On Wednesday, U2 released a surprise EP titled Days of Ash. The songs are politically charged, responding to what the band describes as "mad and maddening times," using real-world tragedies and global flashpoints as their emotional core.
One of those songs pays tribute to Renee Nicole Good, who was fatally shot on January 7 by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis.
Bono, an Irish citizen whose real name is Paul David Hewson, is known for his extensive political activism, which has focused on social justice, poverty and global health issues, with a focus on Africa, but has a history of criticizing Trump dating back a decade.
His attention now seems to have turned acutely to tensions over the Trump administration's immigration crackdown -- tensions that have been growing as the administration carries out Trump's hardline immigration policies, which were key in his 2024 bid for re-election. 2025 saw ICE's deadliest year in two decades, with thirty-two people dying in custody. Concerns have been raised over the agency's conduct, including over arrests without due process, arrests of children and racial profiling. Tensions intensified in the wake of the killing of two U.S. citizens in January - Good, a 37-year-old mother of three and Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse who was shot by Border Patrol.
U2's lyrics have long had political undertones.
One of the most overt of these is "Sunday Bloody Sunday," which addresses the 1972 massacre in Derry, Northern Ireland, where British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest. "Pride (In the Name of Love)" was a tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. "Bullet the Blue Sky" critiques U.S. military involvement in Central America during the 1980s, which has come back around in popularity with Trump's recent actions in the Caribbean.
In the 1990s, U2 came out with "Please" - A commentary on the Northern Ireland peace process.
In 2000, the band released "Walk On," inspired by Aung San Suu Kyi and the struggle for democracy in Myanmar. In 2004, they critiqued global inequality and Western indifference to poverty with "Crumbs from Your Table."
In a 2016 interview with Charlie Rose, prior to Trump's 2016 presidential election victory, Bono said, "America is like the best idea the world ever came up with, but Donald Trump is potentially the worst idea that ever happened to America."
He warned that Trump could "destroy it."
The band released "American Soul" in 2017. It addresses American identity and political turmoil, while "Get Out of Your Own Way" is said to be a call to resist authoritarianism and defend civil rights.
Also in 2017, he said that Trump is not welcome at U2 concerts while speaking to the Independent before a gig in Seattle.
"I welcome his supporters. But him? I don't want him here. A person like that," he said.
In 2018, while speaking at the Concern charity dinner in New York, Bono made an indirect reference to Trump, after the president was criticized for sending troops to the US-Mexico border to meet a caravan of migrants and stating that it was an "invasion."
"In this moment, there is a lot of soul-searching going on, here in the US and the wider world, but we must be very careful of demonizing 'the other.' Irish people to their credit are suspect of demonizing the other... because we were 'the other.' We were the stranger, we were the invading hordes, we were the cockroaches, and we haven't forgotten,"
he said at the time.
In 2022, he supported Ukraine's resistance to Russia's invasion. He wrote a poem about both the invasion and Saint Patrick, which was recited by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a White House event for Saint Patrick's Day, though the poem was widely derided by the public.
In 2025, during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Kimmel asked Bono whether he was on the side of Trump or Bruce Springsteen, after the president criticized the Born To Run singer.
He responded, "I think there's only one boss in America."
He then said of Trump's Truth Social platform - "And you know it's called Truth Social, it seems to be pretty antisocial and not very true a lot of the time."
During that same appearance, he said that people from all walks of life are "Very angry with the person that they voted into office having demolished instruments of mercy and compassion, like USAID and PEPFAR."
In a 2025 interview with Esquire, Bono said that he was "very angry" with the state of the world, following cuts to global relief efforts.
"The most unbelievable carnage imaginable is happening to our work,"
he told the outlet.
"The United States has been a promised land to a lot of people, but it looks like it's about to break that promise,"
he said.
Bono, in a statement on Wednesday: "The songs on Days of Ash are very different in mood and theme to the ones we're going to put on our album later in the year. These EP tracks couldn't wait; these songs were impatient to be out in the world. They are songs of defiance and dismay, of lamentation. Songs of celebration will follow; we're working on those now... because for all the awfulness we see normalized daily on our small screens, there's nothing normal about these mad and maddening times and we need to stand up to them before we can go back to having faith in the future."
Trump accused Kamala Harris of buying endorsements in May of 2024, which included Bono, in a Truth Social post: "HOW MUCH DID KAMALA HARRIS PAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN FOR HIS POOR PERFORMANCE DURING HER CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT? WHY DID HE ACCEPT THAT MONEY IF HE IS SUCH A FAN OF HERS? ISN'T THAT A MAJOR AND ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION? WHAT ABOUT BEYONCÉ? ...AND HOW MUCH WENT TO OPRAH, AND BONO??? I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter. Candidates aren't allowed to pay for ENDORSEMENTS, which is what KAMALA DID under the guise of paying for entertainment. In addition, this was a very expensive and desperate effort to artificially build up her sparse crowds. IT'S NOT LEGAL! For these unpatriotic "entertainers," this was just a CORRUPT & UNLAWFUL way to capitalize on a broken system. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!"
U2 is set to embark upon a world tour this year. This will include stops in the United States.