The triple-threat legend talks about revamping a Woody Guthrie classic into an anti-Trump anthem and why older generations are responsible for calling out fascism

If you ask Bette Midler, her whole career has been about spreading enough joy to distract from “the grimness of everyday life.” 

But that mission hasn’t kept her from growing increasingly upset at the second Trump administration’s rapid-fire escalation of war profiteering, anti-trans rhetoric, and extrajudicial ICE raids — including those that resulted in the deaths of Minnesota residents Alex Pretti and Renee Good. “The insanity that’s happening, this unprecedented destruction of all of normal behavior, has affected me very badly,” Midler tells Rolling Stone from her home in Los Angeles. “I was talking to Jane Fonda the other day, and she said, ‘We need an anthem.’ So I looked back at [some] catalogs and an old Woody Guthrie song stuck in my head.” 

The World War II-era song in question, “All You Fascists,” released in 1940, decried the poll tax, Jim Crow, and race hatred in the U.S. Now, Midler is debuting a 2026 revamp, which she co-wrote with producer Eric Kornfeld, targeting Trump policies and the need for voter turnout in the midterm elections. In the music video, out today, Midler is joined by her Beaches co-star Barbara Hershey and familiar faces including actor David Hyde Pierce, singer and actress Jenifer Lewis, and Broadway star Shoshana Bean. 

“We’ll battle ICE together/Until they cut and run/Just like in Minneapolis/And when the midterms come,” Midler sings, “You’re bound to lose/You fascists, bound to lose.” Another verse includes the lyrics: “Trying to distract us from the Epstein files/You gas and beat and murder us, protecting pedophiles/Let’s turn the screws/You pervs are bound to lose.” 

For Midler, who counts the start of her career as her time in a folk group in college, this new version of “All You Fascists” is a direct tribute to the legacy of American protest music in the political activism of the Fifties and Sixties. That’s a cultural moment she looks back on fondly, one whose revival she believes is necessary to shake up some of the political fatigue people are feeling. 

“Everybody [back then] had a guitar and everybody had a song,” Midler says. “To watch it bloom and to see the excitement on people’s faces that they didn’t have to be silent was a wonderful thing to live through. I think that we could all use a little bit of that meaning in our lives right now. And for us to stand there and say, as a generation, we had the best of it, and not turn around and give the people behind us a hand up — it’s completely unacceptable to me.”