Nicki Minaj wants young people to head to the polls this fall, and she wants them voting Republican. The catch is that the last thing she said publicly about her status is that she isn’t a U.S. citizen, which means she may not be able to cast a ballot herself.
The message comes from a preview of her sit down with Lara Trump, which Fox News is promoting ahead of the full broadcast. The network’s own tagline for the clip is blunt: “Vote red.”
In the snippet, Minaj speaks directly to younger viewers who might be tempted to sit the midterms out. “Now is not the time to think that your voice will not be heard.
Your voice will not only be heard, but your voice is very necessary right now for the country and for the world,” she says.
She follows it up with a line that leaves little room for interpretation. This is your country, this is your world, and vote red,” Minaj says in the preview Fox shared on September 25.
Here’s where it gets complicated. During a 2024 livestream, Minaj told fans she was not a U.S. citizen, despite having lived in the country for many years after moving from Trinidad as a child.
Then this January, she said she was finalizing her citizenship paperwork after showing off a Trump Gold Card. She hasn’t publicly confirmed that the process is done, so as far as anyone outside her circle knows, the question is still open.
Federal elections require voters to be citizens, full stop. That makes the timing of her message land awkwardly, given what the Trump administration just won at the Supreme Court.
In a six to three decision, the justices cleared the way for the administration to resume expanded citizenship checks through a federal database known as SAVE, short for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements. The order pauses a lower court ruling that had blocked the expanded system while the appeal plays out.
SAVE was originally built to check eligibility for public benefits. It now pulls in Social Security records and lets officials search voter information in bulk, which the administration says helps state and local officials catch people who shouldn’t be on the rolls.
Voting rights groups see it very differently. They argue the expanded system puts private data at risk and can wrongly flag people who are fully eligible to vote.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote the dissent, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, arguing the majority brushed past the harm to lawful voters.
She pointed to findings that one Texas voter lost her registration without knowing it, while two others had to prove their citizenship just to stay registered.
The ruling doesn’t erase federal limits on sweeping voter roll removals close to Election Day. Officials can still run individual checks, though, and critics worry about who gets caught in the net.
None of this seems to be cooling Minaj’s enthusiasm for the president. On Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, she was asked what she’d say to people criticizing her work with the administration, and her answer was simply that she had nothing to say to them.
“I am honored to have the opportunity to work with this administration and to work with President Trump,” she said. She described Trump as someone she relates to and said his manner makes her feel heard.
“I just love him,” Minaj told Ingraham. “I’m not going to ever make excuses for that because I don’t know why I should.”
She’s also gone beyond talk. Minaj signed on as a judge for the administration’s Million Dollar Pitch Competition, sitting alongside investor Grant Cardone and Airbnb cofounder Joe Gebbia.
For a lot of longtime Barbz, the shift has been hard to square with the artist they grew up with. Minaj, for her part, has said the backlash only makes her more determined to stand by Trump, so the criticism doesn’t appear to be moving her anywhere.
It’s also worth keeping the framing in perspective. The “vote red” push is front and center in Fox’s promotion, but the preview itself mostly shows Minaj urging young people to participate, and nobody has seen the full conversation yet.
That changes this weekend. My View with Lara Trump” airs Minaj’s full interview Saturday, September 26, at 9 P.M. ET, and plenty of people will be watching to see if she finally clears up where her own citizenship stands.
