Politics
Column: I know what a true hillbilly is, and it's not J.D. Vance
From the moment I learned about hillbillies as a child, I was entranced.
Good ol’ boys and girls born high up in the mountains? That’s my parents. People who moved from rural towns to metro areas in search of a better life? Story of both sides of my family. Working class? My upbringing. Lovers of things — food, fashion, music, diction, parties — that polite society ridiculed? Yee-haw! Stubbornly clinging to their ancestral lands and ways? ¡Ajúa!
I learned to love bourbon, bluegrass, “Hee Haw” reruns and Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might Be a Redneck If …” series. As an adult, I drove through the small towns of central and eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, feeling at home in areas even my white friends warned wouldn’t take kindly to “my type.” I might not have outwardly resembled the ‘billies I met — I’m a cholo nerd, after all — but we got along just fine, because they were my brothers and sisters from another madre.
That’s why I was intrigued when J.D. Vance’s memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” was released in 2016. From what I heard about it, the familial dysfunction, generational poverty and inherent fatalism that Vance overcame were similar to the pathologies of my own extended clan. The up-from-bootstraps message he preached in interviews was what my parents had always preached, and what I still subscribe to. Vance’s critique of conspicuous consumption among the poor is something everyone should consider.
But the parallels between the clean-cut Vance and me only went so far. He was a Yale graduate and venture capitalist, while I’m a community college kid who chose a dying profession. He was far removed from his roots, while I experience mine nearly every other weekend at family parties. More importantly, Vance cast himself as an extraordinary exception to his fellow Appalachians, describing ‘billies as encased in a toxic amber that kept them from improving their lot and left them embittered with a country that has moved on without them.
My Mexican hillbilly family never had time to whine and mope.
My parents’ generation found blue-collar jobs, bought homes and are now retired and enjoying the fruits of their blood, sweat and tears. Most of my cousins got white-collar jobs or joined the public sector. Their children are going straight to four-year universities.
We all made it in a society that never gave us a handout and wanted us to fail, embracing it as ours even as we hung on to our rancho traditions. Even Vance expressed admiration for our trajectory, writing in “Hillbilly Elegy” that white Appalachians wallow in pessimism, unlike Latino immigrants, “many of whom suffer unthinkable poverty.”
I never got around to reading all of Vance’s memoir — it seemed like poverty porn for the elite he now belonged to. I did read his stream of essays for liberal publications explaining why working-class whites were so enthralled with Donald Trump, a man he would go on to call a “fraud,” “a moral disaster,” “cultural heroin,” “reprehensible” and a “cynical a—hole” who might turn into “America’s Hitler.” I appreciated that Vance didn’t blame immigration for America’s supposed decline as much as other right-leaning pundits did, and even called out Trump for his rank racism.
What a difference running for office makes. In 2022, Vance sought a U.S. Senate seat as a Trump-worshiping xenophobe. What changed his mind?
Mexicans.
Who better to implement Trumpism in all branches of American life and government for decades to come than a 39-year-old white guy from Ohio?
(Jeff Dean / Associated Press)
“Are you a racist?” a now-bearded Vance cheerily asked in a commercial released for his campaign. “Do you hate Mexicans?” “The media” maligned “us” with those charges, he said — “us” meaning those who supported Trump’s border wall — and went on to claim that unchecked migration under the Biden administration was “killing Ohioans” with “illegal drugs and Democratic voters pouring into this country.” Vance ended his 30-second spot by blaming the “poison coming across the border” for nearly killing his mother, whose struggles with drug addiction Vance documented in his book and a Netflix film of the same name as his memoir.
The commercial made California Gov. Pete Wilson’s infamous “They Keep Coming” 1994 reelection ad seem as pro-Mexican as a taco truck. Many Latinos immediately ridiculed Vance’s campaign gambit as the woe-is-me blamefest that it was. But it worked: Trump endorsed him, he won, and he has continued his anti-Mexican crusade ever since.
Last year, the senator introduced a bill seeking to establish English as the official national language. He has endorsed the use of American military forces to go after drug cartels in Mexico while opposing amnesty for immigrants illegally in the U.S. and federally funded healthcare for DACA recipients. Last week, Vance supporters received a fundraising plea that called for the deportation of “every single person who invaded our country illegally.”
Now, he is Trump’s choice for vice president.
Trump has long made clear that he wants nothing but lickspittles surrounding him in a second administration. He also wants someone young enough to implement Trumpism in all branches of American life and government for decades to come. Who better than a 39-year-old white guy from Ohio? Trump is looking toward the future by choosing Vance — but through a lens reflecting the gringo past.
Long considered a bellwether state essential for any successful presidential run, Ohio is also an anomaly. White people, who make up 58% of the U.S. population, are 77% of residents in the Buckeye State. Ohio under-indexes for African Americans and Asian Americans but especially Latinos — we’re nearly 20% of this country’s population but just 5% of Ohioans.
Vance’s job for Trump is to campaign in Rust Belt swing states, arguing for a defense of whiteness against the browning of America. Neither will explicitly admit that’s what they’re doing — how can they be anti-immigrant when Trump is married to an immigrant and Vance’s wife was born to Indian immigrants?
But the proof was visible Monday, on opening night of the GOP convention. Not a single Latino sat in Trump’s VIP section. All three Latinos who spoke propped themselves up, Vance-like, as exemplars of their community and thus worth paying attention to. The most prominent one, Goya Chief Executive Bob Unanue, spent his five minutes trashing open borders and making fun of Vice President Kamala Harris’ first name in Spanish, a joke that fell flat because few in the audience habla español.
Maybe Trump’s advisors think that Vance’s background and life story will appeal to Latinos in swing states like Nevada and Arizona, especially in light of recent polls showing that Latino antipathy against illegal immigration is higher than it’s been in decades.
But part of the bootstrap mentality is not to blame others for your circumstances. And Vance has plenty of blame to go around. In “Hillbilly Elegy,” he faulted Appalachian culture for keeping his people down. He now insists that it’s actually his fellow elites who have destroyed the United States. Mexico, Vance now says, is the reason his mother and too many others became addicted to opioids. There is no concept of personal responsibility in Vance’s worldview — or Trump’s, for that matter.
Vance is a classic example of a convenenciero — someone who goes through life with no principles other than getting ahead, and no loyalty to a community other than his own. Hillbillies of all backgrounds loathe such pendejos, which is why nearly all of my Southern friends ridiculed “Hillbilly Elegy” and warned the liberals enamored with it that they were propping up a false prophet.
Now, Vance has a very good chance of becoming the second-most powerful person in the United States — courtesy of Trump, the undisputed king of false prophets. Heaven help us all.
For decades, American families have gathered to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” on Christmas Eve.
The 1946 Frank Capra movie, about a man who on one of the worst days of his life discovers how he has positively impacted his hometown of Bedford Falls, is beloved for extolling selflessness, community and the little guy taking on rapacious capitalists. Take those values, add in powerful acting and the promise of light in the darkest of hours, and it’s the only movie that makes me cry.
No less a figure of goodwill than Pope Leo XIV revealed last month that it’s one of his favorite movies. But as with anything holy in this nation, President Trump and his followers are trying to hijack the holiday classic.
Last weekend, the Department of Homeland Security posted two videos celebrating its mass deportation campaign. One, titled “It’s a Wonderful Flight,” re-creates the scene where George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart in one of his best performances) contemplates taking his own life by jumping off a snowy bridge. But the protagonist is a Latino man crying over the film’s despairing score that he’ll “do anything” to return to his wife and kids and “live again.”
Cut to the same man now mugging for the camera on a plane ride out of the United States. The scene ends with a plug for an app that allows undocumented immigrants to take up Homeland Security’s offer of a free self-deportation flight and a $1,000 bonus — $3,000 if they take the one-way trip during the holidays.
The other DHS clip is a montage of Yuletide cheer — Santa, elves, stockings, dancing — over a sped-up electro-trash remake of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You.” In one split-second image, Bedford Falls residents sing “Auld Lang Syne,” just after they’ve saved George Bailey from financial ruin and an arrest warrant.
“This Christmas,” the caption reads, “our hearts grow as our illegal population shrinks.”
“It’s a Wonderful Life” has long served as a political Rorschach test. Conservatives once thought Capra’s masterpiece was so anti-American for its vilification of big-time bankers that they accused him of sneaking in pro-Communist propaganda. In fact, the director was a Republican who paused his career during World War II to make short documentaries for the Department of War. Progressives tend to loathe the film’s patriotism, its sappiness, its relegation of Black people to the background and its depiction of urban life as downright demonic.
Then came Trump’s rise to power. His similarity to the film’s villain, Mr. Potter — a wealthy, nasty slumlord who names everything he takes control of after himself — was easier to point out than spots on a cheetah. Left-leaning essayists quickly made the facile comparison, and a 2018 “Saturday Night Live” parody imagining a country without Trump as president so infuriated him that he threatened to sue.
But in recent years, Trumpworld has claimed that the film is actually a parable about their dear leader.
Trump is a modern day George Bailey, the argument goes, a secular saint walking away from sure riches to try to save the “rabble” that Mr. Potter — who in their minds somehow represents the liberal elite — sneers at. A speaker at the 2020 Republican National Convention explicitly made the comparison, and the recent Homeland Security videos warping “It’s a Wonderful Life” imply it too — except now, it’s unchecked immigration that threatens Bedford Falls.
The Trump administration’s take on “It’s a Wonderful Life” is that it reflects a simpler, better, whiter time. But that’s a conscious misinterpretation of this most American of movies, whose foundation is strengthened by immigrant dreams.
Director Frank Capra
(Handout)
In his 1971 autobiography “The Name Above the Title,” Capra revealed that his “dirty, hollowed-out immigrant family” left Sicily for Los Angeles in the 1900s to reunite with an older brother who “jumped the ship” to enter the U.S. years before. Young Frank grew up in the “sleazy Sicilian ghetto” of Lincoln Heights, finding kinship at Manual Arts High with the “riff-raff” of immigrant and working-class white kids “other schools discarded” and earning U.S. citizenship only after serving in the first World War. Hard times wouldn’t stop Capra and his peers from achieving success.
The director captured that sentiment in “It’s a Wonderful Life” through the character of Giuseppe Martini, an Italian immigrant who runs a bar. His heavily accented English is heard early in the film as one of many Bedford Falls residents praying for Bailey. In a flashback, Martini is seen leaving his shabby Potter-owned apartment with a goat and a troop of kids for a suburban tract home that Bailey developed and sold to him.
Today, Trumpworld would cast the Martinis as swarthy invaders destroying the American way of life. In “It’s a Wonderful Life,” they’re America itself.
When an angry husband punches Bailey at Martini’s bar for insulting his wife, the immigrant kicks out the man for assaulting his “best friend.” And when Bedford Falls gathers at the end of the film to raise funds and save Bailey, it’s Martini who arrives with the night’s profits from his business, as well as wine for everyone to celebrate.
Immigrants are so key to the good life in this country, the film argues, that in the alternate reality if George Bailey had never lived, Martini is nowhere to be heard.
Capra long stated that “It’s a Wonderful Life” was his favorite of his own movies, adding in his memoir that it was a love letter “for the Magdalenes stoned by hypocrites and the afflicted Lazaruses with only dogs to lick their sores.”
I’ve tried to catch at least the ending every Christmas Eve to warm my spirits, no matter how bad things may be. But after Homeland Security’s hijacking of Capra’s message, I made time to watch the entire film, which I’ve seen at least 10 times, before its customary airing on NBC.
I shook my head, feeling the deja vu, as Bailey’s father sighed, “In this town, there’s no place for any man unless they crawl to Potter.”
I cheered as Bailey told Potter years later, “You think the whole world revolves around you and your money. Well, it doesn’t.” I wondered why more people haven’t said that to Trump.
When Potter ridiculed Bailey as someone “trapped into frittering his life away playing nursemaid to a lot of garlic eaters,” I was reminded of the right-wingers who portray those of us who stand up to Trump’s cruelty as stupid and even treasonous.
And as the famous conclusion came, all I thought about was immigrants.
People giving Bailey whatever money they could spare reminded me of how regular folks have done a far better job standing up to Trump’s deportation Leviathan than the rich and mighty have.
As the film ends, with Bailey and his family looking on in awe at how many people came to help out, I remembered my own immigrant elders, who also forsook dreams and careers so their children could achieve their own — the only reward to a lifetime of silent sacrifice.
The tears flowed as always, this time prompted by a new takeaway that was always there — “Solo el pueblo salva el pueblo,” or “Only we can save ourselves,” a phrase adopted by pro-immigrant activists in Southern California this year as a mantra of comfort and resistance.
It’s the heart of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and the opposite of Trump’s push to make us all dependent on his mercy. He and his fellow Potters can’t do anything to change that truth.
Case 1:25-cv-04480 Document 1 Filed 12/22/25
Page 1 of 18
JOYCE BEATTY,¹
V.
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
Plaintiff,
DONALD J. TRUMP, RICHARD GRENELL, JENNIFER FISCHER, SERGIO GOR, JOHN FALCONETTI, BRIAN D. BALLARD, MARIA BARTIROMO, PAMELA BONDI, MARY HELEN BOWERS, HANNAH F. BUCHAN, ROBERT CASTELLANI, ELAINE CHAO, PAMELLA ROLAND DEVOS, PATRICIA DUGGAN, EMILIA MAY FANJUL, LYNETTE FRIESS, PAMELA GROSS, LEE GREENWOOD, KATE ADAMSON HASELWOOD, LAURA INGRAHAM, MICHELE KESSLER, DANA KRAFT, MINDY LEVINE, LYNDA LOMANGINO, BARBARA LONG, ALLISON LUTNICK, DOUGLAS MANCHESTER, CATHERINE B. REYNOLDS, DENISE SAUL, DAN SCAVINO, CHERI SUMMERALL, USHA VANCE, SUSIE WILES, ANDREA WYNN, PAOLO ZAMPOLLI, ROBERT F. KENNEDY, JR., MARCO RUBIO, LINDA MCMAHON, MIKE JOHNSON, SAM GRAVES, JULIA LETLOW, MIKE MCCAUL, JOHN THUNE, SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, SUSAN COLLINS, TRUSTEES OF THE JOHN F. KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS, JOHN F. KENNEDY CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS,
Defendants.
No. 25-CV-
1 Pursuant to Local Civil Rule 5.1(c)(1), the Plaintiff’s residential address is being filed under seal with the Court in a separate Notice of Filing.
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At least 20 percent of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s administrative appointees are connected to groups characterized as anti-Zionist, according to a Monday report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
The report found that more than 80 individuals among Mamdani’s 400-plus transition and administrative appointees either have ties to such groups or a “documented history of making anti-Israel statements.”
The organization said Mamdani’s Transition Committee appointees have been linked to groups including Students for Justice in Palestine, a pro-Palestinian college activism network; Jewish Voice for Peace, an American Jewish anti-Zionist organization; and Within Our Lifetime, a New York City-based anti-Zionist group “known for leading protests outside synagogues.”
For example, the ADL said at least four appointees have ties to Louis Farrakhan, the antisemitic leader of the Nation of Islam. One appointee, Jacques Léandre, was cited for reportedly attending a conference at which Farrakhan denounced “the Jews and their power.”
ADL CHIEF WARNS NYC MAYOR-ELECT ZOHRAN MAMDANI POSES A ‘CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER’ TO JEWISH COMMUNITY
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani speaks to members of the media at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in the Queens borough of New York on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. (Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Several other appointees were also cited for statements that appear to support or justify violence against Israel and the Oct. 7 attacks. According to the ADL, Kazi Fouzia posted on Facebook hours after the attacks that “Resistance are [sic] Justified when people are occupied” with video footage from an anti-Israel protest happening that day in Manhattan.
The report continued to identify other appointees who publicly expressed hostility toward Zionism.
Examples included Fahd Ahmed, who stated “Zionism is racism”; Ruha Benjamin, who signed a statement calling Israel “ideologically founded on Jewish supremacy”; Lisa Ohta, who referred to “Zionism’s genocidal ideology”; and Mohammed Karim Chowdhury, who shared a post claiming “Zionists are worse than … Nazis,” ADL reported.
MAMDANI’S FATHER SAYS COLUMBIA ‘TARGETED’ ANTI-ISRAEL STUDENTS WITH ANTISEMITISM CRACKDOWN
A protester waves a Palestinian flag during a protest on college campuses in Washington, D.C., on March 23, 2025. (ANDREW THOMAS/Middle Eeast Images/AFP via Getty Images)
The organization also identified Zakiyah Shaakir-Ansari, who was cited for allegedly posting a photo of herself at an encampment in front of a banner displaying an inverted red triangle, a symbol associated with Hamas, alongside the text “LONG LIVE THE RESISTANCE.”
The report also states that at least 12 appointees publicly expressed support for anti-Israel campus encampments during the spring of 2024, with at least five attending the protests in person. The ADL highlighted Gianpaolo Baiocchi, who was reportedly arrested at the NYU encampment and later asserted that no hate speech was present. The ADL disputes that claim, citing flyers distributed at the encampment that called for “Death to Israeli Real Estate” and “Death to America.”
Demonstrators raise a “Free Palestine” flag on Oct. 4, 2025. (Dan Gainor)
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Mamdani, who takes office on Jan. 1, has previously and repeatedly emphasized that he stands against antisemitism.
The ADL noted that many appointees did not raise concerns and emphasized that at least 25 individuals expressed support for the Jewish community, including Rabbi Joe Potasnik, Félix Matos Rodríguez, Wayne Ho, John King, and Jerry Goldfeder. However, the organization said it remains concerned about Mamdani’s team overall.
“Many of Mayor-elect Mamdani’s Transition Committee appointments are inconsistent with his campaign commitments to prioritize the safety of New York’s Jewish community,” the ADL wrote in the report.
Fox News Digital reached out to Mamdani for more comment.
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