At the Golden Globes on Jan. 11, allegedly progressive Hollywood barely mentioned the Immigration and Customs Enforcement siege taking place in Minneapolis. Most didn’t gesture to the Trump administration’s war on free speech, particularly in the media. (In fairness, there were some who spoke out on the red carpet, and others wore pins indicating their support for Renee Good, who had been killed four days before by an ICE agent, but it was a very small contingent.)
The reluctance shouldn’t have been too surprising. America’s elite institutions and wealthy individuals have been among the most cowardly of all stakeholders in the country since Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025. Still, of all of them, Hollywood should have been out there saying something. The film industry has experience with blacklists and government witch hunts, and they should have realized what’s at stake — and how much they could stand to lose.
But Saturday’s fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive-care unit nurse at a local Veterans Affairs hospital, by Border Patrol officers in Minneapolis seems to have broken the entertainment industry out of its stupor. In the last few days there have been numerous statements from actors and musicians condemning ICE’s actions and demanding that the Trump administration end its mass deportation campaign and hold the perpetrators accountable. Reddit forums like FauxMoi are featuring anti-ICE statements from celebrities over the past few days — including Glenn Close, Billie Eilish, Ethan Hawke, Natalie Portman, Katy Perry, Edward Norton and many others — while also posting videos and commentary usually confined to political sites.
But it’s not just artists who are speaking out. As the Washington Post reported, “influencers devoted to adventure biking, baseball and Lord of the Rings to travel, sewing and women’s personal finance” have posted their outrage at Pretti’s killing, and their followers are weighing in with similar sentiments. Even a sub-Reddit devoted to playing your cat’s behind like a bongo — which has 800,000 participants! — came out swinging against ICE, with its moderator declaring, “If you still support Trump/ICE even slightly, you’re not welcome in this sub. We can no longer tolerate the people who are supporting or making excuses for this.”
Everyone from fitness influencers to military groups to quilters are weighing in, and there is surprising agreement in the comments.
Other cat lovers have also been taking a stand. On his Instagram “Business Cats” feed, comedian Drennon Davis has been posting his cats singing protest songs for the last couple of weeks. He similarly invites his followers who disagree to deport themselves to another forum if they don’t like it. In both cat cases, the up votes far outnumber the down votes. Everyone from fitness influencers to military groups to quilters are weighing in, and there is surprising agreement in the comments. Even a Reddit sex forum devoted to large penises waded into the topic.
Apolitical institutions are speaking out as well. Minnesota’s professional sports teams issued a joint statement calling for the “immediate de-escalation of tensions,” and the National Basketball Players Association announced that they “stand in solidarity with the people in Minnesota protesting and risking their lives to demand justice.” At an NBA game on Sunday, the Minnesota Timberwolves held a moment of silence for Pretti, and fans followed by yelling “F**k ICE!” and holding up protest signs throughout the arena. No altercations were reported.
Even in Silicon Valley, which has famously cozied up to Trump, “more than 800 employees, including those from Google, Microsoft, and Meta, called on their bosses to condemn ICE,” according to a Semafor. A couple of the big bosses, Sam Altman of Open AI and Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei, spoke out against the agency’s authoritarian tactics. (They also bowed and scraped to Trump at the same time, but baby steps.)
Social media is responsible for this swift evolution. In the immediate aftermath of Saturday’s shooting, the administration disseminated a narrative that was belied by the many videos of Pretti’s killing that were circulated across all the platforms. The graphic footage went instantly viral, with trusted influencers all over the internet sharing it and offering their own opinion, which created a permission structure and an invitation for people who are not immersed in politics to take a position.
Suddenly, what had always been apolitical forums have become platforms for the famous and non-famous alike to condemn the Trump administration’s deportation tactics — and that may have marked a turning point in the Trump administration’s assault on democracy. The normies got involved.
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With the extreme polarization of our political information ecosystem, most of us exist, at least to some extent, inside media echo chambers. Regular people now pick up on current events in a more random fashion. After the 2024 presidential election, many Americans holding more mainstream, centrist beliefs backed off from participating in the political conversation, and they have been reluctant to join in again because of how chaotic and emotionally charged it has become. But when your quilting group on Facebook starts posting “F**k ICE” quilts and your favorite Instagram cats are singing protest songs, you start to pay attention.
On Wednesday, Bruce Springsteen — who has been a steady voice for the downtrodden throughout his long career — released “Streets of Minneapolis,” a moving protest anthem based on his Academy Award-winning song “Streets of Philadelphia.” The Boss’ lyrics — “Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice / Singing through the bloody mist” — have struck a chord; the track instantly garnered national media attention and has gone viral online.
The people Springsteen is singing about — the thousands of regular folks in Minneapolis who have emerged from their homes in bitterly cold weather to take to the streets in peaceful protest against Trump’s occupying paramilitary force — are a model of courage for the rest of America. And the horror of seeing two of them shot down by masked federal agents has sent a shock wave through the population. Politics has escaped the news silos — the true story of what’s happening in Minneapolis is now out in the world in a way that few stories ever are these days.
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Even some Trump voters are starting to rebel. The gun groups, who were slow off the mark, are now condemning the administration’s line, reiterated by Trump on Tuesday, that Pretti shouldn’t have had a gun, despite possessing a conceal-carry permit. Polls show a sharp decline in support for the president’s mass deportation policy, and his approval ratings are continuing their descent into the 30s. The response of focus groups of voters who chose Trump in 2024 after going with Biden in 2020 should send chills down GOP spines. “You know, they killed that young man and they killed that young lady a couple weeks ago too,” one participant said. “They’re out of hand. [Trump’s] main priority, I think, for the last couple of months, [has] been the Nobel Peace Prize which is ridiculous.”
It is indeed ridiculous, as is the fact that the president’s first words after Pretti’s shooting was a lengthy Truth Social screed complaining about a possible delay of his precious White House ballroom.
Average Americans are seeing that Trump is more and more out of touch, and they’re recognizing, as that Trump voter has, that his administration is more and more out of hand. They likely wouldn’t be seeing it now if not for the influencers and others who are using their platforms to share their outrage in online communities where politics isn’t usually discussed. For all its toxicity — and it is profoundly toxic — in this instance, social media actually did some good.
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