In an unannounced stage appearance at the 2026 Light of Day Winterfest, Bruce Springsteen excoriated President Donald Trump and ICE‘s invasive presence in Minneapolis following an agent’s killing of Renee Good.
While performing at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, N.J., the pioneering heartland rocker and staunch Trump critic paused before introducing his next song, 1978’s “The Promised Land,” a quintessential working-class ballad about despair and resilience.
“I wrote this song as an ode to American possibility, it was [about] both the beautiful but flawed country that we are, and to the country that we could be,” the Grammy, Academy and Tony Award winner said, per local reports and footage posted online. “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.”
He continued, “So as we gather tonight in this beautiful display of love and care and thoughtfulness and community — if you believe in democracy, in liberty; if you believe that truth still matters, that it’s worth speaking out, that 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 and 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.”
Concluding, Springsteen dedicated the track to the audience and to Good, whose Jan. 7 slaying by agent Jonathan Ross — just blocks away from the 2020 police killing of George Floyd — has escalated tensions between an aggrieved public and an increasingly hostile ICE.
“And as the mayor of that city has said, ‘ICE should get the fuck out of Minneapolis.’ Then this one is for you, and the memory of the mother of three and American citizen Renee Good.”
Earlier today, the Justice Department said it would not be investigating Good’s killing.
