardship of the economy and far from impressed on his key signature issue of immigration. In what may be the most important piece of data from the Times/Sienna polling, looking toward the 2026 midterm election, Independents are giving the Democrats a substantial advantage.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular