LOS ANGELES / STOCKHOLM (Sept. 17, 2026) — Swedish pop star Zara Larsson on Thursday condemned the White House for soundtrack-ing an ICE deportation TikTok with her song “Midnight Sun,” calling the clip “so dehumanizing” and the people shown “real people,” Rolling Stone, Variety, and the BBC reported.

The White House post, captioned “Never ending deportations,” used the track over footage of immigration arrests. Larsson replied in a TikTok stitch: she was “just sad,” wished she could talk to whoever made the video, and said she and the people depicted “aren’t that different” except for “a different hand in life.” She argued the song is about connection to nature, the universe, and people — not manufacturing a “massive divide.”

“You guys are such fucking losers, like it’s crazy,” she said, per Rolling Stone’s transcript of the response.

A familiar music fight

Artists including Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, and Ariana Grande have similarly objected when their music appeared in Trump-era White House social clips. Variety noted the White House had previously used Larsson’s “Lush Life” in a Trump dancing clip promoting ICE; she answered then on Instagram with a blunt rejection of the administration’s framing.

BBC reporting said the White House later removed “Midnight Sun” from the deportation reel after Larsson’s criticism, though the underlying video remained visible on the account’s TikTok feed. Using a commercial recording in a government social video without a license is a separate copyright question from the politics of the clip — and one artists keep forcing into public view when official accounts treat pop charts like a free SFX library.

Sources: Rolling Stone (Daniel Kreps, Sept. 17, 2026); Variety (Tanya Fedak, Sept. 17, 2026); BBC (Sept. 17–18, 2026); Forbes contemporaneous coverage.