history

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is pushing for Congress to pass its signature legislation within the next two weeks, before Independence Day, when lawmakers return home for much of the summer. But their deadline appears to be in jeopardy after a Senate version of the bill released this week prompted blowback from influential Republicans in both chambers.

Widespread public opposition

Senate Majority Leader John Thune speaks along with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) on Tuesday in the Capitol.

(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)

The proposal, titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is meant to be the legislative vehicle to pass President Trump’s core campaign promises into law. But the overall price tag of the legislation, its cuts to Medicaid and green energy tax credits, and its tax provisions are dividing the Republican caucus.

The GOP infighting comes as new polling shows a sizable majority of Americans disapprove of the bill. A Washington Post/Ipsos poll found that Americans oppose the legislation by 2 to 1, while 64% said they opposed it in a recent KFF Health Tracking Poll.

The House passed its version of the bill last month with a razor-thin majority. But within days, several House Republicans said they regretted their votes over a host of tangential provisions, such as a line that would prohibit states from regulating artificial intelligence over the next decade.

Now, the Senate bill would hike the federal debt limit by $5 trillion — $1 trillion more than the House language — making Trump’s 2017 business tax credits permanent, expanding tax cuts for seniors and slowing the end of green energy tax breaks that had phased out more quickly in the House version.

The Senate language also introduces its own controversial, niche provisions, such as the removal of suppressors — also known as silencers for guns — from regulation under the National Firearms Act.

Gutting Medicaid, raising deficits

The Senate language, drafted by the Senate Finance Committee, also would make even more drastic cuts to Medicaid, capping provider taxes at 3.5% from 6% by 2031 and imposing even more restrictive work requirements. Those provisions risk key votes in the chamber from GOP members who have expressed concern with funding reductions to the program, including Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Shelly Moore Capito of West Virginia and Josh Hawley of Missouri, among others.

After the Finance Committee draft was released, Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky, who have advocated for a bill that would reduce annual deficits, said they would not vote for it in its current form. Republicans can only afford to lose three votes in the chamber to pass the bill.

“We’ve got a ways to go on this one,” Johnson said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, of South Dakota, said he would refer the text to the Appropriations Committee, headed by Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, yet another skeptic of the bill.

“Republicans’ ’One Big Beautiful Bill’ is one huge ugly mess that will come at the cost of working families’ health care,” said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii). “This bill proposes the biggest cut to Medicaid in history, kicking almost 14 million Americans off their insurance.”

Pushback from both GOP wings

Even if it passes the Senate, reconciliation with House Republicans will be a tall order.

“This bill, as the Senate has produced it, is definitely dead if it were to come over to the House in anything resembling its current form,” said Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, which advocates for decreased government spending, in a call with reporters.

But the other end of the House GOP caucus, composed of Republican lawmakers from majority Democratic states, also oppose the Senate bill as is.

Those Republicans successfully advocated to raise the cap in state and local tax deductions, to $40,000 for those making $500,000 or less a year. But the Senate version keeps the SALT provisions as is, extending them at a $10,000 cap.

“That is the deal, and I will not accept a penny less,” said Rep. Mike Lawler of New York. “If the Senate reduces the SALT number, I will vote no, and the bill will fail in the House.”

The White House has intensified its push for passage of the bill next month, warning that failure will have dire consequences. “More than 1.1 million jobs in the manufacturing sector and nearly six million jobs overall will be lost” if Trump’s 2017 tax cuts expire, the administration warned in a statement.

The bill also would provide funding for thousands of more agents at the Department of Homeland Security to perform border enforcement, a top priority for the administration that is currently reaching for unconventional resources — from refugee officers to the armed forces — for assistance in its mass deportation efforts.

“It needs to be passed,” Thune told Fox News this week. “We believe that the president and the House, the Senate, are all going to be on the same page when it’s all said and done, and we’ll get a bill that we could put on his desk that he’ll be happy with, and that the American people will benefit from.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Confusion reigns as Trump threatens to intensify L.A. sweeps even as ICE vows shift
The deep dive: The Minnesota Suspect’s Radical Spiritual World
The Times Special: As the Senate loses luster, more members run for governor. Is there a takeaway for Kamala Harris?

More to come,
Michael Wilner

—
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

In his ongoing war on “woke,” President Trump has instructed the National Park Service to scrub any language he would deem negative, unpatriotic or smacking of “improper partisan ideology” from signs and presentations visitors encounter at national parks and historic sites.

Instead, his administration has ordered the national parks and hundreds of other monuments and museums supervised by the Department of the Interior to ensure that all of their signage reminds Americans of our “extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity and human flourishing.”

Those marching orders, which went into effect late last week, have left Trump opponents and free speech advocates gasping in disbelief, wondering how park employees are supposed to put a sunny spin on monuments acknowledging slavery and Jim Crow laws. And how they’ll square the story of Japanese Americans shipped off to incarceration camps during World War II with an “unmatched record of advancing liberty.”

At Manzanar National Historic Site, a dusty encampment in the high desert of eastern California, one of 10 camps where more than 120,000 Japanese American civilians were imprisoned during the early 1940s, employees put up a required notice describing the changes last week.

Like all such notices across the country, it includes a QR code visitors can use to report any signs they see that are “negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes”.

An identical sign is up at the Cesar E. Chavez National Monument in Kern County, a tribute to the struggle to ensure better wages and safer working conditions for immigrant farm laborers. Such signs are going up across the sprawling system, which includes Fort Sumter National Monument, where Confederates fired the first shots of the Civil War; Ford’s Theater National Historic Site in Washington, D.C., where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated; and the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Park.

So, nothing negative about John Wilkes Booth or James Earl Ray?

In response to an email requesting comment, a National Park Service spokesperson did not address questions about specific parks or monuments, saying only that changes would be made “where appropriate.”

The whole thing is “flabbergasting,” said Dennis Arguelles, Southern California director for the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Assn. “These stories may not be flattering to American heritage, but they’re an integral part of our history.

“If we lose these stories, then we’re in danger of repeating some of these mistakes,” Arguelles said.

Trump titled his March 27 executive order requiring federal sign writers to look on the bright side “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” He specifically instructed the Interior Department to scrutinize any signs put up since January 2020 — the beginning of the Biden administration — for language that perpetuates “a false reconstruction” of American history.

Trump called out signs that “undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”

He specifically cited the National Historical Park in Philadelphia and the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., as bowing to what he described as the previous administration’s zeal to cast “our Nation’s unparalleled legacy of advancing liberty, individual rights, and human happiness” as “inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”

His solution? Order federal employees and historians to rewrite the “revisionist” history with language that exudes patriotism.

“It all seems pretty Orwellian,” said Kimbrough Moore, a rock climber and Yosemite National Park guide book author. After news of the impending changes began circulating in park circles, he posted on Instagram a sign he saw in the toilet at the Porcupine Flat campground in the middle of the park.

Across from the ubiquitous sign in all park bathrooms that says, “Please DO NOT put trash in toilets, it is extremely difficult to remove,” someone added a placard that reads, “Please DO NOT put trash in the White House. It is extremely difficult to remove.”

Predictably, the post went viral, proving what would-be censors have known for centuries: Policing language is a messy business and can be hard to control in a free society.

“Even the pooper can be a venue for resistance,” Moore wrote.

For more than three decades, a familiar refrain has echoed from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons.

Since 1992, when Netanyahu addressed Israel’s Knesset as an MP, he has consistently claimed that Tehran is only years away from acquiring a nuclear bomb. “Within three to five years, we can assume that Iran will become autonomous in its ability to develop and produce a nuclear bomb,” he declared at the time. The prediction was later repeated in his 1995 book, Fighting Terrorism.

The sense of imminent threat has repeatedly shaped Netanyahu’s engagement with United States officials. In 2002, he appeared before a US congressional committee, advocating for the invasion of Iraq and suggesting that both Iraq and Iran were racing to obtain nuclear weapons. The US-led invasion of Iraq followed soon after, but no weapons of mass destruction were found.

In 2009, a US State Department cable released by WikiLeaks revealed him telling members of Congress that Iran was just one or two years away from nuclear capability.

Three years later, at the United Nations General Assembly, Netanyahu famously brandished a cartoon drawing of a bomb to illustrate his claims that Iran was closer than ever to the nuclear threshold. “By next spring, at most by next summer … they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage,” he said in 2012.

Now, more than 30 years after his first warning, Israel has conducted attacks against Iran while Netanyahu maintains that the threat remains urgent. “If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time,” he argued recently, suggesting the timeline could be months, even weeks.

These assertions persist despite statements from the US Director of National Intelligence earlier this year saying Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.

For Netanyahu, the message has scarcely changed in decades — a warning that appears to transcend shifting intelligence assessments and diplomatic developments.

Tucked away from the crowds is a seaside town that is perfect for a weekend escape. The ‘underrated’ destination is full of history and has an ‘enormous food scene’

As temperatures soar to a sizzling 30C, Brits are flocking to their favourite coastal spots to bask in the sun and enjoy the refreshing sea breeze. But before you rush off to the usual hotspots like Brighton or Margate, consider exploring some of the lesser-known seaside gems that are teeming with life.

Time Out has ranked the best seaside towns and unveiled a hidden treasure that’s often overlooked due to its more famous neighbours.

Nestled away from the bustling crowds is the quaint town of Deal in Kent. With its cosy charm, breathtaking coastal views, and an unexpectedly lively food scene, it’s the ideal location for a weekend getaway.

Time Out praised Deal as a “Proper seaside town with a creative community and really great food. The travel guru went on to say: “It’s smaller and less well known than its ever-popular Kentish neighbours Margate and Whitstable, but overlooking little Deal would be a mistake. Stretching along the seafront and an enormous pebble beach, Deal is a gem.”, reports the Express.

Deal is characterised as “quaint, quirky, and one of the most charming coastal towns in Kent.” The town is steeped in history, boasting a variety of maritime exhibits at the Deal Museum and the Timeball Tower Museum, as well as ancient castles.

Visitors can stroll along Deal’s historic pier and take in a view that has remained virtually unchanged for over a century. The town also has a rich history, with its narrow streets and alleyways once infamous for 18th-century smuggling, according to Visit South East England.

The pebbly shores of a British beach have earned an impressive 4.2 bubbles on TripAdvisor, despite not boasting the golden sands many might expect beside the clear blue sea.

One visitor raved about their experience: “Lovely clean beach…..of shingle, not sand. Ideal for swimmers and families. Seafront is clean and accessible, being very flat and with a smooth surface.”

They continued to praise the area, saying, “Ideal for all, from runners, cyclists, dog walkers, those in wheelchairs and disabled. There are plenty of places to stop with benches along the seafront. Nice looking pier that is flat and easy to walk on with buggies and wheelchairs. Again, with plenty of seating.”

A local resident added their thoughts: “Well, I live in Deal, 500 yards from the beach, so I can’t say anything bad about it. The beach is huge and stretches for several miles between Kingsdown and Sandwich. At the height of summer, the beach is never crowded.”

However, they did offer a word of caution: “Be aware that the beach is very stony and is quite steep down to the water. The water current is fairly strong when the tide is running, and you can very quickly get out of your depth.”

Adding to the allure, Time Out has spotlighted Deal’s culinary scene, stating: “It’s dotted with delicious places to eat, buzzy places to drink and gorgeous places to look at or buy beautiful things. Try 81 Beach Street, wine bar Le Pinardier and Smugglers Records for starters.”

81 Beach Street reigns as Deal’s top dining spot on TripAdvisor, boasting over two decades on the scenic seafront. Their commitment to local produce shines on their webpage, proclaiming their passion for the freshest ingredients from Deal and Kent’s local small businesses.

They say: “Put together by one of the most experienced and talented kitchen teams in the area, there is always a great choice of fresh, creative plates; meals that taste as good as they look!” The eatery’s menu tempts with a variety of freshly prepared fish specials along with succulent steaks and juicy burgers.

A gourmet reviewer at Muddy Stilettos praised the restaurant: “It’s a real crowd pleaser and would appeal for a lunchtime gathering with family, and equally a fun and foodie-filled destination for a date night.”

Other hot recommendations from TripAdvisor include The Sea View and V Gastropub & Bar.

Reporting from Washington — At the center of his foreign policy vision, Donald Trump has put “America First,” a phrase with an anti-Semitic and isolationist history going back to the years before the U.S. entry into World War II.

Trump started using the slogan in the later months of his campaign, and despite requests from the Anti-Defamation League that he drop it, he stuck with it.

Friday, he embraced the words as a unifying theme for his inaugural address.

“From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land,” Trump said on the Capitol steps. “From this day forward, it’s going to be only America First. America First.”

Those same words galvanized a mass populist movement against U.S. entry into the war in Europe, even as the German army rolled through France and Belgium in the spring of 1940.

A broad-based coalition of politicians and business leaders on the right and left came together as the America First Committee to oppose President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s support for France and Great Britain. The movement grew to more than 800,000 members.

While the America First Committee attracted a wide array of support, the movement was marred by anti-Semitic and pro-fascist rhetoric. Its highest profile spokesman, Charles Lindbergh, blamed American Jews for pushing the country into war.

“The British and the Jewish races,” he said at a rally in September 1941, “for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war.”

The “greatest danger” Jews posed to the U.S. “lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government,” Lindbergh said.

It is unclear if Trump is bothered by the ugly history of the phrase. What is clear is that he is determined to make the words his own. He has used them to sell his promises to impose trade barriers, keep manufacturing jobs inside the U.S. and restrict illegal and legal immigration.

Inauguration Day live updates: ‘American carnage stops’ here and now, Trump says »

“Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families,” Trump said in Friday’s inaugural speech.

“We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs,” he said.

“It is such a toxic phrase with such a putrid history,” said Susan Dunn, professor of humanities at Williams College and an expert in American political history, in an interview.

Lindbergh and other prominent members of the America First organization believed democracy was in decline and that fascism represented a new future, Dunn said.

Those words “carry an enormous weight,” said Lynne Olson, author of “Those Angry Days,” a book about the clash between Lindbergh and Roosevelt over entering the war.

“That time was strikingly familiar to now,” Olson said. “There was an enormous amount of economic and social turmoil in the country, anti-Semitism rose dramatically as well as general nativism and populism.”

Shortly after Trump took the oath of office, White House aides posted a 500-word description of Trump’s approach to the world titled “America First Foreign Policy.”

“The world must know that we do not go abroad in search of enemies, that we are always happy when old enemies become friends, and when old friends become allies,” the statement read. It added that defeating radical Islamic terror groups will be the “highest priority,” and that Trump’s administration would add ships to the Navy and build the Air Force back up to Cold War levels.

Trump also plans to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and renegotiate the terms of NAFTA with Canada and Mexico.

Trump appears to have first tried out the phrase “America First” during an interview with the New York Times in March, when he was asked if he was taking an isolationist, “America First” approach to foreign policy.

“Not isolationist, I’m not isolationist, but I am ‘America First.’ So I like the expression. I’m ‘America First,’” Trump said at the time. “We have been disrespected, mocked and ripped off for many, many years by people that were smarter, shrewder, tougher,” he added.

Twitter: @ByBrianBennett

[email protected]

ALSO

Dozens of protesters arrested as violence breaks out in capital

Trump is sworn in as president and promises to lift up ‘the forgotten’

Just like his campaign, Trump’s inauguration breaks Washington norms

Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to wage war on illegal immigration the likes of which the United States has never seen. His first big campaign — launched against Los Angeles and its surrounding communities, of course — has proceeded with predictably disastrous results.

Parts of Southern California are under occupation by the National Guard and Marines, as Trump and his allies try to paint the protests against deportations as an insurrection fueled by Mexican “invaders”. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeal will listen today to administration lawyers argue that deploying the National Guard over the objections of a sitting governor is constitutional.

On social media Sunday, Trump cawed that he has “directed my entire Administration” to concentrate on identifying and removing as many illegal immigrants as possible as quickly as possible. He vowed especially to crack down on sanctuary cities across the country to supposedly “reverse the tide of Mass Destruction Migration that has turned once Idyllic Towns into scenes of Third World Dystopia.” (His Restoration-era capitalization, not mine).

Yet in the president’s social media blathering last week came something shocking: an admission that deportations don’t really work.

On June 12, Trump wrote that farmers, hoteliers and people in the leisure industry “have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace.”

Ya think?

For decades, study after study across the political spectrum have shown that illegal immigrants not only don’t take jobs away from native-born U.S. citizens or depress their wages, but that removing them usually makes the economy worse.

There’s the liberal-leaning American Immigration Council, which predicted last year that a decadelong campaign to achieve Trump’s goal of booting 1 million illegal immigrants a year would shave off at least 4.2% from the U.S. gross domestic product. That number is on par with the Great Recession of 2008.

There’s the 618-page tome released in 2017 by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and overseen by 14 professors. It concluded that “immigration has an overall positive impact on long-run economic growth in the U.S.” and also noted that “the rate of unemployment for native workers decline” with “larger immigration flows.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected last year that the surge in migration during the Biden administration would at first depress wages of native-born workers and legal immigrants but eventually help them increase over a decade.

Center for Immigration Studies director of research Steven Camarota — a man whose whole public persona is arguing that too much immigration of any kind is detrimental to the U.S. — claimed in prepared remarks before Congress last year that his group had “good evidence that immigration reduces wages and employment for some U.S.-born workers.” But he also admitted that parsing out how illegal immigration impacts the job market “is difficult.”

A 2024 survey by the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire examined previous research into three infamous removals of legal and illegal immigrants from the U.S. workforce: the repatriation during the Great Depression of at least half a million people of Mexican descent, the 1964 end of the bracero program, and the removal of nearly half a million illegal immigrants during the Obama administration. The survey concluded that “deportation policies have not benefited U.S.- born residents.”

Meanwhile, a 2024 Brookings Institute paper found that three of the five professions with the highest number of illegal immigrants were in the hospitality, agricultural and restaurant industry and that U.S. citizens don’t work in those fields at the rate undocumented people do.

No wonder that later in the day after Trump’s social media about-face, the New York Times reported that a memo went out to ICE regional leaders urging them to “hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels.”

So why pursue mass deportations at all if there’s mucho evidence that they negatively effect American-born workers, a group Trump claims he wants to restore to greatness?

There’s really only one explanation: terror.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller speaks with the media outside the White House.

(Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)

Trump’s main adviser on all things immigration is Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who has long advocated for a scorched-earth campaign and dressed down ICE agents just last month for not nabbing and deporting people faster, damn the cost.

The Santa Monica native absorbed this apocalyptic vision from conservative activists in California, who cast the fight against illegal immigration while he was growing up in the 1990s and 2000s not just in economic terms but cultural ones. Xenophobia has always colored this nation’s past crackdowns on immigration legal and not, but the Golden State became a noxious cauldron whose anti-immigrant fumes have infested Americans in a way not seen in a century.

That’s what makes Trump’s campaign so dangerous. His seeming softening against farmers, restaurateurs and hoteliers shows that he knows the country can’t weather the disruptions that deportations cause to important sectors of our economy. If he just took a dollars-and-cents approach to illegal immigration and stopped the language about “Migrant Invasion” destroying big cities, Trump wouldn’t get such righteous pushback from so many.

But that’s not who he is. He inveighs the way he does because he wants undocumented people and the people who care for them to live in fear, to see him as a potentate who can deport people or leave them alone at his mercy and whim.

The historical precedent that Trump wants la migra to follow is Operation Wetback, an Eisenhower administration program the immigration authorities claimed back then deported 1.3 million illegal immigrants in 1954 alone and improved the economic conditions of Americans. Then and now, authorities said people without papers were ruining it for citizens, were causing too much crime and that our southern border was out of control.

The only book-length study of the campaign remains Juan Ramón García’s 1980 “Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented Workers in 1954.” The professor went through newspaper clippings, congressional testimony and government reports to paint a picture of a government hell-bent on splashy headlines to scare Mexican migrants into returning to their homeland and deterring others from making the trek to el Norte.

Garcia found that government officials had exaggerated their claims because “they realized that the more impressive the figures, the better congressional response might be to requests for increased budgetary support.”

A 1954 photograph of undocumented Mexican workers (identified as “wetbacks” in a handwritten notation on the negative) awaiting deportation by U.S. authorities to Mexico.

(Los Angeles Times)

Operation Wetback didn’t usher in a new era of American worker prosperity but rather emboldened employers to exploit legal immigrants and citizens who filled in the jobs that illegal immigrants once occupied, Garcia found. It also “helped to strengthen feelings of alienation from U.S. society and to cause further mistrust of the government” for Mexican Americans. You’re seeing that play out right now, as young Latinos wave the flags of Mexico and other Latin American countries and U.S. citizens are being detained by la migra.

Most damningly, the book concluded that Operation Wetback didn’t stop illegal immigration at all — a fact borne out by the fact that here we are arguing about the subject 71 years later. The mass deportations were just a “stopgap measure, doomed to go the way of most stopgap measures,” Garcia wrote, because this country can never quit “the seemingly insatiable appetite for cheap labor” that it’s always had.

Someone tell that to Trump so he stops this madness once and for all.

It was as strange a sight as you could stumble upon in the English countryside. As a muggy summer’s day began outside Shildon, County Durham – rain threatening, bees drowsy in the hedgerows – I found myself standing on an embankment, surveying two rows of colossal stone teeth jutting through the earth. It looked as if someone had buried a sleeping giant.

“You wouldn’t believe it by looking at it, but this is one of railway history’s most amazing feats,” my companion, rail expert Richie Starrs, said as we gazed down at the molars beneath our feet. A closer look revealed they were abandoned rail sleepers, laid out between the hawthorns and along which coal wagons were once pulled uphill by steam traction locomotives. “This is the Brusselton Incline, a section of the original Stockton and Darlington Railway. Nationally, it’s a story that’s not well known, but it’s one we’re rightly proud of.”

For those interested in such rail history, this is a year like no other. Two hundred years ago, on 27 September 1825, the 26-mile Stockton and Darlington Railway opened as the world’s first public railway, making Shildon the world’s first railway town. And the lessons learned there helped the north-east, then Britain, Europe and the world grasp the importance of rail travel, first for transporting coal and lime, then, decisively, for passengers. It is “the railway that got the world on track”.

A focal point of this year’s bicentennial celebrations throughout Britain (see Railway 200 for details on hundreds of events) is County Durham’s new multi-use S&DR Trail of Discovery. Launching this month as part of the multi-arts S&DR200 festival, the meandering greenway follows the original 26-mile route from Witton Park Colliery near Bishop Auckland to Stockton Riverside and will, its founders hope, stimulate interest in the region’s rail history – and give a shot in the arm to the “left behind” pit communities along the way. There is a buoyant mood around the anniversary, but that doesn’t dispel the melancholy that has lingered over much of the rail line since the coalfields were exhausted and the Shildon Wagon Works, once described as “the jewel in British Rail’s crown”, was closed.

There would be some who find this all too trainspotterish, but not Starrs, S&DR200’s project manager, or Niall Hammond, volunteer chair of the Friends of the S&DR, both of whom joined me on the first completed section of the trail, a five-mile ramble from the Brusselton Incline to Heighington station, the world’s first train station, at Newton Aycliffe.

Over the coming months, the trail – rich in history – will be transformed with 17 information boards and newly commissioned art murals, plus a podcast and augmented reality game, devised to add colour. Fittingly, you can also hop on a train between many of the milestones along the route.

The idea, Niall told me, is to encourage travellers to walk, eat and stay on the trail for two to three days, but also spark wider regeneration for the area. According to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, County Durham remains one of the most deprived areas in England. “This is more than history for people who like rail tracks and iron,” he told me. “The whole point is to make it count for locals. We’re doing up buildings, cleaning up areas and showing why the world was changed from here. It’s urban regeneration in action.”

Once my eyes had learned to read the signs of rail history in the landscape, despite the absence of so much of it, it became easier to imagine how this tiny corner of County Durham changed the world. Along a stretch of the reclaimed rail line through Shildon, impressions of former goods sheds, an iron warehouse, loading bays and an engine house appeared next to tired houses and an empty pub.

We passed a coaling drop, admiring the handsome brickwork arches and columns that once saw wooden chutes rapidly unload coal into hoppers and a row of railway workers’ cottages, now memorials to those who dedicated their lives to the tracks. There was no whiff of engine oil, only bluebells and primrose.

The newest part of Shildon’s compelling train story is at Locomotion, a museum that opened its £8m New Hall last year. It holds Europe’s largest indoor collection of historic locomotives (a mightily impressive 99 engines) and is the temporary home of a 150-year-old bronze statue of the great north-east rail engineer Robert Stephenson, after its removal from London Euston during construction works for HS2, Britain’s controversial high-speed railway. Alongside his influential father, George, who designed the first locomotive for the Stockton and Darlington Railway, Robert shaped rail history, and taking pride of place inside is his world-renowned locomotive Rocket, built in 1829 and on loan from York’s National Railway Museum.

Amid all this, another highlight: Locomotion has a buzzy cafe with Eurostar seating and cakes, including a syrupy ginger loaf right from the Stephenson family cookbook. The book, also part of the National Railway Museum’s collection, lists more peculiar novelties from the 1840s, including recipes for birch wine, English champagne, mince “pyes” and calf foot gilly, a pudding made by boiling a calf’s foot. Thankfully, that was not on the menu.

Another good place to step through the looking-glass is Hopetown Darlington, an eight-minute train journey from Heighington to North Road station, which unloads passengers beside another superlative: the Skerne Bridge, the world’s oldest railway bridge that has remained in continuous use. The open-air rail museum, with 3 hectares (7.5 acres) and an exhibition in a Victorian-era station, is an arsenal of detail, with a dust-free archive of 30,000 heritage artefacts.

The trivia is half the fun. When a message was to be delivered from a moving train to a station, I learned, the note was tucked inside a slit potato and simply flung from the window. Amazingly, the story of the Stockton and Darlington Railway is on the Japanese school curriculum, but not in England.

In its great engineering hall, I was reminded of the UK’s contribution to railways the world over. Robert Stephenson went on to help create the Grand Trunk Railway in Canada, as well as the first railroad in Egypt. His work directly influenced the Norwegian Trunk Railway and the first railway in Argentina.

Rightly, all of this and more will be celebrated across the UK this summer – from Inspiration, Railway 200’s unique exhibition train, which is touring 60 stations (from 27 June), to the largest ever assembly of rolling stock at Derby Litchurch Lane Works, the country’s largest train factory (The Greatest Gathering, 1 to 3 August). Essentially, it is an education in the benefits of rail travel and the art of slowing down at home. Or, perhaps, it’s better to think of this as a story about people, communities and the tracks that help bring them together.

S&DR 200 runs to November 2025 across County Durham and the Tees Valley. Railway 200 runs to the end of the year, with events nationwide. The trip was provided by This is Durham and Visit England

Rhiannon Giddens is down at the river, carrying a flame of heritage, and she’s inviting anyone who wants to join her to come down and light their own wicks.

Rivers are traditionally sites of salvation, as well as play. Last summer, Giddens was making her new album of traditional banjo and fiddle tunes with Justin Robinson, “What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow,” and they were recording a few songs at Mill Prong House in Red Springs, N.C. Stepping inside the house, built on a plantation in 1795, Giddens recoiled at the intensity she felt.

“I knew who was working these fields,” she says. “I knew who was serving in this house — and it was people who looked like me. And then seeing up on the wall, like, a reunion photo of these old white dudes who went to Chapel Hill, at the end of the Civil War, and one of them had my Black family’s last name from Mebane [N.C.] … I was just like: I can’t right now. I had to run out to the river.”

In a moment captured by a photographer, she was crouching by the water just before it started to rain, “and I’m thinking: how many people have come down to this river for respite? How many people in the history of this plantation — turned manor house, turned private property — have come to exactly this spot, distressed over whatever reason?”

Giddens carries the weight of this on her shoulders — of the distress, but also of the joyful culture and music-making of her ancestors — and she extends an open invitation to audiences to share and learn their stories and their culture. She did so at her inaugural Biscuits & Banjos Festival in her native North Carolina, and she’s doing it in her current Old-Time Revue tour — which will make a special blockbuster stop at the Hollywood Bowl [on June 18].

The program will feature Giddens playing with Hollywood banjoists Steve Martin and Ed Helms, along with a reunion of the all-female banjo supergroup Our Native Daughters. “So many banjos,” she says. “This evening is going to be amazing. I wanted to call it a ‘Banjo Jamboree,’ but they wouldn’t let me,” she laughs, speaking to The Times via Zoom.

Balancing laughter and sorrow seems to come easily to Giddens, 48, who has been on a serious mission to rekindle the legacy of the banjo and string band traditions as authentically Black creations ever since she met fiddle player Joe Thompson in 2004 and became a disciple. She’s referred to as an “elder” in the “Blackbird” liner notes, which doesn’t bother her: “To an 18-year-old, I am an elder,” she says. “I’m almost 50, and we are the half generation. We’re the point five, because our parents didn’t pick this up.”

From the Carolina Chocolate Drops to her solo music, from composing the Pulitzer-winning opera “Omar” to helming the Silkroad Ensemble, Giddens is at the fore of a movement of Black artists — including Beyoncé, whose country album “Cowboy Carter” features Giddens on banjo — reclaiming their cultural heritage and making it sing again.

Rhiannon Giddens

(Rick Loomis / for the Los Angeles Times)

A river (of sorts) played a role in another piece of Black Southern iconography this year — in the climax of “Sinners.” Giddens was a musical consultant on Ryan Coogler’s blockbuster film and contributed her banjo to the song “Old Corn Liquor” on its soundtrack. She was also meant to appear onscreen in the central juke joint — her Chocolate Drops bandmate, Justin Robinson, does — but she couldn’t make it work with her busy schedule. She admittedly hasn’t seen the film (“I don’t like horror movies, so I actually don’t want to see it”) but she’s still a fan.

“I think what they’ve opened up with the whole conceit behind it is super important,” Giddens says.

In a way, “Sinners” is a vampiric, IMAX-sized version of her own project, in that it’s about how so much of our popular musical culture was invented by Black folks in the South and co-opted by white performers (whether Elvis, the Rolling Stones or the country and folk music industries) — but also about how music can be a time machine, a way to seance with people up the river of history.

“Beyoncé, ‘Sinners,’ and then, in its own small way, Biscuits & Banjos is like this little triangle of a cultural movement,” Giddens says, “which I didn’t see coming, and I’m just super grateful. Because it’s been a desert. … We’re all toiling in our corners, on our own, and it kind of feels like we’re carrying all of this on our own.”

Her Durham festival, which took place in April, drew musical legends — Taj Mahal, Christian McBride, the Legendary Ingramettes — and basically “most of my favorite people making music right now,” says Giddens. She also judged a biscuit competition and participated in contra dances, which is what got her into this music in the first place.

“People were just really ready,” she says, “ready to come and feel good, and to celebrate our humanity together.”

For Giddens, the stakes couldn’t be higher. She and Robinson learned their tunes and their art directly from Thompson, who died in 2012; they were playing his music together in Ojai recently “when it just hit me how important it was what we were doing,” she says, “like how complete the sound was together. I said: ‘If one of us gets hit by a bus, this tradition is dead.’ ”

That’s why she wanted to record the tunes they inherited from Thompson, as well as from Etta Baker and other North Carolina string band players — hence the “Blackbird” album. But she also insists that the only way to truly pass the flame is through playing together in person.

Rhiannon Giddens crouching by river near Mill Prong House in Red Springs, N.C.contemplating the historic struggle of her slave ancestors. “I’m thinking: how many people have come down to this river for respite?” she said. “How many people in the history of this plantation — turned manor house, turned private property — have come to exactly this spot, distressed over whatever reason?”

(Karen Cox)

“I know that learning from Joe forms the center of my character as a musician,” she says. “I learned stuff off of recordings, fine, but I have something to go back to that was a living transmission. And I just think you should have something of that, especially in this day and age.”

Giddens has passed her tradition down to many students in the past 20 years, including her nephew Justin “Demeanor” Harrington — who plays banjo and the bones, and also raps, and who is traveling with her Old-Time Revue.

This will be Giddens’ first time at the Bowl; likewise for Amythyst Kiah, a banjo player from Johnson City, Tenn., and one of Our Native Daughters. That project began in 2019 as a one-off album recorded in a small Louisiana studio, of songs inspired by the transatlantic slave trade and the suffering and often unheard voices of Black women.

“Music has a way of disarming,” says Kiah, “so it allows for people to be able to engage with the subject matter in an easier way than just talking about it.”

The fierce foursome — which also includes Allison Russell and Leyla McCalla — toured with their songs before the pandemic, and later brought their banjos to Carnegie Hall in 2022. “Now we’re playing in a stadium,” says Kiah, “which is insane.”

The star-studded Bowl show is “not what I usually do,” says Giddens. “It’s stepping out a little bit for me, not to mention the size of the place, which is kind of freaking me out.”

But really it’s just another river — or rather, the same river Giddens has been inviting folks to join her at for the last 20 years.

On Saturday night, singer Nezza sang a Spanish version of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” also known as “El Pendón Estrellado,” at Dodger Stadium, despite being told by an unnamed representative of the baseball organization that she sing it in English.

The 30-year-old pop singer, whose real name is Vanessa Hernández, uploaded the interaction on TikTok, where she proceeded to sing the Spanish version anyway. She captioned the video, “para mi gente [heart] I stand with you.”

In a tearful follow up TikTok video, she clarified that her decision to follow through with singing “El Pendón Estrellado” was in response to the ongoing immigration sweeps throughout Los Angeles

“I’ve sang the national anthem many times in my life but today out of all days, I could not,” Nezza said in the TikTok video.

The Dodgers did not issue a public comment on Nezza’s social media posts, but a team official said there were no consequences from the club regarding the performance and that Nezza would be welcome back at the stadium in the future.

“I just don’t understand how anyone can watch the videos that have been surfacing and still be on the wrong side of history,” Nezza told The Times.

Nezza’s performance has also sparked conversations about the origins of “El Pendón Estrellado,” resurfacing the legacy of a trailblazing Latina composer, Clotilde Arias.

“The lyrics and the story are the same,” said Nezza. “We’re still saying we’re proud to be American.”

In 1945, the U.S. State Department looked to commission a Spanish version of the national anthem, per the request of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who looked to strengthen political and business partnerships with Latin American countries amid World War II. His cultural efforts aligned with his 1933 Good Neighbor Policy, a Pan-Americanism objective that he implemented at the start of his first term to distance the U.S. from earlier decades of armed intervention.

Although “The Star-Spangled Banner” had already been translated to various languages by the time that President Roosevelt entered office, including two Spanish versions, no versions of the anthem were considered singable. In 1945, the Division of Cultural Cooperation within the Department of State, in collaboration with the Music Educators National Conference, invited submissions for the song in Spanish and Portuguese to promote American patriotism throughout Latin America.

Composer and musician Arias — who immigrated to New York in 1923 at the age of 22 from Iquitos, Peru — answered the call.

At the time, Arias had already established herself as a formidable copywriter for ad agencies, translating jingles and songs in Spanish for companies like Alka-Seltzer, Campbell Soup, Ford Motor Co., Coca-Cola (including the translation version of Andrews Sisters’ “Rum and Coca-Cola”) and others.

She submitted “El Pendón Estrellado,” which included singable lyrics that conveyed the original patriotic essence of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It was accepted as the only official translation of the national anthem allowed to be sung, according to the National Museum of American History.

However, Arias would die in 1959 at age 58, leaving the song’s existence publicly unknown until 2006, when Roger Arias II, her grandson, dug out drafts of the sheet music and drafts hidden in the garage.

The unexpected find caught the attention of Marvette Pérez, the late curator of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History who at the time was programming Latino exhibits like “!Azúcar!: The Life and Music of Celia Cruz.”

To honor Arias’ legacy, Pérez organized an exhibit in 2012 titled “Not Lost in Translation: The Life of Clotilde Arias,” featuring real documents and photographs of the songwriter. The exhibit also commissioned the first-ever recording of “El Pendón Estrellado,” sung by the a cappella ensemble Coral Cantigas under the musical direction of Diana Sáez. The DC-chamber choir also performed during the exhibit’s opening day, which Arias’ son, Roger Arias, age 82 at the time, came to see.

“I was there when she was writing it,” Roger Arias told NPR at the time. “She’d sing it in her own way to see if it fits, and she would say, ‘How does that sound, sonny?’ And I would say anything she did sounded good to me. So, yes, she struggled through it, but she made it work.”

For Nezza, Arias’ “El Pendón Estrellado” is not only a symbol of American pride, but also a living piece of forgotten Latino history.

“Latino people are a huge part of building this nation,” said Nezza. “I think [the song] shows how we are such an important piece to the story of America.”

SACRAMENTO — Sen. Alex Padilla had heard all he could stand from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. For good reason. She was sounding like a military dictator and brushing off California voters.

So the California senator interrupted her. He tried to ask a question — and wound up being shoved out of the room by federal bodyguards, strong-armed to the floor and handcuffed.

This is how the Trump administration intends to “Make America Great Again”?

The unprecedented act of disrespecting and roughing up a U.S. senator occurred at the Westwood federal building during a Noem news conference Thursday. Padilla, a Democrat, was standing behind reporters when the secretary said federal agents would continue to conduct immigration raids in Los Angeles indefinitely.

“[We’ll] continue to sustain and increase our operations in this city,” Noem said.

“We are not going away,” she emphasized. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor and this mayor have placed on this country.”

Definitely fighting words.

“Liberate” the city? That’s the sort of language used by dictators — fascist, Communist or any Third World despot.

“Socialist” leadership? A pejorative straight out of the right-wing playbook of political talking points.

Was Noem saying the Trump administration’s real goal is to overthrow Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass because of their “burdensome” regimes?

Perhaps the secretary has forgotten what she presumably was taught in civics class.

Noem talks without thinking

But Noem, 53, was governor of South Dakota. And before that she was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and a state legislator. So she knows about the election process. And we can only conclude that, at her news conference, she was talking without thinking.

Because in America, the “liberators” are the voters. Not immigration agents, Cabinet secretaries or even the president.

California citizens reelected Newsom by a 59% landslide vote in 2022. The Democrat will be termed out of office next year — a policy set by voters, not by some federal administration.

Bass also was elected in 2022 by a margin of nearly 10 percentage points. If Angelenos want to liberate themselves from her, they’ll have the opportunity when she’s up for reelection next year.

Socialist is such a tired characterization of practically any policy the political right doesn’t like. You could tag lots of government spending with socialism — including Social Security and Medicare.

Anyway, Padilla listened to Noem’s dumb comments about liberating citizens from the governor and mayor, and, he said later in TV interviews, “it was just too much.”

He broke in with a shouted question.

OK, he shouldn’t have done that. There’s a protocol at formal news conferences. Only reporters ask questions. Certainly not visiting politicians. And questioners really shouldn’t interrupt the person at the lectern, although it happens.

This wasn’t a Senate committee hearing in which Padilla could ask anything he wanted — when it was his turn. He wasn’t “doing his job” at Noem’s event, as his Democratic colleagues later asserted. He was there as an observer. If he wanted to ask the secretary a question, this wasn’t the time or place.

Wrong but understandable

But his emotional reaction to Noem’s comments was totally understandable.

Padilla ordinarily is a very polite guy, extraordinary civil — calm, soft-spoken, the opposite of an aggressive loudmouth.

But he is passionate about the cause of immigrant rights and comprehensive reform that would offer a path to citizenship for undocumented people. It’s what inspired him to enter politics.

He was motivated by Latino activists’ losing fight in 1994 against Proposition 187, which would have denied most public services to immigrants living here illegally if it wasn’t tossed out by a judge.

Padilla, 52, is a proud L.A. native, the son of Mexican immigrants. His dad was a short-order cook, and his mom cleaned affluent people’s houses. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a mechanical engineering degree. But he caught the political bug and was elected to the L.A. City Council at age 26.

Later he was elected to the state Senate and as secretary of state. He ultimately became California’s first Latino U.S. senator.

On Thursday, the lawmaker was at the federal building to meet a general. He heard Noem was holding a news conference, asked to attend and was escorted in.

After he was forced to the ground by federal agents who considered him a security threat, Padilla declared repeatedly: “If that’s what they do to a United States senator with a question, imagine what they do to farmworkers, day laborers, cooks and the other nonviolent immigrants they are targeting in California and across the country.”

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung claimed Padilla acted like “a complete lunatic … by rushing toward Secretary Noem.” Noem said he “lunged” at her.

Wrong. A video recording disproved that.

Federal bodyguards contended Padilla didn’t identify himself. More bull. They just didn’t listen.

“Hands off! I am Sen. Alex Padilla,” he’s heard saying and repeating several times on the recording.

A federal agent turned to a Padilla staffer recording the sorry incident and said: “There’s no recording allowed out here, per FBI rights.”

Sorry. If it’s a right not to be recorded piling on a senator trying to exercise his rights, then it should be repealed.

The Trump administration did another stupid thing. Padilla came out a hero.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: ‘Protest is patriotic.’ ‘No Kings’ demonstrations across L.A. against ICE sweeps, Trump presidency
The TK: Will mom get detained? Is dad going to work? Answering kids’ big questions amid ICE raids
The L.A. Times Special: Voices from the raids: How families are coping with the sudden apprehension of loved ones

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

The assassination of one Democratic Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband and the shooting of another lawmaker and his wife at their homes are just the latest addition to a long and unsettling roll call of political violence in the United States.

The list, in the last two months alone: the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, D.C.; the firebombing of a Colorado march calling for the release of Israeli hostages; and the firebombing of the official residence of Pennsylvania’s governor — on a Jewish holiday while he and his family were inside.

Here is a sampling of other attacks before that — the assassination of a healthcare executive on the streets of New York City late last year; the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally during his presidential campaign last year; the 2022 attack on the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) by a believer in right-wing conspiracy theories; and the 2017 shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) by a gunman at a congressional softball game practice.

“We’ve entered into this especially scary time in the country where it feels the sort of norms and rhetoric and rules that would tamp down on violence have been lifted,” said Matt Dallek, a political scientist at Georgetown University who studies extremism. “A lot of people are receiving signals from the culture.”

Individual shootings and massacres

Politics have also driven large-scale massacres. Gunmen who killed 11 worshipers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, 23 shoppers at a heavily Latino Walmart in El Paso in 2019 and 10 Black people at a Buffalo, N.Y., grocery store in 2022 each cited the conspiracy theory that a secret cabal of Jews was trying to replace white people with people of color. That has become a staple on parts of the right that support Trump’s push to limit immigration.

The Anti-Defamation League found that from 2022 through 2024, all of the 61 political killings in the United States were committed by right-wing extremists. That changed on the first day of 2025, when a Texas man flying the flag of the Islamic State group killed 14 people by driving his truck through a crowded New Orleans street before being fatally shot by police.

“You’re seeing acts of violence from all different ideologies,” said Jacob Ware, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who researches terrorism. “It feels more random and chaotic and more frequent.”

The United States has a long and grim history of political violence, including presidential assassinations dating to the killing of President Abraham Lincoln, lynchings and other violence aimed at Black people in the South, and the 1954 shooting inside Congress by four Puerto Rican nationalists. Experts say the last few years, however, have reached a level not seen since the tumultuous days of the 1960s and 1970s, when political leaders the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., President Kennedy, Malcolm X and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated.

Ware noted that the most recent surge comes after the new Trump administration has closed units that focus on investigating white supremacist extremism and pushed federal law enforcement to spend less time on anti-terrorism and more on detaining people who are in the country illegally.

“We’re at the point, after these six weeks, where we have to ask about how effectively the Trump administration is combating terrorism,” Ware said.

One of Trump’s first acts in office was to pardon those involved in the largest act of domestic political violence this century — the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob intended to prevent Congress from certifying Trump’s 2020 election loss.

Those pardons broadcast a signal to would-be extremists on either side of the political debate, Dallek said: “They sent a very strong message that violence, as long as you’re a Trump supporter, will be permitted and may be rewarded.”

Ideologies not always aligned — or coherent

Often, those who engage in political violence don’t have clearly defined ideologies that easily map onto the country’s partisan divides. A man who died after he detonated a car bomb outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic last month left writings urging people not to procreate and expressed what the FBI called “nihilistic ideations.”

But each political attack seems to inspire partisans to find evidence the attacker is on the other side. Little was known about the man police identified as a suspect in the Minnesota attacks, 57-year-old Vance Boelter. Authorities say they found a list of other apparent targets that included other Democratic officials, abortion clinics and abortion rights advocates, as well as fliers for the day’s anti-Trump “No Kings” parades.

Conservatives online seized on the fliers — and the fact that Boelter had apparently once been reappointed to a state workforce development board by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz — to claim the suspect must be a liberal. “The far left is murderously violent,” billionaire Elon Musk posted on his social media site, X.

It was reminiscent of the fallout from the attack on Paul Pelosi, the former House speaker’s then-82-year-old husband, who was seriously injured by a man wielding a hammer. Right-wing figures falsely theorized the assailant was a secret lover rather than what authorities said he was: a believer in pro-Trump conspiracy theories who broke into the Pelosi home echoing Jan. 6 rioters who broke into the Capitol by saying: “Where is Nancy?!”

No prominent Republican ever denounced the Pelosi assault, and GOP leaders including Trump joked about the attack at public events in its aftermath.

On Saturday, Nancy Pelosi posted a statement on X decrying the Minnesota attack. “All of us must remember that it’s not only the act of violence, but also the reaction to it, that can normalize it,” she wrote.

After mocking the Pelosis after the 2022 attack, Trump on Saturday joined in the bipartisan condemnation of the Minnesota shootings, calling them “horrific violence.” The president has, however, consistently broken new ground with his bellicose rhetoric toward his political opponents, whom he routinely calls “sick” and “evil,” and has talked repeatedly about how violence is needed to quell protests.

The Minnesota attack occurred after Trump took the extraordinary step of mobilizing the military to try to control protests against his administration’s immigration operations in Los Angeles during the last week, when he pledged to “HIT” disrespectful protesters and warned of a “migrant invasion” of the city.

Dallek said Trump has been “both a victim and an accelerant” of the charged, dehumanizing political rhetoric that is flooding the country.

“It feels as if the extremists are in the saddle,” he said, “and the extremists are the ones driving our rhetoric and politics.”

Riccardi writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The mission of President Trump’s extraordinary deployment of U.S. Marines and National Guardsmen to Los Angeles depends on whom you ask — and that may be a problem for the White House as it defends its actions in court on Thursday.

The hearing, set before U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco, will set off a rare test over the legality of a military deployment on American soil.

While California has asked for a temporary restraining order against the government, a judicial decree ordering a full withdrawal would be extraordinary, scholars said. But so, too, was the deployment itself, raising the stakes for the judge entering Thursday’s hearing.

Breyer, a veteran of the bench appointed by President Clinton and the younger brother of Stephen Breyer, the former Supreme Court justice, could instead define the parameters of acceptable troop activity in a mission that has been murky from its start over the weekend.

In an interview, California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta told The Times that he was told that Trump’s mission set for both the Marines and the National Guard in Los Angeles “is to protect federal property, functions and personnel.”

“The property part may well be compliant with the Posse Comitatus Act,” Bonta said, referring to a landmark law passed after the Civil War prohibiting the use of U.S. troops to engage in local law enforcement.

“If all the Marines do is protect buildings, that might be compliant,” he added. “But it needs to be made clear that they cannot go out into the community to protect federal functions or personnel, if that means the ‘functions’ of civil immigration enforcement conducted by the ‘personnel,’ ICE. That means they’ll be going to Home Depots, and work sites, and maybe knocking on doors.”

Vague mission set

Trump told reporters Tuesday that without federal involvement, “Los Angeles would be burning down right now,” suggesting their role was to confront violent rioters throughout the city. But that same day, Air Force Gen. Gregory Guillot told The Times that Marines sent to L.A. County were limited in their authority and without arrest power, deployed only to defend federal property and personnel. The Los Angeles Police Department continues to lead the response to the protests.

Still a third potential mission set emerged within 24 hours, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a photo on Facebook indicating that National Guardsmen were accompanying its agents on the very immigration raids that generated protests in the first place. And White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told The Times that the president’s primary motivation behind the federal show of force was to send a message to protesters — an effort to deter agitators in the crowd from resorting to violence.

Clarifying the true nature and purpose of the deployment — whether to protect federal property, to supplement ICE raids, to quell unrest, or all of the above — will prove critical to the administration’s success on Thursday. Breyer denied California’s request for an emergency restraining order on Tuesday, instead giving both sides 48 hours to prepare their case for the hearing.

“He’s the most well-regarded district judge in the United States,” said Robert Weisberg, a professor at Stanford Law School. “He will be very meticulous in asking all of these questions.”

‘Posse Comitatus’

Unprecedented though Trump’s actions may be, signs of caution or restraint in his decision to refrain from invoking the Insurrection Act could ultimately salvage his mission in court, experts said.

The Insurrection Act is the only tool at a president’s disposal to suspend Posse Comitatus and deploy active-duty Marines on U.S. soil. While Trump and his aides have made a coordinated public effort to reference the L.A. protesters as insurrectionists, he has, so far, stopped short of invoking the act.

The president instead invoked Title 10 of the U.S. Code, which grants him the authority to federalize the National Guard. Even still, California argues that Trump has overstepped the law, which still requires directives to the Guard “be issued through the governors of the States.” And the White House has suggested that Title 10 authority also justifies the Marine deployment.

“We expect an order from the court making clear what’s lawful and what’s unlawful, and part of that is making clear that the deployment of the National Guard by Trump is unlawful,” Bonta said.

“And so he might just strike down that deployment,” he added, “returning the National Guard to the command of its appropriate commander-in-chief, the governor.”

Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA School of Law, said that Title 10 “requires a ‘rebellion or danger of rebellion,’ and inability of regular law enforcement authorities to execute the laws.”

“I would be shocked if a court determined that those conditions were met by what is actually happening in L.A. at the moment, as those of us living here know,” Arulanantham added.

Yet, by relying on Title 10 authorities and by refraining from invoking the Insurrection Act, Trump could save himself from a definitive loss in court that would probably be upheld by the Supreme Court, Weisberg said.

“I do think that Trump is trying to take just one step at a time,” Weisberg said, “and that he contemplates the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act, but it’s premature.”

“There’s always the possibility he’s being rational,” he added.

Another front in California vs. Trump

For Bonta, the case before Breyer is just the latest in a series of legal battles California has brought against the Trump administration — cases that have compelled the White House to lay out evidence, based on truth and facts, before seasoned judges.

Moments before Bonta spoke with The Times, Leavitt told reporters in a briefing that “the majority of the behavior that we have seen taking place in Los Angeles” has been perpetrated by “mobs of violent rioters and agitators.”

“It’s completely untrue and completely unsurprising,” Bonta responded. “It’s what the Trump administration — the press secretary, the secretary of Defense and the secretary of Homeland Security — it’s what they’ve been on a full 24-hour campaign to try to do, to manufacture and construct a reality that’s not actually true.”

The LAPD and L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, Bonta noted, have dealt with worse in the past, not just during major historic events such as the Rodney King riots of 1992 or the George Floyd protests of 2020, but after relatively routine annual events, such as the NBA Finals or the Super Bowl.

“There is absolutely no doubt that the National Guard was unnecessary here,” Bonta said, adding, “They’re using words like insurrection and emergency and rebellion and invasion, because those are the words in the statutes that would trigger what they really want. They want the president to be able to seize more power.”

What else you should be reading

The must-read: 9-year-old Torrance Elementary student deported with father to Honduras
The deep dive: Newsom, in California address, says Trump purposely ‘fanned the flames’ of L.A. protests
The L.A. Times Special: Brian Wilson, musical genius behind the Beach Boys, dies at 82

More to come,
Michael Wilner

—
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

Which team and country has won the most titles? Who is the record goal scorer? Al Jazeera looks back at the tournament.

The 21st edition of the FIFA Club World Cup is set to roll out in the United States on Saturday, June 14, as Lionel Messi-led Inter Miami host Egyptian club Al Ahly in Miami, Florida.

The tournament’s changed-up and expanded format has been subject to debate and criticism, but FIFA and its chief Gianni Infantino remain optimistic about its future as the premier club competition.

Its history, although relatively short, is littered with illustrious champions from across the world.

Here’s a look back at the 25-year history of the tournament:

2000-2006: Brazil rules the first three FIFA Club World Cups

The inaugural edition was an all-Brazilian affair as the country’s top two clubs – Corinthians and Vasco da Gama – contested the final, which was hosted at Rio de Janeiro’s historic cauldron, the Maracana Stadium, on January 14, 2000.

Corinthians emerged victorious as the game ended goalless after extra time and a dramatic penalty shootout saw them win 4-3.

Famous players including Romario (Brazil), Nicolas Anelka (France), Raul (Spain) and Dwight Yorke (Trinidad and Tobago) were part of the tournament.

The tournament was halted for five years due to FIFA’s troubles with finding marketing and broadcast partners.

Upon its resumption in 2005, the Samba Boys once again went on to win the following two editions.

Sao Paulo beat Liverpool 1-0 in the December 2005 final in Yokohama, Japan, and Internacional beat Barcelona a year later with the same scoreline at the same venue.

2007-2011: Beginning of the European reign at Club World Cup

It took the star-studded AC Milan team of the 2000s to break the Brazilian hold on the tournament as Kaka, Filippo Inzaghi, Alessandro Nesta and co beat Argentina’s Boca Juniors 4-2 in Yokohama to take the title to Italy.

The following years saw Manchester United (2008), Barcelona (2009 and 2011) and Inter Milan (2010) keep the title within Europe.

2012: A Brazilian break

Corinthians returned to the fore with their second title in a low-scoring tournament that ended with a 1-0 scoreline in the final between the Brazilian side and the then-European champions Chelsea.

2013-2023: A decade of European dominance

Spain’s two biggest clubs – Barcelona and Real Madrid – reigned supreme in the 2010s and early 2020s as they shared six of the 11 titles won by European teams during that period.

Germany’s Bayern Munich were crowned twice, in 2013 and 2020, and the rest of the three titles were won by three different English clubs.

Who has won the most FIFA Club World Cup titles?

Real Madrid has won five titles.

The Los Blancos won their first Club World Cup trophy in 2014 and then went on a treble-winning spree from 2016 to 2018.

Their most recent win came in 2022, when they beat Saudi club Al Hilal 5-3 in the final in Morocco.

Who are the past winners of the FIFA Club World Cup?

• 2000: Corinthians
• 2005: Sao Paulo
• 2006: Internacional
• 2007: AC Milan
• 2008: Manchester United
• 2009: Barcelona
• 2010: Inter Milan
• 2011: Barcelona
• 2012: Corinthians
• 2013: Bayern Munich
• 2014: Real Madrid
• 2015: Barcelona
• 2016: Real Madrid
• 2017: Real Madrid
• 2018: Real Madrid
• 2019: Liverpool
• 2020: Bayern Munich
• 2021: Chelsea
• 2022: Real Madrid
• 2023: Manchester City

Who has scored the most goals at the FIFA Club World Cup?

Cristiano Ronaldo has represented two teams – Manchester United and Real Madrid – and has scored the most goals, seven, in his eight games at the tournament.

FIFA chief Infantino tempted Ronaldo to add to his tally by switching to a Club World Cup 2025 participant team from Al Nassr, but the Portuguese superstar wouldn’t have it.

Who is the most successful manager at the FIFA Club World Cup?

Pep Guardiola has won the trophy on four occasions with three different clubs. He was the manager of the famous “tiki-taka” Barcelona side of the late 2000s and early 2010s that won the title in 2009 and 2011.

Guardiola then took his golden touch to Germany’s Bayern Munich, with whom he won in 2013. And finally, in 2023, the Spanish manager took his Manchester City team to their first Club World Cup title.

Among the other players on the list, Messi and his Inter Miami teammate Luis Suarez have scored five goals each. Both have the chance to add to their respective tallies and surpass Ronaldo in the 2025 edition.

Which country has the most Club World Cup winners?

Spain. The two La Liga giants have won eight titles between them.

Brazil and England are second on the list with four titles each, while Germany and Italy have two apiece.

The social media user claimed to have found the most underrated city in Europe, sharing a short video of the destination, which is known for its incredible architecture

Praise has been lavished on an historic city dating back to the Middle Ages with a population of just 560,000 people and the largest designated cyclist area in Europe. In a short video on YouTube, @MarkEarthExplored shared a video of “a true hidden gem”.

With just 60 followers to his name, the intrepid explorer exclaimed in his latest offering: “I found the most underrated city in Europe.” Clocking in over 130 likes, the footage takes viewers on a visual jaunt through Ghent, the jewel of Belgium’s East Flanders province and its third-largest urban sprawl.

READ MORE: ‘Perfect’ Father’s Day present dubbed ‘must have for dads’ is £11

Steeped in antiquity as one of the nation’s eldest cities, Ghent boasts a tapestry of historical richness and awe-inspiring architecture epitomised by the towering Saint Bavo’s Cathedral, peaking at 292 feet.

Ghent’s treasure trove of landmarks features The Groot Vleeshuis, a grandiose former market hall, the ancient Gravensteen castle harking back to 1180, and the sacred walls of St Elisabeth Church, nestled within one of the city’s three beguinages.

If bricks and mortar history isn’t your cup of tea, Ghent has a smorgasbord of museums to tickle your fancy, reports the Express.

The prestigious Museum voor Schone Kunsten houses a staggering array of artwork amounting to 9,000 pieces dating as far back as the Middle Ages, majorly spotlighting Flemish masterpieces beside those of other European virtuosos.

Meanwhile, the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK), or City Museum for Contemporary Art in layman’s terms, parades a dazzling permanent exhibit featuring scene-stealing pieces from icons like Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon.

Alternatively, food enthusiasts can indulge in some of Ghent’s mouth-watering specialties, such as the sweet, cinnamon-spiced “mastellen” or “Saint Hubert bread” bagels.

A mastel is a soft, bagel-like treat flavoured with cinnamon and sugar, offering a delightful taste experience.

Another local delight is the praline chocolates, also known as cuberdons or “neuzekes” (little noses), which are cone-shaped and filled with a sweet raspberry-flavoured filling.

Visitors can easily reach Ghent by plane, train, or car. By train, the journey from London takes approximately three hours, while a flight takes around one hour.

Driving from London to Ghent takes roughly 4.5 hours, although the duration may vary depending on the specific starting location.

American history has the receipts. As we approach the 250th anniversary of this nation’s birth, it ought to be common knowledge that putting the National Guard into the center of turmoil is not to be taken at all lightly. Federalizing the California Guard to quell a supposed insurrection on the streets of greater Los Angeles is a bold move of presidential showmanship and look-tough opportunism. It is also risky on many fronts.

We have been here before, and we would be wise to heed history’s caution. In the spring of 1894, a nationwide railroad strike, spreading out from the outskirts of Chicago, paralyzed freight and passenger rail traffic up and down California. Strikers took to the streets, occupied railroad depots, often with their families, waved signs, and erected tents and hastily constructed shanties. In Oakland, strikers who had “killed” a locomotive covered it in black crepe.

Political leaders and railroad officials insisted that the strikers were insurrectionists ripping at the fabric of the republic. But the public did not necessarily see things the same way. Strikers who were hunkered down in Northern California depots took in provisions from farmers loyal to their cause. A U.S. marshal sent to Sacramento to clear them out and get the trains moving was beaten up and insisted later that the local police force was sympathetic to the strikers.

Judging the Sacramento situation as an insurrection, Gov. H.H. Markham of Pasadena called up the National Guard, which mustered first in San Francisco on July 3. Some elderly Civil War veterans volunteered for duty but were politely turned away. Instead, young California guardsmen, each given 20 rounds of ammunition, marched to the Bay amid a jeering crowd, took a ferry to Oakland and tried to get to Sacramento by train.

But all train service had been interrupted by the strike, and skilled rail operators did not want to cross the picket lines. After nine hours, the exhausted guardsmen arrived in Sacramento early on the morning of July 4 — having taken a train through a circuitous route to avoid trouble. They marched to the city armory, then on to the occupied depot, where they were met by Sacramento members of the National Guard who were already deployed. Guardsmen — about 1,000 weekend warriors — stood in the hot sun, rifles at the ready alongside the Gatling gun they brought, facing the railroad strikers camped out in the depot with their wives and children. One Guardsman’s gun went off accidentally, killing a bystander. Officers ordered their men to fix their bayonets and, if ordered to shoot, to “aim to kill.”

One Sacramento unit reported that its men would not fire on their friends and relatives. Other Guardsmen wore their sympathies on their sleeves and lapels: pro-striker buttons. The strikers and their families began to mingle with the phalanx of guardsmen. “Frank, if you kill me you make your sister a widow,” one striker informed her brother-in-law in the Guard. Some guardsmen removed the ammunition from their weapons; others lowered them and just wandered away — toward the lemonade and ice that the protesters themselves provided. The strikers stayed in the depot for weeks. The whole thing was a chaotic farce.

Matters were hardly any less tense in Southern California. People lined the streets of downtown Los Angeles, chanting and cheering for the strikers, many of whom wore American flag lapels. Photographs of goings on in Sacramento and the Bay Area got passed from one Angeleno to another in the crowd. Guardsmen in L.A. expressed the same kind of trepidation about bringing militarized force to bear on the strikers. “If we had to fight Indians or some common enemy,” one guardsman offered in a revelatory admission, “we might have some fun and excitement. But this idea of shooting down American citizens simply because they are on strike for what they consider their rights is a horse of another color. All of the boys are against it from first to last, and many are in sympathy with the strikers.”

In hindsight, the federal and state response to the rail strike of 1894 appears to have lacked some consideration of unintended consequences. Calling in the Guard only created chaos, emboldened the strikers and, for a time at least, sustained much of the public’s support. The federal government, with some seeing 1894 as “the greatest crisis in our history,” allied with the rail corporations in a set of legal maneuverings that led to the deployment of federal troops across the country. As the strike dissipated, each side tried to take the high ground of intention and behavior: The crisis was lawlessness or it was unwarranted government overreach.

Though it is too soon to know how things will play out here in L.A. this time, nothing looks good from the rough scenes in downtown and the adjacent freeway exits and entrances.

Mark Twain said that “history never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.” Here we have that rhyme written in the latest Los Angeles verse of our tense world. The administration’s move to federalize the Guard in the name of quelling a domestic insurrection has poured more gasoline onto the tinder of our times here in the Southland.

Deverell is a professor of history at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts & Sciences.

Around 240m years ago, a 12-foot-long reptile called a chirotherium walked along a beach in what was then part of the supercontinent of Pangaea, and what is now the shoreline of Kildonan village, on the rugged, southern coast of the Isle of Arran. Natural dykes of black igneous rock – cooled magma – jut out into the ocean here. The houses on shore are backdropped by grassy cliffs.

We know that this giant proto-crocodile once roamed here because it left behind footprints – which can still be seen today. “This is older than the dinosaurs,” says Malcolm Wilkinson of Arran Geopark, as we crouch down next to the trace fossil. I place my hand in the massive print and attempt to imagine the world millions of years ago, when Scotland sat just north of the equator and the climate was tropical.

After they were made, Malcolm says, these footprints were covered in layers of silt, deposited by water or wind, which protected them from erosion and created a natural mould. Over the next few million years, layers of sediment gathered and compacted on top, cementing the grains and turning the soft mud around the footprint into solid red sandstone. The footprints turned into fossils, and were thrust back to the surface when the Atlantic opened about 60m years ago, tearing Europe and North America apart.

As the younger rocks slowly eroded the trackway became visible. Similar prints were first discovered in the Victorian era, and the creature was named chirotherium – “hand-beast” – because the fossils look like giant, human handprints.

Just off the west coast of Scotland and reachable in a little over two hours from Glasgow, Arran has long been known for its rocks, regularly welcoming groups of hard hat-clad students on field trips. In April, it became Scotland’s newest Unesco Global Geopark (there are two others, in Shetland and the North West Highlands), in recognition of the world-class geology here, which records tectonic plate collisions and shifting continents.

To walk around Arran is to walk through 600m years of Earth’s history, and my plan is to hike the 65-mile Arran Coastal Way, which circumnavigates the island, over six days. Thankfully for laymen like myself, the history is spelled out through informative Geopark signage along the way.

As the ferry approaches Brodick, the serrated silhouette of the northern mountains comes into focus, the sandstone castle nestled in the greenery below and the mysterious lump of the “Holy Isle” drawing the eye south. The island is divided by the Highland Boundary Fault, a geological line where tectonic plates once collided, separating Scotland’s rolling lowlands from the mountainous highlands.

On day one of the Coastal Way I head up Goat Fell, Arran’s highest peak (874 metres), and witness this: the granite mountains of the north have jagged ridgelines and tower over deep glens, sculpted by glaciation, while to the south the scenery is soft and green.

That evening I stay at the Corrie Hotel and follow a Geopark leaflet to the spot where a sand dune was struck by lightning 270m years ago, locking it in time a stone’s throw from the centre of the village. Staring at this “fossilised fulgurite” and imagining that desert lightning bolt is like staring into a different universe.

Along the coast is another trackway, in a remote spot where Arran’s only coal seam was exposed to the surface. This one was left by a six-foot millipede that lived 300m years ago, and would be easily missed without the small, oak Geopark signpost. A pod of dolphins swims by as I reach it, stealing the scene, jumping joyfully just offshore.

Four miles north sits the most famous geological site on Arran – Hutton’s Unconformity. James Hutton, the father of modern geology, visited the island in 1787. At Newton Point, a rocky outcrop in the north of Arran, he observed rock contact between gently sloping sandstone and older, steeply dipping schists. This led Hutton to reason that if natural processes had occurred in the past at the same rate observable in his day, this formation, and so the Earth, must be millions and not thousands of years old – as was widely believed by scholars at the time.

Happily, a holidaying geologist is on hand to explain this to me, though he is, by his own admission, “more excited about the bloody otter” he’d just spotted.

I eat fish and chips at the community-owned Lochranza Country Inn and collapse into Lochranza Youth Hostel. A simple (but private) bunk bed provides all the comfort I need. The next day I walk a mighty 19 miles along the boulder-filled coastline and quiet roads around the west of Arran, camping near King’s Cave, where iron age crosses are carved into the stone, and watch gannets dive bomb into the sea as the sun sets over the Kintyre Peninsula.

Occasionally, I abandon the geological hunt altogether; stopping to watch otters fishing, indulging in a whisky and chocolate tasting at the newly opened Lagg Distillery, or relaxing at The Lagg Inn, whose leafy beer garden is tucked away next to a river.

As my walk happens to coincide with perhaps the sunniest week in Arran since Scotland sat at the equator, it isn’t hard to convince Malcolm to meet me down at Kildonan shore. “This really is a world-class geological site,” he tells me, pointing to the shoreline. While we wait for the tide to reveal our “pre-dinosaur” footprint, Malcolm explains the science of the nearby dyke swarms – the black “walls” jutting into the sea. “They’re magma which was forced up vertically through cracks in the Earth, and have since eroded away,” he says. “This is a record of a time Europe and North America were pulled apart; and the Atlantic was born.”

Seals lounge around on these globally significant rocks, digesting their breakfast in the sun. “The special thing about Arran is that it has rock types from basically every geological period of the last half billion years,” Malcolm says. “We’ve got the main part of the history of the Earth here – and it’s so accessible.”

Off shore sits the microgranite mound of Ailsa Craig, home to an enormous colony of gannets, and Pladda, an island with a scenic lighthouse, sitting on what was once molten magma.

That evening, via the plummeting waterfalls of Glenashdale, I reach Whiting Bay, and watch an otter scurrying in the sunset before setting up camp. With careful consideration for tide times, my final day skirts along boardwalks and seabed to Lamlash, Arran’s most populous village.

I stop for a swim at a secluded bay and oystercatchers (my constant companions on the walk) squeak their farewells. Brodick soon welcomes me back with its sublime mountain vistas. As my ferry sails back to the mainland I gaze back at Goat Fell, and the words of the writer Nan Shepherd come to mind: “the shortsighted cannot love mountains as the longsighted do”.

The Corrie Hotel has doubles from £115 B&B, Lochranza Youth Hostel has private rooms from £42 or dorm beds from £20, Lagg Inn has doubles from £170. For more information, see Visit Arran

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom is up to his old tricks, trying to ram major policy change through the state Legislature on short notice. And again lawmakers are pushing back.

Not only lawmakers, but the Legislature’s nonpartisan, independent chief policy analyst.

The Legislative Analyst‘s Office has recommended that legislators hold off voting on what the governor seeks because they’re being pressed to act without enough time to properly study the complex matter.

Newsom is asking the Legislature to “fast-track” construction of his controversial and costly water tunnel project in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

The $20-billion, 45-mile, 39-feet-wide tunnel would enhance delivery of Northern California water to Southern California.

Delta towns and farmers, environmental groups and the coastal salmon fishing industry are fighting the project and the governor’s latest move to expedite construction.

If there are any supporters at the state Capitol outside the governor’s office for his fast-track proposal, they’re not speaking up.

“Nobody’s told me they’re excited about it,” says state Sen. Jerry McNerney (D-Pleasanton), an East San Francisco Bay lawmaker who is co-chairman of the Legislative Delta Caucus. The 15-member bipartisan group of lawmakers who represent the delta region strongly oppose the tunnel — calling it a water grab — and are fighting Newsom’s bill.

The black mark on the governor’s proposal is that he’s trying to shove it through the Legislature as part of a new state budget being negotiated for the fiscal year starting July 1. But it has nothing to do with budget spending.

The tunnel would not be paid for through the budget’s general fund which is fed by taxes. It would be financed by water users through increased monthly rates, mainly for Southern Californians.

Newsom is seeking to make his proposal one of several budget “trailer” bills. That way, it can avoid normal public hearings by legislative policy committees. There’d be little scrutiny by lawmakers, interest groups or citizens. The measure would require only a simple majority vote in each house.

“We’re battling it out,” says Assemblywoman Lori Wilson (D-Suisun City), the Delta Caucus’ co-chair whose district covers the delta as it enters San Francisco Bay.

“This is not about the project itself. This is about how you want to do things in the state of California. This [fast-track] is comprehensive policy that the budget is not intended to include,” says Wilson.

Legislative Analyst Gabriel Petek issued a report concluding: “We recommend deferring action … without prejudice. The policy issues do not have budget implications. Deferring action would allow the Legislature more time and capacity for sufficient consideration of the potential benefits, implications and trade-offs.”

The analyst added: “In effect, approving this proposal would signal the Legislature’s support for the [tunnel], something the Legislature might not be prepared to do — because it would remove many of the obstacles to move forward on the project.

“Moreover, even if the Legislature were inclined to support the project, some of the particular details of this proposal merit closer scrutiny.”

Newsom tried a similar quickie tactic two years ago to fast-track the tunnel. And incensed legislators balked.

“He waited now again until the last moment,” Wilson says. “And he’s doubled down.”

She asserts that the governor is seeking even more shortcuts for tunnel construction than he did last time.

“There are some people who support the project who don’t support doing it this way,” she says. “The Legislature doesn’t like it when the governor injects major policy into a budget conversation. This level of policy change would usually go through several committees.”

Not even the Legislature’s two Democratic leaders are siding with the Democratic governor, it appears. They’re keeping mum publicly.

Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) has always opposed the tunnel project. So quietly has Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister), I’m told by legislative insiders.

McGuire and Rivas apparently both are trying to avoid a distracting fight over the tunnel within their party caucuses at tense budget time.

Newsom insists that the project is needed to increase the reliability of delta water deliveries as climate change alters Sierra snowpack runoff and the sea level rises, making the vast estuary more salty.

He also claims it will safeguard against an earthquake toppling fragile levees, flooding the delta and halting water deliveries. But that seems bogus. There has never been a quake that seriously damaged a delta levee. And there’s no major fault under the delta.

The tunnel would siphon relatively fresh Sacramento River water at the north end of the delta and deliver it to facilities at the more brackish south end. From there, water is pumped into a State Water Project aqueduct and moved south, mostly to Southern California.

“A tunnel that big, that deep, is going to cause a lot of problems for agriculture and tourism,” says McNerney. “One town will be totally destroyed — Hood. It’s a small town, but people there have rights.”

Newsom’s legislation would make it simpler to obtain permits for the project. The state’s own water rights would be permanent, not subject to renewal. The state would be authorized to issue unlimited revenue bonds for tunnel construction, repaid by water users. It also would be easier to buy out farmers and run the tunnel through their orchards and vineyards. And it would limit and expedite court challenges.

“For too long, attempts to modernize our critical water infrastructure have stalled in endless red tape, burdened with unnecessary delay. We’re done with barriers,” Newson declared in unveiling his proposal in mid-May.

But lawmakers shouldn’t be done with solid, carefully reasoned legislating.

On policy this significant involving a project so monumental, the Legislature should spend enough time to get it right — regardless of a lame-duck governor’s desire to start shoveling dirt before his term expires in 18 months.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Candidates for California governor face off about affordability, high cost of living in first bipartisan clash
The TK: State lawmakers considering policy changes after L.A. wildfires
The L.A. Times Special: Homeland Security’s ‘sanctuary city’ list is riddled with errors. The sloppiness is the point

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

PARIS — Carlos Alcaraz rallied from two sets down and saved three match points to beat Jannik Sinner 4-6, 6-7 (4), 6-4, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (10-2) on Sunday and retain his French Open title for a second straight year.

Alcaraz, who won his fifth Grand Slam tournament in as many finals, produced one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the clay-court tournament.

It was the first time that Sinner had lost a Grand Slam final.

It was also the longest-ever French Open final — 5 hours, 29 minutes — in the Open Era.

After 3 hours, 43 minutes, Sinner had his first match point. But with just over five hours since the match began, Alcaraz served for the title at 5-4 up.

The drama was still not over.

Sinner made a remarkable retrieve from yet another superb Alcaraz drop shot. At the very limit he could stretch to, Sinner glided the ball over the net, with the ball landing with the softness of an autumn leaf and out of Alcaraz’s reach to make it 15-40.

When Sinner won the game to make it 5-5, it was his turn to milk the applause and he was two points away from victory in the 12th game, with Alcaraz on serve and at 15-30 and at deuce.

But Alcaraz made a staggering cross-court backhand to make it 6-6 and force a tiebreaker, with the crowd going wild when Alcaraz’s cross-court winner made it 4-0.

Sinner could not find a way back and Alcaraz won the match with a superb forehand pass down the line and then fell onto his back to celebrate.

Prince, also known by his recording name Dellyswagz, heard about the choir through a friend who was a member when he first moved to Venice in 2017. He was a singer in Nigeria, and his friend told him it was a good community, that they could help him get settled. When he first arrived, they gave him clothes, helped him find work and provided him with legal assistance to begin the process of getting a visa.

He is now 38, soft-spoken, but when he sings, he sways with feeling, and belting the lyrics, his voice strains and nearly breaks. He dresses in blue-tinted sunglasses, a black leather newsboy cap and a full denim outfit. “Like a king,” he says, smiling.

Shortly after he was born, his parents split up, and his primary caregiver was his mother’s father, who he was very close to. When his grandfather died in 2011, Prince no longer had ties to the Lagos suburb where he grew up and in 2015 decided to cross the Sahara and the Mediterranean in search of a better life.

“Growing up a boy, your mom have to really pray a lot for you,” he explains. “Either you become a thug or a mafia.”

He lives in a shared apartment in Padua, 40km (25 miles) outside Venice, where he moved after losing his job in a factory and being evicted because he didn’t have his papers yet. His bedroom doubles as his recording studio, where on a cluttered desk with a large monitor, he is recording and producing Afrobeats songs for his first album.

In Nigeria, he was a professional dance teacher, by most accounts successful, yet he felt there was no future there. Friends and family had already left, including his father, who lived in the United Kingdom, yet he didn’t consider leaving until his uncle, who was living in Austria, called and suggested he make the trip with his uncle’s wife and three cousins. Prince gave away his speakers, clothes and sneakers to his students. Along with his family, he saved up thousands of dollars. He brought nothing with him and told his parents he’d already made up his mind.

“The journey was deadly,” he says with a serious expression. “My story comes with a lot of pain and loss.”

The first three weeks were spent on a large open-backed truck packed with dozens of people. They drove across the Sahara and slept on the sand each night. Some had to drink their own urine, he recounts, because they hadn’t brought enough water, and along the way, he saw bodies left in the sand. “I can’t count how many we buried,” he says without emotion, referring to the people who died on the journey. “We used sand to cover them up. There’s no details of a name or family to call.”

From Libya, he and his family members tried to cross the Mediterranean by boat eight times. The entire journey to Italy took him two years. Once, they were kidnapped by pirates when they were on a boat and released two months later after paying a ransom. Another time, he was held in a Libyan prison for four months. At one point, they ran out of money, and he worked as a security guard for seven months in a compound holding refugees and migrants.

Then, in October 2016, he and his family members tried to cross the Mediterranean again. They crowded onto a wooden boat with more than 200 passengers on board. In the middle of the night, water began to enter the boat, and it started to sink. As it capsized, people fell into the water. Prince jumped in to save his cousins. The sea was freezing, and everyone was shouting and screaming around him, and he remembers the dark water lit by stars. By the time he located his 14-year-old cousin Sandra, it was too late. She had drowned because she didn’t know how to swim.

He held her lifeless body floating on his chest with a life vest propped behind his neck for what he estimates was 25 hours before he and other survivors, including the rest of his family, were rescued by fishermen and brought back to Libya.

“I didn’t even know I was rescued because I was so tired,” he says. “My eyes were just seeing white. I wasn’t seeing any more because of the sea, the salt. I was so tired.” Prince and his family were never able to bury Sandra because he says her body was stolen by people smugglers.

In Libya, a fisherman from The Gambia taught him how to use a compass, and on his final voyage, he was the navigator, telling the boat captain in which direction to steer. Their boat was intercepted by a rescue boat off the coast of Lampedusa. “The journey is not something I would wish upon my worst enemy,” he says, shaking his head. The rest of his family, who had gone ahead separately, went to different parts of Italy and Austria.

Prince tried to live with his sister-in-law in Austria, but when the authorities threatened to deport him, he was brought back to Italy, where his asylum case was pending. His flight landed him in Venice. He doesn’t know why.

Life in Italy has been hard, he says. His father had warned him about living as an immigrant, telling him before he left, “It’s better to be a free man in your own country than a slave abroad.” Prince is starting to agree with him. When he was evicted from his apartment, he was homeless for seven months, sleeping on friends’ couches and in a garage.

For him, there’s nothing special to Venice. “All I do is go to work and come home, go to work, come home,” he says. If he could do it all again, he says, he would have stayed in Nigeria.

These days, he has a new job, but it is an exhausting night shift with a long commute that cuts into the time he has to make music. To save money, he has learned to subsist on one meal a day and has stopped painting, another favourite hobby. The choir is the only time he enjoys himself. “When I’m singing with them, I’m always smiling,” he says, “because that’s the only time I can be myself.”

SAN ANSELMO, Calif. — It’s hard to miss Brian Colbert. It’s not just his burly 6-foot-4 frame, his clean-shaven head or the boldly patterned, brightly colored Hawaiian shirts he’s adopted as an unofficial uniform.

Colbert is one of just a small number of Black people who live in wealthy, woodsy and very white Marin County — and the first Black supervisor elected since the county’s founding more than 175 years ago.

He didn’t lean into race, or history, as he campaigned in the fall. He didn’t have to. “As a large Black man,” he said, his physicality and the barrier-breaking nature of his candidacy were self-evident.

Rather, Colbert won after knocking, by his count, on 20,000 doors, wearing out several pairs of size 15 shoes and putting parochial concerns, such as wildfire prevention, disaster preparedness and flood control, at the center of his campaign. He continues, during these early months in office, to focus on a garden variety of municipal issues: housing, traffic, making local government more accessible and responsive.

That’s not to say, however, that Colbert doesn’t have deeply felt thoughts on the precedent his election set, or the significance of the lived experience he brings to office — different from most in this privileged slice of the San Francisco Bay Area — at a time President Trump is turning his back on civil rights and his administration treats diversity, equity and inclusion as though they were four-letter words.

“I think of the challenges, the indignities that my grandparents suffered on a daily basis” living under Jim Crow, Colbert said over lunch recently in his hometown of San Anselmo. He carefully chose his words, at one point resting an index finger on his temple to signal a pause as he gathered his thoughts.

Colbert recalled visits to Savannah, Ga., where he attended Baptist church services with his mother’s parents.

“I remember looking at the faces,” Colbert said, “and to me they were the faces of African Americans waiting for death, because they were aware and knew of the opportunities that had been denied to them simply because of the color of their skin. But what gave them hope was the belief their kids and grandkids would have a better life. I am a product of that hope, in so many ways.”

Colbert, 57, grew up in Bethel, Conn., about 60 miles northeast of New York City. Residents tried to prevent his parents — an accountant and a stay-at-home mom — from moving into the overwhelmingly white community. Neighbors circulated a petition urging the owners to not sell their home to the Black couple. They did so anyway.

Colbert went on to earn degrees in political science and acting, public policy and law. He traveled the world with his wife, a Syrian American, practiced law on Wall Street, ran a chocolate company and a small tech firm. He lived for 3½ years in Turkey, where he taught international law and political science at a private university.

In 2007, when the couple returned to the U.S., they set their sights on the Bay Area, drawn by the weather, the natural beauty and the entrepreneurial spirit that drew countless opportunity seekers before them. (Colbert started wearing Hawaiian shirts on the Silicon Valley conference circuit, after being mistaken one too many times for a security guard.)

In 2013, Colbert, his wife and their daughter settled in San Anselmo, a charmy tree-lined community about 15 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The relatively short commute to San Francisco, where he manages a medical concierge service, the quality schools and the vast open space were big attractions — though Colbert knew he and his family would stand out, just as he had in Bethel.

San Anselmo, with its rugged hillsides and red-brick downtown, has about 13,000 residents. The Black population is less than 2%. But Colbert’s extensive travels and life overseas convinced him that people “on a certain level [are] the same” everywhere — “warm, welcoming, kind, generous, helpful.”

He had an abiding interest in policy and public service, so in 2013 Colbert joined the city’s Economic Development Council. Four years later, he was elected to the Town Council. He served seven years, one in the rotating position of mayor, before running for the nonpartisan Board of Supervisors.

Inevitably, he encountered racism along the way. There were threatening phone calls and emails. He got the occasional side-eye as he canvassed door-to-door in all-white neighborhoods. For the most part, however, “people were incredibly pleasant” and campaigning “was no more challenging … than it would be [for] any candidate.”

On a recent sunny afternoon, Colbert was greeted heartily — “Hey, Brian!” “Hey, supervisor!” — as he strode past Town Hall to Imagination Park, a gift the city’s most famous resident, filmmaker George Lucas, bequeathed along with life-sized statues of Yoda and Indiana Jones.

These are fraught times. The reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd has given way to a backlash and a president who disdains efforts at equality, complains of anti-white prejudice and purges powerful Black men and women in the name of a mythical colorblind society.

Given a chance to speak directly to Trump, what would Colbert — a Democrat — say?

“Mr. President, thank you for your service,” he began. “Being in public offices is hard and difficult.”

He paused. Several beats passed. A waiter cleared away dishes.

“I would encourage you to change your tone, certainly publicly, and broaden your perspective and embrace those who might have a different perspective than you,” Colbert went on. “Many people have come to this country and they’ve added value. They’ve made this country for the better.

“Remember those who don’t necessarily have easy access to power. Remember those who are struggling. Focus on those who are most vulnerable and are highly dependent on the government to help them through a short amount of time. I mean, the American experiment is incredible. Keep that in mind. A little empathy. Simple acts of kindness. Place yourself into someone else’s shoes.

“Thank you, Mr. President.”