MAGA isn’t going to like this halftime show.
Midway through the Packers-Cowboys game on Sunday appeared a 23-second commercial. Like all things Benito Ocasio Martinez, it was deceptively simple. The video begins close in on the face of the impish superstar in a palm-leaf pava hat, a stunning beachfront sunset—the kind that only Puerto Rico can deliver—behind him. Waves crash and seagulls cry as we hear the opening notes of his dreamy track “Callaita” and the camera begins to zoom out. The singer is sitting on a goalpost in a suit and flip-flops, casually swinging his legs. It’s official: Bad Bunny will headline the 2026 Super Bowl halftime show.
Tuning into the Super Bowl is one of the last shared cultural experiences in our divided country, and the announcement has ignited another round in the culture wars over what “real America” should look and sound like.
Bad Bunny, or Benito, as he’s affectionately referred to by his fans, is closing out a historic year. In January, his latest album hit a billion streams in just 13 days. Rather than tour to promote the album, the artist announced a summer-long residency in his homeland of Puerto Rico, called “No me quiero ir de aquí” (“I don’t want to leave here”). The 31 shows at the José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum, known as El Choli, were an unapologetic celebration of Puerto Rican music and culture that reverberated far beyond those of us lucky enough to catch one of the shows in person. The final performance in late September was timed to the anniversary of Hurricane Maria and livestreamed on Amazon Music; it shattered the platform’s records, surpassing even Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
Bad Bunny has said he wanted to avoid touring in the continental United States to protect his fans from being targeted by ICE agents. But he had Latinos all over the U.S. dancing and singing in Spanish, our heads held high, during what has otherwise been a very, very bad year.
Latino dehumanization is a hallmark of the Trump administration. Videos of masked ICE officers making violent arrests have been shared regularly across social media. Latinos are hardly the only people being rounded up and deported, but it is Latino faces—shoved to the asphalt, crying for their children and for mercy—that symbolize victory to the MAGA radicals. It is Latino faces that have been turned into degrading memes. Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that ICE and Border Patrol officers are within their rights to stop anyone who, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent, “looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work in a low wage job.”
Attacks on Latino people have happened in tandem with attacks on Latino culture. English has been declared the “official” language in the U.S.; the White House deleted its Spanish-language website on day one of this administration. Plans for a Latino-history branch of the Smithsonian have been halted.
