hard time

For decades, American families have gathered to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” on Christmas Eve.

The 1946 Frank Capra movie, about a man who on one of the worst days of his life discovers how he has positively impacted his hometown of Bedford Falls, is beloved for extolling selflessness, community and the little guy taking on rapacious capitalists. Take those values, add in powerful acting and the promise of light in the darkest of hours, and it’s the only movie that makes me cry.

No less a figure of goodwill than Pope Leo XIV revealed last month that it’s one of his favorite movies. But as with anything holy in this nation, President Trump and his followers are trying to hijack the holiday classic.

Last weekend, the Department of Homeland Security posted two videos celebrating its mass deportation campaign. One, titled “It’s a Wonderful Flight,” re-creates the scene where George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart in one of his best performances) contemplates taking his own life by jumping off a snowy bridge. But the protagonist is a Latino man crying over the film’s despairing score that he’ll “do anything” to return to his wife and kids and “live again.”

Cut to the same man now mugging for the camera on a plane ride out of the United States. The scene ends with a plug for an app that allows undocumented immigrants to take up Homeland Security’s offer of a free self-deportation flight and a $1,000 bonus — $3,000 if they take the one-way trip during the holidays.

The other DHS clip is a montage of Yuletide cheer — Santa, elves, stockings, dancing — over a sped-up electro-trash remake of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You.” In one split-second image, Bedford Falls residents sing “Auld Lang Syne,” just after they’ve saved George Bailey from financial ruin and an arrest warrant.

“This Christmas,” the caption reads, “our hearts grow as our illegal population shrinks.”

“It’s a Wonderful Life” has long served as a political Rorschach test. Conservatives once thought Capra’s masterpiece was so anti-American for its vilification of big-time bankers that they accused him of sneaking in pro-Communist propaganda. In fact, the director was a Republican who paused his career during World War II to make short documentaries for the Department of War. Progressives tend to loathe the film’s patriotism, its sappiness, its relegation of Black people to the background and its depiction of urban life as downright demonic.

Then came Trump’s rise to power. His similarity to the film’s villain, Mr. Potter — a wealthy, nasty slumlord who names everything he takes control of after himself — was easier to point out than spots on a cheetah. Left-leaning essayists quickly made the facile comparison, and a 2018 “Saturday Night Live” parody imagining a country without Trump as president so infuriated him that he threatened to sue.

But in recent years, Trumpworld has claimed that the film is actually a parable about their dear leader.

Trump is a modern day George Bailey, the argument goes, a secular saint walking away from sure riches to try to save the “rabble” that Mr. Potter — who in their minds somehow represents the liberal elite — sneers at. A speaker at the 2020 Republican National Convention explicitly made the comparison, and the recent Homeland Security videos warping “It’s a Wonderful Life” imply it too — except now, it’s unchecked immigration that threatens Bedford Falls.

The Trump administration’s take on “It’s a Wonderful Life” is that it reflects a simpler, better, whiter time. But that’s a conscious misinterpretation of this most American of movies, whose foundation is strengthened by immigrant dreams.

Director Frank Capra

(Handout)

In his 1971 autobiography “The Name Above the Title,” Capra revealed that his “dirty, hollowed-out immigrant family” left Sicily for Los Angeles in the 1900s to reunite with an older brother who “jumped the ship” to enter the U.S. years before. Young Frank grew up in the “sleazy Sicilian ghetto” of Lincoln Heights, finding kinship at Manual Arts High with the “riff-raff” of immigrant and working-class white kids “other schools discarded” and earning U.S. citizenship only after serving in the first World War. Hard times wouldn’t stop Capra and his peers from achieving success.

The director captured that sentiment in “It’s a Wonderful Life” through the character of Giuseppe Martini, an Italian immigrant who runs a bar. His heavily accented English is heard early in the film as one of many Bedford Falls residents praying for Bailey. In a flashback, Martini is seen leaving his shabby Potter-owned apartment with a goat and a troop of kids for a suburban tract home that Bailey developed and sold to him.

Today, Trumpworld would cast the Martinis as swarthy invaders destroying the American way of life. In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” they’re America itself.

When an angry husband punches Bailey at Martini’s bar for insulting his wife, the immigrant kicks out the man for assaulting his “best friend.” And when Bedford Falls gathers at the end of the film to raise funds and save Bailey, it’s Martini who arrives with the night’s profits from his business, as well as wine for everyone to celebrate.

Immigrants are so key to the good life in this country, the film argues, that in the alternate reality if George Bailey had never lived, Martini is nowhere to be heard.

Capra long stated that “It’s a Wonderful Life” was his favorite of his own movies, adding in his memoir that it was a love letter “for the Magdalenes stoned by hypocrites and the afflicted Lazaruses with only dogs to lick their sores.”

I’ve tried to catch at least the ending every Christmas Eve to warm my spirits, no matter how bad things may be. But after Homeland Security’s hijacking of Capra’s message, I made time to watch the entire film, which I’ve seen at least 10 times, before its customary airing on NBC.

I shook my head, feeling the deja vu, as Bailey’s father sighed, “In this town, there’s no place for any man unless they crawl to Potter.”

I cheered as Bailey told Potter years later, “You think the whole world revolves around you and your money. Well, it doesn’t.” I wondered why more people haven’t said that to Trump.

When Potter ridiculed Bailey as someone “trapped into frittering his life away playing nursemaid to a lot of garlic eaters,” I was reminded of the right-wingers who portray those of us who stand up to Trump’s cruelty as stupid and even treasonous.

And as the famous conclusion came, all I thought about was immigrants.

People giving Bailey whatever money they could spare reminded me of how regular folks have done a far better job standing up to Trump’s deportation Leviathan than the rich and mighty have.

As the film ends, with Bailey and his family looking on in awe at how many people came to help out, I remembered my own immigrant elders, who also forsook dreams and careers so their children could achieve their own — the only reward to a lifetime of silent sacrifice.

The tears flowed as always, this time prompted by a new takeaway that was always there — “Solo el pueblo salva el pueblo,” or “Only we can save ourselves,” a phrase adopted by pro-immigrant activists in Southern California this year as a mantra of comfort and resistance.

It’s the heart of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the opposite of Trump’s push to make us all dependent on his mercy. He and his fellow Potters can’t do anything to change that truth.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Former U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, the last Democrat to hold statewide office in Alabama, kicked off his campaign for governor Friday, saying voters deserve a choice and a leader who will put aside divisions to address the state’s pressing needs.

“With your help we can finish what we began. We can build the Alabama we’ve always deserved,” Jones told a packed crowd at a Birmingham campaign rally featuring musician Jason Isbell.

He said the state has urgent economic, healthcare and educational issues that are not being addressed by those in public office.

The campaign kickoff came on the eighth anniversary of Jones’ stunning 2017 Senate win over Republican Roy Moore, and Jones said Alabama proved back then that it can defy “simplified labels of red and blue.”

“You stood up and you said something simple but powerful: We can do better,” Jones said. “You said with your votes that our values, Alabama values, are more important than any political party, any personality, any prepackaged ideology.”

His entry into the race sets up a possible rematch with Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who defeated Jones by 20 points in the 2020 Senate race and is also now running for governor. Both parties will have primaries in May before the November election.

Before running for office, Jones, a lawyer and former U.S. attorney, was best known for prosecuting two Ku Klux Klansmen responsible for Birmingham’s infamous 1963 church bombing.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Jones said families are having a hard time with things like healthcare, energy bills and making ends meet.

“People are struggling,” he said. “They are hurting.”

Jones used part of his speech to describe his agenda if elected governor. He said it is time for Alabama to join most states in establishing a state lottery and expanding Medicaid. Expanding Medicaid, he said, would protect rural hospitals from closure and provide healthcare coverage to working families and others who need it.

He criticized Tuberville’s opposition to extending Affordable Care Act subsidies in the Senate. Jones said many Alabama families depend on those subsidies to buy health insurance “to keep their families healthy.”

Alabama has not elected a Democratic governor since Don Siegelman in 1998.

When Tuberville ousted Jones in 2020, the Democrat won about 40% of the vote, which has been the ceiling for Alabama Democrats in recent statewide races.

Retired political science professor Jess Brown said Jones lost in 2020 despite being a well-funded incumbent, and that’s a sign that he faces an uphill battle in 2026.

“Based on what I know today, at this juncture of the campaign, I would say that Doug Jones, who’s a very talented and bright man, is politically the walking dead,” Brown said.

Jones acknowledged being the underdog and said his decision to run stemmed in part from a desire that Tuberville not coast into office unchallenged.

Jones pointed to recent Democratic victories in Georgia, Mississippi and other red states as cause for optimism.

Tuberville, who formerly led the football program at Auburn University, had “no record except as a football coach” when he first ran, Jones said. And “now there are five years of being a United States senator. There are five years of embarrassing the state.”

Jones continued to question Tuberville’s residency, saying he “doesn’t even live in Alabama, and if he does, then prove me wrong.” Tuberville has a beach house in Walton County, Fla., but has repeatedly said Auburn is his home.

Tuberville’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment but has previously noted his commanding defeat of Jones five years ago. The Republican senator spent part of Friday with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Huntsville to mark the official relocation of U.S. Space Command from Colorado to Alabama.

Jones’ 2017 victory renewed the hopes, at least temporarily, of Democratic voters in the Deep South state. Those gathered to hear him Friday cheered his return to the political stage.

“I’m just glad that there’s somebody sensible getting in the race,” Angela Hornbuckle said. “He proved that he could do it as a senator.”

Chandler writes for the Associated Press.