The Republic of Liberia began as a settlement of the American Colonization Society (ACS), who believed black people would face better chances for freedom in Africa than in the United States.
Between 1822 and 1861, thousands of free blacks were relocated to the settlement at Cape Mesurado on the Pepper Coast of West Africa. In 1824 the colony was named Liberia, and the main settlement was named Monrovia, which remains the present-day capital.
Monrovia is named in honour of U.S. President James Monroe, who supported the colonization of Liberia by the American Colonization Society. This makes it the only other national capital to be named after a U.S. President; Washington, D.C. being the other.
The settlers faced immense hardships in the initial years with atrocious mortality rates due to disease and conflict with the indigenous peoples. Within twenty years, the colony had grown and established economic stability.
On July 26th 1847, the settlers issued a Declaration of Independence and promulgated a constitution. The constitution was heavily based on the United States Constitution and established the independent Republic of Liberia. The United Kingdom was the first country to recognize Liberia’s independence, the United States only recognized Liberia’s independence in 1862 during the American Civil War.
Liberia was the first African republic to proclaim its independence, and is Africa’s first and oldest modern republic, maintaining independence despite the colonial expansion in Africa in the late nineteenth century.
The Star and Stripes
The Liberian flag is based on the flag of the united States and was adopted on July 26th 1847. It has 11 horizontal red stripes representing the 11 men who signed the Liberian Declaration of Independence. The single star represents African freedom.
President Donald Trump has ordered signs to be placed outside the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, to caution visitors about exhibits his administration views as “inaccurate”.
The order directs the Department of Interior to issue the warnings, and also to direct people about where they can find “accurate information regarding America’s history”.
The Trump administration has often accused the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest research museum, as well as other academic organisations of harbouring an anti-American bias.
The Smithsonian did not immediately respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
The order on Friday – titled Restoring Trust in the Smithsonian Institution – accuses museum leadership of not doing enough to celebrate America’s founders on the country’s 250th anniversary of independence, which took place on 4 July.
It says the museum’s leadership team “views American history as a ‘prime tool’ to advance ideas of social justice and the radical transformation of our society”.
Democrats who oversee the Smithsonian condemned the order.
“This EO is a clear political overreach, driven by an ideological agenda to rewrite American history,” congresswoman Melanie Stansbury, ranking member of the House Administration Committee, wrote on X.
“Our Smithsonian institutions do not belong to the President, but to the American people and so does our nation’s history.”
The executive order comes just days after Smithsonian director Anthea Hartig was grilled by Republican lawmakers in two congressional hearings, where the museum was accused of being “infected by a woke ideology that seeped into public displays, educational materials and planning documents”.
Earlier this month, the White House Domestic Policy Council released a scathing report, claiming that the museum “erases our heritage”.
Trump has set out to radically reshape American culture, which he says has been contaminated by “woke” left-wing ideology.
He has signed several orders that are intended to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programmes from the federal government – some of which led to legal challenges.
In March, he issued a separate order against the Smithsonian, directing it to “eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology”.
The Smithsonian is largely funded by the federal government. Its museums offer free entry to some 15 to 30 million visitors each year. It operates 21 museums in Washington, Virginia and New York.
They include the National Museum of American History, the National Portrait Gallery, the American Art Museum, the National Zoo and more than a dozen others.
July 24 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Friday ordered the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to add signage warning visitors about “ideological” views in some of its displays.
Trump issued an executive order to add the signs based on a review of the Smithsonian’s American History museum that he directed to search for ideological views related to social justice and “radical” changes to society.
The report, issued on July 4, ripped the museum for what the Trump administration claimed is practicing “extreme political activism” in its exhibits and the language it uses in them.
The report was the subject of a contentious House subcommittee meeting on Thursday, which followed Republican members of the House alleging the Smithsonian of misusing federal funds and promoting a “divisive, politically [biased] revisions of American history.”
Trump’s order directs the Department of the Interior to bear the cost of signs and changes to exhibits throughout the museum.
“The report demonstrates that the Smithsonian leadership does not present American history as a shared national inheritance to be taught and celebrated, but instead views American history as a ‘prime tool’ to advance the ideas of social justice and the radical transformation of society,” Trump said in the executive order.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during a press briefing in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on Thursday. Photo by Samuel Corum/UPI | License Photo
Fulgencio Batista had led a military coup on 10 March 1952 installing himself as president, supported financially and militarily by the United States government. Batista moved to suspend the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike.
Fidel Castro was a lawyer with strong communist views. He had participated in the elections that were cancelled due to Batista’s coup. Castro viewed Batista as an oppressive dictator in the pocket of the US and had begun training rebels with the aim of removing Batista.
On the morning of 26 July 1953, around 160 men under the command of Fidel Castro attacked the Moncada army garrison in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba’s second-largest city. The attack was seen as an opportunity to arm the rebels and instigate a revolution that would bring down Batista.
By any measure, the assault was a failure, with deaths on both sides. Many of the rebels were hunted down and executed. Those that were captured, including Castro, were sentenced to long prison sentences; though they only served 22 months due to an amnesty for political prisoners.
Fulgencio Batista was removed from power on 12 January 1959.
Despite the failure of the attack on the Moncada barracks, it is seen as the catalyst for the Castro-led insurrection that eventually expelled Fulgencio Batista. The date of the attack was adopted by Castro as the name for his revolutionary movement. (Movimiento 26 Julio or M 26-7).
The damage to the Moncada Barracks was quickly repaired by the military after the attack. The bullet holes were recreated in the façade of the barracks after the revolution’s success.
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios was born in Caracas on July 24th 1783.
He was born into an influential and rich family, but both his parents died before he was ten, and Bolivar was placed under the guidance of several tutors, the most influential being Don Simón Rodríguez, who became his mentor and instilled in Bolivar the ideas of liberty, enlightenment, and freedom. When Bolivar was 14, Rodríguez had to leave the country and Bolivar joined a military academy. When he was 16, Bolívar was sent to Europe to complete his education.
He lived in Spain and married the daughter of a Spanish nobleman in 1802. He then returned to Caracas with his young bride, who died less than a year later from Yellow fever. He then travelled across Europe for a few years, even meeting Napoleon Bonaparte whose success at the time impressed Bolivar.
On his return to Caracas, he found a region that had started to embrace the idea of independence from colonial rule. In 1810, he joined a group of patriots that temporarily seized Caracas and proclaimed independence from Spain.
In 1813, he was given command of a patriot army and he began a successful military campaign – recapturing Caracas from the Spaniards. He was soon forced to retreat to New Granada (now Colombia), which was also at war with Spain. Taking command of a Colombian army he captured Bogota in 1814. The struggle for Colombia (now Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela) continued until 1819. After the military victory, he led the congress that organised the original republic of Colombia and Bolivar became its first president on December 17th 1819.
There are certain truths that are self-evident to all but the willfully blind or stubbornly obtuse.
Heat is hot.
Rain is wet.
Donald Trump is the most brazenly corrupt president in the history of the United States.
The money-grubbing chief executive has raked in at least $2.2 billion during his first year back in office. He’s funneled millions of taxpayer dollars and foreign payments to his businesses. The grift, er, gift of a tricked-out Air Force One from the Qatari government — which Trump plans to keep in retirement — is only the most high-flying example of his avarice.
It’s so blatant and so consistent with Trump’s dodgy corporate background — a career checkered with six bankruptcies — that it’s easy to shrug off his presidential swindling as just more of the same. That’s been Trump’s political superpower: normalizing the outrageous and anesthetizing many Americans to all but the most extreme affronts. Even those have limited shock value these days.
On Thursday, California’s junior U.S. senator, Democrat Adam Schiff, will take to the floor of the chamber to assay the president’s many conflicts of interest, warn against complacency of the seen-it-all variety and offer his prescription for a cleansing once Trump slinks out of the gold-slathered Oval Office.
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“The scope of the corruption we’ve seen in this administration is beyond anything we have imagined in prior years or prior administrations, “ Schiff said in a preview of his speech. “It’s really novel and breathtaking.”
But the purpose of his remarks, Schiff said, goes beyond simply enumerating the abundant examples of presidential profiteering. (It was a struggle, he said, keeping the list to a top 10.) His intent, he said, is “to bring home … the real cost to ordinary people” of Trump’s egregious self-dealing. Explaining why — in a practical, feel-it-in-your-wallet sense — people should care.
“If a president approves a merger not because it’s good for consumers, not because it’s good for the economy, but because participants in the merger paid him millions, what’s the cost to them?” Schiff said, referring to the proposed marriage of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery and the money CBS shelled out for a flimsy lawsuit against “60 Minutes.” The settlement was widely seen as a way to smooth Paramount’s merger with Skydance Media, which is now bidding to swallow Warner Bros.
“The cost is they’re paying more for their streaming services,” Schiff said. “They’re getting laid off if they work in the industry. “
In 2024, Democrats lost the White House at least in part because they spent so much time talking about noble but abstract concepts like defending democracy and the rule of law, rather than highlighting ways they’d work to bring down the price of bacon and eggs.
Schiff insists it’s not an either/or choice. To prevail in November’s midterm elections, which means winning at least one chamber of Congress, Schiff said Democrats should discuss both affordability and Trump’s venality. He sees the two as being irrevocably entwined.
“The positive message is we are singularly focused on your cost of living,” Schiff said from his office on Capitol Hill. “We want to build more housing and bring down the cost of housing. We want to attack anti-competitive mergers of grocery stores and food companies to bring down the cost of food. We have a whole agenda that is designed to make your life more affordable.
“Why isn’t the administration doing this?” he said. “And the answer is, they’re corrupt. They’re focused on their own economic well-being. They’re doing great for themselves. They could care less about you.”
Schiff plans to introduce a number of proposed remedies. They include legislation to ban corporate executives from serving in the executive branch if they’ve been convicted of corruption or financial crimes, and a requirement that government employees recuse themselves from matters affecting the financial interests of any employer they’d worked for within the previous four years.
Although the measures stand no chance of passing in the current Congress, Schiff said “it’s important to show the American people, ‘Hey, this is what we intend to do if you give us the majority.’”
He acknowledged that the depth of presidential dishonesty, its constancy and deep weave in the fabric of this administration, can have a deadening effect: “When the guy working the teleprompter at the White House, betting on how many times the president will use a certain word in his speech, is a blip in the corruption…”
But Schiff said it’s important not to turn away or shrink from the malodor rising from Trump’s swampy Washington.
“You just have to take the time to break it down for people,” Schiff said. “I think putting things in context, trying to snap people out of the norm-shattering numbness of this administration, is a daily challenge. But it’s one that we have to undertake.”
There’s no certainly no harm in stating the truth. It’s worth trying, over and over.
Over the weekend, the Academy Museumannounced that it will honor Mexican and Mexican American film history in an upcoming exhibition titled “Cinelandia: Celebrating Mexican American Cinema.”
Currently scheduled to open in September 2027 — likely to coincide with the onset of Hispanic Heritage Month — the showcase will span from the silent film era to the present day and examine movies from both sides of the border.
The idea for the exhibition was first discussed back in 2019 and work on it officially began in late 2022, Academy Museum associate curator Sophia Serrano told The Times.
The display will focus mostly on Mexican American cinema, but examines those films in conversation with Mexican features and other Spanish-language movies, made both in Hollywood and internationally.
Films included in the exhibit will be Day of the Dead flicks like “The Book of Life” and Disney’s “Coco” — as well as the Spanish-language version of the 1931 horror classic “Dracula,” plus director Luis Valdez’s “La Bamba” and “Zoot Suit.” Three groundbreaking works by Gregory Nava will also be honored: the Oscar-nominated “El Norte,” “My Family/Mi Familia” and the Jennifer Lopez-led biopic “Selena.”
Among the classic Mexican films included are the 1932 film “Santa,” which was the first Mexican narrative sound movie, as well as 1946’s “Enamorada.” Features from Mexico’s Oscar-winning “three amigos” of cinema — Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro Iñárritu — will also be highlighted.
Along with curator Serrano, “Cinelandia” is guided by a 12-person advisory panel: cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz; UC Santa Cruz professor emeritus Rosa-Linda Fregoso; LACMA curator and head of contemporary art Rita Gonzalez; animator-director Jorge R. Gutiérrez; writer-director Cristina Ibarra; Pitzer College professor Jesse Lerner; director-writer Carlos López Estrada; University of Arizona assistant professor Orquidea Morales; director Gregory Nava; UCLA professor Chon Noriega; University of Texas at Austin professor Charles Ramirez Berg; and USC professor Laura Isabel Serna.
Given that L.A. County’s population is almost 50% Latino, Serrano noted that part of the exhibition’s aim is to connect to the millions of Latinos in the county and show how they’ve been critical in informing the cultural landscape of L.A.
“Mexican American cinema is … a big part of Los Angeles’ history,” Serrano said. “We want this exhibition to connect with the broader Los Angeles community, as well as illuminate the history behind many of the beloved films from Mexican American and Mexican filmmakers. The exhibition is designed to offer something for everyone and bring people of all ages and backgrounds together to celebrate this important cultural heritage.”
“Many of the films and artists featured in the exhibition draw attention to or push against these challenges in a variety of ways,” Serrano said. “A guiding principle of the exhibition is foregrounding the voices of film artists themselves via interviews, written quotes, and guest curations and collaborations alongside the hundreds of original objects that will go on display, and this aims to tell an earnest and engaging story about this history.”
“We are also aiming to show how vast the contributions of Mexican American artists are, and these histories are often unknown or underrecognized. It’s essential that the exhibition celebrates these moments of impact and influence in a dynamic and educational manner.”
“Cinelandia” isn’t the museum’s first foray into identity-based exhibitions centered on underrepresented populations. In 2022, the museum opened the “Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971” exhibition which highlighted the work of Black creatives from filmmaking’s early days through the civil rights movement. The showcase — which closed in April 2023 — tackled such themes as the representation of Black people in early cinema (1897-1915), the era of “race films” made by Black filmmakers for Black audiences (1910s-1940s), musical films and stories born of the civil rights movement.
The museum’s ongoing showcase titled “Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital,” explores the stories of the Jewish filmmakers and studio founders who helped cement the L.A. area as the world capital of entertainment.
Lieutenant José Quiñones Gonzales was a Peruvian pilot during the Ecuadorian–Peruvian War. On July 23rd 1941, his plane, a North American NA-50 fighter, was hit while performing a low-level attack on an Ecuadorian border post on the banks of the Zarumilla River.
According to Peruvian accounts, instead of parachuting to safety, Quiñones chose to make the supreme sacrifice by crashing his damaged aircraft onto the Ecuadorian position, rendering the battery out of action.
Quiñones was promoted posthumously to the rank of Air Force Captain and was declared a national hero by law on May 10th 1966.
For decades, neo-Nazis and far-right extremists flocked to the Austrian home where Adolf Hitler was born to glorify the Nazi leader. Now, the building has been transformed into a police station following a $22.8-million renovation.
Austrian politicians hope the change will prevent neo-Nazis from visiting the building as a place of pilgrimage.
Published On 22 Jul 202622 Jul 2026
The building in which Adolf Hitler was born near the Austrian border with Germany has been converted into a police station.
The Austrian government opened the new police station in the town of Braunau am Inn on Wednesday in the hope that the change will prevent neo-Nazis from visiting the building as a place of pilgrimage.
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The government bought the terraced house in 2017, and the plans to remodel it were announced in 2019. The renovation cost about 20 million euros ($22.8m).
Officers from the district and local police will be based in the building.
In a ceremony to mark the opening, Johannes Waidbacher, mayor of the town, said he hoped the transformation would show that the local community is “confronting its history, that it is assuming responsibility”.
“I believe that the opening of the police station today brings clarity to the discussion, perhaps also a bit of calm for the people of Braunau,” Waidbacher said in a ceremony also attended by Interior Minister Gerhard Karner.
About 100 people watched an orchestra play in the house’s courtyard, including some 30 officers in uniform, though few locals made the trip, the AFP news agency reported.
The head of the Austrian Ministry of the Interior’s history department, Stephan Mlczoch, told reporters on a tour of the building: “The aim was to prevent any association with Adolf Hitler, so as to strip it of that mystique.”
That mystique was encouraged by the Nazis’ cult of personality around Hitler, under whose rule the “Fuehrer birth house” was an art museum.
Hitler was born there on April 20, 1889; his family moved out a few weeks later. Passers-by often stop to take pictures, but their views on Hitler are usually not known. Local officials said there are now only “isolated incidents” involving visitors, fewer than before.
A picture taken on July 16, 2026 shows a police car standing in a courtyard of the birth house of former German dictator Adolf Hitler in Austria [AFP]
However, critics have said changing the building’s function will not erase its history and association with the Nazi leader.
“The world won’t forget where the worst mass murderer in history was born. Wikipedia won’t change its entries,” said Robert Eiter of the Mauthausen Committee and the Network Against Racism and Right-Wing Extremism. He added that there will be no reduction in the number of neo-Nazis making “the pilgrimage to Braunau”.
When asked about the public response to the project, Mayor Waidbacher told the Reuters news agency, “I think on the whole the people of Braunau have accepted it and can live with it.”
Meanwhile, some residents are unhappy about the building’s new purpose. “I would have preferred if they had done something else, but it is what it is,” said Irene, 74, adding that she would have wanted the charity to stay there.
Waidbacher was on a commission that recommended the building be used for either a charitable or official administrative purpose. In the end, having a charity based there would have made it too accessible to the public, he said. Waidbacher had said an argument against the charity was that it would have been too accessible to the public.
There is a rock on the building’s pavement from the Mauthausen concentration camp with the inscription “Never again fascism”. The rock remains in place, and a sign that reads “Police” has recently been added.
Many Jews worldwide observe the religious holiday of Tisha B’Av by fasting, praying and reading Bible passages related to the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC.
Religious Jews have kept Tisha B’Av for centuries as a day of communal mourning for the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem.
The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans under Titus, who burned it down in 70 AD.
For Jews, the ninth day of the month of Av also commemorates multiple tragedies in Jewish history, ranging from God decreeing that the Israelites would wander in the desert for 40 years to Jews being expelled by decree from England in 1290 and from Spain in 1492.
The Orthodox Jewish organization Chabad ranks Tisha B’Av as “the saddest day on the Jewish calendar,” even more sombre than Yom Kippur.
The Fast of Av begins at sunset the previous day and lasts for more than 24 hours.
Jewish law demands that during the three weeks preceding the day, Jews limit rejoicing: no weddings, no haircuts, no listening to music and swimming is prohibited. In the last nine days of the three weeks, no one is allowed to eat meat or drink wine except on Shabbat, or even wash clothes.
Thirty years ago a teenage boy, traveling abroad and without parents for the first time, came upon a scene of staggering destruction.
At Pompeii, when Tom Hiddleston saw the casts of the bodies killed by the explosion of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79, he wasn’t just horrified, he was mesmerized, even excited; amid all that death it felt like the past was alive.
“Until that point, it had existed in books in the classroom, but I felt like was going back in time, walking into the past,” he said in a recent video interview about “Pompeii: Out of Time With Tom Hiddleston,” his new series that’s a hybrid of travelogue, documentary and extensive dramatic reenactments (with a meta touch).
“I was knocked sideways by the quality of the preservation,” he recalled of that teenage visit. “You can hear that these buildings carry the echoes of the lives they contained because of the frescoes, the mosaics, the furniture. You feel 2,000 years compress and collapse. It’s like magic.”
Hiddleston knows something about magic and time travel. After studying classics at Cambridge, his acting career led to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the role of Loki, the god of mischief and “the boundary crosser.” Loki’s movie misdeeds get him “removed from the timeline of history,” and in the “Loki” spinoff TV show, he faces his past while bouncing through time.
One place Loki lands is Pompeii. Hiddleston was actually on a set in Atlanta, but there he was speaking Latin and revisiting his own past. “I felt this extraordinary confluence of my passions.”
Tom Hiddleston in a scene from the series, where he speaks to experts about Pompeii and how the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius unfolded.
(Christian Black / National Geographic)
Hiddleston had been talking with producer Kevin R. Wright about his fascination with the ancient world, and after seeing Hiddleston in fictional Pompeii, Wright got the ball rolling on “Out of Time,” co-writing and helping to produce the series, which debuts Wednesday on NatGeo and Thursday on Hulu and Disney+.
On the show, Hiddleston travels back to Pompeii and the lip of the volcano, speaking to experts of Pompeii’s history and volcanoes but also one in surviving disasters to help him understand people’s behavior as the sky was falling on them. “It’s about trying to gather as much evidence from different disciplines,” he explained.
Hiddleston’s enthusiasm for the project is evident throughout our interview: Each question earned a five-minute response, all delivered with passion (and incredibly articulate with no verbal fillers or talking in circles) and fascinating digressions — he broke down the Greek and Latin roots of the words “democrat” and “republican,” mentioned the classical references in the architecture of the New York Stock Exchange and British Museum, and tied in the relevance of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey.”
Here, for instance, is a portion of his answer to my first question about whether the driving force of the series was the importance of facts in understanding history, using storytelling and imagination to create empathy for the people of Pompeii, or to show the way our past still has lessons to offer today:
“I wanted a series with an original dynamism, which could be immersive and propulsive and emotional, and bring the story of Pompeii and its people back to life in a way that could be different and innovative. I wanted to evoke for the audience the feeling that I had when I first went to Pompeii.
“At university, I had teachers who taught me to live in the question and that our relationship with the past is a two-way street. One cannot examine the past without acknowledging that we look back from the perspective of where we stand. We tell stories to understand something about ourselves — we need to know who we were to think about who we are now.
Darius Arya, an archeologist and historian, with Hiddleston in the ancient city of Herculaneum. (Paolo Verzone/National Geographic)
Human remains inside of boat sheds, where people took shelter from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. (Paolo Verzone/National Geographic)
“The engine of my commitment was centered on empathy, trying to honor the lives of the people of Pompeii. If we could gather enough evidence, enough fragments of truth, they might add up to a picture of history, which would generate great reserves of feeling and compassion so we could see ourselves in their predicament, their instincts, their choices, their capacity to help each other. And that experience of empathy and compassion would connect us to a thread across time to people experiencing a terrifying and traumatic event, and to see that in our world now.
“But we were very careful about the idea that the truth matters. In writing history, there must be intense rigor — evidence is important and if you have evidence that should counteract any bias or hypothesis.
“But the evidence here is incomplete so at some point, you have to take an educated guess, a leap of imagination. The past is a two-way street with the present, but it’s also an eternal mystery and all of our questions will never be answered so there’s that joy of living in the question.”
When the publicist said our time was up, Hiddleston stepped out of time and took one more question. And then another and another, nearly doubling the time allotted, thrilled to be exploring the connections between past and present.
While many people think that the city’s population was wiped out, the vast majority actually escaped and modern research has found the names and details of hundreds of survivors. Hiddleston notes that “one great gift of Pompeii is that the Romans didn’t have paper, so the walls, the columns, the houses, the public buildings are covered in writing: deeds, business contracts, advertisements, gossip, doodles.”
In this behind the scene photo, director of photography Jim Jolliffe runs with a camera, following Frankie Treadaway playing Avianius, a teenage boy whose story is reenacted in the series.
(Darrin Zammit Lupi / National Geographic)
The three episodes track the stories of a teenage boy, a successful businesswoman and a soldier in the nearby town of Herculaneum, with a sprawling cast and special effects bringing those scenes to life. “We thought that in the words of Pliny the Younger, ‘their lives were worthy of our memory.’ ”
While there have been other more traditional Pompeii documentaries, Hiddleston felt he had something distinctive to offer, thanks to his “day job.”
“I take a piece of writing and a character, real or imagined, and research as much as I can, and then imagine it and try and breathe life into a person,” he says. “Even when I’ve played real people, I’ve run out of evidence. That’s when you just have to extend your empathy and compassion, your knowledge of human beings and the breadth and range of human experience, the things we all share and can connect with to find an internal world of variety and depth.”
Hiddleston wanted to extend that to the people of Pompeii. “They were three dimensional people with rich lives,” he says. “We follow the trail of breadcrumbs as far as we can, and then try to bring them to life with empathy and compassion.”
In a list of most popular reasons for public holidays, celebrating the birthday of a ruler or the date when a country threw off the shackles of colonial rule are probably the most popular. Not far down the list is commemorating a battle or war that was crucial to the heritage and history of a nation. This is the case with Guam’s Liberation Day which commemorates the Battle of Guam in 1944 which returned the island to U.S. control.
Guam is the southernmost and largest of the Marianas Islands in the Pacific Ocean. It became a U.S. territory in December 1898 after the Spanish-American War. The U.S. sold the other Marianas Islands to Germany.
In December 1941, Japan entered the second world war when it launched a surprise attack on the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbour in Hawaii. With the intention to dominate the Pacific theatre, Japan invaded Guam a few days after the Pearl Harbour attack. This first Battle of Gaum lasted two days before the U.S. troops were overwhelmed by the Japanese.
Japan’s early advances in the war began to wane as the U.S. Pacific Fleet retaliated with a major victory at the Battle of Midway coming in June 1942.
It would two long years of hard-fought victories before the U.S. launched its assault to liberate Guam on July 21st 1944. The Second Battle of Guam raged until August 10th, with the Japanese troops fighting to the last man.
We said “last man”, but some Japanese soliders held out in the jungle and fought until December 1944, and famously one of the Japanese soldiers was discovered on the island in January 1972, having escaped the fighting and living in a cave for 28 years.
After the battle, Guam became an important base for the allied operations that would eventually end the war in 1945.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — This summer’s World Cup will be remembered for a lot of things.
It was the first to be played in three countries, the first with 48 teams and the overall attendance nearly doubled the previous record. Norway’s Erling Haaland and Cape Verde’s Vozinha were captivating while Egypt and Canada both won World Cup games for the first time, advancing to the Round of 16.
But the tournament will also be remembered for a classless and churlish Argentina, which forever stained itself with a thuggish performance in the game and an ungracious one afterward.
If La Albiceleste had simply kept its composure it would have secured a place next to Brazil and Germany, the only other countries to reach three finals in four World Cups, as one of the greatest teams of all time. Instead, some of its players turned the postgame handshakes into a brawl, with Argentine midfielder Leandro Paredes drawing a red card for grabbing Spain’s Eric Garcia by the throat and shoving him to the turf.
It was believed to be the only red card ever handed out after a World Cup final, and the ignominy it brought was well-deserved. But the childishness was just beginning. When Spain assembled on the podium to accept the World Cup trophy, which had been Argentina’s moments earlier, the South Americans turned their backs.
More than an hour later Lionel Messi, who has cemented his stature as the greatest player in World Cup history, soiled that status by leading the players out of the locker room and through a back exit to the team bus, avoiding the media many had been so eager to speak with during the team’s unbeaten run to the final.
Argentina’s Nahuel Molina, top, reacts after Spain won the World Cup final between Spain and Argentina in East Rutherford, N.J.
(Pamela Smith / Associated Press)
It was an attack on class and decorum as well as violation of FIFA rules, which require players to leave the stadium through a “mixed zone” accessible to media. They are not required to stop or speak, but certainly someone owed some accountability to the tens of thousands of fans in Argentine jerseys who packed Times Square and MetLife Stadium over the weekend and the millions in Argentine who filled plazas and town squares to watch the team play.
“We’ve been great in victory and we need to be great in defeat,” Argentine coach Lionel Scaloni said moments after Paredes was booked for assault. “We have shown today that we know how to lose, too. We lost the game and we accept that.”
Scaloni, who did address the media, later broke down in tears.
“I already cried all the tears I had in the dressing room,” he said in Spanish.
Scaloni, 48, may be out of a job when his contract expires in December, but his message for the fans was don’t cry for me, Argentina.
“It is hard to ask people to enjoy this equally. It is very hard to convince people that this is a triumph,” said Scaloni, who has lost just twice in 15 World Cup games.
“When you win, not everything is good. When you lose, not everything is bad.”
But while Argentina was being petty and petulant, Spain was practically perfect in every way. Not only did it concede just one goal in the tournament, it held Argentina without a shot into extra time Sunday — the first time that’s ever happened in a World Cup final — and ran its unbeaten streak to a record 38 games overall.
The win, which came on substitute Ferran Torres’ goal moments into the second extra-time period — and less than 20 minutes after Argentina was reduced to 10 men when Enzo Fernández was given a second yellow card for a foolish tackle — not only made Spain the first country to be the men’s and women’s world champion at the same time, it also made it the first to be the men’s world, European and Olympic champion at the same time.
No country in history has dominated the sport as Spain is dominating it now. And since Spain is the second-youngest team to win the World Cup in 56 years, La Roja could be on top for some time.
“After the match, some of the players who have been with us the longest asked me ‘coach, what is left for us win? We’ve won everything,’” said Spain’s manager Luis de la Fuente. “I told them, well the next match in September.”
That’s a UEFA Nations League match with England, which finished third in this World Cup. A little further down the road is the 2030 World Cup, which Spain will co-host, making it the first country in history to defend its title at home.
“When you arrive at a moment like today and think about the journey we’ve taken, you realize the importance of that process,” said De la Fuente, a former youth national team coach who managed many of the players on the World Cup team — among them Dani Olmo, Mikel Merino, Mikel Oyarzabal, Unai Simón, the tournament’s top goalkeeper, and Rodri, tournament’s top player — to U-19 and U-21 European titles.
“We certainly wouldn’t be here today — we wouldn’t have achieved anything — without the journey we’ve shared with these players,” the coach continued. “We have that raw material, those wonderful Spanish footballers. And they way they compete, that is what brought us here.
“That goes back many years.”
De la Fuente, soft-spoken and professorial, is also scrupulously polite, an example many of his players follow. And while it is undoubtedly easier to display grace and dignity in victory than it is in defeat, the difference in the way Argentina and Spain exited the World Cup was far greater than the gap that separated them on the scoreboard, something De la Fuente unwittingly highlighted in speaking about his team late Sunday.
“It seems people were surprised that, alongside talent and brilliance, good people can also play the game,” he said. “This proves that it is possible; that good, supportive, generous people with strong values can form a genuine team.
“We played against the best national teams in the world, yet we were the best team. We demonstrated that a team built on good people — supportive people, people who hold values and principles that prioritize the common good over individual interests. Traveling with people like that makes for a better, safer journey.”
In Spain’s case, it also makes a World Cup champion.
Staff writers Eduard Cauich and Jad El Reda contributed to this story.
Among likely voters, 65% oppose the termed-out governor’s edict and just 34% support it. The opposition among infrequent or nonvoters is even stronger.
Negative attitudes are especially stiff in inland California — particularly the Central Valley — and among middle-class people with incomes between $40,000 and $100,000, those over age 55 and Republicans.
Opposition to being denied new gas vehicles has grown substantially since 2021, when Californians were evenly divided over the issue.
But the state’s anticipated next governor, moderate Democrat Xavier Becerra, is more in line with Californians’ thinking on gas cars than is Newsom.
Becerra told me during his primary election campaign that Newsom’s 2035 goal is not realistic.
“We can’t make it by ‘35,” he said. “But we can make it.” Sometime in the future.
The fact is lots of people can’t afford electric vehicles because they tend to cost more than cars fueled by gas.
Besides, there’s an inconvenience of having to pull off the road for a 40-minute recharging stop on a long trip — if you can find a vacant recharger.
And “electricity is not cheap. It often depends on the time of day,” notes PPIC Polling Director Mark Baldassare, who owns an electric vehicle and says he likes it.
Newsom has been hawking electric vehicles since he came into office, like some slick TV pitchman — his goal being to greatly reduce climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions.
The governor and the Legislature recently appropriated $135 million to motivate Californians to buy new or used electric vehicles.
First-time EV buyers will receive $3,500 rebates on vehicles with manufacturer’s suggested retail prices of $50,000 or less. Used car buyers will get $1,750 off if the sale price is $25,000 or less.
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Automakers will pay for half the incentive costs — obstensibly, at least, if they don’t just secretly add their tab to the vehicle price.
This smacks of a huge taxpayer giveaway to manufacturers if the state isn’t careful. Is it really the state’s job to sell cars? Shouldn’t it be the automakers’ responsibility to offer competitive prices? Whatever.
Newsom’s plan partially replaces a $7,500 federal tax incentive for new EVs that President Trump and the Republican-led Congress allowed to expire last year.
California already leads the nation in EV ownership, with around 1.3 million vehicles registered. That’s more than five times the No. 2 state, Florida. And it’s not just because California’s population is much larger. We also lead in per capita ownership.
There’s plenty of contradiction and hypocrisy in the divided minds of Californians, as highlighted in the lengthy PPIC survey into their views on environmental policies.
People strongly favor fighting climate change — at least in concept — until it adversely affects them directly. That’s just human nature.
Asked what they consider the most important environmental issue facing California, those surveyed placed wildfires first, followed closely by global warming.
Baldassare says what struck him in the poll was “the disconnect between what people support in policies and what they’re prepared to do.”
“Two things are going on in California now,” the pollster continues. “People have their long-standing concerns about the environment. But they also have immediate concerns about affordability.
“When it comes to what people are willing to do, they’re worried about living costs and particularly the cost of energy. It’s something we’ve noticed even more this year. It affects the political and economic landscape.”
Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed support Newsom’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero “as soon as possible, but no later than 2045.”
And there’s overwhelming support for taxing corporations based on the amount of carbon emissions they produce.
Roughly 60% favor requiring all electricity to be generated with renewable energy — such as wind and solar — by 2045, although support for that state edict has dropped by 15 percentage points in the last six years.
Paradoxically, people aren’t willing to pay more for electricity produced by renewable sources. Roughly 60% reject that idea. Ten years ago, almost that many told PPIC pollsters they were willing to pay extra.
And today they’re not nearly ready to surrender their option of buying a new gas-fueled automobile.
For one thing, they’re not convinced there’ll be enough charging stations to handle a lot more EVs. Twice as many people are not confident of that as are confident, the poll found.
The California Energy Commission reported in January that there were more than 200,000 public and private EV charging stations in the state, plus 800,000 chargers in homes. The state is helping to add more along highways.
Becerra has pledged to take a fresh look at several controversial Newsom projects, including the pokey bullet train. There’s much uncertainty about the pending new governor.
But there’s one pretty good bet: In 2035, sales of new gas cars will still be getting a green light.
The Spanish first arrived in Colombia in 1499, founding the first permanent settlement in 1510. Under the reign of King Charles III (reigned 1759-1788), resentment in the colonies was growing as the Spanish insisted that the colonies could only trade with Spain, limiting their growth and also as the Spanish support for the Americans in the US war of independence increased taxation. This had led to small, ineffective rebellions.
Following the Napoleonic Wars and the turmoil in Europe, Criollos (natives born from Spanish descent) who wanted independence seized their chance.
Mogadishu, Somalia – Thousands of reel-to-reel tapes sit in an air-conditioned room in the archive of Somalia’s public radio, Radio Mogadishu, stacked on steel shelves and lined up like old manuscripts beneath a thick layer of dust.
Each reel contains a small fragment of Somalia’s 20th-century history, from news bulletins to speeches, music and voices that were once beamed out across the nation’s airwaves, some dating back to the early 1950s.
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Abdiqadir Geedi Robleh, an archivist at Radio Mogadishu, threads a reel onto an old tape machine, connects it to a computer, and records the contents of each tape. A tape with a love song by Mohamed Mooge Liban, a prominent singer fills the room, and Robleh is transported, he says, to his youth.
He is working with a small team to digitise and methodically order approximately 400,000 hours of broadcasts, officials here say, before the magnetic tape deteriorates beyond recovery, taking with it a crucial record of the country’s past.
Abdiqadir Geedi Robleh cues up a tape, ready to hear a recording. [Abdimajid Abdillahi Farah/Al Jazeera]
“This is the world’s largest store of Somali language music, culture, dramas and everything else, and at the moment it is locked away from the public in a kind of prison,” Robleh tells Al Jazeera. “We’re working to preserve it but also open it up in future to the public.”
Founded in 1951 during the Italian colonial era, Radio Mogadishu would grow into Somalia’s largest and most important public broadcaster. It initially broadcast in Italian and Somali before introducing foreign language services, including everything from Swahili and Oromo to English and Arabic.
In its heyday, it was among the most influential and distinctive voices in East African media, reaching audiences as far afield as Tanzania, Ethiopia, and the Middle East with a style of radical pan-African broadcasting reminiscent of Radio Cairo in the Nasser years.
With the exception of a brief hiatus in the 1990s, when it fell under the control of a warlord, it has served not only as a key source of news for Somalis and audiences across the region, but also as a vital repository of the country’s collective memory.
The effort to preserve its archives has gathered new momentum this year.
In early June, Somalia’s information ministry and the UNESCO regional office for Eastern Africa – the UN’s heritage agency – brought archivists from across the country to a workshop in Mogadishu, aimed at eventually registering its contents with UNESCO’s Memory of the World programme, which catalogues archives of important historical value.
“Protecting this knowledge isn’t just relevant for Somalia, but it is relevant for everyone,” said Guilherme Canela, a senior UNESCO official who is overseeing the project.
Thousands of tapes fill the shelves of Radio Mogadishu’s archive, holding decades of Somali history [Abdimajid Abdillahi Farah/Al Jazeera]
An expert assessment carried out in April counted roughly 45,000 tapes and reels, representing an estimated 400,000 hours of material recorded since the station’s founding. More than 85 percent remain playable, but around one in 10 has deteriorated with age, and more than 5 percent has been destroyed or severely damaged, according to UNESCO.
Radio Mogadishu’s collection was recognised both for its size and because so much of what it holds exists nowhere else.
Some were damaged in an electrical fire in 2018, Robleh says, while others were lost during fighting in 1992, when US forces battled Somali militias in the streets of Mogadishu.
During the worst of the civil war, police colonel Abshir Hashi Ali risked his life to prevent the contents of the archives from being looted. When fighting engulfed Mogadishu following the 1990 collapse of the government, he said he ran back “with the aim of conveying to Somalis the wealth that is stored here”.
Abdi Jeite, the station’s director, says the digitisation drive began as early as 2012, but has been held back for years by a lack of resources. By his estimate, only approximately 10 percent of the archive has so far been converted.
“We’ve got some new tools, and more training for our archivists, but there is still a lot of support needed,” he says.
An old reel-to-reel machine used to play and digitise tapes at Radio Mogadishu’s archive in Mogadishu begins spinning [Abdimajid Abdillahi Farah/Al Jazeera]
To understand why the archive matters so much, it helps to understand what radio once meant in Somali life.
“Radio Mogadishu was arguably the preeminent media institution in post-independence Somalia,” Iman Mohamed, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota and historian of Somalia, tells Al Jazeera.
“In a society that prizes orality above the written word, radio was uniquely effective at creating a common public sphere through which ordinary people could feel bonded to one another and to a shared sense of nationhood,” Mohamed adds.
Though Somali audiences could also access BBC Somali, Radio Hargeisa, and opposition stations when the government began to deteriorate in the latter part of the 20th century, it was Radio Mogadishu that dominated the “soundscape of urban Somalia”, Mohamed said.
That dominance made Radio Mogadishu a national factory of talent. “If you were a musician, poet, playwright or producer, Radio Mogadishu was the platform you wanted to appear on,” Robleh, the archivist, said. “It made Somalia’s stars.”
Robleh points to the label on a tape of a love song recorded at Radio Mogadishu in 1974 [Abdimajid Abdillahi Farah/Al Jazeera]
Robleh, the archivist, added that many BBC Somali journalists who went on to have distinguished careers first cut their teeth at Radio Mogadishu, which became an important pipeline for Somali-language talent to the BBC.
Hassan Dahir, a former journalist at the station, was one of many Somali children who grew up dreaming of working there. For years, he recalled, Radio Mogadishu was virtually the only source of news for millions, “the eyes and ears of the community”, he told Al Jazeera.
“Its reach was so extensive that even nomadic herders followed events as far afield as the Vietnam War and the American Civil Rights Movement,” Dahir said.
Under Siad Barre, the military officer who seized power in a 1969 coup and ran Somalia for two decades under a self-styled socialist, revolutionary government, the station became an instrument of state ideology, mixing news, drama and religious programming with nationalist and anti-colonial content.
The station beamed pan-African songs Oh Africa, still asleep by Halimo Khalif Magool, which spurred the continent’s inhabitants to awaken and take charge of their own destinies. Mahamud Abdullahi Sangub’s Reject the Color of Imperialism was another popular song of the era in this same tradition of politically charged music, with lyrics like: “Africans listen to each other, reject the colour of imperialism, reject it, reject it, reject it!”
Many of those songs have been covered, sampled or repurposed since, and younger Somalis often encounter them with no idea who performed the originals, or the politics that shaped them, say Mohamed.
Its news coverage focused on anti-colonial wars in places such as Mozambique against Portugal, the struggle against apartheid in Rhodesia and South Africa and the Civil Rights Movement in the US. It covered everything from colonial battles in Guinea-Bissau to the arrest of African American political activist and author Angela Davis.
“We were telling the stories of people resisting their oppressors”, said Dahir.
After seizing power in a 1969 coup, Major General Mohamed Siad Barre used Radio Mogadishu as a key instrument for disseminating his regime’s messages [Abdimajid Abdillahi Farah/Al Jazeera]Portraits of Somalia’s presidents line a wall at Radio Mogadishu above the entrance to the archive [Abdimajid Abdillahi Farah/Al Jazeera]
The station was a “mouthpiece of the government”, cautions Mohamed, but took on a crucial role of inculcating “a patriotic and revolutionary ideological orientation in the Somali people”.
One of the most important projects the radio supported was the Somali mass literacy campaign, when the government sent students to rural Somalia in 1972 to teach the newly developed Somali script. The campaign led to a dramatic increase in literacy across the country.
It also became deeply entangled with Somalia’s regional foreign policy, as the government spent much of the 20th century at loggerheads with Ethiopia before eventually invading in 1977.
That rivalry led Radio Mogadishu to dedicate airtime to Ethiopia’s marginalised ethnic communities, as well as armed rebel movements, particularly those from Eritrea. Among its most notable initiatives were broadcasts in Oromo and Sidama.
Dahir, the former Radio Mogadishu journalist who covered Ethiopia, told Al Jazeera that these were the first-ever radio programmes in either language, both of which had been suppressed for many years in Ethiopia under policies that privileged Amharic, the language of the country’s elite.
The station itself has taken on a far smaller role in Somali life since.
The collapse of the central government in 1991 broke the state’s grip on broadcasting, opening space for private radio, television and online outlets, which have proven popular with the Somali public.
It has lost most of its foreign-language programming, and with it, much of its revolutionary edge. The Somali state also continues to be constrained by limited resources as it rebuilds after decades of conflict.
The entrance to Radio Mogadishu’s studios. [Abdimajid Abdillahi Farah/Al Jazeera]
In November 2021, the al-Qaida-affiliated armed group al-Shabab, which has waged a long rebellion against Somalia’s government, assassinated the station’s then-director, Abdiaziz Mohamud Guled, in a suicide bombing in Mogadishu.
Iman Mohamed, the historian, says that with the civil war in the country, now in its third decade, preserving the archive for posterity has become more urgent.
“The destruction of archives during the civil war has left an enormous gap in Somalia’s documentary record, which means that anyone researching the country’s history is almost entirely reliant on foreign archives or oral history,” Mohamed said.
“That is especially problematic for young people,” she adds. “Recovering what we can matters for the youth who will never have known the world that Radio Mogadishu broadcast in its heyday.”
Nicaragua is the largest of the republics in Central America.
In 1936, Anastasio Somoza García, the head of Nicaragua’s army deposed the elected President, Juan Bautista Sacasa (who was also Somoza’s uncle), and installed himself as President.
This effectively established a hereditary dictatorship in the country for over 45 years, with two of Somoza’s sons serving as president after Somoza had been assassinated in 1956.
Backed by the US because of their anti-communist stance, the administration brought some reforms to the country, though the Somozas exhibited the usual dictatorial traits of accumulating incredible personal wealth and exiling any potential opponents.
Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the second of Somoza’s sons to be president was seen as particularly dictatorial and was accused of human rights violations.
Not too far in the background of the Somoza rule was the Sandinista National Liberation Front. This was a socialist revolutionary group founded in 1962 and named after Augusto Sandino, a hero of the resistance to U.S. military occupation between 1927 and 1933.
Since their creation, the Sandinistas had steadily built their support base amongst workers, students and peasants. In the 1970s, the political aims spilt over into military attacks on the Nicaraguan government. And although the Somozas retaliated, the revolution was gaining momentum, exploding into direct confrontations between the Sandinistas and the Nicaraguan army in 1978.
For Seattle, Awa Fam carved out a slice of history for herself, becoming the youngest player ever at the age of 20 to hit four three-point shots in a single quarter.
Dominique Malonga scored 28 points, the second most in her career, and 14 rebounds – but it wasn’t enough for Seattle, who set a team record for points scored in a normal-time loss.
Clark’s record-breaking night came a day after she was labelled a “political football” by NBA commissioner Adam Silver.
The star point-guard has become one of the biggest draws in the WNBA since being drafted by the Fever in 2024, and there has been a lot of attention paid to the way she is treated by opposing teams and the tactics they employ to try to limit her impact during games.
Last month, Phoenix Mercury forward Alyssa Thomas received a retrospective one-game ban and a $1,000 (£743) fine for appearing to knee Clark in the groin and push her fist into her neck during a tussle for possession.
A group of 11 Republican lawmakers then sent a letter to WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert asking the league to take “accountability”, and expressed concern that “attacks against Clark may be racially motivated”.
Political commentators on the right have also weighed in, suggesting the treatment of Clark is rooted in racism and jealousy.
Speaking as part of a panel at an event in New York on Thursday, Silver said the debates surrounding Clark had become about broader political and cultural issues in the United States rather than basketball alone.
“That particular incident is not about whether a foul should have been called at the time of the game or whether that was ultimately a flagrant non-review,” said Silver.
“I’ve come to know Caitlin really well. She’s an incredible player and also an incredible person.
“And she wants to focus on being the best player she can. And she’s become a bit of a political football in this country, and I think it’s incredibly unfair to her.”
Son Heung-min scored his first goal of the season, Denis Bouanga continued his scoring streak in El Tráfico, and LAFC beat the Galaxy 3-0 on Friday night at Dignity Health Sports Park following an international break for the World Cup.
LAFC (8-5-3) evened the all-time series with the Galaxy at 10-10-7. The Galaxy (5-6-5) entered unbeaten in their last three meetings with LAFC.
Mark Delgado, who played for the Galaxy from 2022-24, opened the scoring in the 26th minute. Delgado’s initial header was blocked but it came right back to him for a shot past goalkeeper Novak Micovic.
Bouanga made it 2-0 in first-half stoppage time on a penalty kick that Micovic got a hand on. Bouanga has scored 11 goals in 10 matches against the Galaxy across all competitions and has scored in the last seven meetings, the longest streak in the rivalry’s history.
LAFC forward Denis Bouanga does a flip after scoring on a penalty kick against the Galaxy in the first half Friday.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
Son scored in the 57th after getting a pass back from Delgado.
Up next for LAFC: Hosts Real Salt Lake on Wednesday.
Up next for the Galaxy: Host St. Louis on Wednesday.
After achieving enlightenment, Buddha gave his first sermon in the Deer Park in Isipatana, India and founded the Buddhist sangha (monkhood) about 2,500 years ago.
In the sermon, which is known as ‘Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion’, the Buddha first spelt out the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.
In His First Sermon, the Buddha said, “I teach one thing and one thing only: suffering and the end of suffering,” which is the ultimate goal of Buddhism. The Buddha presented and explained this very doctrine in his major discourses. In this First Sermon at Deer Park, He taught the Four Noble Truths: the existence of suffering, the cause of suffering, that the cause of suffering can end, and the path to the end of suffering.
“Avoiding extremes, the Buddha has realised the Middle Path: It gives vision, it gives knowledge, and it leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment, to Nirvana. And what is that Middle Path? It is simply the Noble Eightfold Path, namely, right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. This is the Middle Path realised by the Buddha, which gives vision, which gives knowledge, and which leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment, and to Nirvana.”
Thirty years ago this fall, a Republican politician cried electoral fraud after losing a close race.
Orange County Rep. Bob Dornan couldn’t accept the most logical explanations for why Loretta Sanchez beat him in a historic upset: that voters had tired of his polarizing politics. That his Latino-majority district wanted one of their own to represent them. That he was an ideologue who never brought anything back from D.C. for his constituents.
Instead, Dornan and his supporters settled on the craziest excuse of them all: Illegal immigrants.
California voters were passing anti-immigrant laws by the boatful, so Dornan’s fevered tales about nonprofits registering noncitizens to vote and take him down landed with Republicans. A compliant Congress investigated Dornan’s claims, while local lawmakers proposed bills that would force voters to show government-issued identification every time they cast a ballot — a voter suppression tactic going back to the segregationist South.
The congressional investigation flopped like a soccer player fishing to draw a red card, finally concluding in 1998. Yes, noncitizens did vote for Sanchez, but only an infinitesimal number — less than 1% of the total votes tallied and not enough to overturn the results. No one was charged for illegally voting on purpose or improperly registering noncitizens to vote.
When Dornan ran again in 1998, with volunteers vowing to pursue any election irregularities, Sanchez walloped him, and he was swept into the dustbin of political history.
I teach this episode in my O.C. history college classes as a case study in what happens when political parties succumb to the spell of a vindictive demagogue who blames everyone for their failures except themselves. I also point out that Dornan had the last laugh: the idea that illegal immigrants regularly vote in elections, throwing them toward Democrats, has become gospel for many Republicans.
And here we are.
Republican U.S. Congressional candidate Bob Dornan speaks to a group of young adults at the Orange County Conservation Corps. in Anaheim, California in 1998. He was seeking to regain his old seat from Democratic incumbent Loretta Sanchez, who beat him in a historic 1996 upset.
(John Hayes/Associated Press)
On Thursday, President Trump’s obsession over losing to Joe Biden in 2020 reached a phlegmatic nadir with a speech on debunked election fraud theories that weaved in everything from communist China to deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro to — who else? — alleged noncitizen voters.
The tirade was so pathetic and noneventful that most networks didn’t bother to air it. Even Fox News host Sean Hannity — whose tongue is probably two parts shoe polish after spending the last decade as Trump’s personal spit shine — moved on just minutes after Trump finished.
The president insisted that the U.S. Senate pass a bill ahead of this November’s midterms, mandating in the name of election integrity that voters show proof of citizenship before casting a ballot.
In California, a clown car of MAGA loyalists — state Assemblymember Carl DeMaio, state Senator Tony Strickland, wannabe Southern California U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli — are pushing something similar. Proposition 39 would require California election officials to verify the citizenship of registered voters and require voters to show government-issued identification when they cast a ballot.
By law, voters in federal elections must be U.S. citizens. Only a handful of municipalities allow noncitizens to vote in local elections. Despite Trump’s trumpeting of supposed evidence that 278,000 noncitizens are registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Nevada, actual instances of them casting a ballot are as rare today as in Dornan’s time.
That hasn’t stopped Trump and his lackeys from claiming, as Dornan and his supporters did, that they are trying to restore faith in a system corrupted by liberals and their undocumented puppets. But, just like back then, this amounts to a dog whistle for people freaked out about changing demographics and massive GOP midterm losses.
It’s the last, most dangerous gasp of a wheezing political movement whose supporters are clinging to power at all costs and just can’t understand why more and more voters are tired of Trump’s flailing foreign policy and failing economy.
These people are so delusional that they point to last month’s California primaries as proof of election fraud, arguing that the results in two prominent races should have been different.
No Republican has won a statewide election in 20 years, so it’s not surprising that Republican Steve Hilton finished second to Democrat Xavier Becerra in the gubernatorial primary, with both advancing to the general election. Nor was it a shock that in the primary for Los Angeles mayor, progressive incumbent Karen Bass and democratic socialist City Councilmember Nithya Raman finished first and second over Republican reality television star Spencer Pratt.
That didn’t stop Trump from insisting that both Republicans should have won outright and crying conspiracy when they didn’t. The president continued his laughable tune in his White House speech.
“Took a month to count the votes,” he whined about California’s sloth-like approach to counting ballots. “I wonder what they were doing. This is worse than any third world country. There’s no third world country that has elections like we have.”
Actually, many third world countries elect despots like Trump — but that’s neither here nor there.
A May poll by the Public Policy Institute of California found that Prop. 39 was in a statistical dead heat, with 49% of voters favoring it and 51% opposed. All Prop. 39’s opponents have to do is cite Trump’s stark-raving mad comments about electoral fraud, and support for the ballot initiative will melt faster than the Sierra snowpack.
The Republican crusade against imaginary noncitizen voters may pay off in the short run but will inevitably, spectacularly backfire.
Look at what happened in my native Orange County. Sanchez’s victory was the first ripple in a blue wave that eventually turned O.C. purple. Our once-mighty GOP is now increasingly isolated to wealthier pockets of the county and no longer commands national attention — hell, they couldn’t even deliver O.C. to Trump in any of his elections.
The crazy thing is, when Republicans put in the work to appeal to immigrant and Latino voters instead of obsessing about how they’re supposedly anti-democracy invaders, it pays off. Just look at 2024, when a record number of Latino GOP legislators won seats in California and Trump won a larger share of the national Latino electorate than any Republican presidential candidate ever had.
That happened because the party largely stayed quiet on noncitizen voting and focused on what swing voters wanted to hear: a promise to clamp down on unchecked migration and too much wokeness, while fattening average Americans’ pocketbooks.
Trump’s success with Latino voters seemed to represent a tectonic shift in American politics. Now, it feels like an aberration.
Trump still doesn’t seem to get how desperate the situation is for Republicans, just four months before Election Day, and how much of it is of his own making.
Near the end of his speech, he sputtered, “The only reason you wouldn’t do [mandated voter ID] is you want to cheat because your policies are so bad, and your candidates are so pathetic that you can’t get away or can’t get elected any other way.”
![Abdiqadir Geedi Robleh cues up a tape, ready to hear a recording for the first time in years. [Abdimajid Abdillahi Farah/Al Jazeera]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2F3A0163-1783253287.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
![Thousands of tapes fill the shelves of Radio Mogadishu's archive, holding decades of Somali history. [Abdimajid Abdillahi Farah/Al Jazeera]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2F3A0155-1783253271.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
![An old reel-to-reel machine used to play and digitise tapes at Radio Mogadishu's archive in Mogadishu. [Abdimajid Abdillahi Farah/Al Jazeera]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2F3A0085-1783253236.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
![Robleh points to the label on a tape of a love song recorded at Radio Mogadishu in 1974. [Abdimajid Abdillahi Farah/Al Jazeera]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2F3A0122-1783253259.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
![After seizing power in a 1969 coup, Major General Mohamed Siad Barre used Radio Mogadishu as a key instrument for disseminating his regime's messages. [Abdimajid Abdillahi Farah/Al Jazeera]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2F3A0132-1783255045.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
![Portraits of Somalia's presidents line a wall at Radio Mogadishu. [Abdimajid Abdillahi Farah/Al Jazeera]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2F3A0102-1783253246.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
![The entrance to Radio Mogadishu's studios. [Abdimajid Abdillahi Farah/Al Jazeera]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2F3A0182-1783253368.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
