history

About six months after Toni Morrison died in the summer of 2019, Literary Cleveland began hosting annual community tribute parties on the Nobel Prize-winning author’s birthday, Feb. 18. Lorain, Ohio — a suburb of Cleveland — is where Morrison was born and raised, and where she set several of her novels. During these gatherings, participants were prompted to read aloud from their favorite Morrison works, and share why they savored those particular lines.

Over time, these meetings began to feel increasingly intimate, even “sacred,” according to Literary Cleveland’s Executive Director Matt Weinkam, which prompted him, in tandem with Ohio Humanities head Rebecca Asmo, to brainstorm how to take their program state-wide. “This is Toni Morrison, one of our greatest writers,” Weinkam recalls thinking. “We needed to do something bigger.”

At the time, Weinkam and Osmo were also trying to figure out how to commemorate America’s semiquincentennial. Weinkam was listening to Morrison’s entire oeuvre on audio and realized that when you organize the 11 novels in a certain order, “they tell the history of America.” So how, he thought, “could you use the literature of Toni Morrison to view our country through a different lens — through her lens?” He says they knew honoring Morrison as a consequential figure not just in literature but also in the context of American history would be central to Ohio’s celebration of the semiquincentennial.

“[But] only as the project was coming together did we strike on the fact that her novels trace American history from ‘A Mercy,’ set in 1690, through ‘God Help the Child,’ in the 2010s. Not only does her work re-center African Americans in the story of our country, it also tackles major events from our founding, through slavery, to the impact of Jim Crow, to the great migration and beyond.”

In the months leading up to the 250th anniversary, they decided to bring the Morrison salons they were curating in Cleveland to all 88 Ohio counties. For assistance they connected with Britt Lovett, a strategist, community leader and fellow Morrison acolyte.

“People say that reading Toni Morrison is challenging,” says Lovett. “[But] reading Toni Morrison is like my grandmother speaking to me.”

In February, on what would have been Morrison’s 95th birthday, they officially launched “Beloved: Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison,” a yearlong homage including readings, workshops, lectures and a monthly book club that meets on Sunday evenings. They intentionally programmed the book club so that it would take readers through our U.S. history utilizing Morrison’s vision: Weinkam proposed reading Morrison’s novels in the order in which they are set rather than the order in which they were published. “That simple shift,” says Lovett, “changed everything.”

They began with “A Mercy,” one of Morrison’s later novels, published in 2008 — which is set in the late 17th century, before slavery took hold and the country became “racialized.” Next came “Beloved,” then “Sula” and “Jazz.” “Experiencing the novels this way reveals how Morrison traced generations of Black American life across centuries of our nation’s history,” Lovett says. “What may appear to be individual stories become part of a larger narrative about memory, freedom, family, belonging and the ongoing project of America itself.”

For Morrison, writing fiction was a form of “literary archaeology,” excavating history, and how the past hovers over the present. Her quest was what she termed “rememory.”

Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is a Princeton professor and author of “America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries” who has studied Morrison. “She understood the ongoing national effort to disremember — this startling combination of dismembering and remembering — to protect the innocence of America,” Glaude says. “Instead, her novels relentlessly expose the horror and the magisterial efforts on the part of ordinary people to overcome them. In doing so, she takes us to the beating heart of this fragile experiment — something we desperately need to remember in this 250th year of the country.”

In 1973, as an editor at Random House, Morrison published and collaborated with collectors in compiling “The Black Book,” a seminal volume that tells the story of the African American experience in America in the form of an encyclopedic scrapbook that spans from 1619 through the 1940s. There is no narrator, and this is intentional. The visuals — newspaper clippings, slave auction notices, patent applications by Black inventors, photographs, sheet music, relate their own powerful story “Black life as lived” — great joy juxtaposed with the tragedy and legacy of slavery. From her work on that groundbreaking assemblage emerged the idea for “Beloved,” which won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Nearly seven years after Morrison’s death at 88, we are living in a golden age of Morrisonia. Three extraordinary new books, published this year, shed light on the brilliance and complexity of Morrison’s life and work, and place her as an American eminence, a visionary who saw fiction as a means through which to recast her country’s story. “On Morrison” by Namwali Serpell; “Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship” by Dana Williams; and a posthumously published collection of Morrison essays entitled “Language as Liberation: Reflections on the American Canon.” Serpell writes that “Morrison has shaped the way we think about everything.” Morrison herself said that she wrote to “think the unthinkable,” to write novels that were “relentlessly black,” giving no deference to the “white gaze.” Her refusal to sugarcoat the interior and exterior lives of her characters, whether enslaved or traumatized by the past — by events in American history — was purposeful.

“You’re confronted with horrific acts of violence,” Serpell says. “Not to present it in spectacular fashion, nor to feed any kind of voyeuristic or prurient interest on the part of the audience, but to use quiet language — beautiful language — in order to actually get us to step back and think about why this violence is happening and where it’s coming from.”

In that way, Morrison’s work was always a radical experiment — and is perhaps why, according to the American Library Assn., “The Bluest Eye” her 1970 debut — continues to be one of the most frequently “challenged” books in the U.S. “Beloved” runs a close second. But this also is among the reasons her books are considered must-reads in the classroom, and contemporary classics.

John Freeman is an executive editor at Knopf who oversees Morrison’s publishing program. “Her books persist today because they beckon us doubly: they invite us to look clearly at what America is, to come to grips with the fantasies and shadows developed to avoid this awful knowledge,” Freeman says. “They also tell us one phenomenal love story after another.”

Through her book club, cultural icon Oprah Winfrey introduced millions of readers to Morrison by featuring four of the author’s novels. “From ‘The Bluest Eye’ through ‘Beloved,’ ‘Jazz,’ ‘Home,’ ‘A Mercy’ and ‘Love,’ Morrison’s words have helped me become more of myself,” Winfrey says. “She understands the lives of Black women like no one else I’ve ever read. Reading her, I’ve often felt seen in places I didn’t know how to name.”

(HarperCollins; Penguin Random House)

In Morrison’s essays, lectures and other public comments — including as a professor at Princeton for nearly two decades — she occupied the role of public intellectual, always teaching us how to view America’s evolution as a country, and how it became “racialized.”

In a Granta interview conducted late in her life, she challenged the interviewer to consider that the concept of “whiteness” is peculiarly American: “Think about it, “ she prompted. “If you come to this country from Germany or Russia, or anywhere you got off the boat, got on the land, in order to become an American, you have to be white. That’s the quality that brings the country, its people together — having a non-white population. My concept is that if you were from Sweden, you were Swedish. You didn’t have to say, ‘I’m a white Swede.’ You know what I’m saying?”

As we prepare to celebrate America’s 250th, it’s useful to reflect on how Morrison viewed the intersection of fiction, history and memory, how the mission of her fiction was to uncover truths omitted by the standard historical records and history’s “sages.” In her 1987 essay, “The Site of Memory,” she utilized a river as a metaphor to discuss how imagination excavates forgotten histories and people. “All water,” she wrote, “has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were.”

Haber is a writer, editor and publishing strategist, and co-founder of the Ink Book Club on Substack. She was director of Oprah’s Book Club and books editor for O, the Oprah Magazine.

WASHINGTON — President Trump reshaped this year’s U.S. Senate map by sidelining some Republican incumbents and promoting loyalists to replace them. Now the question is whether he’ll put his money where his mouth is.

With four months to go until November’s elections, it’s still unclear how much MAGA Inc., the country’s largest political war chest, with $382 million in the bank as of last month, plans to spend on key races.

The silence has persisted even as Senate Republican leaders have urged Trump’s team, both privately and publicly, to pick up the tab for the president’s decisions.

Front and center is Texas, where Trump successfully endorsed fiery conservative Ken Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn, a choice that some Republicans grumble has turned a safe election into a toss-up that will drain resources away from other battlegrounds. Democratic nominee James Talarico, a state lawmaker, has made Paxton’s history of corruption allegations a central target of his campaign.

“The president picked Paxton, and he’s got $350 million,” Cornyn recently told Semafor. “I think he can spend his money.”

Another challenge has emerged in North Carolina, where Sen. Thom Tillis declined to run for reelection after feuding with Trump last year over healthcare spending.

Trump backed Michael Whatley, his former handpicked chair of the Republican National Committee, to run instead, and Democrats hope to flip the seat with former Gov. Roy Cooper.

Some in Republican campaign leadership are expecting MAGA Inc. to pitch in for Whatley in North Carolina, where the several metro media markets can be pricey.

Republicans will likely be able to count on generous support from well-funded official party committees, which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this week should be allowed to make unlimited direct contributions to candidates’ campaigns.

But even that sum falls short of what Trump has stockpiled in MAGA Inc. Even though the president is constitutionally barred from running again, he began raising money shortly after winning a second term, and he’s regularly held fundraisers at his resort properties where tickets cost $1 million per person.

James Blair, the former White House political director who left his government job to coordinate the president’s midterm efforts, was evasive in an interview with Sean Spicer, a former Republican spokesman who hosts a podcast.

“The president is going to expend substantial resources to win the midterms,” said Blair. “He cares deeply about the party winning.”

As a super PAC, MAGA Inc. can raise unlimited money from individuals and corporations. However, it is barred from coordinating with individual campaigns or national Republican committees, which adds to the sense of mystery surrounding its plans.

It’s been more than two months since Blair, along with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, pollster Tony Fabrizio and political advisor Chris LaCivita huddled at Washington’s Waldorf Astoria to discuss MAGA Inc.’s strategy.

The huddle was focused on assembling teams of vendors, such as advertisers, canvassing providers and digital media company leaders who had worked with the Trump team in key states during previous elections and who would be dispatched once plans were in place.

The president has spent much of the year waging a war of retribution against Republicans who have crossed him. He viewed Cornyn as insufficiently loyal, held a grudge against Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana for voting to convict him in an impeachment trial and assailed Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky as the “worst Republican Congressman in history.”

All of them lost their primaries to Trump-backed challengers.

Cornyn’s loss weighs heavily on Senate Republicans, who suggest that Paxton could cost the party an extra $100 million to defend the seat.

Senate Leadership Fund, the principal super PAC aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, is still expected to spend money on advertising in Texas, but not to play a central role given its obligations elsewhere.

Democrats must net four seats to take the majority, and they see Alaska, Maine, North Carolina and Ohio as their best opportunities. The Senate Leadership Fund has already committed to spending $342 million across these four states, plus Iowa, Georgia, Michigan and New Hampshire.

When Paxton came to Washington after winning the nomination May 26, he had a cordial meeting with Thune focused on moving forward together, according to people with knowledge of the conversation who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Later that day, Thune suggested that Trump should be putting up money for a candidate whom Senate Republicans hadn’t asked for.

“We will do what we need to do to make sure the state stays red,” Thune told reporters. “But I’m certainly hopeful the president and the resources he can bring to bear will be engaged.”

“It’s going to be an expensive race,” he added.

Beaumont writes for the Associated Press. Associated Press White House correspondent Seung Min Kim contributed from Washington. Beaumont reported from Des Moines.

The Benin Bronzes are a broad term used for the carved ivory, wooden works, metal sculptures and plaques looted by British troops during the Punitive Expedition in 1897.

Scholars estimate that more than 5,000 artefacts were stolen, some of which were gifted to Queen Victoria, others sold in auctions, held in private galleries or donated to museums across Europe and elsewhere.

The call to return the art, which began in the 1930s, intensified in the recent decade, inspired by growing pressure, repatriation activism and the relentless effort of the Benin Dialogue Group, a multilateral stakeholders’ group.

As momentum built at the peak of the homecoming of these arts, Igun Street unexpectedly found itself in the global spotlight. Diplomats, state officials, museum curators and researchers began arriving in numbers local artisans say they had never witnessed before.

This noon, Double Chief’s voice brims with pride as he points to a recently completed sculpture resting on a wooden bench. The bronze figure, a man in a suit and tie, had received its final polish only that morning after months of work.

Yet for many bronze casters, the attention has done little to solve underlying concerns.

“We are struggling to keep the industry alive,” says Oriakhi Osazee, who sits on a wooden stool at the entrance of a store in Igun. A sculptor whose mediums are clay, fibre, brass and bronze, Osazee has been in the craft for more than 35 years. He speaks with depth and conviction, drawing from vivid dates and past events to reinforce his ideas.

Efforts to recruit apprentices have stalled, he says. Young people, on whom the future of the craft depends, are increasingly leaving in search of what he calls “quick money” in other professions, cities and countries.

When their ancestors began, he recalls, their craft extended beyond bronze casting. There were, among the Iguns, men who had a gift in ivory carving. Long before the global ban on ivory trade was made official, that layer of art, without heirs and hope of continuity, had died.

For Agbonmwenre Alex, the subject of heirship within the craft is a matter of personal pain.

Alex, who was taking a tour of his workshop, began learning the craft at the age of eight under the guidance of his father. He started with errands and light tasks before progressing to kneading clay pottery. Over time, he learned every stage of the casting process, from preparing moulds to the final polishing of finished works.

Today, he is the only one of his father’s seven sons who remains in the profession. But uncertainty now hangs over the next generation.

“I would like my sons to take after me,” Alex says. “Unfortunately, I started exposing them to this craft so late. They literally see this work as outdated, archaic, and dying. The zeal, the love for the job, is dead.”

I would like my sons to take after me. They see this work as outdates, archaic, and dying. The zeal, the love for the job, is dead.

by AGNONMWENRE ALEX, BRONZE CRAFTSMAN

His first son chose to study law. His second is pursuing a degree in healthcare. Despite repeated efforts to pique their interest, including offering workshop space, raw materials and financial support to start a business of their own, neither accepted.

“The number of youths is declining drastically. It [the craft] is at risk of going into extinction. Apprentices are so scarce,” says Osazee. “We used to have a lot of apprentices in the past.”

An estimated 10 million mourners attended Iran’s first Supreme Leader’s funeral in 1989, making it one of the world’s largest gatherings. As Iran prepares for the funeral of Khamenei, it’s expecting even bigger numbers.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Mauricio Pochettino’s team continues to do things in this summer’s World Cup that no U.S. team has ever done before.

Its three wins are the most in a single tournament. So are the 10 goals in four games. It has the best goal differential ever and its two shutouts ties a record.

Yet all that means absolutely nothing to the players.

“They’re great milestones,” captain Tim Ream said. “But I don’t think anybody’s even once mentioned the different things that we’re doing. We’re focused on what we’re doing daily on the training ground, because that puts us in the best possible position to to put these performances.

“So yeah, not aware or even worried about records that we’re breaking.”

Well, except for maybe one.

With Wednesday’s gritty 2-0 over Bosnia and Herzegovina, a game the U.S. finished with just 10 men, the Americans won a game in the World Cup knockout stage for just the second time. That sends them on to a round-of-16 meeting with Belgium on Monday in Seattle where a win would be — you guessed it — historic.

“It’s cool and it’s great and it’s an accomplishment,” midfielder Weston McKennie said of the records. “But at the same time, we have high expectations for ourselves. That’s what we expect of ourselves, what we expect of our team.

“We just want to focus on Belgium now and continue to try to make history.”

That chore got a good deal more difficult because of an unwanted team record that was also set Wednesday. When Folarin Balogun scored a goal late in the first half then drew a red card early in the second, he became the first American — and third player ever — to get one of each in the same World Cup knockout game.

“Cool record,” defender Chris Richards said.

But while the goal, Balogun’s third of the tournament, proved to be all the U.S. needed to beat Bosnia, the red card — which cannot be appealed according to U.S. Soccer — means he’s suspended for the game with Belgium.

“It’s just so unfortunate, honestly,” Christian Pulisic said. “Looking back at it, it seems so harsh. I just told him he’s done so much for us, and now we’ve got his back.”

The red card came in the 64^th minute with the U.S. protecting a 1-0 lead built on Balogun’s goal just before the intermission. The American striker was battling hulking Bosnia defender Tarik Muharemovic for a loose ball when he inadvertently raked Muharemovic’s right calf with his studs up, then landed on his ankle, twisting it awkwardly.

Brazilian referee Raphael Claus did not flash either card before stopping play at the behest of the video assistant referee. But after consulting a slow-motion reply, Claus gave Balogun a red card for a dangerous challenge.

“For me, never is this a red card,” said Pochettino, now the winningest U.S. coach in World Cup history. “Watching after on TV, never was [it his] intention to step up on the player. That was a normal action in football.”

Maybe. But Claus sent Balogun off just the same, leaving the U.S. to protect a one-goal advantage for the final 30 minutes while playing a man down. It was probably the sternest test the Americans have faced in the tournament.

“It would be easy to have an excuse if they did score,” McKennie said. “But that’s not the type of team we are.”

For Ream, the challenge was actually no challenge at all.

“Would it be weird if I downplayed this and said [I] wasn’t even fazed by it?” he said. “It didn’t feel like we were down a man. We were still able to carve out chances and we were still able to keep hold of the ball. Everybody knew their roles.

“It felt really calm and felt really, really easy and simple for us in that moment.”

And that allowed another hero to shrug off the pain of his own wounds and step up big.

Early in the second half a Bosnian player stomped on Malik Tillman, shredding his boot and cutting his right foot (but not drawing a red card). During the hydration break, Tillman was able to change shoes and in the 82^nd minute, his white sock turning red with blood, he found himself standing over a free kick just outside the Bosnian penalty area.

“I’ve been dreaming about this game. I’ve been dreaming about, yeah, maybe taking a free kick and scoring,” said Tillman, who bent the ball off the gloved right hand of Bosnian keeper Nikola Vasilj and into the net for his first World Cup goal. “I trained for this in our practices and then it actually came true.”

So did the team’s dreams of reaching the round of 16, only now they’re arriving without their leading scorer, who will have to watch the Belgium game from the stands. Balogun’s absence, however, creates opportunity for others, with Haji Wright and Ricardo Pepi the most likely candidates to take his place.

And if this U.S. team has proven anything, it’s proven that it loves nothing more than embracing opportunities to prove people wrong.

“We’re going to miss him for the next game but we know that if it’s Pepi or Haji, whoever, is going to step up next and they’re going to do the job just as well as he did,” Richards said of Balogun. “One thing about this team is we’re really a big family and we’re shown it this whole tournament.

“Coming in, there was a lot of question marks about our whole team in general. Game by game we started to put ourselves right. Because we knew we had it the whole time.”

Chances are, right about now, you’re considering how you’d like to spend this upcoming Fourth of July weekend. At the beach, maybe, at a barbecue or whatever place sets fireworks pinwheeling through your holiday-happy mind.

Which makes it a perfectly excellent time to talk about elections and vote counting.

Every two years, in the spring and fall, California holds an election. Every two years the state faces an outraged chorus, voices raised nationwide, decrying the length of time it takes to tally the millions of ballots cast and, in a handful of races, determine the winner.

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Then, just as suddenly, the din fades away, the focus shifts and the election process is forgotten until the next round of howling protest.

Just that word, process, can throttle and snuff the life out of the subject.

So it’s good news that lawmakers in Sacramento have used this inattentive time to address the biennial hullabaloo and perhaps shut some people up.

The budget that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law Monday includes an additional $40 million aimed at speeding up California’s vote count, and even if the sum is less than half the $90 million sought by reform-minded advocates, it’s something.

Most of the money will go toward staffing, technology and equipment upgrades. Another $10 million will pay for voter education and outreach. A further $750,000 will be used to combat election misinformation. (A $3.50 roll of duct tape would be a far more economical way to address the latter were it applied to the inciteful mouth of America’s election-denier-in-chief. More about him in a moment.)

“While the amount budgeted is less than we had recommended, it still represents a sizable investment that prioritizes timely election results,” said Kim Alexander, head of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, which has been at the forefront of election reform efforts in the state.

A surprise Supreme Court decision

As it happens, the budgetary infusion came the same day the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of states to count mail ballots that are postmarked by election day, even if they arrive days afterward. In California, where most voters mail their ballots, that lag time can be up to a week.

It was a surprise decision from this most Trump-obeisant court, a setback for the petulant president and a ruling that will have very little effect on California’s prolonged vote counting.

That’s because those late-arriving ballots have very little to do with the time it takes to complete the count. My colleague Kevin Rector reported that in 2024 California tallied more than 406,000 late-arriving mail ballots — which represents only about 2.5% of the more than 16 million ballots cast. The long count is a result of the huge number of ballots placed in drop boxes or arriving at processing facilities on or just before election day — and, really, is it such a bad thing for voters to watch for late developments before letting go of their ballot?

(Does the name Eric Swalwell ring any bells?)

Lawmakers in California made a purposeful decision that voting should be convenient and not a chore, as a way to to encourage the greatest turnout possible. That’s a good thing if you believe in our system of representative democracy. The voice of the people, and all that.

There wasn’t much hue or cry — especially about mail balloting, which has exploded in popularity and introduces all sorts of time-consuming steps, such as signature verification — until Trump cried fraud and made other specious claims. That’s what happens when you have a sore, whiny loser astride the bully pulpit; Trump is perfectly willing to torch people of good faith and burn working systems to the ground if it salves his eggshell ego.

An election, not a soccer match

Many political commentators are complicit in Trump’s arson.

Awaiting California’s election results, they act like pouty birthday children forced to leave their presents unopened until all the kids have had their cake. They speak of voters losing faith in the election process without explaining the commendable reason for the delay — seeking maximum voter participation — or acknowledging how their impatience contributes to the sense that something wrong is afoot.

At bottom, the push for instant results, and instant gratification, is much more about sating the curiosity of pundits and political junkies than some widespread agita among voters glued to the ballot-counting as if it were a World Cup match.

Is there a soul out there who feels there’s insufficient time between June 8, when the Associated Press called the Los Angeles mayoral race, and June 9, when the call came in the gubernatorial contest, for candidates to present their cases and voters — who haven’t already decided — to make up their minds?

Hang out with family and friends. Enjoy some barbecue. Watch fireworks paint the night sky. There’s plenty of time for speechifying, TV ads and campaign mailers to blitz the state between now and the election on Nov. 3.

Frankly, most Californians welcome the break.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: What you should know about the $351.7 billion state budget Newsom just signed
The deep dive: Costs of Iran war will linger despite conflict’s end, experts say
The L.A. Times Special: This California bill is so bad it has me agreeing with a Trump Republican

Until next time,
mzb
—
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Dine-in movie theater chain Alamo Drafthouse Cinema is launching a new initiative to show unreleased independent films that had successful festival runs, a move that comes as specialty films have struggled to gain distribution.

The Alamo Exclusives program, announced Wednesday, will give limited theatrical runs to films that showed at festivals including Sundance, the Toronto International Film Festival, Tribeca Festival and South by Southwest festival, as well as Alamo’s own Fantastic Fest.

The idea is to help showcase films that received critical acclaim, but did not secure distribution or acquisition deals. The chain will not acquire these films, but instead will enter into agreements with filmmakers to exhibit their films on Alamo Drafthouse screens. By showing these films to audiences on the big screen, these films could get the momentum they need for further opportunities.

The program’s first film will be the documentary “Butthole Surfers: The Hole Truth and Nothing Butt,” which debuted last year at South by Southwest and chronicles the history of the punk rock band.

The film will be shown in Alamo Drafthouse theaters for a limited time later this summer.

The Austin-based chain, which is owned by Sony Pictures, has a long history of curating indie films for its audiences, giving Alamo Drafthouse confidence that its viewers want to see these kinds of movies, company chief executive Michael Kustermann said in a statement.

“Time and again, they’ve shown they’ll come out to support bold, original films when given the opportunity,” he said. The new Alamo Exclusives “gives us another way to champion filmmaker-driven films that deserve to be discovered and connect them with the wider Alamo Drafthouse audience.”

The initiative comes at a difficult time for indie films. Since the pandemic upended the movie business, traditional studios and distributors have had less appetite for risk, including betting on smaller indie films out of festivals.

And as the 2023 dual writers’ and actors’ strikes thinned out theatrical lineups, that aversion to uncertainty became a push for reliable and profitable hits.

“Too many incredible films premiere at festivals and then never receive the theatrical life they deserve,” Lisa Dreyer, director of Fantastic Fest and film innovation at Alamo, said in a statement. “We are actively searching for films across all genres, from horror to comedy, to everything in-between, to champion in this new, exciting way.”

This week’s narrow Supreme Court decision protecting birthright citizenship is rightly being hailed as a triumph for the American experiment.

By some, anyway.

Check out MAGA world and you’ll quickly find Trump surrogates and even elected leaders spouting a kind of extremist anti-immigrant sentiment that once, not so long ago, was considered intolerable in the public sphere.

This has included suggestions that go as far as banning pregnant women from traveling to the United States for fear they might give birth here, and — no joke — one notable commentator writing that demanding female immigrants be sterilized might be a solution.

Trump’s Homeland Security advisor Stephen Miller said after the ruling that children of immigrants might not be “qualified to carry on or capable of executing the inheritance of this country.”

“We have people from all over the world, from Third World nations, nations that on their own would have never invented the wheel, let alone modern technology, let alone medicine, let alone air travel, and they can just come into the country, have a baby at a hospital, paid for it by you and me, and then that baby is automatically a citizen,” Miller said.

Before you tell me that the Supreme Court has spoken and this is a done deal, no matter if there’s more gross Miller mush, let me tell you about Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s written opinion and why it matters. It is, if read in the right light, a warning for what comes next — a fight to rewrite history to serve political aims.

“The odds were long and the stakes were high,” Jackson wrote about the creation of the 14th Amendment in 1866, which has long been understood as granting citizenship to any child born on U.S. soil and which was the focus of this case.

Still, she wrote, despite the unlikeliness of post-Civil War America rising to the challenge of inclusiveness, the amendment was always meant to do just that — because free Black people, recently emancipated but denied citizenship, “fought for the shared humanity of all people.”

An alternative interpretation by MAGA world of this amendment and this history was the center of this case.

To greatly simplify, the 14th Amendment was originally a response to a Supreme Court decision, the Dred Scott case, that said freed Black slaves could not be U.S. citizens. MAGA world was arguing that the authors of the 14th Amendment never intended much more than that — citizenship for ex-slaves and their descendants.

While concurring with the majority of the court, Jackson also wrote her own summary that makes a vital point: Without history that includes the Black experience — as most of the arguments in this case did — we are left bereft of the suffering that has shaped our values and which gives us the empathy required to be a pluralistic society.

Black history — any non-white history, really — is the history of resistance and the road map to recovery from this dark era of hate.

It’s hard to call someone your fellow citizen if you take away their humanity — which is exactly what this case was attempting to do by splitting into factions those who would fight for equality and rewriting history with only the voices that match the current administration’s goals.

It was disappointing that the court, whose individual justices bounced around arguments from a myriad of sources outside of their erstwhile adherence to the ideas of originalism, did not call out that erasure more forcefully, and that it was left to Jackson to do so.

Jackson took that narrow idea that Black people — and the white legislators sympathetic to their cause — had only themselves in mind when crafting the 14th Amendment and attacked it head-on, arguing that if we just look at what Black people were saying at the time, the larger intent of the amendment becomes clear.

“This alternative account pitches Black Americans against immigrants when the advocates who promoted the Fourteenth Amendment did no such thing,” Jackson pointed out of the MAGA version of events. “Freed Blacks fought for the shared humanity of all people.”

That “universalist vision of belonging and citizenship,” she wrote, “eventually won the day.”

The 14th Amendment was largely written by Sen. Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, who took much of the basis of it from the legal arguments of Black intellectuals, including Frederick Douglass, the most influential Black statesman of the era.

Trumbull then argued in Congress that the amendment was meant to be inclusive — even of so-called “gypsies” and Chinese immigrants, who faced extreme racism, especially in California.

One congressman opposed to the measure warned that if it passed, Chinese immigrants would “overrun” California and “will double or treble the population.” At the same time, the Romani would likely continue to “wander in gangs” and “have no homes, pretend to own no land, live nowhere, settle as trespassers where ever they go, and whose sole merit is a universal swindle,” he warned.

Asked if the amendment would grant citizenship to those two controversial groups of immigrants, Jackson points out that Trumbull gave an unapologetic “undoubtedly,” again drawing on the universalist ideas of Douglass and others.

The “child of an Asiatic is just as much a citizen as the child of a European,” Trumbull said (and Jackson quoted, drawing from an amicus brief by Evan Bernick of Northern Illinois University and Jed Sugerman of Boston University).

“There is a serious breakdown in on the court that reflects the breakdown and echo chambers in America,” Sugerman, the professor, told me Wednesday. “When it comes to history and originalism, you have to read more broadly than just the founding fathers that you liked.”

So the history of the 14th Amendment is right there — equality not just for Black Americans but for immigrant Americans — but it required Jackson to write her own opinion to put it on the court record.

Legal scholars aligned with Trump did Olympic-level gymnastics in this case to parse what the authors of the 14th Amendment meant with the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” — words that MAGA claimed were meant to secretly exclude undocumented immigrants.

Brown instead reminded us that outside of those white-only discussions when the amendment was written, it was the activism of Black people — their demand for colorblind equality — that actually shaped the final words that granted citizenship to all babies born within our borders.

Solidarity — the unbreakable strength of American democracy.

After the ruling, Trump wrote on social media that Congress could write legislation undoing birthright citizenship. Some pundits say that wouldn’t work, but I’m here to say Trump has managed a bunch of stuff that the pundits said wouldn’t work.

More chilling, and direct, were more comments from Miller.

“It’s an abomination,” he said of the ruling.

But “because of President Trump’s courage and leadership, we are now on the precipice. Yes, we were dealt a setback, but because of his courage alone, we’re on the precipice as a nation of being in a position to end this travesty once and for all, and that’s what we have to fight for.”

Miller and his ilk are seeking to rewrite history to justify their vision of the future of America.

Jackson alone in the court offered us both a warning and a path — a reminder that our history holds indisputable facts despite politics, and we erase them at our own peril.

Of all the calculated maneuvers by LeBron James during his eight years with the Lakers, he saved his smartest for last.

He left before the door could hit him in the butt.

He knew the Lakers didn’t want him back, so he skipped out before they had a chance to say goodbye.

He leaked the news alone, before the Lakers could publicly confirm, because he wanted to sell that this was his decision, when it absolutely was not.

This was not his idea. This was not his call. This was the Lakers saying, enough is enough. This was the Lakers saying, we want our team back.

This was arguably the greatest player in basketball getting the message and getting out before they threw him out.

Officially, on Tuesday, James informed the Lakers that he’s going to leave them as a free agent and finish his career elsewhere.

Unofficially, yay!

LeBron is gone, and he left without a fight, and the Lakers couldn’t be luckier.

LeBron is history, and it didn’t cost the Lakers a penny, and now they can breath again.

“LeBron James is one of the greatest athletes in history,” Lakers governor Jeanie Buss said on social media after the news dropped Tuesday morning. “We will always be thankful for his eight years with the Lakers — including the title he led us to in 2020 under the toughest imaginable circumstances and the countless records he broke in purple and gold. We wish him all the best in the future, both on the court and off. He will always be a cherished part of the Lakers family.”

Cherished, but gone, and thank goodness somebody over there had the conviction to let history walk.

Kudos to the new Lakers ownership for resisting every business impulse in their body to keep him while summoning the strength to stare down the most famous basketball player in the world and tell him to hit the road.

Lakers forward LeBron James looks to pass while being defended by Kings guard Daeqwon Plowden during a game in March.

(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)

They could have been suckered into signing him just to throw him a grand farewell tour. They weren’t.

They could have been fooled by the 15-2 success he enjoyed when playing with Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves during that glorious month this spring. They weren’t.

They could have, as with past Laker regimes, simply been bullied by Rich Paul and his cronies. They weren’t.

They didn’t even make him an offer!

In losing LeBron, the Lakers reclaimed a bit of their soul. In letting LeBron leave, they sent a clear message to everyone who stayed.

This team belongs to Luka. This team belongs to the future. This team again belongs to the Lakers.

“Truly a honor to wear the (purple and gold),” James posted on social media. “Hope I made a few proud during my stint.”

He made many proud. He made the Lakers proud. He led them to their only championship in the last 16 years, he became the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, and, in his 23rd season, he set all sorts of records for longevity.

Lakers forward LeBron James (23) and his son Bronny (9) on the court together during a playoff game against the Rockets in April.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

In his final glorious act this spring, at age 41, he dragged a shorthanded Lakers team into the second round of the playoffs. His widely acclaimed effort against the Houston Rockets proved he could still play. He was still among the top 20 players in the league.

But, goodness, he drove the Lakers crazy.

His eight-year tenure was filled with quiet demands for roster changes amid veiled threats to leave. The Lakers were so afraid of losing him or displeasing Paul and all of his other star clients that they constantly, sometimes embarrassingly, bowed to the King.

In doing everything from acquiring Russell Westbrook to drafting James’ son, Bronny, the Lakers contorted themselves to please their leader.

And for what? Outside of that bubble title in 2020, James never led the Lakers to much of anything. Despite setting some of his records in front of them, he never connected with Lakers fans, perhaps because of the continuous passive-aggressive mind games he played with management.

Here’s guessing he wanted to stay in Los Angeles, and would have eventually accepted a massive pay cut from last year’s $52.6 million. Here’s guessing he would have chosen to remain in the town that contains one of his family homes and many of his businesses for a chance to end his career in a Laker uniform with a farewell celebration that matched the royal ones given the likes of Kobe Bryant and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

But the Lakers never gave him that choice. As it turns out, even 43,440 points were not enough to endear him to an organization that still prefers to call itself the Lakers and not the LeBrons. While he seemed invincible, LeBron was not indisposable, and now he can take his act to Golden State or Cleveland or somewhere else willing to kiss the ring.

Give him credit, though, for pulling one last move.

LeBron leaked his announcement one day after son Bronny’s $2.3 million contract became fully guaranteed.

Of course he did.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — He’s a prize-winning presidential historian who wrote an entire biography of Thomas Jefferson. But even Jon Meacham needs to think for a moment before defining what it means to be a “Jeffersonian.”

“Well for a long time, before the civil rights movement, it meant to be more inclined toward states’ rights and limited government,” says Meacham, the National Constitution Center’s Semiquincentennial Scholar. He then pauses, and asks to start over, recalling how President Franklin Delano Roosevelt evoked Jefferson as an “apostle of liberty” who would have supported the U.S. fighting the Nazis in World War II.

You could define it in so many ways. Historians may argue over the “greatness” of individual founders, but as the country’s 250th anniversary approaches many agree that no one’s life and work resonates like Jefferson’s. He embodied the “very best and the very worst” of the United States, Meacham says.

And a great deal in between.

America’s birth is rooted in his most profound contradiction — the man who proclaimed that “all men are created equal” while being a slaveholder to the end of his life. But Jefferson advanced and explored both sides of so many issues and world views that have defined the country’s path: agrarian self-sufficiency and worldly innovation, pluralism and separatism, limited government and dreams of an “empire of liberty.”

“There is no more malleable figure in early America than Jefferson,” says Andrew Burstein, a professor of history at Louisiana State University who has summed up Jefferson’s legacy in a book he published a decade ago: “Democracy’s Muse: How Thomas Jefferson became an FDR Liberal, a Reagan Republican, and a Tea Party Fanatic, All the While Being Dead.”

“There have been times in American history when just about everyone would have considered themselves ‘Jeffersonian,’” says historian Peter S. Onuf, author of numerous works on Jefferson. “Yet even at those moments, he was a controversial figure.”

It’s an argument without end

Jefferson’s legacy is debated even in settings that owe their existence to him.

On the campus of the University of Virginia, the college he founded and regarded as a signature achievement, stands a memorial to thousands of enslaved people who lived and worked there.

At Monticello, the mountaintop estate and plantation outside of Charlottesville where Jefferson lived when not in public office, a banner near the entrance features the Declaration and the caption, “After all, our guy wrote it.” But once on the grounds, reminders of his enslavement of hundreds are found throughout, from its “Burial Ground for Enslaved People” that includes dozens of graves to an exhibit dedicated to Sally Hemings, the enslaved woman with whom Jefferson is widely believed to have had six children.

Monticello’s director of historic interpretation and audience engagement, Brandon Dillard, cites the staff’s mission “to tell unflinching stories of America’s complex origins and fitful progress toward the ideals Jefferson articulated in the Declaration of Independence.”

Jefferson regarded Monticello as a refuge from the times, but the times inevitably find their way here. A guide on the gardens and grounds tour points out that a foldable plant Jefferson tried and failed to grow — the “Mimosa Pudica,” or “sensitive plant” — now thrives because of climate change. The visitors’ center is LEED Gold-certified for green energy, Dillard says, and geothermal systems have been installed in other buildings for temperature control.

Monticello raises questions old and new about race. Virtually all of the guides are white, an issue Dillard notes is prevalent nationwide. A recent survey released by the American Association for State and Local History found that around just 10% of workers at museums, historic sites and historical societies were nonwhite and that many “Latino/a/x, and multiracial respondents reported higher rates of discrimination and harassment.” (Dillard declined to answer in detail the experience of guides of color at Monticello.)

There is a Jefferson for every occasion

Jefferson’s contradictions date back through much of American history; he was claimed by both sides of the Civil War and both sides of the civil rights movement.

Nineteenth-century Confederates and 20th-century segregationists cited his defense of states’ rights, while Abraham Lincoln and civil rights leaders emphasized Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence. In the space of a few months in 1963, he would be invoked in the inaugural speech of Alabama Gov. George Wallace as he vowed defiance of federal efforts to integrate the state’s schools and by the Rev. Martin Luther King as he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington.

Roosevelt enlisted Jefferson as an ideological ally for the New Deal (the Thomas Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., began as a New Deal project) and a former New Dealer-turned conservative, President Reagan, held up Jefferson decades later as a foe of wasteful spending. Jefferson has been cited often by free-speech advocates for his crucial support for the Bill of Rights, while President Trump has quoted Jefferson’s 1807 lament that “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper” as an implicit endorsement of his modern war against “fake news.”

Jefferson has also been placed on either side of today’s divide over immigration. Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How to Be an Anti-Racist,” cites his well-documented belief in colonization for Black people as inspiration for contemporary scapegoating and xenophobia. Meanwhile, at a time when the Trump administration is aggressively trying to restrict immigration and even denaturalize some citizens, Monticello continues its decades-old July 4 naturalization ceremonies, with Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger scheduled as this year’s keynote speaker.

“As new citizens share their personal stories every Fourth of July,” Dillard says, “we are reminded that the values uplifted in that Declaration are values toward which people from all backgrounds aspire.”

Many Monticello visitors, many reasons to visit

Monticello attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. They come for many reasons.

Erin Porter is a Virginia native in her 40s who until recently had never been to Monticello and wanted to cross it off her bucket list, while Nathan Jaycox of Connecticut is a former nuclear engineer now seeking to absorb history for a class he hopes to teach. Duane Cromwell, a longtime resident of Vancouver, was here on a very personal mission.

Cromwell, 70, grew up in Greenville, S.C., where she was taught that slavery was “an economic necessity” and learned nothing about Jefferson’s history of enslavement. In town last month for a family reunion, she arrived at Monticello anxious to get past the “whitewashed Southern version” and the myths of evil “yankees” and the victimized rebels who defied them.

“Did you (ever) notice kudzu growing up over trees and buildings while in the South? It is an invasive plant brought to the region to control erosion. Well, it is like racism. It is pervasive, part of the horizon, always there but soon you don’t notice it,” she says.

“Having said that, I do think that people do go along better, there is more interactions, relationships than when I was growing up. Everyone needs each other and in the South, there is a great sense of humor and friendliness that help people navigate the awkward moments.”

For Cromwell, Monticello was a chance to educate herself, to become a better person — and, like countless others before her, using Thomas Jefferson as a prism.

“Isn’t that what it’s all about?”

Italie writes for the Associated Press.

SACRAMENTO — President Trump was handed a golden opportunity to upstage Gov. Gavin Newsom in Newsom’s own state on an issue of critical importance to Americans everywhere. But Trump naturally blew it.

The governor and the Democratic-led state Legislature shined.

Trump was victimized by his own self-centered obstinance and inhumanity. And Republican congressional leaders were left looking embarrassed and wimpy.

The issue was housing affordability — the lack of it that is stifling the American dream of homeownership everywhere, not just in California.

In Sacramento, the Legislature lopsidedly passed an $11.25-billion bond proposal aimed primarily at providing government subsidies for building affordable housing. Newsom immediately signed the measure last week, just beating the deadline for getting it on the Nov. 3 election ballot.

“In California, we don’t turn away from the needs of our people,” Newsom boasted in a prepared statement, taking a veiled shot at Trump, his favorite political target.

This came just after both houses of Congress, with members working collaboratively in a rare bipartisan manner, overwhelmingly passed a landmark bill aimed at boosting housing supply. The measure removed regulatory barriers, upgraded federal programs and incentivized new home building.

A Trump “promise kept,” the White House proclaimed.

Whoops! The president then suddenly flip-flopped. He canceled a planned bill-signing ceremony, torpedoing the legislation, an opportunity to gain sorely-needed points for the GOP heading into the fall elections and a chance to outboast Newsom, arguably his most annoying political antagonist.

Trump said he wouldn’t sign the housing bill unless Congress approved his unrelated voter ID legislation, which has practically no chance of passage. The least of his concerns seemed to be struggling homebuyers and renters.

As of this writing, it wasn’t clear what Trump would ultimately do. Nothing ever is certain with him. Shocked and confused GOP congressional leaders even held back sending the president the bill, then ducked out on holiday recess.

At the California state Capitol, by contrast, the governor and legislative leaders were united, working off the same page and successfully negotiating a final agreement on housing help.

As icing on the cake for voters, $1.25 billion was added for the popular CalVet loan program for military veterans. Their home loans are repaid through mortgages, costing the state nothing.

But the remaining $10 billion would need to be paid off by taxpayers over 30 years — at an estimated $580 million annually, bringing the total bond cost to about $17.4 billion, including interest.

Putting this in perspective, the Legislature just passed a $352-billion state budget for the fiscal year starting July 1. Of that, $7.5 billion will go for retiring debt on $73 billion in bonds. And the state has voter authorization to sell $38 billion more in bonds.

During legislative floor debates, some Republicans objected to the additional borrowing.

“We’ve got record revenue, why do we need to borrow money?” asked Assemblyman David Tangipa (R-Fresno).

That was answered during the Senate debate by Sen. Christopher Cabaldon (D-West Sacramento), one of the measure’s principal jockeys.

Building affordable housing “simply is impossible, it can’t be done without this bond” to finance government subsidies, Cabaldon told colleagues.

Developers are subsidized so they can build at a cost that will result in affordable consumer prices, mainly rents in this case.

Some Republicans also objected to inserting the CalVet money for voter appeal. Assemblyman Carl DeMaio called it “window dressing.”

CalVet funds normally are acquired through very small, separate bond measures.

But in the end, only a few Republicans voted against the big bond, which was officially authored by the Assembly Speaker and the Senate leader to display political muscle.

To their credit, the Legislature and governor in recent years have been whittling away at regulatory obstacles to home building. But many cities still balk at rezoning residential neighborhoods to make room for new multifamily dwellings.

The bond proposal is mainly designed to generate affordable rentals for poor people. More money was added at the end for affordable student and farmworker housing.

There’ll be a separate bond proposal on the November ballot that goes in a different direction but doesn’t conflict. It would help middle class homebuyers. And that measure wouldn’t cost taxpayers a cent.

“Housing supply is not just about poor people. It’s not just about homelessness,” says the middle class initiative’s originator, former legislative leader Bob Hertzberg, a Los Angeles County Democrat.

His proposal would authorize $25 billion in revenue bonds. Like the CalVet program, those bonds would be repaid by homebuyers through mortgages — not costing the state anything.

Under the plan, a homebuyer could borrow most of the money needed for a down payment on a newly constructed single-family home or condo. Typically, a 20% down payment is required. Under Hertzberg’s proposal, 17% could be borrowed. Regular lending institutions would arrange the second mortgage.

To be eligible, a homebuyer’s income could not exceed 200% of the area’s median income. In L.A. County, that would be around $213,000 for a family of four, Hertzberg figures. The home would need to be the owner’s primary residence.

The November ballot will be bursting with state propositions — 14 in all, mostly very complex, running the gamut. Besides housing, there’ll be proposals for a billionaires tax, voter ID requirement, local tax limitations and fast-tracking of public works.

Voters could just throw up their hands and reject everything.

“At some point, voters are just gonna say, ‘I don’t know about all this stuff. There’s a lot of stuff,’” says Dan Dunmoyer, who heads the California Building Industry Assn.

California’s housing affordability crunch won’t be solved by just two bond packages. But they’d help.

We and all of America could also use some help from our seemingly unconcerned president, who enjoys free public housing.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Newsom, California Legislature reach $351.7-billion budget deal
Money (That’s what I want): Controversial billionaire tax proposal will appear on November ballot
The L.A. Times Special: Here’s a clue about these mystery books: ‘Papa’ may be California’s next governor

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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The California dream, according to the latest Times’ poll: National Guardsmen patrol the border with Mexico, bayonets at the ready. Every resident, citizen and non-citizen alike, carries a tamper-proof identi ty card (You can’t leave home without it). Countless times a day, the card is shown to bureaucrat or police officer to prove citizenship. The 14th Amendment, guaranteeing citizenship to the U.S.-born, is abrogated. Truant officers, lists in hand, enter classrooms and pull undocumented children from behind their desks, trundling them into vans for shipment to relocation centers. At hospitals nearby, emergency-room doctorsturn away the sick or injured who do not possess the identity card.

Every now and then, the people of California surrender themselves to a recurrent paranoid delusion that is virtually a badge of Californian identity. Now is such a time. And the combination of a paranoid-delusional populace and demagogic politicians has engendered among Californians a mean-spiritedness, a detachment from reality–and worse, a fear of freedom itself.

It happened in Los Angeles on Oct. 24, 1871, when a mob, which included some of the city’s best citizens, tortured and hanged 17 Chinese men from downtown lampposts, among them a teen-age boy, then looted the Chinese quarter.

It happened in the 1930s, in the midst of the mother of all Depressions, to Dust Bowl migrants. In February, 1936, the city of Los Angeles declared both the federal and state constitutions null and void, dispatched 126 police officers to seal off all California’s land borders from entry by migrants–all American citizens–who could not prove their net worth.

It happened most sweepingly in 1942, when American citizens of Japanese descent were shipped off to what were euphemistically called relocation centers.

It happened in June, 1943, when thousands of young servicemen wandered the streets of Los Angeles, beating up young Mexican males, stripping them of their zoot suits, blaming them, implicitly and explicitly, for the fact that they, the Anglos, had to go off to war while the Mexican youths were able to stay home and jitterbug.

As Yogi Berra would say, “It’s deja vu all over again.” Just as Californians once believed that the Chinese, the Japanese, the Dust Bowlers, or Mexican youths in zoot suits were the cause of their ills, they now believe, with the full force of mass psychosis, that illegal immigrants–read: illegal Mexicans–constitute the gravest threat to our way of life, in a close third to the economy and crime, to which illegal immigration is intimately linked.

Think of it! Mexican illegals responsible for bloated bureaucracy. Mexican illegals responsible for special-interest-dominated politicians. Mexican illegals responsible for a soaring divorce rate, the breakdown of the family, AIDS, venereal disease, declining standards in culture and education, anti-female violence in rap music, drugs, child abuse, spousal batterings, the loss of religion and personal morality, deferred maintenance of the infrastructure, teen-aged pregnancies, the Inquisition of political correctness, slovenliness in personal dress–or whatever other symptom one might choose to signify the decline of California as a culture.

To say all this is not to deny that California faces a terrible array of problems, including illegal immigrants. As Delmore Schwartz once pointed out, even paranoids have enemies. Illegal immigrants are a drain on the public sector. The underground economy–with its exploitative wages, lack of benefits, forged and perjured documents–corrupts employer and employee alike.

Furthermore, in an economy partly dependent upon illegal immigration, citizenship is devalued. What previous generations struggled for across a lifetime–the chance to live and work in America–is stolen by means of false papers. The ghetto existence of illegal immigrants reinforces an unfortunate tendency in the legal immigrant community not to learn English, not to assimilate, on some level, the language, legal and institutional structures, heritage and historical identities of the United States of America.

As bad as these problems are, however, they are not the whole picture. The state’s current malaise cannot be blamed on the young busboy, far from home, washing dishes late into the night in an upscale restaurant on the Westside. Indeed, in the vast majority of instances, Mexican illegals are doing the work that others–even those on welfare–will not do, yet needs to be done.

How did we lose faith in the premise of America and California, which is freedom and an open society, personal liberty, courage, fairness and, whenever possible, generosity to others who also wish something better for themselves? Why are we talking about bayonets on the border when, every day, there are tens of thousands of legal crossings between Mexico and California crucial to the survival of our economy? Why are we scapegoating obliquely, perhaps, yet with loathsome effectiveness, the fact of Mexican immigration to America, an immigration that was absolutely necessary for the creation of modern California?

Mexican labor built the interurban electrics that made possible modern Los Angeles and its hinterlands. Mexican labor played the major role in the creation of the agricultural economy that still remains the leading component of California’s domestic product.

Californians had it easy in that long arc of prosperity extending from World War II through the ‘80s? When it was taken away–when California began to suffer like the Rust Belt or rural New England or Appalachia–they turned around and blamed the weakest, especially an underclass approaching non-personhood.

Paranoia is intrinsically self-destructive. Paranoids not only blame others; they do damage to themselves. And so it is not surprising that the current paranoid-delusional mind-set, not content with soldiers on the border and identity cards, with kids yanked from classrooms and the sick denied treatment, now seeks to sink the North American Free Trade Agreement. True, the treaty requires some amending, but to kill the entire idea of economic cooperation with Mexico on the ground that Mexico will hijack our economy is to betray in an instant how far our self-esteem has sunk, how far we have devolved into paranoia. We want it both ways: to see the Mexicans as, on the one hand, illegals enervating our social system; and, on the other, to see them back on their own turf, capable of stealing our industrial base.

What a horrible hypocrisy for California to simultaneously exploit and berate those who come only for a better life.

Minutes after the final whistle was blown on Canada’s historic World Cup victory against South Africa on Sunday, coach Jesse Marsch gathered his players and staff in a huge huddle and delivered some words of inspiration to them.

“Canadian heroes,” he called his team after they won a knockout game at the tournament for the first time to reach the last 16.

“The future of the sport in this country is huge because of you.”

Marsch is known for grandiose comments – exaggerated and emotional statements delivered to provide maximum impact.

But his words here ring true – the sport in the country is changing.

“It is starting to become known as football now, not soccer,” one fan told BBC Sport before the match.

“Canada is becoming a football nation.”

That was the objective Marsch set out to achieve when he became Canada boss two years ago, a goal that at the time seemed highly unlikely for a country whose first love is widely regarded as ice hockey.

Mexico hosted this World Cup’s opener while the USA stages the final. Attention has been far greater on the two in the build-up, leaving Canada as something like the forgotten co-host.

But Canada quietly went about its business, building interest and passion for the tournament and their national team from within.

The country’s captain, Alphonso Davies, is used to large, football-mad crowds playing for Bayern Munich and in the Champions League.

However, he has noticed the change in Canada since the World Cup got under way, and said he cried at seeing so many fans clad in red and white in Toronto for their opening game against Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“It was surreal because I’ve never seen so many Canadians at a football match before,” he said before the win against South Africa.

“It brought tears to my eyes.”