Country star's anti-ICE ballad has MAGA singing the blues

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Country music stars have long touted the greatness of the red, white, and blue, but singer Zach Bryan is drawing a line in the red clay dirt when it comes to ICE raids.

The Grammy-winning artist released a snippet of a new song that paints a heartbreaking picture of scared children alone after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raid their homes.

“And ICE is gonna come bust down your door / Try to build a house no one builds no more / Well I got a telephone / Kids are all scared and all alone,” the Oklahoman belted over a steely guitar in a teaser track posted to Instagram.

Bryan’s song continues with an apparent reference to President Donald Trump’s impact on the United States.

“The bar stopped bumpin’, the rock stopped rolling / The middle finger’s rising and it won’t stop showin’ / Got some bad news / The fadin’ of the red, white, and blue.”

Those who know the moody singer are likely not surprised by his anti-ICE lyrics. After all, Bryan stood by transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney when conservatives boycotted Bud Light for an LGBTQ+-friendly ad featuring the influencer.

“I just think insulting transgender people is completely wrong because we live in a country where we can all just be who we want to be,” he posted via X in 2023. Bryan’s X account has since been deleted for unrelated reasons.

But conservatives—who are commonly, if incorrectly, associated with country music due to the blue-collar themes common in twangy ballads—were predictably riled up by Bryan’s latest song.

MAGA mega-influencers like Benny Johnson said that Bryan risks losing his whole fanbase because of his stance.

“[Bryan] just drew over 112,000 fans to what became the largest concert in U.S. history last week,” Johnson tweeted. “Now, that will never happen again. When will they learn?”

But Fox News Nation contributor and Big & Rich singer John Rich had a softer approach.

“Zach Bryan has every right to record a song bashing law enforcement, and fans have every right to keep supporting his career, or not,” he tweeted Tuesday.

“Capitalism isn't cancellation. Who knows, maybe there's a large ‘anti law enforcement’ wing of the country music fanbase,” Rich said. “We'll soon find out.”

While Johnson and Rich seem to think that being critical of ICE and law enforcement is at odds with country music, at least some people recall the era of country culture entrenched in bootlegging and giving a middle finger to the cops they were running from.

From “Smokey and the Bandit” and “The Dukes of Hazzard” to Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson, anti-law rhetoric was prevalent across the South for decades—until Sept. 11 changed the tune of country music forever.

Following the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, most country musicians banded together in a nationalist, pro-establishment tune of defense and unity that was quickly adopted by conservative talking heads.

Despite the needed history lesson for right-leaning listeners protesting Bryan’s music, he’s not the only music artist prompting rage from the right.

Last week, the NFL announced that Reggaeton superstar Bad Bunny would be headlining the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show.

Like clockwork, conservatives began denouncing the NFL’s decision to tap the artist because of his Puerto Rican roots, Spanish-language music, and decision to skip mainland U.S. tour dates out of fear that ICE agents would target his fans.

Many MAGA luminaries like Tomi Lahren tried to say the Puerto Rican artist—whose full name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio—isn’t American. But she was quickly reminded that Puerto Rico is, in fact, a territory of the United States, and Bad Bunny is as American as she is.

The push to cancel and boycott artists who don’t fully embrace the White House’s pro-ICE, pro-nationalist views is growing across the far right.

And while conservatives previously claimed they were champions of free speech, that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

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