Spotify No Longer Playing ICE Recruitment Ads After Minneapolis Shooting

You can always count on left-wing corporations to learn exactly zero lessons from recent history. 

The last decade is littered with examples of corporations falling victim to progressive politics. Bud Light is the most famous, obvious example, when it used transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney to market its beer to an audience that does not exist. Bud Light still hasn't recovered from that disaster. Disney too, started infusing progressive ideology into animated children's movies and superhero movies, then saw its stock price wildly underperform the S&P 500 as its films flopped. 

Major League Baseball moved the All-Star Game out of Atlanta based on disinformation from Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams over Georgia's voting bill in 2021. MLB was heavily criticized, with some fans vowing to never watch baseball again. 

That's just a handful of examples. And apparently, Spotify, could be at risk of becoming the next Bud Light, even if it isn't even entirely its own fault.

MINNEAPOLIS - Federal agents including ICE and U.S. Border Patrol stand with weapons along Portland Ave. near the scene where federal agents shot and killed a woman on January 7, 2026. (Photo by Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images)

Spotify No Longer Running ICE Ads On Its Platform

ICE, along with a number of government agencies, have been running advertisements across many podcasting and media platforms over the last few months. Those ads were designed to beef up staffing and hire more deportation officers throughout the country. Spotify allowed those ads to run throughout 2025, receiving criticism from left-wing media and entertainment industry publications. 

And as soon as news broke of a fatal shooting in Minneapolis involving a woman driving her car into an ICE officer, the media lept into action to see if Spotify would bow down to its demands. 

Fortunately for Spotify, those ads had already ended "late last year," meaning their end had nothing to do with the shooting.

"There are currently no ICE ads running on Spotify," a spokesperson confirmed to Variety. "The advertisements mentioned were part of a U.S. government recruitment campaign that ran across all major media and platforms."

Multiple left-wing groups had announced their intention to boycott Spotify for even allowing ICE ads to run in the first place. Pressure grew so intense, Spotify had to issue a statement defending it. 

"This advertisement is part of a broad campaign the US government is running across television, streaming, and online channels," Spotify said at the time. "The content does not violate our advertising policies. However, users can mark any ad with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to help manage their ads preferences."

The question now becomes, will Spotify be brave enough to run more government recruitment advertisements in the future? Or will the company allow itself to be the next Bud Light by bowing to pressure from miniscule left-wing groups? If Spotify wants to learn from the lessons provided by any number of corporate examples, it'll realize that the media purposefully misled its audiences on the shooting to rile up anger and tensions. That nobody will boycott Spotify because of the U.S. government enforcing existing immigration laws. And that it would be making an unforced mistake. 

Maybe this will be the first time somebody actually learns from history.