Trump's Least Favorite Words, in One Terrifying Song
Last year, a lot of indie-music fans—including myself—got someone else's packing list stuck in their head. I'd walk around muttering 'Milk thistle, calcium, high-rise, boot cut / Advil, black jeans, blue jeans'—lyrics hissed out by the art-punk legend Kim Gordon on a song called 'Bye Bye.' The track led off her album The Collective, one of the most acclaimed releases of 2024. Over hard hip-hop beats and snarling guitar distortion, Gordon stammered about daily banalities, reframing modern life as a psychological war zone.
Now the 72-year-old co-founder of Sonic Youth has released a new version of the song, called 'Bye Bye 25.' The music is largely the same, but the lyrics are new, and they start like this:
mental health
electric vehicle
Gulf of Mexico
energy conversion
gay
bird flu
These are among the terms that the Trump administration has tried to minimize from public life. PEN America has assembled a list of at least 350 phrases that federal authorities have, this year, scrubbed from government websites and materials (including school curricula), flagged as necessitating extra review in official documents and proposals, or discouraged the use of among staffers. The attention paid to these words reflects Trump's crusade against diversity, equity, and inclusion, as well as his team's stances on policy issues such as energy and vaccines. Gordon picked some of these words to rework 'Bye Bye'—making her, somewhat curiously, one of the few established musicians to release music directly inspired by Trump's second term.
For all the chaos and consternation caused by the president this year, the entertainment world's response has been relatively muted. Bruce Springsteen, that liberal stalwart, kicked off his tour with an anti-Trump sermon; stars such as Doechii and Lady Gaga have made awards-show speeches in support of immigrants, trans people, and protesters. But outright protest music responding to recent events has been rare. 'I think people are kind of mostly just still stunned and don't know what to do,' Gordon told me in a video chat earlier this week.
The memory of what happened the last time around might be contributing to the hesitation. Trump's rise to power in 2016 spurred a quick response from popular culture, resulting in diss tracks (Nipsey Hussle and YG's 'FDT') and provocations from luminaries (remember Madonna wanting to explode the White House?). The indie-rock world united for a compilation called Our First 100 Days: one track released for each of Trump's first 100 days in office. But today, many of those efforts feel like either artifacts of a bygone movement—the pink-hatted #Resistance—or simply inconsequential. When I spoke with Gordon, she said, with a laugh, that she had no memory of contributing to the Our First 100 Days project.
The new version of 'Bye Bye' caught my attention because it's deadpan funny, and because it avoids some of the pitfalls that await many anti-Trump protest efforts. The president and many of his supporters seem to use liberal outrage as fuel, which means strident criticism has a way of backfiring. Steve Bannon's stated strategy to 'flood the zone with shit'—to stoke multiple incendiary media narratives every day—can make knowing what to protest first difficult. The firing of human-rights workers? The extrajudicial deportations? The dehumanization of trans people? The bid to turn Gaza into a resort? How do you pick?
Gordon's song cuts across topic areas by highlighting the dark absurdity of an ascendant political tactic: controlling policy by controlling language. It also doesn't sloganeer; instead, it presents a patently ridiculous jumble of terms for listeners to reflect on. (Theoretically, a MAGA loyalist might even enjoy the sound of diversity-related jargon becoming a heavy-metal hit list). 'I wanted to have some really mundane, weird words in there like allergy or measles or tile drainage,' she told me. 'It's unrealistic to think they could actually ban these words, because everyone uses them every day. But I think if they had their ultimate fantasy, maybe.'
Gordon and her former band, Sonic Youth, emanate the kind of inscrutable hauteur that might seem at odds with outright protest. But this is not her first such effort in this vein. Sonic Youth arose out of the punk-rock underground of the 1980s that was boiling with outrage against Ronald Reagan. In 1992, their song 'Youth Against Fascism' featured Thurston Moore—the band's other singer, and Gordon's now-ex-husband—sneering, 'Yeah, the president sucks / He's a war pig fuck.' That same year, the Gordon-led 'Swimsuit Issue' skewered male chauvinism, a topic she returned to with the hilarious 'I'm a Man' on The Collective.
Talking with her, I remembered that though Gordon is often associated with Gen X disaffection, she's really a Baby Boomer who came of age attending Vietnam War protests and listening to folk music. The video for 'Bye Bye 25' splices images from the recent anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles with shots of her holding cue cards in the style of Bob Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' video. She told me her favorite protest song is Neil Young's 'Ohio,' which decried the state violence at Kent State University in 1970. Young, she suspected, didn't intend to write an out-and-out rallying cry. 'Those lyrics were describing a time,' she said. 'That's what I hope I'm doing with my music and my lyrics—really describing what's going on.'
Article originally published at The Atlantic
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
a minute ago
- Los Angeles Times
A Congolese refugee's 8-year struggle to reunite with her family in the U.S.
BOISE, Idaho — The Congolese woman's search for safety sent her on a terrifying trek of nearly 2,300 miles through southern Africa on foot when she was just 15. Reuniting with her family has been a more difficult journey. For eight years, she clung to hope through delays and setbacks as she navigated a U.S. program that reconnects refugees with family members already in the country, and her dream of seeing them again seemed close to becoming a reality. But President Trump signed an executive order halting the refugee program just hours after he took office on Jan. 20, leaving her and thousands of other refugees stranded. 'It was horrible. I would never wish for anyone to go through that, ever. When I think about it, I just ...' she said, pausing to take a long breath. 'Honestly, I had given up. I told my mom maybe it was just not meant for us to see each other again.' During a brief block on the order, the woman made it into the U.S., one of only about 70 refugees to arrive in the country since Trump took office. She asked that her name not be used because she fears retaliation. 'It's been a really devastating roller coaster for those families, to be stuck in this limbo of not knowing whether their hope of being resettled in the United States will ever come true,' said Melissa Keaney, an attorney with the International Refugee Assistance Project. The woman was an infant when her mother fled the Democratic Republic of Congo's civil war in 1997, seeking shelter at Tanzania's Nyarugusu refugee camp. When the camp grew too dangerous, she fled for South Africa. She built a modest life there, always hoping she would rejoin her family, even after they were resettled in the U.S. For a time, that seemed likely, thanks to the 'follow to join' program. The refugee program had bipartisan support for decades, allowing people displaced by war, natural disaster or persecution to legally migrate to the U.S. and providing a pathway to citizenship. But Trump's executive order halting the program said communities didn't have the ability to 'absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees.' Organizations like the International Refugee Assistance Project and some refugees, including the Congolese woman and her mother, sued over Trump's order in February. They said resettlement agencies were forced to lay off hundreds of workers and some refugees were left in dangerous places. 'I had a small business and told everyone, 'I'm out now,'' she said. 'It felt like this door had just been opened, and I was running toward it when — boom! — they push it shut right in front of me.' Looking back on her time in the Nyarugusu refugee camp, she remembers teaching her little brother to ride a bike and whispering with her sister late at night. She remembers hunger and fear as attacks on refugees foraging outside the camp increased. 'You see someone hanged, and that brings fear,' she said. 'You don't know if you'll be next. You don't know if they're waiting for you.' By 2012, the camp was especially dangerous for teen girls, who were at risk of being kidnapped or assaulted. With little hope of a viable future, her mother made a plan: The 15-year-old would walk to South Africa, where she would have a better chance of finishing school and building a life. Her siblings were too young to make the journey, so she would have to go alone. She didn't know the way, so joined other travelers, often going without food during the six-week journey. The crossing from Mozambique into Zimbabwe was deep in a forest. The group she was following had hired a guide, but he abandoned them in the middle of the night. Under the thin moonlight, the group walked toward a cellphone tower in the distance, hoping to find civilization. 'How we made it to the other side was only God,' she said. In Durban, South Africa, she finished school, started a tailoring business, joined a church and volunteered helping homeless people. Then in 2016, the 19-year-old got unexpected news: Her family was being resettled in the United States, without her. 'It happened so fast,' she said. 'When I left, the idea of them going to be resettled was never in the mind at all.' Her family settled in Boise, Idaho, and her mother signed her up for the 'follow to join' program in 2017. The program often takes years and requires strict vetting with interviews, medical exams and documentation. At the start of 2020, the woman was asked to provide a DNA sample, typically one of the final steps. Then the COVID pandemic hit. For the next several years, her case foundered. A social worker would send her to the local consulate, where she'd be told to go back to the social worker. 'It went on and on,' she said. Last year, her case was handed over to lawyers volunteering their time 'and that's when we started seeing some light.' By January, she had her travel documents and gave up her home. But her plane ticket wasn't issued before Trump took office. Within hours, he suspended the refugee program, and the consulate told the woman she could no longer have her passport and visa. 'That was the worst moment of my life,' she said. Nearly 130,000 refugees had conditional approval to enter the U.S. when Trump halted the program, the administration said in court documents. At least 12,000 of them were about to travel. The aid groups' lawsuit asks a judge to declare Trump's executive order illegal. A federal judge granted a nationwide injunction temporarily blocking the order in late February. An appeals court blocked most of the injunction weeks later. But that brief legal window was enough: A group of refugee advocates donated funds to cover the woman's flight to the U.S. Her family met her at the airport in March — a joyful reunion more than a dozen years in the making. 'They made a feast, and there were drinks and songs and we'd dance,' she said, smiling. The appeals court ordered the government to admit thousands more conditionally accepted refugees, but the administration has created new roadblocks, Keaney said, including decreasing the time refugees' security screenings are valid to 30 days —- down from three years. 'It causes cascades in delays, setting people back months or more,' Keaney said. Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are waiting for the courts to decide what the government must do to comply with the ruling. The Congolese woman, now 28, is still getting to know her youngest brothers, who were children when she left for South Africa. One is now a father. 'It's been a long time and a lot has changed, you know, on my side and on their side,' she said. 'I'm still on that learning journey. We are getting to bond again.' Boise is friendly, but she hasn't escaped the worries she hoped to leave behind. She fears being exposed as the plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Trump administration will turn her family into targets for harassment. 'Home is where my family is. If me being known can bring any kind of negative impact ... I don't want to even imagine that happening,' she said. Boone writes for the Associated Press.
New York Post
a minute ago
- New York Post
Trump will be present at Kennedy Center as honorees are announced today
President Donald Trump, embracing his new role as chairman of the Kennedy Center, was set to be on hand Wednesday as the recipients of its annual award are announced, and both he and the performing arts venue hint at coming renovations to its building. Trump avoided the Kennedy Center Honors awards program during his first term after artists said they would not attend out of protest. This year, the Republican president has taken over as the Kennedy Center's new chairman and fired the board of trustees, which he replaced with loyalists. 3 President Trump, embracing his new role as chairman of the Kennedy Center, was set to be on hand Wednesday as the recipients of its annual award are announced. AP In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump teased a name change for the center, formally the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and said it would be restored to its past glory. 'GREAT Nominees for the TRUMP/KENNEDY CENTER, whoops, I mean, KENNEDY CENTER, AWARDS,' Trump wrote. He said work was being done on the site that would be 'bringing it back to the absolute TOP LEVEL of luxury, glamour, and entertainment.' 'It had fallen on hard times, physically, BUT WILL SOON BE MAKING A MAJOR COMEBACK!!!' he wrote. In a statement on its social media feed, the Kennedy Center said it is 'honored' to host Trump, who will be visiting for the third time since January, and hinted that he would announce a construction project. 'Thanks to his advocacy, our beautiful building will undergo renovations to restore its prestige and grandeur,' the venue said. 'We are also excited to be announcing this year's INCREDIBLE slate of Kennedy Center Honorees.' Trump complained during a March visit that the building is in a state of 'tremendous disrepair.' 3 Donald Trump and Melania Trump attend 'Les Misérables' opening night at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 11, 2025. REUTERS It is unclear how this year's honorees were chosen, though Trump had indicated he wanted a more active role. Historically, a bipartisan advisory committee selects the recipients, who over the years have ranged from George Balanchine and Tom Hanks to Aretha Franklin and Stephen Sondheim. A message sent to the Kennedy Center press office asking how this year's honorees were selected wasn't returned on Tuesday. The Kennedy Center did post this on social media, however: 'Coming Soon … A country music icon, an Englishman, a New York City Rock band, a dance Queen and a multi-billion dollar Actor walk into the Kennedy Center Opera House …' In the past, Trump has floated the idea of granting Kennedy Center Honors status to singer-songwriter Paul Anka and Sylvester Stallone, one of three actors Trump named as Hollywood ambassadors earlier this year. Anka was supposed to perform 'My Way' at Trump's first inaugural and backed out at the last moment. The Kennedy Center Honors were established in 1978 and have been given to a broad range of artists. Until Trump's first term, presidents of both major political parties traditionally attended the annual ceremony, even when they disagreed politically with a given recipient. Prominent liberals such as Barbra Streisand and Warren Beatty were honored during the administration of Republican George W. Bush, and a leading conservative, Charlton Heston, was feted during the administration of Democrat Bill Clinton. In 2017, after honoree Norman Lear declared that he would not attend a White House celebration in protest of Trump's proposed cuts to federal arts funding, Trump and first lady Melania Trump decided to skip the Kennedy Center event and remained away throughout his first term. Honorees during that time included such Trump critics as Cher, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Sally Field. Since taking office for a second time, Trump has taken a much more forceful stance on the Kennedy Center and inserted himself into its governance. Besides naming himself chairman and remaking the board, he also has indicated he would take over decisions regarding programming at the center and vowed to end events featuring performers in drag. 3 Trump took over as the Kennedy Center's new chairman and fired the board of trustees, replacing them with loyalists. AFP via Getty Images The steps have drawn further criticism from some artists. In March, the producers of 'Hamilton' pulled out of staging the Broadway hit musical in 2026, citing Trump's aggressive takeover of the institution's leadership. Other artists who canceled events include actor Issa Rae, singer Rhiannon Giddens, and author Louise Penny. House Republicans added an amendment to a spending bill that Trump signed into law in July to rename the Kennedy Center's Opera House after Melania Trump, but that venue has yet to be renamed. Maria Shriver, a niece of the late President Kennedy, a Democrat, has criticized as 'insane' a separate House proposal to rename the entire center after Trump. Recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors are given a medallion on a rainbow ribbon, a nod to the range of skills that fall under the performing arts. In April, the center changed the lights on the exterior from the long-standing rainbow to a permanent red, white, and blue display.
The Hill
a minute ago
- The Hill
Leland Vittert: Jan. 6 ‘has nothing to do' with crime in D.C.
NewsNation host Leland Vittert pushed back on Democrats and other critics of President Trump who have cited the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as evidence the president does not care about violent crime in D.C. 'Jan. 6 was awful. I was in the middle of it. I was confronted by the mob, on multiple occasions' Vittert said on his nightly show, calling the attack 'a stain on our country's history.' 'But it was four years ago,' he continued. 'It has nothing to do with the current crime epidemic in D.C.' Vittert's comment came a night after he hosted progressive pundit Medhi Hasan for a segment on Trump's crime crackdown in Washington, during which Hasan said of the president 'if he cared about crime in D.C., why did he pardon 600 people who assaulted police officers?' The host shot back, arguing, 'You're going to sit here and say, 'if Trump cures cancer, Jan. 6 was terrible.'' 'The fact is you can't have an argument about what's happening on the streets of D.C. without going back to Jan. 6,' Vittert added. Trump this week declared a crime emergency in the district, seizing control of the local police force and deploying National Guard troops to patrol its streets. The move is being widely condemned by Democrats, who argue crime is down in D.C. and warn Trump is overstepping his authority as president.
