It’s hard to mount a culture war when your big counteroffensive looks like a youth-group lock-in made up of kids who found God in a megachurch but lost their personality somewhere in suburban Atlanta.
Alexis Wilkins, Kash Patel’s girlfriend, praised the artist’s messaging, then got backlash and swore she didn't even watch.
It appears that President Trump didn’t even bother to tune into Turning Point USA’s alternative, anti-immigrant “All-American Halftime Show.”Footage taken from inside Trump’s Super Bowl party at his Mar-a-Lago golf club showed the president and his invited guests watching Bad Bunny’s halftime show rather than TPUSA’s night of Jesus Christ, Kid Rock, and country music. Footage from inside Trump’s golf club Super Bowl party reveals the Bad Bunny half time show played on the big screens.What a bunch of hypocrites. pic.twitter.com/hF5scOGYek— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) February 9, 2026“This just proves it’s all performative,” one X user wrote, calling out Trump’s hypocrisy in not even putting on TPUSA’s halftime show. “They stoke the outrage but couldn’t care less as long as the peasants are fighting.”Trump later confirmed that he watched Bad Bunny instead of Kid Rock, in a classic long, angry Truth Social post Sunday evening. “The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence. Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World,” he wrote, apparently fuming. “There is nothing inspirational about this mess of a Halftime Show and watch, it will get great reviews from the Fake News Media, because they haven’t got a clue of what is going on in the REAL WORLD.” But based on Trump’s own actions, it’s the MAGA sycophants who watched the TPUSA halftime show—when their own president didn’t bother—who don’t know what’s going on in the “real world.” A Grammy-winning artist, perhaps the most popular in the Western hemisphere, put on a sprawling, jubilant show and spoke in Spanish almost the entire time. Kid Rock just did some weird lip syncing.
MAGA is fighting with itself over Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show.President Trump crashed out almost immediately after, complaining about Bad Bunny’s singing in Spanish and calling it a “‘slap in the face’ to our Country” in an angry Truth Social post. This is despite the fact that the message on the football at the end of the Puerto Rican artist’s show was “Together we are America.” But others on the right praised the message. Conservative influencer Emily Austin said, “Bad Bunny had the biggest stage in the world and could’ve made it political. He didn’t. He chose unity & love. You can celebrate different backgrounds and still love this country.”A former press aide to Trump, Harrison Fields, criticized conservatives who called Bad Bunny anti-American, saying, “Last time I checked, my Puerto Rico–born grandmother was a full American citizen—and she voted for Trump.” Vivianca Rodriguez, who worked on the Trump campaign, said that Trump supporters who complained were “alienating [the] Puerto Rican conservative base.” Even Alexis Wilkins, the girlfriend of FBI Director Kash Patel, praised the “branding” of Bad Bunny’s show.The right-wing discourse over the show also divided brothers Jake and Logan Paul. Jake, who called Bad Bunny a “fake American citizen,” was admonished by Logan, who said, “I love my brother but I don’t agree with this.” “Puerto Ricans are Americans & I’m happy they were given the opportunity to showcase the talent that comes from the island,” Logan posted on X.The MAGA right is probably going to fight over this instead of America’s actual issues. Some, like the president, can’t accept the fact that one of the world’s most popular stars speaks Spanish and is actually an American citizen born in a U.S. territory. Others recognize that Spanish speakers and Latinos vote too, and that most of the country didn’t switch to Turning Point USA’s alternative halftime show. The question is which side will win the argument.
Have policymakers identified ways to retool their industries, and their economies, to benefit from the mining supercycle?
The partial reopening of Gaza’s southern Rafah crossing with Egypt has been marked by chaos and severe restrictions imposed by Israel, as tens of thousands of Palestinians continue to wait for medical evacuation to receive urgent care outside the Gaza Strip. According to U.N. data, only 36 Palestinians in need of medical treatment were allowed to leave Gaza during the first four days of the crossing’s reopening. Palestinians permitted to reenter Gaza have also reported abuse and hourslong interrogations. This comes amid growing skepticism over the implementation of the second phase of the Trump-brokered ceasefire, which Israel has repeatedly violated with near-daily attacks across Gaza since the truce took effect in October. “No one inside Gaza is calling this a ceasefire,” says Arwa Damon, former CNN correspondent and the founder of INARA, a nonprofit organization that supports children impacted by war. She says ongoing Israeli restrictions on medical evacuation are essentially a death sentence for many people, including children. “They are either going to end up with permanent injury or they are going to die.”
With the 2026 Winter Olympics underway in Italy, we speak with writer and academic Jules Boykoff, author of six books about the Olympics, who says Milan is hosting the Games despite widespread public opposition from locals. Boykoff says that while the Olympics have attempted in recent years to institute some “cosmetic” reforms, “they don’t get at the core elements that really plague the Olympic Games, and that’s overspending, that’s the intensification of militarized policing, that’s greenwashing, that’s corruption, that’s the displacement of local populations.” Boykoff’s recent piece for The Nation, co-authored with Dave Zirin, is headlined “Get Ready for This Year’s Undemocratic, Debt-Ridden, and Mobster-Infused Winter Olympics.”
The two countries agreed to expand bilateral trade and investment in areas including mining, agriculture, renewable energy, and technology.
Data showed improved electricity supply in South Africa — which accounts for a quarter of the region’s consumption — led the boost.