Culture
Perfection, by Lamine Yamal
Follow live coverage of England vs Netherlands in the Euro 2024 semi-final today
A tear in the universe opened up at the Allianz Arena.
A space that wasn’t apparent to the other 21 players on the pitch, notably France goalkeeper Mike Maignan, or the 75,000 fans in the stands, suddenly appeared. When it did, Pedri, on the Spanish bench, brought his clasped hands from his neck to his face. He looked frightened by what he had just witnessed. Frightened by the portal to a new dimension his team-mate Lamine Yamal cut into with his left foot. The portal to a Euros final. The portal through which Yamal’s immense potential could be glimpsed.
Pedri watches Yamal’s goal in disbelief (BBC)
Time travelled with the ball as it went from out to inside the far post. Yamal was 13 when the last Euros took place three years ago. He watched Spain go out in the semi-finals to Italy at a shopping centre with his friends. Dani Olmo, the man of the match in that game, missed a penalty in the shootout. But in Munich, Yamal showed an alternative reality was possible.
Olmo scored the winner against France. His goal was exquisite in its own right for its dexterity, its elusiveness, its affirmation of Spanish technical supremacy. Olmo was playing with the confidence of someone who has scored in three games in a row. But France were also in a state of sheer disbelief and disorientation.
Four minutes earlier, Yamal had cancelled out France’s opener. Up until then, it had looked like this might be Kylian Mbappe’s night. Mbappe had discarded his mask in the way a gladiator might throw one onto the bloodied sand of the Colosseum floor. A statement of intent. His vision was no longer impaired by the “horrible” accessory he’d been forced to wear to protect a broken and bruised nose. Inside 10 minutes, Mbappe even made Randal Kolo Muani, a player who famously missed a one-on-one in the 2022 World Cup final, not to mention another against Portugal four days ago, finally score.
We’ve grown accustomed at this tournament to no one coming back against France. They’re not supposed to, anyway. The only goal Maignan had conceded so far was a penalty from Yamal’s Barcelona team-mate, Robert Lewandowski, in the 1-1 draw with Poland. Maignan had saved Lewandowski’s first effort only for the referee to order it to be retaken for encroachment. Beating him would take something truly special. Something out of this world. “We were in a difficult moment,” Yamal acknowledged. “Nobody expected to concede a goal so early.”
When a Fabian Ruiz roulette ended in a tangle 30 yards from goal, Yamal collected the loose ball and moved to puncture the enthusiasm behind the French goal. “I picked up the ball and I did not think about it, I tried to put it where it went, and I’m just very happy.”
Standing up to him was France’s giraffe-like midfielder Adrien Rabiot. Clearly, Yamal thought he needed to wind his neck in. On the eve of the game, Rabiot had said: “We’ve seen he is a player who can deal with stress very well, he has lots of qualities of playing for his club and in a major tournament. We know what he is made of. He keeps a cool head, but it can be difficult to deal with a semi-final in a big tournament. It will be up to us to put pressure on him, but we want him to come out of his comfort zone. If you want to play at a Euro final, you need to do more than he has done up until now.”
Yamal responded on Instagram with a post of a hand moving a pawn on a chessboard. “Move in silence” read the caption. “Only speak when it’s time to say ‘checkmate’.” Yamal let his left foot do the talking. His move came in the 21st minute. Yamal hid the ball, at first, by wrapping his left foot around it to go outside Rabiot only to reveal it again by nudging it inside with the outside of the same boot.
Rabiot shifted from side to side like an Arctic crab. He threw out a claw as Yamal set to shoot, but Rabiot caught none of the ball. Neither did Maignan. He covered his goal as well as he could. The AC Milan goalkeeper’s gloved hand eclipsed the top corner, but it couldn’t shut out the sun, the light of Yamal’s talent. “Habla! Habla!” Yamal shouted at Rabiot. “Talk! Talk!” All the Frenchman’s talk had been cheap. Yamal’s strike, on the other hand, was priceless. “We saw a touch of genius,” Spain coach Luis de la Fuente said.
It’s commonplace to hear people say perfection doesn’t exist. That it’s unattainable. But Yamal’s shot challenged that notion. “His shot was magnifique,” Didier Deschamps praised. It made Yamal, at 16 years and 362 days, the youngest goalscorer in Euros history. He will turn 17 on the eve of the final. The only gift Yamal wanted, he said, was “just to win, win, win. My objective was to be able to celebrate my birthday here in Germany. And I am very happy to celebrate it here with the team”. He then added: “I told my mum she does not need to buy me any present if we manage to win the final.”
As Yamal turned and dashed towards the enraptured Spanish bench, sliding on his knees in a state of euphoria, memories of a very similar goal the Barcelona winger scored against Mallorca flashed before the eyes of the Catalan journalists in the press box. But this was better. For the occasion. For the way it made Mbappe puff his cheeks in a look of awe and helplessness. “I don’t know if it’s the best goal of the tournament,” Yamal said. “But it’s the most special for me.”
Maignan is powerless to stop Yamal (Javier Soriano/AFP via Getty Images)
Yamal’s display will be condensed to the analysis of a moment. Rodri, however, expanded on it. “I personally went over to Lamine and congratulated him for his performance,” he said. “People will remember the game for his goal and what he did is something only a few chosen ones can do. But I personally thanked him for his defensive commitment. The recoveries, the tracking back, how he helped out the full-back. It’s been outstanding for a guy his age. I personally really rate this.”
At the end of the game, the Spanish players huddled together and jumped up and down in celebration at reaching the final. Yamal, initially, stood apart from them, nearer the halfway line like a star from a galaxy far, far away.
(Top photo: James Gill – Danehouse/Getty Images)
Catherine and Heathcliff. Since 1847, when Emily Brontë published her only novel, “Wuthering Heights,” those ill-starred lovers have inflamed the imaginations of generations of readers.
Who are these two? Definitely not the people you meet on vacation. The DNA of “Wuthering Heights,” set in a wild and desolate corner of Northern England, runs through the dark, gothic, obsessive strains of literary romance. Heathcliff, a tormented soul with terrible manners and a worse temper, may be the English novel’s most problematic boyfriend — mad, bad and dangerous to know. What redeems him, at least in the reader’s eyes, is Catherine’s love.
As children growing up in the same highly dysfunctional household, the two form a bond more passionate than siblinghood and purer than lust. (I don’t think a 179-year-old book can be spoiled, but some plot details will be revealed in what follows.) They go on to marry other people, living as neighbors and frenemies without benefits until tragedy inevitably strikes. In the meantime, they roil and seethe — it’s no accident that “wuthering” is a synonym for “stormy” — occasionally erupting into ardent eloquence.
Take this soliloquy delivered by Catherine to Nelly Dean, a patient and observant maidservant who narrates much of the novel:
This all-consuming love, thwarted in the book by circumstances, has flourished beyond its pages. Thanks to Catherine and Heathcliff — and also to the harsh, windswept beauty of the Yorkshire setting — “Wuthering Heights,” a touchstone of Victorian literature, has become a fixture of popular culture.
Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon played Heathcliff and Catherine in William Wyler’s 1939 multi-Oscar-nominated film adaptation.
Since then, the volatile Heathcliff has been embodied by a succession of British brooders: Richard Burton, Ralph Fiennes, Tom Hardy. At least for Gen X, the definitive Catherine will always be Kate Bush, dancing across the English countryside in a bright red dress in an indelible pre-MTV music video.
Now, just in time for Valentine’s Day, we’ll have Emerald Fennell’s new R-rated movie version, with Margot Robbie (recently Barbie) as Catherine and Jacob Elordi (recently Frankenstein’s monster) as Heathcliff.
Is theirs the greatest love story of all time, as the movie’s trailer insists? It might be. For the characters, the love itself overwhelms every other consideration of feeling. For Brontë, the most accomplished poet in a family of formidable novelists, that love is above all a matter of words. The immensity of Catherine and Heathcliff’s passion is measured by the intensity of their language, which of course is also Brontë’s.
Here is Heathcliff, in his hyperbolic fashion, belittling Catherine’s marriage to the pathetic Linton:
Which is what romance lives to do. It’s a genre often proudly unconstrained by what is possible, rational or sane, unafraid to favor sensation over sense or to pose unanswerable questions about the human heart. How could Catherine love a man like Heathcliff? How could he know himself to be worthy of her love?
We’ll never really have the answers, which is why we’ll never stop reading. And why no picture will ever quite match the book’s thousands of feverish, hungry, astonishing words.
Culture
Annotating the Judge’s Decision in the Case of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-Year-Old Detained by ICE
One of the many unsettling images to emerge from the recent ICE surge in Minneapolis was that of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, in his blue bunny hat, standing in the January cold with the hand of a federal officer gripping his Spider-Man backpack.
Liam and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, an asylum seeker from Ecuador, were taken from Minnesota to Texas and held at a detention facility outside San Antonio. Lawyers working on their behalf filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, an ancient judicial principle forbidding the government from holding anyone in custody without providing a legally tenable reason for doing so. On Saturday, Fred Biery, a federal judge in Texas’ Western District, granted their petition, freeing them.
That’s the boilerplate. But Judge Biery’s decision — which has gotten a lot of attention in legal circles and beyond — is much more than a dry specimen of judicial reasoning. It’s a passionate, erudite and at times mischievous piece of prose.
That may not have surprised some Texas court watchers. Judge Biery, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in 1994, is known for his wit and writerly flair. His judicial order in a 2013 case involving San Antonio strip clubs is famous for its literary allusions (“to bare, or not to bare”) and its cheeky double entendres. A 2023 profile in San Antonio Lawyer magazine called him “a judge with a little extra to say.”
The extra in this case transforms what might have been a routine decision into a thorough scourging of the Trump administration’s approach to governance. This text isn’t much longer than one of Mr. Trump’s Truth Social posts. In fewer than 500 words, Judge Biery marshals literature, history, folk wisdom and Scripture to challenge the theory of executive power that has defined Trump’s second presidency.
It’s worth looking at how he does it.
OPINION AND ORDER OF THE COURT
Before the Court is the petition of asylum seeker Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son for protection of the Great Writ of habeas corpus. They seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law. The government has responded.
He starts by juxtaposing the grandeur of habeas corpus with the modesty of the father and son’s claims, implying that what makes the writ “Great” is precisely its ability to protect the basic right of ordinary people not to be locked up arbitrarily. It does this by requiring that the government either provide reasons for holding them in custody or else let them go.
Judge Biery’s footnote directing readers to Blackstone’s commentaries and Magna Carta may be intended to give a remedial lesson to members of the administration. His larger point, though, is that to flout the guarantee of habeas corpus — as he insists the current deportation policy has done — is to threaten the integrity of the American constitutional order itself.
The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures.
He calls attention to the grandiosity and sloppiness of the administration’s position while suggesting that its overreach reflects a more sinister intention.
Apparent also is the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were:
1. “He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People.”
2. “He has excited domestic Insurrection among us.”
3. “For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us.”
4. “He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures.”
As the 250th birthday of American independence approaches, the president is being cast as King George III. The federal government’s indifference to habeas claims places it on the wrong side of the historical divide between individual liberty and unchecked state power, and thus at odds with the founding documents of the Republic.
“We the people” are hearing echos of that history.
And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized.
U.S. CONST. amend. IV.
Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster.
In constitutional terms, the judge finds that the administration has defied the Fourth Amendment and disregarded the separation of powers.
That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.
A barnyard metaphor puts the matter in plainer language: Because executive authority has the potential to be predatory, it needs to be checked by the judiciary branch. Judge Biery might also be sending a sly message to his colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court, who have looked favorably on many of Mr. Trump’s expansive claims of executive branch power.
Accordingly, the Court finds that the Constitution of these United States trumps this administration’s detention of petitioner Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son, L.C.R. The Great Writ and release from detention are GRANTED pursuant to the attached Judgment.
The language in which the judge renders his decision also sends a message, in this case to the president himself. Capitalization is a hallmark of Mr. Trump’s style, as it is of American legalese. The paragraph granting the petition bristles with uppercase nouns, which makes it all the more striking that the president’s name, otherwise absent from the ruling, is rendered in lowercase, as a card-table verb.
This may be a subtextual swipe at the president’s ego, but it’s consistent with the decision’s fundamental argument, which is that the president — any president — is ultimately smaller than the law.
Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.
For Judge Biery, the case involves procedure, and morality too. When he allows himself to express his disapproval — to write judgmentally, rather than judicially — he is in effect arguing that these principles can’t be separated. Due process and human decency are two sides of the same coin.
Ultimately, Petitioners may, because of the arcane United States immigration system, return to their home country, involuntarily or by self-deportation. But that result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place.
Philadelphia, September 17, 1787: “Well, Dr. Franklin, what do we have?” “A republic, if you can keep it.”
With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike,
It is so ORDERED.
Benjamin Franklin famously (and perhaps apocryphally) pointed out the fragility of orderly self-government, while the Dutch boy immortalized in the 19th-century novel “Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates” did what he could to protect his neighbors from the fury of the unchecked sea.
That Judge Biery puts himself in their company suggests that he sees this decision less as a final judgment than as a warning.
SIGNED this 31st day of January, 2026.
FRED BIERY
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Credit: Bystander
After his cautionary conclusion, the judge still has something extra to say, something that shifts the focus away from the rational, secular domain of jurisprudence.
Below his signature, he attaches the widely seen photograph of Liam. Underneath that — after an eloquently anonymous photo credit — are references to two verses from the New Testament. The judge doesn’t quote them, but they speak for him all the same.
Matthew 19:14
The Matthew verse — “But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: For of such is the kingdom of heaven” — is a well-known statement of compassion and care.
John 11:35
So, in its way, is John 11:35, the shortest verse in the English Bible. It is often quoted when things are so terrible that all other words fail:
“Jesus wept.”
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights thriller and mystery novels set in towns around the United States. (Even if you don’t know the book, each question offers a clue about the state.) To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.
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