Springsteen opens with a warning, not an escape hatch

Bruce Springsteen said his 2026 Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour with the E Street Band would be political. In Minneapolis on Tuesday, he followed through with the sort of enthusiasm that makes “political” feel like a polite understatement.

Across a three-hour, 27-song set, Springsteen delivered four pointed speeches aimed squarely at President Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, the country’s richest figures and what he described as a widening national drift toward cruelty and chaos. There was still plenty of rock, which was fortunate for everyone involved, but the message was clear: this was not an evening built for easy nostalgia.

The show opened with a prayer for U.S. service members overseas, “we pray for their safe return,” and Springsteen dedicated the performance to “celebration and defense of American ideals.” He then kicked off with a cover of Edwin Starr’s 1970 Vietnam-era anthem “War,” a song he helped reintroduce to a new generation in 1983 and had not been playing on tour since then.

A free livestream covered the opening two songs, “War” and “Born in the U.S.A.” After that, viewers had to rely on witnesses, which may have been for the best if they were hoping for a light night.

A long speech, and not much ambiguity

Midway through the concert, Springsteen widened the beam and went after the current administration in a sustained, escalating monologue.

“We are living through some very dark times,” he said. “Our American values that have sustained us for 250 years are being challenged as never before. We’ve got our young men and women’s lives at risk in an unconstitutional and illegal war. This is happening now.

“There are immigrants being held in detention centers around the country and being deported without due process of law to alien countries and foreign gulags. This is happening now.

“Our Justice Department has completely abdicated its independence, and our attorney general, Pam Bondi, takes her marching orders straight from a corrupt White House. She prosecutes our president’s perceived enemies, covers up for his misdeeds and protects his powerful friends. This is happening now.

“The richest men in America have abandoned the world’s poorest children through death and disease, through their dismantling of USAID. This is happening now.

“We are abandoning NATO and the world order that’s kept us safe and at global peace for 80 years. This is happening now.

“We threaten our neighbors and our allies whose sons and daughters have fought alongside us in American wars with the predatory annexation of their land. This is happening now.

“Our museums are being told to whitewash American history of any unpleasant or inconvenient facts, like the full history of the brutality of slavery. You want to talk about snowflakes? We have a president who can’t handle the truth. This is happening now.

“While working Americans struggle, our president and his family enrich themselves by billions of dollars trading on the people’s office in corruption unmatched in American history. This is happening now.

“This White House is destroying the American idea and our reputation around the world. To many, we are no longer looked upon as an often imperfect but strong defender of democracy standing for the global good. We are no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. We are now, to many, America the reckless, unpredictable, predatory rogue nation. That is this administration’s and this president’s legacy. This is happening now.

“Honesty, honor, humility, compassion, thoughtfulness, morality, true strength, and decency, don’t let anybody tell you that these things don’t matter anymore. They do. They are at the heart of the kind of men and women we are, the kind of citizens we are, the kind of country we’ll be leaving to our children. So many of our elected leaders have failed us that this American tragedy can only be stopped by the American people. So join us and let’s fight for the America that we love.

“Are you with us?”

He repeated the final line several times as the band crashed into “My City in Ruins,” a song that began as a reflection on Asbury Park, then became a post-9/11 meditation on New York, and now lands as another reminder that the country is not exactly in a relaxed phase.

Minneapolis names, grief and a call to act

Springsteen also invoked the names of slain Twin Cities activists Renee Good and Alex Pretti twice during the night. Near the end of the show, he sat on a step at the front of the stage and explained why the performance had taken shape as a kind of pop-up tour after their deaths, which took place not far from Target Center a little more than two months earlier.

“These are the hard times, but we’ll make it through,” he said. “We’re the Americans. But I think, I know, for me, the hardest part about all of this is feeling the distance between your neighbors, your fellow citizens, and that distance, well, it can darken your soul. Now we have a leader who says he wishes nothing but ill upon the people he disagrees with, and who disagree with him. I don’t feel that way. America, from the beginning, was born out of disagreement. It was built on disagreement. We can argue about what course we thought the country should take while recognizing our common humanity, our dignity and, yes, our unity.”

He then referred to Good’s last words, captured on video as she spoke through her car window to the ICE agent who shot her moments later: “That’s fine, dude, I’m not mad at you.”

“God bless her. Tonight, when you go home,” Springsteen said, “hold your loved ones close. And tomorrow, do as Renée did: find a way to take aggressive, peaceful action to defend our country’s ideals. And as the great civil rights leader John Lewis said, ‘Go out and get in some good trouble.’ Say something, do something. Hell, sing something…

“If you’re feeling helpless, hopeless, betrayed, frustrated, angry, I know. I mean, that’s why the E Street Band is here tonight. This is a tour that was not planned. We’re here tonight because we need to feel your hope and your strength, and we want to bring some hope and some strength for you. I hope we did that. All I can say is God bless Alex Pretti, God bless Renee Good, God bless you and God bless America.”

The band ended the three-hour show the way it began, with a protest-era cover, this time Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom.”

He said the blowback was part of the job

Before the tour started, Springsteen told Jon Bream of the Minnesota Star Tribune that he expected the right to come after him for the political tone of the run and anything he said along the way.

“My job is very simple: I do what I want to do, I say what I want to say, and then people get to say what they want to say about it. I don’t worry about if you’re going to lose this part of your audience,” he said. “I’ve always had a feeling about the position we play culturally, and I’m still deeply committed to that idea of the band. The blowback is just part of it. I’m ready for all that.”

He had already touched on Good’s death in “Streets of Minneapolis,” the anti-ICE protest song he released on Jan. 28 and first performed publicly on Jan. 30 at a “Defend Minnesota” benefit concert near Target Center at First Avenue, where organizer Tom Morello also appeared. Morello is part of the new tour as a guest guitarist.

Springsteen and Trump have been trading insults for a while now, because apparently no one is letting this one go quietly. In May 2025, Springsteen opened an overseas tour in Manchester with a speech describing a “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration” that was “taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers,” and accused it of abandoning allies and siding with dictators. He repeated a version of that speech throughout the European leg, and some on the right apparently assumed he would not bring the same energy back to the United States.

He did.

Trump, for his part, previously called Springsteen “highly overrated,” “not a talented guy,” “just a pushy, obnoxious JERK” and “a dried up prune.”