Football, politics and protest: This year's Super Bowl comes at a tinderbox moment in the US

WASHINGTON (AP) — Don't tune into the Super Bowl hoping for a break from the tumultuous politics gripping the U.S.

The NFL is facing pressure ahead of Sunday's game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots to take a more explicit stance against the Trump administration's aggressive immigration enforcement. More than 184,000 people have signed a petition calling on the league to denounce the potential presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Super Bowl, which is being held at Levi's Stadium in the San Francisco Bay Area. The liberal group MoveOn plans to deliver the petition to the NFL's New York City headquarters on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, anticipation is building around how Bad Bunny, the halftime show's Spanish-speaking headliner, will address the moment. He has criticized President Donald Trump on everything from his hurricane response in his native Puerto Rico to his treatment of immigrants. On Sunday night, he blasted ICE while accepting an award at the Grammys. His latest tour skipped the continental U.S. because of fears that his fans could be targeted by immigration agents.

Trump has said he doesn't plan to attend this year's game, unlike last year, and he has derided Bad Bunny as a “terrible choice.” A Republican senator is calling it “the woke bowl.” And a prominent conservative group plans to hold an alternative show that it hopes will steal attention from the main event.

The Super Bowl is one of the few remaining cultural touchstones viewed by millions of people in real time and the halftime show is no stranger to controversy, perhaps most notably Janet Jackson's 2004 performance in which her breast was briefly exposed. But there are few parallels to this year's game, which has the potential to become an unusual mix of sports, entertainment, politics and protest. And it will unfold at a tinderbox moment for the U.S., just two weeks after Alex Pretti's killing by federal agents in Minneapolis reignited a national debate over the Trump administration's hard-line law enforcement tactics.

“The Super Bowl is supposed to be an escape, right? We’re supposed to go there to not have to talk about the serious things of this country,” said Tiki Barber, a former player for the New York Giants who played in the Super Bowl in 2001 and has since attended several as a commentator. “I hope it doesn’t devolve, because if it does, then I think we’re really losing touch with what’s important in our society.”

The 31-year-old Bad Bunny, born in Puerto Rico as Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, has elevated Latino music into the mainstream and gained global fame with songs almost entirely in Spanish — something that irks many of his conservative detractors. He has leaned into the controversy, referring to the halftime show when he hosted “Saturday Night Live” in October by joking “everybody is happy about it — even Fox News.”

He segued into a few sentences in Spanish, expressing Latino pride in the achievement, and finished by saying in English, “If you didn’t understand what I just said, you have four months to learn!”

Those who follow him closely doubt that he'll back down now.

“He has made it very clear what he stands for,” said Vanessa Díaz, a professor at Loyola Marymount University and co-author of “P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance.” “So I can’t imagine that this would all go away with the Super Bowl.”

The halftime show is a collaboration between the NFL, Roc Nation and Apple Music. Roc Nation curates the performers and Apple Music distributes the performance while the NFL ultimately controls the stage, broadcast and branding.

The NFL, which is working to expand its appeal across the world, including into Latin America, said it never considered removing Bad Bunny from the halftime show even after criticism from Trump and some of his supporters.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on Monday described the singer as “one of the great artists in the world," as well as someone who understands the power of the Super Bowl performance “to unite people and to be able to bring people together."

“I think artists in the past have done that. I think Bad Bunny understands that. And I think you'll have a great performance," Goodell told reporters during his annual Super Bowl press conference.

About half of Americans approved of Bad Bunny as the halftime performer, according to an October poll from Quinnipiac University. But there were substantial gaps with about three-quarters of Democrats backing the pick compared to just 16% of Republicans. About 60% of Black and Hispanic adults approved of the selection compared to 41% of whites.

Republicans are eager to maintain Latino support in their bid to keep control of Congress. But as the Super Bowl draws near, many in the GOP have kept up their Bad Bunny critiques.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, the former head football coach at Auburn University who is now running for governor, derided the “Woke Bowl" on Newsmax last week and said he'll watch an alternative event hosted by Turning Point USA.

The group founded by the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk said Monday that Kid Rock, a vocal Trump supporter, would be among the performers at its event.

In recent days, Department of Homeland Security official Jeff Brannigan hosted a series of private calls with local officials and the NFL in which he indicated that ICE does not plan to conduct any law enforcement actions the week of the Super Bowl or at the game, according to two NFL officials with direct knowledge of the conversations.

ICE is not expected to be among more than a dozen DHS-related agencies providing security at the game, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

While that is the plan, some worry that Trump and his MAGA allies who lead DHS can change their minds ahead of Sunday’s game given their recent statements.

DHS official Corey Lewandowski, a key adviser to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, said in October that ICE agents would be conducting immigration enforcement at the game.

“There is nowhere that you can provide safe haven to people who are in the country illegally, not the Super Bowl, not anywhere else,” he said at the time.

Asked to clarify ICE's role this week, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin refused to say whether federal immigration agents will be present for the Super Bowl.

“Those who are here legally and not breaking other laws have nothing to fear,” she said. “We will not disclose future operations or discuss personnel. Super Bowl security will entail a whole-of-government response conducted in line with the U.S. Constitution.”

The progressive group MoveOn will host a Tuesday rally outside the NFL headquarters in New York to present a petition telling the league, "No ICE at the Super Bowl."

“This year’s Super Bowl should be remembered for big plays and Bad Bunny, not masked and armed ICE agents running around the stadium inflicting chaos, violence, and trauma on fans and stadium workers,” MoveOn spokesperson Britt Jacovich said. "The NFL can’t stay on the sidelines, the league has a responsibility to act like adults, protect Super Bowl fans and stadium workers, and keep ICE out of the game.”

In an interview, San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie was optimistic that the event would be a success even in a politically tense climate.

“We are going to keep everybody safe — our residents, our visitors,” he said. "Obviously with everything going on, we're staying on top of it, monitoring everything. But I expect everything to be safe and fun.”

Peoples reported from New York.

President Donald Trump walks on the South Lawn upon his arrival to the White House, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Bad Bunny arrives at the 68th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — The almost monthlong disappearance from public view of Bolivia’s towering socialist icon, ex-leader Evo Morales, shortly after the Jan. 3 U.S. seizure of former Venezuelan president and his close ally Nicolás Maduro, is alarming his supporters, roiling his enemies and galvanizing the internet.

On Monday, he missed a ceremony that he typically attends welcoming students back from summer break. On Sunday, Morales was a no-show for the fourth straight weekly broadcast of his political radio show, which he has hosted without interruption for years.

Since early January, he has skipped scheduled meetings with members of his coca-leaf growing union in Bolivia’s remote Chapare region and his daily stream of social media content has all but dried up.

Although Morales has spent the past year evading an arrest warrant on charges of human trafficking, his fugitive status hasn't stopped the firebrand union leader from speaking at rallies, receiving supporters, giving interviews, posting on X — or even running an unconventional presidential campaign last year — all from his political stronghold in the Chapare.

Morales rejects the statutory rape allegations as politically motivated.

The question of Morales’ whereabouts has set off furious speculation as the Trump administration imposes its political will in South America through sanctions, punitive tariffs, electoral endorsements, financial bailouts and military action.

Morales' close associates have privately declined to provide an explanation for his absences while publicly telling supporters that the former president has been recovering from dengue fever, a mosquito-borne viral illness with symptoms that typically last no longer than a week.

“We have asked our brother Evo Morales to rest completely,” said Dieter Mendoza, vice president of an body of farmers known as the Six Federations that runs the coca-leaf trade in the tropics, declining to elaborate.

For Morales' rivals, the mystery has stirred resentful memories of 2019, when he resigned under pressure from the military after his disputed bid for an unconstitutional third term provoked mass protests. Morales fled to Mexico then took refuge in Argentina, only to return home when Luis Arce, his former finance minister, took the presidency in 2020.

“Evo Morales is in Mexico,” declared right-wing lawmaker Edgar Zegarra, offering no evidence but demanding that the government prove otherwise. “He has not appeared, not even at political events, and they don’t know how to justify it.”

Security officials within Bolivia's first conservative government following almost 20 years of dominance by Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party, have been cryptic.

“The former president has not left Bolivia,” said Police Commander Gen. General Mirko Sokol, “at least not through any official channels.”

WhatsApp messages and calls to Morales went unanswered Monday.

Bolivia's election of centrist President Rodrigo Paz last October came as part of a wider ideological swing across Latin America, where U.S. President Donald Trump has become increasingly entangled in regional politics.

In the last two years, right-wing would-be saviors have come to power in countries wracked by economic crisis like Argentina and consumed by fears of violent crime like Chile. Costa Rica's election of a right-wing populist Monday reinforced the trend.

Like Maduro and his mentor and predecessor, the late Hugo Chávez, Morales was openly hostile to the United States and cozied up to its political foes during his 14 years as Bolivia's first Indigenous president from 2006 to 2019.

In 2008, Morales expelled the U.S. ambassador and counternarcotics officials for allegedly conspiring against his government. Russia poured money into Bolivia’s energy and lithium mining sectors. Chinese companies won contracts to build highways and dams. Iran offered the country its drone technology.

Now Paz is trying to reverse the political direction. His government has scrapped visa requirements for American tourists, held talks with U.S. officials on securing loans to rescue Bolivia's economy and paved the way for the return of the Drug Enforcement Agency to Bolivia, a regional cocaine-trafficking hub.

The prospect of the DEA’s reappearance has rattled the Bolivian tropics still scarred from an aggressive U.S.-backed war on drugs in the late 1990s that forced coca farmers to eradicate their crops. The plant is the raw material of cocaine but it also holds deep cultural and spiritual significance in the country.

Coca farmers in the Chapare say they haven't seen Morales since Jan. 8, as panic about a rare overflight by a Super Puma helicopter gripped the jungle region. Deputy Social Defense Minister, Ernesto Justiniano, later explained it was a data collection mission in coordination with foreign agencies, including the DEA, but had nothing to do with Morales.

“State surveillance should not be a threat to anyone," he said.

Right-wing contenders in last year's presidential election campaign — including ex-President Jorge Quiroga, who ultimately lost the runoff to the more moderate Paz — vowed that if elected, they'd yank Morales from his hideout in the Chapare and lock him up.

Now, they're seizing on unverified rumors of Morales' escape to ratchet up the pressure on Paz.

“He’s playing hide-and-seek, he’s making a mockery of the state,” Quiroga said of Morales. “The country cannot speak of legal security when an arrest warrant is not executed.”

Bolivia's judiciary, with its history of tacking where political winds blow, has already freed right-wing opposition figures and pursued cases against former officials, detaining former President Arce just weeks after Paz's inauguration.

But unlike Arce, Morales retains a strong, albeit small, base of support. Loyalists protecting him from arrest have vowed to resist with guerrilla tactics if security forces invade the Chapare.

Morales could appear at any time and quash the speculation about his status.

But for now his inner circle appears content to leave things a mystery.

“Our brother president is doing very well,” said Leonardo Loza, a former senator and close friend of Morales. “He is in a corner of our greater homeland.”

DeBre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

FILE - Bolivia's former President Evo Morales chews coca in Lauca N, Chapare region, Bolivia, Nov. 3, 2024, amid an ongoing political conflict with the government of President Luis Arce. (AP Photo/Juan Karita, File)