limits

This summer, I cheered — and at times, secretly sneered — in crowds of Angelenos cheering for the Mexican national team during the World Cup.

Friends, colleagues, strangers who had grown up in Southern California arrived at watch parties prepared with the players’ names, stats and even deep lore on what the World Cup meant to each country. Such was the beauty of shared diaspora with other countries in my city of Los Angeles.

Then, it occurred to me: As a Mexican-born immigrant, I should know the players’ names too, right? Should I know the national anthem and maybe even shed a tear as it plays? Maybe I’ve grown cold, maybe bitter, annoyed even, at the fervor, I thought.

But it wasn’t until Mexico was eliminated in its match against England (curse you, Jude Bellingham) that I, on the drive home, sobbed into the steering wheel.

I realized many questions then, which led me to investigate this piece: Why did I finally feel what everyone had been feeling? Why did the World Cup piss me off? Was it only the corruption? Or was there something stranger inside me? There’s no simple answer, but I will start with one word: nationalism.

Suited up in the cardigan of excess privilege, which is my UCLA education, I can easily be trapped in my own musings to identify, assess and even profess what I think should be the truth about what “country” is to me. My “undocumented-ness,” too, however, is not a golden ticket to absolute genius in my country, nationalism, or cross-border identities. For the Chicano Studies-initiated, there are libraries full of books to help answer this question; but here, I posit a few things to chew on.

Mexican teammates toss goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa into the air after their 3-0 victory over Czechia in Group A.

(Molly Darlington / Getty Images)

After the deluge of 2026 World Cup tequila brand activations, and the more recent midterm elections in the U.S. — which, with the help of Latino voters, resulted in a “blue tsunami” of Democratic wins — we’re reaching the end of two very rousing years for Latinas/os. As the summer of 2025 was hallmarked by Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids that have continued to wreak havoc, especially in California, this time has called for a reckoning with our own conservatism, as well as the need for stronger leadership.

When I look back on the times I felt angry in gatherings to celebrate Latinidad — or even my own Mexican identity — I realize that I just want more from us and for us.

The answer to my questions, then, must not come from just ruminating; I must talk to people who know more than I do.

Over the years, I’ve known Rudy Mondragón as a key expert in the intersection of boxing, race and culture, particularly in the ways fighters use the ring to perform identity, belonging and resistance. As an assistant professor at Loyola Marymount University, he asks us to take seriously the few minutes before the bell goes off in the boxing ring: Notice what flags are draped over the athletes’ shoulders, what kind of music booms through the arenas, the colors stitched into their trunks. These were all the things I had been trying to understand as merely symbolic.

Mexico national soccer team fan Hector Chavez, also known as Caramelo, poses with a replica of the World Cup trophy in Iztapalapa, a Mexico City neighborhood, in 2022.

(Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)

For many Mexicans, both here and in our home country, boxing is one of the main sports we grow up watching — whether we wanted to or not. When I arrived here, I became a huge fan of the L.A. Lakers and Dodgers, but the only times my family would gather around a TV or have carne asadas would be for the big boxing matches. As I grew older, I began to cheer for key fighters, many of whom are working class; and I can profoundly appreciate the greater legacy that the sport carries in our communities.

One of the key things I wanted to deeply understand, however, was why this impact was so huge for our community. Cynically, I’ve asked: Why do so many fighters say “Viva Mexico,” but don’t give back to Mexico? What do they stand for?

“You’re not saying that you support the federal government, the nation-state,” explains Mondragón over a Zoom call, with a framed Muhammad Ali photograph behind him. “It’s their way of expressing their version, their definition, which is infinite in terms of how we can express and socially construct being Latino, being Mexican.”

When Canelo wins and says “Viva Mexico,” it becomes our victory. Many of his high-profile fights have been with non-Mexicans too, thus creating a sense of cultural representation among other Latinos who may be forced to see his fights, but can appreciate the intense passion and joy when he wins.

But the same people who create that sense of belonging can also police its boundaries. Mondragón points to Canelo distinguishing Ryan Garcia as Mexican American, rather than Mexican. That matters, because someone with Canelo’s cultural power can help define who the public understands as authentically Mexican.

Mondragón warns, however, against expecting athletes to communicate politics in exactly the vocabulary that activists or academics might prefer. Public gestures can carry political meaning, even when they don’t resemble conventional activism. Their contributions are still impactful and meaningful, but we don’t need to look far to also see how others are expanding what belonging can be.

A portrait of professional fighter and actor Kali Reis.

(Justin J Wee / For The Times)

Kali Reis, a former world champion boxer and actor who identifies with the Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe, offers a different kind of entrance.

Mondragón told me that when Reis fights, she reaches out to Native communities whose lands she is fighting on and invites them to help create her walk to the ring. Rather than simply arriving with her own symbols and asking an audience to recognize them, she has invited members of those communities to walk alongside her — even allowing them to choose music culturally specific to their nation.

In Reis’ telling, Mondragón says, the entrance borrows from the opening of a powwow: The people walking with her are not for decoration; they are helping bless the space before she enters it.

I keep coming back to that distinction: Reis is still performing belonging. She is still using music, clothing and ceremony to tell thousands of people who she is. But she is not necessarily drawing a circle around herself and declaring who belongs inside it — she is asking the people whose land she enters to help draw the circle with her.

In a sport so often expensively sold through flags, borders, and at times racist and xenophobic rivalries, her entrance offers another possibility: What if pride did not require making the borders of belonging smaller but invited more people into its making? What if nationalism alone isn’t what creates community?

Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl LX halftime show in February. His powerful performance illustrated the complexity of the Latino community.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

Vanessa J. Díaz, who recently appeared on the De Los podcast, pushes the argument further: Art, music, dance and cultural expression are not necessarily separate from material resistance, but they help us imagine what community can truly look like for Latinos.

Also a professor at LMU, Díaz has become the leading chronicler of Bad Bunny’s relationship to Puerto Rican identity and resistance. She is the co-author, with Petra Rivera-Rideau, of “P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance,” a book that places his music and political expression within a much longer history of Puerto Rican cultural resistance.

“If we are talking about resistance in comprehensive terms, then we make room for lots of different kinds of resistance,” Díaz tells me in a series of phone calls.

For her, the symbolism is the material; it is the powerful arm to meet the ends of empowerment and healing for our community. Beyond all the anthems Bad Bunny played during his halftime show — songs that carried me from my 20s into my 30s — it was him literally painting a picture of how complex our Latino community is at the Super Bowl, which in my opinion, remains the most powerful Latino cultural moment in recent times. (And, yes, this means I count Gaga as an honorary Latina now. Deal with it.)

Bad Bunny, to some, has campaigned for candidates, funded political billboards and unequivocally impacted his Puerto Rico — extending the idea of what nationalism is. He also shows how expanding it can be a more impactful form of pride, rather than just touting your country’s name.

“[But] can one person do everything?” asks Díaz. “Is one person responsible for all of the different components of a movement? I don’t think so.”

However, she adds: “Every movement has [to have] a soundtrack.”

In Puerto Rico, she argues, music has never simply accompanied resistance; it has been one of the ways people practice it. From bomba carrying messages of revolt and abolition to reggaetón emerging from poor Afro-Puerto Rican communities and narrating experiences of racism, poverty, and policing, culture has long been one of the places Puerto Ricans make politics.

And perhaps that is what I had been missing when I first started asking what comes after “¡Viva México!” — the song, the dance, the flag, the entrance, even the cry itself do not have to be the thing that comes before political action. Sometimes they, the universal one, are already doing something: preserving memory, teaching history, finding one another, or simply giving people enough joy to imagine themselves as a people worth fighting for.

Puerto Rico, to some, is a modern colony, a settler colonial state to the U.S. But though its political context is different from that of Mexico, it can offer a deeper imagination of what is possible. Benito did not need to include Chicanos, or any other Latin American flag at the Super Bowl — but choosing to display those visuals alone are what truly got our community together in ways a simple gesture just can’t.

The anger I felt during the World Cup, I know now, was just a yearning for more. In an ideal timeline, Mexico would have made it to the finals and won. Los Angeles would have erupted into a parade — and I would have marched across the border to reunite with my family. In this world, there are no ICE agents; there is only music; there are only long hugs.

Maybe that is why I still feel angry, but that is also why I will keep returning to music and gatherings — because what I long for is not the validation of the nation-state. What I really long for is community.

Like Antonelli, team boss Toto Wolff was as focused on the lessons of the day and year as he was on the success.

He reflected on the fact that while Mercedes had dominated the first half of the season, not only have they been caught in the second, but upgrades brought to the car a few races ago did not have the expected effect.

“Look at the last few races,” Wolff said. “We haven’t won.

“Then today at the beginning of the race, Kimi was just storming away. It looked like this could be ours. But the competition has been getting tougher between Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull and ourselves.

“It’s four teams that can win races and will be challenging for a world championship. And I have no doubt that this is going to be very difficult for us next year.”

Wolff is pleased that Mercedes have found their way back to the front after struggling relatively through what was known as the ground-effect era.

But he says he does not expect this to be the start of another dominant era such as they enjoyed with Lewis Hamilton in the last decade.

“Looking back, those last four years were very difficult between getting it wrong and then kind of understanding why it was wrong and then realising, no, we didn’t understand. And that was a bit back and forth,” he said.

“It wasn’t that bad at all when you look at the sheer numbers, but it felt not good. And the resilience of the team, the people that held together in those tough times is a factor.

“So it feels really good sealing those two titles. Not many sports teams have done that after consecutive run of championships, then a difficult spell and then coming back.

“It looks like the most maybe competitive era that is about to start, because the teams have become so professional in capability, in resource, that this kind of runaway seasons, I don’t see them any more, whether it’s four in a row or eight in a row. And that is a completely new challenge.

“You can see how quickly it goes from being dominant. And within a few races, you realise that your upgrade doesn’t work and you fall back and you’re just third on the road.

“It’s great for the sport. I wished it was the era of Mercedes and me running away with another few championships. I don’t think it’s the reality.”

In the weeks leading up to the midterms the deployment of US forces and Trump’s own, often belligerent, statements ramped up talk that the US was getting ready to go back to war with Iran.

On the eve of the elections, the US carried out a limited bombing raid on an Iranian island in the Gulf.

Before he was hospitalised with a stroke, the US Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat, went to a classified briefing about potential military options for renewed war with Iran.

Without going into detail, he condemned the plans as “insane”, warning that they would trigger a “devastating escalation”.

There has been speculation that the Americans have plans to bomb civilian infrastructure.

Not only would that be likely to constitute a war crime, it might also be answered by devastating Iranian strikes on equivalent targets on US allies in the Gulf. Its list of potential targets could start with the United Arab Emirates, which is as close to Israel as it is to the US.

The regime in Tehran watches political developments in the US closely. It has not concealed its satisfaction that the consequences of its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz have become a domestic political issue in the US.

Tehran is aware of the damage caused to Trump and the Republicans by the sustained rise in the prices of everything (from petrol and diesel to agricultural fertilisers) caused by the war and its attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

The Speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, posted a warning on social media.

He said: “Conscience or the cost of living, Americans said NO TO WAR, and we endorse this message. If the US govt betrays their public will to serve international paymasters and blackmailers, it will learn our NO comes with a Nightmare.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, now acting prime minister of Israel after its election last week, and manoeuvring hard to form a new government, has repeated that he wants to bring down the Islamic regime in Tehran.

Reports in Israel and the US say that he is pushing Trump to go back to war.

Netanyahu does not have the seats to form a new government with his outgoing coalition.

But if a major war restarted and was sustained, and if Israelis came under direct fire, he could have new options of forming a unity government that he would use his considerable political skills to dominate.

On November 3, as Americans vote in the midterm elections, the United States faces a defining test of presidential power, constitutional accountability and democratic resilience. The election will determine control of Congress, but its stakes extend far beyond partisan fortunes. At issue is whether constitutional checks and balances can constrain President Donald Trump, whether election officials can withstand political pressure, and whether the government will respect the voters’ verdict when the outcome threatens its interests.

The battle for control of elections

The administration’s efforts to reshape election procedures have encountered substantial judicial resistance. According to an October 20 review by the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 34 federal district court decisions had temporarily or permanently blocked administration initiatives involving election procedures and demands for voter registration records. The rulings included decisions by judges appointed by presidents of both parties, including Trump himself.

These decisions demonstrate that judicial oversight remains an important constitutional safeguard. Yet repeated litigation exposes a vulnerability: courts often intervene only after disputed measures have been introduced, leaving states to challenge policies that can generate uncertainty close to Election Day.

The controversy intensified on October 26, when a federal appeals court declined to order California to set aside ballots from approximately 20,000 registered voters whom the Justice Department alleges may be noncitizens. The court ruled that the lower court had not been given adequate opportunity to consider the government’s request. The underlying dispute remained unresolved.

The administration maintains that its actions protect electoral integrity. But investigating credible allegations of wrongdoing is fundamentally different from restricting eligible voters on the basis of unverified suspicions. Election security requires accurate voter rolls, but it equally requires protecting citizens from erroneous challenges.

Repeated allegations of fraud can undermine confidence even when evidence fails to establish that an election has been compromised. The danger is that routine election administration becomes suspect in the public mind, regardless of the facts.

Congress as a constitutional check

Republicans hold narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress, placing control of the House and potentially the Senate within reach of Democrats.

A Democratic House majority would strengthen the opposition’s ability to investigate administration policies, subpoena officials and scrutinise executive decisions. Immigration enforcement, election procedures, federal spending and the implementation of executive orders could face intensified oversight.

Such scrutiny could expose misconduct where evidence supports it and compel officials to explain decisions otherwise shielded from meaningful examination. Yet investigations do not automatically produce accountability. Subpoenas can trigger prolonged legal battles, and congressional hearings alone cannot force policy changes.

Control of the Senate would give Democrats greater influence over presidential nominations and judicial appointments. Nevertheless, Trump would retain his veto power and substantial executive authority. Even unified Democratic control of Congress would not automatically reverse his agenda.

The deeper question is whether Congress will exercise its constitutional responsibilities independently or allow partisan loyalty to take precedence over institutional accountability. Checks and balances cannot function effectively if one branch declines to challenge another when circumstances demand it.

The test after election day

Perhaps the most consequential confrontation will come after the ballots are cast.

Trump’s response to his 2020 presidential defeat remains a critical precedent. He challenged the result, made unsubstantiated allegations of fraud, and pressured Georgia officials to find enough votes to reverse his loss. On January 6, 2021, a mob attacked the Capitol as Congress met to certify the presidential election.

That history does not establish that similar events will recur in 2026. It does, however, make scrutiny of potential election disputes essential.

The danger may lie not in a single intervention capable of changing the result, but in successive confrontations: challenges to ballot counting, pressure on state officials, demands for investigations and attempts to portray ordinary procedures as evidence of fraud. Even unsuccessful efforts can delay resolution and weaken public confidence.

Candidates have every right to pursue legitimate legal challenges. Courts must consider credible evidence, and election officials must correct documented irregularities. But allegations are not proof, and no president can simply declare an unfavourable result invalid.

An election can also be damaged without a single vote being changed. Intimidation of election workers, unfounded accusations and efforts to discredit established procedures can erode public acceptance of legitimate outcomes.

The distinction between lawful scrutiny and political interference is therefore fundamental. Electoral integrity depends on evidence, consistent procedures and respect for the law – not on whether the outcome favours the governing party.

Courts cannot defend democracy alone

Judicial intervention demonstrates that constitutional safeguards remain operational. Courts can invalidate unlawful executive actions, but they cannot independently administer elections across thousands of jurisdictions or guarantee that political leaders will respect every ruling.

Nor can judicial decisions alone restore public confidence after sustained efforts to discredit electoral institutions. Democracy depends on Congress exercising oversight, election officials counting ballots accurately, courts acting impartially and political leaders respecting lawful outcomes.

The willingness of judges appointed by presidents of both parties to rule against administration initiatives reinforces a fundamental principle: constitutional protections cannot depend on partisan alignment. Their effectiveness rests on whether institutions apply the same rules regardless of who benefits.

The broader danger is institutional erosion. Repeated confrontations can weaken public confidence, discourage election workers and normalise the idea that constitutional constraints are obstacles to political power rather than obligations governing its exercise.

A verdict beyond the ballots

The November 3 midterms will not resolve the struggle over presidential power. If Republicans retain Congress, Trump will continue to benefit from congressional majorities, although judicial and state-level checks will remain. If Democrats gain one or both chambers, the administration will face greater scrutiny, but substantial executive authority will persist.

Neither outcome guarantees effective constitutional government. The decisive issue is whether institutions exercise their lawful responsibilities and whether political leaders accept that presidential power is neither unlimited nor permanent.

American democracy has survived profound crises, but resilience should not be confused with invulnerability. Checks and balances work only when institutions enforce them and political leaders respect their limits.

The midterms are therefore about more than congressional arithmetic. They will test whether votes are counted according to law, disputes are resolved through established procedures and electoral outcomes are respected regardless of partisan consequences.

The ballots will determine who controls Congress. What follows will reveal whether American institutions can still uphold a principle fundamental to democratic government: no president stands above the law, no party owns the electoral process, and no exercise of political power is beyond accountability.

On November 3, Americans will vote to determine the composition of Congress. The aftermath will test something more enduring: whether the constitutional restraints that have sustained American democracy remain binding when their enforcement carries the highest political stakes.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

A sweeping campaign by federal immigration agents to identify voter fraud by noncitizens through door knocks, street stops and other field interviews in California and eight other states must be reined in ahead of the Nov. 3 election, after a federal judge in Northern California ruled it has intimidated U.S. citizens and interfered with the work of voting rights groups.

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguin said in a ruling Wednesday that limiting the Department of Homeland Security’s surging operations in those states — which she wrote “sweep in U.S. citizens for investigation” — does not prevent the Trump administration from “exercising their authority to investigate voter fraud by lawful means.”

A Homeland Security spokesperson said the agency is “laser focused on identifying, prosecuting, and removing aliens who vote,” and has “no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens.”

The ruling was the latest to come out of an unprecedented legal war playing out between the Trump administration and California in recent days, in which an array of election cases are working their way through the federal courts at breakneck speed.

There is, for example, the lawsuit the U.S. Justice Department filed against California and state and local elections officials last week, demanding that they set aside any ballots from a list of 20,000 individuals identified by immigration officials as “likely noncitizens.”

There are also two cases out of Washington, D.C., in which a coalition of Democratic leaders, immigrant rights groups, voting rights experts and naturalized citizens in California are challenging the Trump administration’s use of Homeland Security data to target voters.

The litigation is playing out amid an intense political debate about election security at the national level — driven in part by President Trump, a longtime election denier — and a sweeping campaign by his administration to root out and parade examples of alleged voter fraud in the final days before the election.

White House, Homeland Security and Justice Department officials have all defended the administration’s efforts as necessary to ensure that noncitizens are not illegally diluting the votes of U.S. citizens. First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, the lead federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, has claimed to have “overwhelming evidence” that tens of thousands of noncitizens are doing so in California.

‘That is not normal’

Democratic leaders and prominent elections experts, meanwhile, have cast the administration’s claims as baseless and intentionally exaggerated to stoke uncertainty about election security and ultimately challenge midterm results the president doesn’t like, and the Justice Department’s legal arguments as fundamentally flawed and wildly out of line with long-established department policy to stay out of elections in the lead up to voting.

“That is not normal. We have literally never experienced that in American history. Not once,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former Justice Department elections attorney. “The fact that the administration appears poised for the first time to act as an adversary to the states and counties who have [the] undisputed constitutional authority to run elections? That is unusual.”

At the same time, Becker and other experts stressed that those efforts to date have failed, and state and local elections have largely proceeded in recent weeks without incident, with millions of Americans having already cast their ballots.

“California voters need to know that they’re in good hands, that we have leaders at the state and local levels who are protecting our ballots and are ensuring that these attempts by the federal government to root out supposed noncitizen voting are not going to prevent Californians from casting our ballots,” said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation. “Part of the strategy here is to distract people and scare people and raise fears, and the important thing is to continue to stay focused on … making a plan to vote.”

Status of cases

Federal courts have already rejected multiple Trump executive orders seeking to enforce nationwide voter ID and citizenship requirements. The Supreme Court blocked an administration plan for the U.S. Postal Service to vet mail ballots. The Justice Department has compiled a stunning record of losses in its 30 lawsuits demanding state voter rolls — with 26 of those cases, including the one in California, so far dismissed.

And election experts said they expect the Trump administration to rack up more losses in coming days — including in the Justice Department’s case challenging California officials’ refusal to segregate the ballots of some 20,000 voters based on the administration’s unsubstantiated claims they are noncitizens.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, shown in 2023, is overseeing a lawsuit in which the Department of Justice says 20,000 California ballots may have been sent to “likely noncitizens.”

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

That case was taken up — and scheduled for a Tuesday hearing — by Judge David O. Carter, an appointee of President Clinton who in January rejected the administration’s demand for California’s voter rolls, calling it a clear federal overreach that would have a “chilling effect” on voters and threaten American democracy.

California has called for the case to be dismissed outright, on the grounds that the administration has zero authority to make such demands, and that the demands are unlawful. The Trump administration has asked Carter to immediately rule in the matter.

“Every minute of [ballot] processing that occurs without segregating the ballots of suspected non-eligible voters causes untraceable disenfranchisement and dilution of the votes of United States citizens,” wrote Julie Hamill, an assistant U.S. attorney in Essayli’s office.

In D.C. federal court, Judge James E. Boasberg set an Oct. 30 hearing in a case in which UCLA Voting Rights Project attorneys, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, and a California voter named Pedro Trujillo are challenging the administration’s use of unproven federal databases to allege California voters aren’t citizens.

Carl Bergquist, an attorney for CHIRLA, said he looked forward to bringing a host of recent Trump administration actions to the court’s attention — including the administration’s lawsuit against California, the charging this week of 28 legal permanent residents in California with election-related crimes, and Trump’s threats to arrest California elections officials who don’t comply with his administration’s demands.

“The events of the last few days, from threats to state and local officials, increased general immigration operations, the random knocking on doors by federal agents and the recent arrests are causing a chill in the community,” Bergquist said. “People, including naturalized citizens, are making their plans to vote and the Federal Government is doing its utmost to quash their attempts to exercise this fundamental right that they have lawfully acquired.”

The argument that naturalized citizens are being intimidated also features prominently in a second lawsuit filed in D.C. federal court Tuesday, in which top Democrats in Congress joined Nevada party officials and a California immigrant named Erick Jose Jimenez to challenge the Trump administration’s unprecedented voter fraud probes.

That lawsuit, also assigned to Boasberg, says Jimenez, a naturalized citizen since 2006, fears being “unlawfully targeted for voting and disenfranchised (or worse).”

Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor who studies elections and was a senior policy advisor on democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House, said there is “so much noise” around the election right now, in part because the administration has been making wild legal arguments about its authority over elections.

But he said “none of the federal government’s attempts to assert power that they do not have are working,” and voting “for 99.999% of the public” will remain “wonderfully normal.”