WSJ What’s News - Why MAGA Is Fuming Over Bad Bunny’s Halftime Show

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

A.M. Edition for Feb. 6. Amazon shares sink, putting the Nasdaq on track for its worst week since last April, as investors punish tech companies spending big on AI, and those exposed to the latest Anthropic update. Plus, the White House launches its drug-buying site, TrumpRx, in a bid to tackle high prices. And WSJ’s Sabrina Rodriguez on how Bad Bunny’s anti-ICE comments are sparking a backlash ahead of his Super Bowl halftime performance this weekend. Luke Vargas hosts. WSJ’s Shelby Holliday explains how the U.S. is preparing for a potential strike on Iran.   Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This January on Paramount Plus, it began on the shores of New Jersey. Now a new pack emerges in the Great White North. Canada Shore, new original series, now streaming on Paramount Plus. Investors punish Amazon for its AI spending plans and send tech stocks tumbling around the world. Plus, President Trump debuts a government-run drug-buying site in a bit to tackle. high prices. You're going to see numbers that you're not going to believe. And we'll go behind the off-field drama ahead of Sunday's Super Bowl. It's Friday, February 6th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories,

moving your world today. Amazon stock is down more than 7% off hours after the company announced a nearly 60% jump in its planned AI spending far higher than Wall Street had been expecting. At the same time, year-over-year, cloud computing growth of 24% came in below Microsoft's 39% and Alphabet's 48. Amazon has said that growth rates don't fully capture its standing in the industry, and CFO Brian Olsowski tried to convince investors that AI spending would pay off. This isn't some sort of quixotic top-line grab. You know, we have confidence that these investments will yield strong returns than invest in capital. We've done that with our core AWS business. I think that will very much be true here as well. But that hasn't satisfied investors,

as AI spending concerns feed a wider downturn in European and Asian markets this morning. Korea's tech-heavy index even halted trading at one point as stocks slumped. That follows another sell-off in U.S. software stocks yesterday after Anthropic released a new AI model with upgraded data analysis, coding, and product management functions. Meanwhile, shares of Jeepmaker Stalantis are plunging today to lows not seen since the start of the pandemic. To blame, an announced $26 billion in written-off investments after the company overestimated demand for EVs in the U.S. Those charges exceed similar recent writedowns by Ford and GM. And so much for Jobs Friday.

Thanks to the latest government shutdown that ended on Tuesday, investors won't be getting a look at January's jobs report today as scheduled. Instead, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish the data on Wednesday, shifting the release of January inflation data to next Friday instead. According to Journal Economics reporter Matt Grossman, investors may need to come to terms with delays to official data, given that four of the last five jobs reports have been delayed in some fashion. In a broader sense, these numbers have started to look a lot less dependable than they used to. We seem to be in a world now where occasional government shutdown is the rule. rather than the exception. And it just gives investors another thing they have to keep on their minds, not just what are the reports going to say, but when are they going to come? Well, who better to provide insights on the job market than you, are listeners. Whether you're

hiring, firing, happily or worriedly employed, looking for a promotion or a new job altogether, we'd love to hear your impressions of the labor market or help to track down an answer to a question on your mind. To weigh in, email us a voice memo to do W-N-P-O-D at WSJ.com, and make sure to include your full name and location so we can use your comments on the show. The White House has launched its new drug-buying website, Trump R-X, in an effort to bring down health care costs for Americans. Roughly 40 drugs are available, from infertility treatments to obesity medicines such as Wigovee and Zepbound. During a press conference Thursday, Dr. Mehmet Oz touted how prices on the site are generally lower than the sticker price. You should not be buying drugs anymore going forward without at least checking to see if those

medications are available at these discounted prices on Trumprx.gov. While the site won't change much for insured Americans, it's more likely to benefit the roughly 27 million people without coverage. High-stakes talks between Iran and the U.S. over Tehran's nuclear program have ended after just 90 minutes. The U.S. has amassed air and naval forces near Iran, with President Trump threatening strikes on the country over the mass killing of protesters last month. That crackdown initially stifled opposition to the regime.

But journal reporter Margarita Stankati says there are now signs that public anger is rising once again. So we're beginning to see big and small shows of defiance against the government despite the continuing crackdown. For example, mourning families are shouting anti-regime slogans at funerals and memorials. We spoke to a student in terror. who said that in her high school, students are refusing to sing the national anthem. People are still really, really angry, and I think it will be really difficult for the government to overcome this. I think, you know, the reason people took the streets in the first place in late December was over economic problems.

People are saying it's very likely we'll see more mass protests, but this time the trigger will be the mass killings that happened in January. And for more on U.S. military readiness for a strike on Iran, check out the link we've left in our show notes. Coming up ahead of a weekend ostensibly about sports, we'll look at how politics is edging its way into the Winter Olympics and Sunday's Super Bowl halftime show. That's after the break. The scorebed app here with trusted stats in real-time sports news. Yeah, hey, who should I take in the Boston game? Well, statistically speaking. Nah, no more statistically speaking. I want hot takes. I want knee-jerk reactions.

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The Super Bowl is this weekend. Seahawks fans and Patriots fans, myself included, will be glued to their screens. So we'll add lovers, sports betters, and fans of the most streamed musical artist in the world last year on Spotify, by Bad Bunny. Journal reporter Sabrina Rodriguez has been keeping an eye on the run-up to what's become one of the most controversial and hotly anticipated halftime shows in years. And she joins me now with more. Sabrina, you are a politics reporter, we should be clear, not a music reporter. So why then are you on the bad bunny beat, if you will? I fell into the bad bunny beat back in September when he was first announced to be the Super Bowl halftime headliner. You know, at the time, it triggered

backlash among MAGA influencers and folks in conservative circles, in part because of his opposition to Trump's immigration agenda that he's been very public about. Folks had other complaints about, you know, his exclusive Spanish language lyrics, his gender fluid fashion choices. So it prompted all this backlash at the time. And then fast forward, the Grammys one week out from the Super Bowl, and we saw Bad Bunny take the stage, his acceptance speech for the best Musica Urbana album, and he used that as an opportunity to say, ICE Out. And that's a phrase that we've seen in protests of the Trump administration's immigration agenda, and now we kind of see that backlash reigniting again.

We are, and we should point out, in addition to speaking out last year, Bad Bunny held the highest-grossing concert tour in the world and avoided the mainland U.S. on that tour saying that he was concerned that law enforcement would be targeting his fans at those events, so instead had a big residency in Puerto Rico. You mentioned the backlash that his comments have generated. Let's play a clip here from White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt. I think it's very ironic and frankly sad to see celebrities who live in gated communities with private security, with millions of dollars to spend protecting themselves, trying to just demonize, again, law enforcement public servants who work for the United States government to enforce our

nation's laws. Sabrina, I'm curious what you make of that, what that might tell us about the impact these comments are having. And frankly, whether this is a political stance from a celebrity that could actually matter compared to, shall we say, the many that through the years kind of have not. Yeah, I mean, I think that the White House Press Secretary taps into a reality of celebrities speaking out. We do see that celebrities are raising public awareness of what's happening. And Bad Bunny's comments at the Grammys sort of reflect the shift that's happening in public opinion right now.

Polls show that a majority of Americans feel that ICE has gone too far and people are souring on how Trump is handling immigration. So it is a moment of showing sort of that shift. However, is it something that's going to cause other people to shift their views on this? That's not necessarily what's going to happen. And finally, Sabrina, I'm curious what the reaction has been on the other side of the aisle to this from Democrats. We've reported that Democratic lawmakers, for instance, have been far from United on whether they embrace calls to abolish ICE. I'm wondering if there's sort of a similar conundrum for them here. Yes, this has been a challenge for Democrats.

You know, we saw in the 2024 election cycle that immigration was very much one of President Trump's strongest issues. And it's one that he really harnessed and focused in on to bring in voters. Obviously, he was successful in that as he won the presidency. So Democrats have had a hard time navigating the politics of immigration, how to talk about it. They want to have a humane policy while at the same time enforcing immigration laws or navigating border security. So there's a lot of conversations in Washington right now about reforming ice, but what the scope of that looks like really varies from Democrat to Democrat. And I think they do not want to fall into what led to Trump being able to harness the issue in the first place. I've been speaking to Wall Street Journal Politics reporter Sabrina Rodriguez.

Sabrina, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. And finally, the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics are officially underway with the opening ceremony set for. for tonight. We'll be watching very closely to see what kind of reception American athletes get here in Italy, and that starts with the opening ceremony. Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio both expected to be in attendance, and no one's quite sure how they'll be received. That's journal sports reporter Joshua Robinson on the ground at the games, who said that despite a potentially frosty initial reception, American athletes have a chance at history over the next

few weeks. So the exciting thing for Americans is that they may actually break their record of most gold medals at a Winter Olympics. Leading the charge is going to be U.S. figure skater Ilya Ilya Malanin. He's considered a lock to win gold, and that's because he is the man known as the Quadraud, the specialist in the quadruple axle who was once thought impossible. Less certain is the status of U.S. skier Lindsay Vaughn, who's probably the most famous American skier in the world. She's making an incredible comeback at age 41 on a a partially reconstructed knee. The problem is that about a week before she was due to race on Sunday, she injured the other knee and tore her ACL. Now, she's said she's going to try it

anyway and ski without that ACL. Can she meddle? Experts think she might. Live coverage of tonight's opening ceremony begins at 2 p.m. Eastern ahead of a primetime encore. And that's it for what's news for this Friday morning. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer and Daniel Bach. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff, and I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Otherwise, have a great weekend, and thanks for listening.