Bruce Springsteen speaking at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey, on January 17, 2026.
(WAAY 31 News)Bruce Springsteen took a side against the Trump administration’s authoritarian abuses last May, when he launched his European tour with an impassioned denunciation of the president’s assault on basic civil liberties, and decried an ugly moment in which the United States “is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration.” Now Springsteen has brought the complaint home, with a clarity that is all the more immediate and necessary.
Before launching into a fiery rendition of his 1978 classic “The Promised Land” during a Saturday night show in his home state of New Jersey, Springsteen turned the crowd’s attention to Minnesota, where, on January 7, an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three who loved to sing, wrote poetry, and evidenced a concern for her neighbors that embodied the spirit of Springsteen’s epic paean to community and solidarity, “We Take Care of Our Own.”
“I wrote [‘The Promised Land’] as an ode to American possibility—both to the beautiful but flawed country that we are, and to the country that we could be,” Springsteen told the crowd. “Right now, we are living through incredibly critical times. The United States, the ideals and the values for which it stood for the past 250 years, is being tested as it has never been in modern times. Those values and those ideals have never been as endangered as they are right now.”
The crowd roared with approval as Springsteen continued:
“So, as we gather tonight in this beautiful display of love and care and thoughtfulness and community, if you believe in democracy and liberty, if you believe that truth still matters, it is worth speaking out. It is worth fighting for. If you believe in the power of the law and that no one stands above it, if you stand against heavily armed masked federal troops invading an American city, using Gestapo tactics against our fellow citizens, if you believe you don’t deserve to be murdered for exercising your American right to protest, then send a message to this president—as the mayor of that city has said—ICE should get the fuck out of Minneapolis.”
Above what had become thunderous applause, Springsteen announced, “This song is for you and the memory of a mother of three and American citizen, Renee Good.”
With that, Springsteen and his band broke into “The Promised Land,” a song that speaks of a storm that will “blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted” and “blow everything down that ain’t got the faith to stand its ground”—and about how, against the tempest and through it all, “I believe in a promised land.”
Years ago, Springsteen summed up his mission as an artist when he said, “I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.” The honesty with which Springsteen has conducted this decades-long examination has earned the songwriter the greatest honors the entertainment industry and the nation can grant. In addition to 20 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, an Academy Award, and a Special Tony Award for his critically acclaimed Springsteen on Broadway shows, he is an inducted member of both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He has also been given the Kennedy Center Honor and, in 2016, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama, who hailed him for “carrying the rest of us on his journey: asking us all what is the work for us to do in our short time here.”
It was an appropriate honor for a singer who, like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger before him, refused to surrender the dream of a promised land to the crude machinations of billionaire investors and the crooked politicians who serve them. “There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music,” Springsteen once said, “but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism.”
There are plenty of artists who soften as they age.
Not Springsteen.
With his denunciation of ICE violence in Minneapolis, he has once again proven himself to be as critical, questioning, angry, and, yes, patriotic as the times require.
