A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump announced that the National Guard and various federal law enforcement agencies would take over the job of policing Washington, DC. Trump claimed that crime in DC was out of control, though it's recently been at its lowest point in decades, and tons of Republican governors made a big show out of sending their own National Guard troops to DC. The people of the city, who have no vote in presidential elections, did not ask for this takeover, and Trump himself is massively unpopular there. It's a blatantly illegal action and a preview of what Trump and his cronies are planning for other American cities, and Neil Young is not having it.
Neil Young has been writing topical protest songs since "Ohio" in 1970, and he has always been loud in his condemnation of Donald Trump. On Wednesday night, Young and his new band the Chrome Hearts played at Chicago's Huntington Bank Pavilion, and they gave their first performance of a new protest song called "Big Crime." On his Neil Young Archives page, Young shared a recording of the band's soundcheck performance of that song, and he also posted the lyrics: "Got to get the fascists out/ Clean the White House out/ Don't want soldiers on our streets/ There's big crime in DC at the White House." Watch below.
A couple of weeks ago, Neil Young ended all Facebook promotion because of the company's gross internal policies about the way AI chatbots can interact with children. Once again, he's on the right side of history.
