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I'm Davan Maharaj, editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Times. Here are some story lines I don't want you to miss today.

The most expensive congressional race in American history came to an end Tuesday with Republican Karen Handel defeating Democrat Jon Ossoff. Handel fills a seat vacated by fellow Georgia Republican Tom Price, now President Trumps secretary of Health and Human Services. And as if there wasnt enough drama already, torrential rains pounded the district and threatened turnout as voters tried to get to the polls. Ahead of election day, donors nationwide many of them Californians poured money into the campaign. Those backing Ossoff hoped a Democratic victory in Georgias traditionally Republican 6th district would signal that Democrats are poised to retake the House of Representatives in 2018. They didnt get the upset, which theyd thought would serve as a major check on the Trump administration. In South Carolina, Republican Ralph Norman defeated Democrat Archie Parnell to give the GOP a 4-0 record against the Democrats in special elections during the Trump presidency.

At long last, Americans are expected to get their first look at Senate Republicans vision for the future of the nations healthcare system. GOP leaders say they plan to unveil the plan Thursday. Republicans have been deliberating over an Obamacare replacement bill in near-total secrecy. Thats leftDemocrats and many others wondering: Will it result in more uninsured Americans? The version passed by the House was forecast to leave 23 million more people uninsured. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says theyll make every effort to pass a bill that dramatically changes the current healthcare law. There wont be much time for debate.. GOP lawmakers are hoping to pass the bill before the July 4th recess.

-- In the Senate, a high-stakes game awaits. Republicans only have a 52-seat majority in the Senate. With zero Democrats on board with their plans, that means the GOP can't lose more than two senators and still pass a bill. (Vice President Mike Pence serves as a tie-breaking vote.) All eyes will fall on senators from the GOPs hardline and moderate wings to see if they can agree on issues including whether to preserve the Medicaid expansions made possible by Obamacare.

-- President Trumps son-in-law and key adviser Jared Kushner is headed to the Middle East in a bid to revive peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. Its an ambitious task for the young real estate magnate and newly minted envoy. The challenge? Resolving one of the worlds most intractable diplomatic conflicts. But Palestinian officials are voicing doubt about the seriousness of the effort after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted approvingly about Israeli jackhammers breaking ground on the first new settlement in the West Bank since the mid-1990s.

Imagine being a septic worker in Death Valley, which had the highest temperature in the U.S. on Tuesday 127 degrees. Or working the tarmac at Phoenixs Sky Harbor International Airport, where it hit 119 degrees. It was too hot there even for jets, causing dozens of flights to be delayed or canceled. The heat wave cooking the Southwest this week and keeping millions of Americans indoors with the air-conditioning cranked up is causing some real trouble. California electricity officials asked consumers to scale back their power usage over the next two days or risk outages. Two firefighters have suffered heat-related injuries while battling a 850-acre wildfire in the San Bernardino Mountains near Highway 18, officials said. Times reporter Louis Sahagun headed to Death Valley, where he found out what happens when a local restaurants air conditioner suddenly fails. Forecaster warn Wednesday is expected to be nearly as hot.

Los Angeles lives in fear of the Big One. Now scientists with the California Geological Survey have newly mapped part of an earthquake fault line in northeastern Los Angeles that they say could someday cause major damage to the heart of the metro area and the San Gabriel Valley. The Raymond fault caused the magnitude-4.9 Pasadena earthquake in 1988, and researchers say its capable of causing a much more serious magnitude-7 earthquake.

--In Northern California this summer, theres big fun and a lot of water at these seven destinations.

--More than 500 surfers paddled out to form a record-breaking circle Tuesday near the Huntington Beach Pier.

--Pamela Adlon of Better Things has a surprising choice when asked about a classic show she would love to have been on.

-- Remember those stolen police cars? The Los Angeles Police Department has now arrested a total of seven cadets. The group of teenagers allegedly stole police cars to go joyriding and possibly also to pose as real officers.

-- More mixed signals. The man who led President Trump's transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency said California should not be allowed to set its own standards for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle tailpipes. During a recent Capitol Hill hearing EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said it wasn't currently under review although he had earlier suggested that the Trump administration could try to revoke California's Clean Air Act waiver.

-- A bodyguard for a popular alt-right personality was stabbed multiple times in Santa Monica on Saturday night. His supporters raised fears that it was an anti-white hate crime, but police said the attack stemmed from a dispute in a parking garage.

-- More than 9,000 workers at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power would receive six raises within five years under a proposed salary agreement endorsed Tuesday by Mayor Eric Garcettis appointees and backed by the DWPs largest employee union.

-- Production will resume on the reality show Bachelor in Paradise after Warner Bros. announced that it had found no evidence of sexual misconduct by a cast member, following a complaint by one of the shows producers. The show is set to air this summer on ABC.

-- Three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis, the 60-year-old English star of films including Lincoln and There Will Be Blood, is retiring from acting after his final film, Phantom Thread, comes out on Christmas.

--Ava DuVernay has doubled down on hiring only female directors for the second season of Queen Sugar, the Louisiana-set TV series she created for OWN. It was like, oh wait, these women havent directed television but they want to, said DuVernay, who directed Selma. We should really take this as far as we can.

--Prodigy, one half of the revered hip-hop group Mobb Deep, died Tuesday. He was 42. He had performed in Las Vegas over the weekend and was hospitalized for complications caused by sickle cell disease, his publicist said.

Jane Russells provocative performance in the 1943 film The Outlaw, and the studio publicity shots posing her in a low-cut blouse, marked a turning point in movie sexuality. She was born Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell on this date in 1921 and died Feb. 28, 2011.

-- Soldiers in Brussels foiled a terror attack when they fatally shot a suspect who brought an explosive device to a busy train station Tuesday night, officials said. No one else was injured.

-- In Portugal, at least 64 people were killed by a wildfire that burned many people alive in their cars as they tried to escape. Environmentalists say theyve identified a major factor that made the fire worse: non-native eucalyptus trees, which have become a profitable cash crop in Portugal, and whose sap and bark are flammable.

-- The U.S. flew two B1-B supersonic bombers over the Korean Peninsula on Tuesday in a show of force against North Korea. The move comes one day after the death of American student Otto Warmbier, who had returned to the U.S. in a coma after North Korea released him from captivity.

-- Saudi Arabias King Salman on Wednesday appointed his 31-year-old son Mohammed bin Salman as crown prince, placing him firmly as first in line to the throne.

-- Bill Cosby faces a retrial after a Montgomery County, Pa., jury deadlocked over whether to convict him for sexual assault. But experts say the prosecution faces an uphill climb.

--Uber CEO Travis Kalanick resigned under pressure from investors unhappy about his management style.

-- Is Barbie ready for a Ken with a dad bod or a man bun? Mattel has started rolling out a new line of male dolls that now include slim and broad body types, plus a wider array of hair and skin-tone options.

-- Former NFL star and Hall of Fame defensive tackle Warren Sapp says he will donate his brain for concussion research, adding, I just cant remember like I used to, and its from the banging we did as football players.

-- Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen has gone halfway through the season without walking any batters. Can he go all the way?

-- The Lakers have traded DAngelo Russell and Timofey Mozgov to the Brooklyn Nets for Brook Lopez and the 27th overall pick in this years draft.

-- Columnist Michael Hiltzik sends his best wishes to the still-hospitalized House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), who was critically wounded in a shooting last week. However, Hiltzik adds, Scalises situation highlights two major public policy issues: There are too many guns in the hands of too many unsuitable owners; and healthcare is still treated in the United States as a privilege, not a right.

-- Every day, three or four children under age 17 die and an additional 16 are hospitalized from gunfire, yet Congress doesnt treat gun violence as a threat to public health, which is outrageous, Scott Martelle writes.

-- Monday was Juneteenth, a holiday that marks the hard-fought end of slavery in America. It is the observance of a victory delayed, of foot-dragging and desperate resistance by white supremacy against the tide of human rights, and of a legal freedom trampled by the might of state violence, Vann R. Newkirk II writes in The Atlantic.

-- Rolling Stones Matt Taibbi, who is no fan of popular conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, thinks NBCs Megyn Kelly made the right call in interviewing Jones: People need to understand how acts like his work and why.

-- Its been a busy first five months for the Trump administration. How well do you remember them? Try this BuzzFeed quiz: Can You Remember Which One Of These Trump Scandals Happened First?

Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times

Skiers at Squaw Valley Ski Resort.

Skiers at Squaw Valley Ski Resort. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

How much snow did California get over the winter? People are skiing in bikini tops during a heat wave in June.

Please send comments and ideas to Davan Maharaj.

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Today: In the Trump Era, Republicans 4, Democrats 0 - Los Angeles Times

Sen. Chris Coons said Wednesday the special elections in Georgia and South Carolina show that Democrats need a positive agenda to take the House in 2018.

I think our challenge is to put forward a strong and clear agenda that helps middle Americans look at the two parties and the directions theyd like to take our country and say that they would rather have a Congress in the hands of Democrats, Mr. Coons, Delaware Democrat, said on CNN.

He also said the focus needs to be on creating this agenda and not just criticizing President Trump and Republicans.

At the moment, the Republicans control the House, Senate, and the presidency so they have an opportunity to move the agenda in a way they havent in a long time, and we need to not just point at the excesses and the outrages of President Trump, some of the statements he made as a candidate or some of the choices hes making, but instead put forward a positive and constructive agenda, Mr. Coons said.

I think if we dont do that, we wont be successful in 2018. If we do do that, then I think we have a strong chance of taking back the House, he said.

Mr. Coons was reacting to the Democrats loss in Georgia and South Carolina special elections on Tuesday. Democrats have failed to flip any of the special election seats up this year.

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Coons: Democrats need a positive agenda to take back the House - Washington Times

The Democratic National Committee raised nearly $4.3 million in May, making it the organization's worst May on record for fundraising since 2003, according to newly released Federal Election Commission data.

In May 2003, the Democratic group pulled in $2.7 million. Although 2017 is an off-year for fundraising, the DNC has raised between $4.5 million and $20 million every May in the nearly decade and a half since then.

The low number follows another rough fundraising month in April, in which the group hauled in $4.7 million, making it the worst April of fundraising since 2009.

DNC Chairman Tom Perez has said he intends to double the organization's budget from $50 million to $100 million this year, a change that will prove difficult if donations continue to remain below average. Perez defended his performance by saying he has only been leading the DNC for a few months now.

"Well again, I got there on March 1. And so, I was the first to say, we have a lot of rebuilding to do," Perez said on NBC.

The Republican National Committee reported $10.8 million in donations for the month of May, an off-year record-high number for the group.

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Democrats had the worst May fundraising since 2003 - Washington Examiner

It's a long shot, but Democrats believe they've identified an error in the health care bill that would force Republicans to get 60 votes to pass their plan, rather than 51. With only 52 Republicans in the Senate, it could essentially kill the bill.

A warning: we're getting into some seriously wonky territory. But it's important, so stay with us.

Under reconciliation, the way Republicans can try to pass the bill with 51 votes, Republicans have to save $2 billion total. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last month that Republicans did that in their House bill. But, there is more to the rules. The $2 billion can't come from just anywhere. They have to save $1 billion in each of the relevant committees. That means Republicans have to save $1 billion from programs under the jurisdiction of the Senate Health, Education and Labor Committee and another $1 billion from the Finance Committee.

Democrats charge Republicans haven't hit the target the HELP committee and accuse them of using budgetary tricks. They want to force the health care bill back to HELP to find more in savings. That would mean a delay and ultimately a committee vote on the plan.

It's a disagreement that's been ongoing for weeks now. Republicans balk at the charge and say it's already been decided, the House health care bill is fine and they are full steam ahead.

Given that Republicans and Democrats are so dug in, it may be the kind of issue that goes to the Senate's parliamentarian.

But here's why Republicans say Democrats may not get very far with their accusation and why even the parliamentarian may not matter.

Under section 312 of the 1974 Congressional Budget Act, Republicans argue that the rules say that it's ultimately up to the Senate Budget Committee Chairman to decide if legislation complies with Senate reconciliation requirements, not a parliamentarian.

Bottom line? At the end of the day, Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyoming, gets to say whether the House health care bill is in compliance with reconciliation.

"The parliamentarian does not decide whether the bill saves enough in HELP jurisdiction to be considered under reconciliation -- again the Chairman of the Budget Committee does," a GOP aide said in an email.

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Democrats' wonky plan to delay GOP health care bill - CNN

The myth, which liberals like myself find tempting, is that only the right has changed. In June 2015, we tell ourselves, Donald Trump rode down his golden escalator and pretty soon nativism, long a feature of conservative politics, had engulfed it. But thats not the full story. If the right has grown more nationalistic, the left has grown less so. A decade ago, liberals publicly questioned immigration in ways that would shock many progressives today.

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In 2005, a left-leaning blogger wrote, Illegal immigration wreaks havoc economically, socially, and culturally; makes a mockery of the rule of law; and is disgraceful just on basic fairness grounds alone. In 2006, a liberal columnist wrote that immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants and that the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear. His conclusion: Well need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants. That same year, a Democratic senator wrote, When I see Mexican flags waved at proimmigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When Im forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.

The blogger was Glenn Greenwald. The columnist was Paul Krugman. The senator was Barack Obama.

Prominent liberals didnt oppose immigration a decade ago. Most acknowledged its benefits to Americas economy and culture. They supported a path to citizenship for the undocumented. Still, they routinely asserted that low-skilled immigrants depressed the wages of low-skilled American workers and strained Americas welfare state. And they were far more likely than liberals today are to acknowledge that, as Krugman put it, immigration is an intensely painful topic because it places basic principles in conflict.

Today, little of that ambivalence remains. In 2008, the Democratic platform called undocumented immigrants our neighbors. But it also warned, We cannot continue to allow people to enter the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked, adding that those who enter our countrys borders illegally, and those who employ them, disrespect the rule of the law. By 2016, such language was gone. The partys platform described Americas immigration system as a problem, but not illegal immigration itself. And it focused almost entirely on the forms of immigration enforcement that Democrats opposed. In its immigration section, the 2008 platform referred three times to people entering the country illegally. The immigration section of the 2016 platform didnt use the word illegal, or any variation of it, at all.

A decade or two ago, says Jason Furman, a former chairman of President Obamas Council of Economic Advisers, Democrats were divided on immigration. Now everyone agrees and is passionate and thinks very little about any potential downsides. How did this come to be?

There are several explanations for liberals shift. The first is that they have changed because the reality on the ground has changed, particularly as regards illegal immigration. In the two decades preceding 2008, the United States experienced sharp growth in its undocumented population. Since then, the numbers have leveled off.

But this alone doesnt explain the transformation. The number of undocumented people in the United States hasnt gone down significantly, after all; its stayed roughly the same. So the economic concerns that Krugman raised a decade ago remain relevant today.

Whats Wrong With the Democrats?

A larger explanation is political. Between 2008 and 2016, Democrats became more and more confident that the countrys growing Latino population gave the party an electoral edge. To win the presidency, Democrats convinced themselves, they didnt need to reassure white people skeptical of immigration so long as they turned out their Latino base. The fastest-growing sector of the American electorate stampeded toward the Democrats this November, Salon declared after Obamas 2008 win. If that pattern continues, the GOP is doomed to 40 years of wandering in a desert.

As the Democrats grew more reliant on Latino votes, they were more influenced by pro-immigrant activism. While Obama was running for reelection, immigrants-rights advocates launched protests against the administrations deportation practices; these protests culminated, in June 2012, in a sit-in at an Obama campaign office in Denver. Ten days later, the administration announced that it would defer the deportation of undocumented immigrants who had arrived in the U.S. before the age of 16 and met various other criteria. Obama, The New York Times noted, was facing growing pressure from Latino leaders and Democrats who warned that because of his harsh immigration enforcement, his support was lagging among Latinos who could be crucial voters in his race for re-election.

Alongside pressure from pro-immigrant activists came pressure from corporate America, especially the Democrat-aligned tech industry, which uses the H-1B visa program to import workers. In 2010, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, along with the CEOs of companies including Hewlett-Packard, Boeing, Disney, and News Corporation, formed New American Economy to advocate for business-friendly immigration policies. Three years later, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates helped found FWD.us to promote a similar agenda.

This combination of Latino and corporate activism made it perilous for Democrats to discuss immigrations costs, as Bernie Sanders learned the hard way. In July 2015, two months after officially announcing his candidacy for president, Sanders was interviewed by Ezra Klein, the editor in chief of Vox. Klein asked whether, in order to fight global poverty, the U.S. should consider sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. Sanders reacted with horror. Thats a Koch brothers proposal, he scoffed. He went on to insist that right-wing people in this country would love an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I dont believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country.

Sanders came under immediate attack. Voxs Dylan Matthews declared that his fear of immigrant labor is uglyand wrongheaded. The president of FWD.us accused Sanders of the sort of backward-looking thinking that progressives have rightly moved away from in the past years. ThinkProgress published a blog post titled Why Immigration Is the Hole in Bernie Sanders Progressive Agenda. The senator, it argued, was supporting the idea that immigrants coming to the U.S. are taking jobs and hurting the economy, a theory that has been proven incorrect.

Sanders stopped emphasizing immigrations costs. By January 2016, FWD.uss policy director noted with satisfaction that he had evolved on this issue.

But has the claim that immigrants coming to the U.S. are taking jobs actually been proved incorrect? A decade ago, liberals werent so sure. In 2006, Krugman wrote that America was experiencing large increases in the number of low-skill workers relative to other inputs into production, so its inevitable that this means a fall in wages.

Its hard to imagine a prominent liberal columnist writing that sentence today. To the contrary, progressive commentators now routinely claim that theres a near-consensus among economists on immigrations benefits.

There isnt. According to a comprehensive new report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Groups comparable to immigrants in terms of their skill may experience a wage reduction as a result of immigration-induced increases in labor supply. But academics sometimes de-emphasize this wage reduction because, like liberal journalists and politicians, they face pressures to support immigration.

Many of the immigration scholars regularly cited in the press have worked for, or received funding from, pro-immigration businesses and associations. Consider, for instance, Giovanni Peri, an economist at UC Davis whose name pops up a lot in liberal commentary on the virtues of immigration. A 2015 New York Times Magazine essay titled Debunking the Myth of the Job-Stealing Immigrant declared that Peri, whom it called the leading scholar on how nations respond to immigration, had shown that immigrants tend to complementrather than compete againstthe existing work force. Peri is indeed a respected scholar. But Microsoft has funded some of his research into high-skilled immigration. And New American Economy paid to help him turn his research into a 2014 policy paper decrying limitations on the H-1B visa program. Such grants are more likely the result of his scholarship than their cause. Still, the prevalence of corporate funding can subtly influence which questions economists ask, and which ones they dont. (Peri says grants like those from Microsoft and New American Economy are neither large nor crucial to his work, and that they dont determine the direction of my academic research.)

Academics face cultural pressures too. In his book Exodus, Paul Collier, an economist at the University of Oxford, claims that in their desperate [desire] not to give succor to nativist bigots, social scientists have strained every muscle to show that migration is good for everyone. George Borjas of Harvard argues that since he began studying immigration in the 1980s, his fellow economists have grown far less tolerant of research that emphasizes its costs. There is, he told me, a lot of self-censorship among young social scientists. Because Borjas is an immigration skeptic, some might discount his perspective. But when I asked Donald Davis, a Columbia University economist who takes a more favorable view of immigrations economic impact, about Borjass claim, he made a similar point. George and I come out on different sides of policy on immigration, Davis said, but I agree that there are aspects of discussion in academia that dont get sort of full view if you come to the wrong conclusion.

None of this means that liberals should oppose immigration. Entry to the United States is, for starters, a boon to immigrants and to the family members back home to whom they send money. It should be valued on these moral grounds alone. But immigration benefits the economy, too. Because immigrants are more likely than native-born Americans to be of working age, they improve the ratio of workers to retirees, which helps keep programs like Social Security and Medicare solvent. Immigration has also been found to boost productivity, and the National Academies report finds that natives incomes rise in aggregate as a result of immigration.

The problem is that, although economists differ about the extent of the damage, immigration hurts the Americans with whom immigrants compete. And since more than a quarter of Americas recent immigrants lack even a high-school diploma or its equivalent, immigration particularly hurts the least-educated native workers, the very people who are already struggling the most. Americas immigration system, in other words, pits two of the groups liberals care about mostthe native-born poor and the immigrant pooragainst each other.

One way of mitigating this problem would be to scrap the current system, which allows immigrants living in the U.S. to bring certain close relatives to the country, in favor of what Donald Trump in February called a merit based approach that prioritizes highly skilled and educated workers. The problem with this idea, from a liberal perspective, is its cruelty. It denies many immigrants who are already here the ability to reunite with their loved ones. And it flouts the countrys best traditions. Would we remove from the Statue of Liberty the poem welcoming the poor, the wretched, and the homeless?

A better answer is to take some of the windfall that immigration brings to wealthier Americans and give it to those poorer Americans whom immigration harms. Borjas has suggested taxing the high-tech, agricultural, and service-sector companies that profit from cheap immigrant labor and using the money to compensate those Americans who are displaced by it.

Unfortunately, while admitting poor immigrants makes redistributing wealth more necessary, it also makes it harder, at least in the short term. By some estimates, immigrants, who are poorer on average than native-born Americans and have larger families, receive more in government services than they pay in taxes. According to the National Academies report, immigrant-headed families with children are 15 percentage points more likely to rely on food assistance, and 12 points more likely to rely on Medicaid, than other families with children. In the long term, the United States will likely recoup much if not all of the money it spends on educating and caring for the children of immigrants. But in the meantime, these costs strain the very welfare state that liberals want to expand in order to help those native-born Americans with whom immigrants compete.

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Whats more, studies by the Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam and others suggest that greater diversity makes Americans less charitable and less willing to redistribute wealth. People tend to be less generous when large segments of society dont look or talk like them. Surprisingly, Putnams research suggests that greater diversity doesnt reduce trust and cooperation just among people of different races or ethnicitiesit also reduces trust and cooperation among people of the same race and ethnicity.

Trump appears to sense this. His implicit message during the campaign was that if the government kept out Mexicans and Muslims, white, Christian Americans would not only grow richer and safer, they would also regain the sense of community that they identified with a bygone age. At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, he declared in his inaugural address, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other.

Liberals must take seriously Americans yearning for social cohesion. To promote both mass immigration and greater economic redistribution, they must convince more native-born white Americans that immigrants will not weaken the bonds of national identity. This means dusting off a concept many on the left currently hate: assimilation.

Promoting assimilation need not mean expecting immigrants to abandon their culture. But it does mean breaking down the barriers that segregate them from the native-born. And it means celebrating Americas diversity less, and its unity more.

Writing last year in American Sociological Review, Ariela Schachter, a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, examined the factors that influence how native-born whites view immigrants. Foremost among them is an immigrants legal status. Given that natives often assume Latinos are undocumented even when they arent, it follows that illegal immigration indirectly undermines the status of those Latinos who live in the U.S. legally. Thats why conservatives rail against government benefits for undocumented immigrants (even though the undocumented are already barred from receiving many of those benefits): They know Americans will be more reluctant to support government programs if they believe those programs to be benefiting people who have entered the country illegally.

Liberal immigration policy must work to ensure that immigrants do not occupy a separate legal caste. This means opposing the guest-worker programsbeloved by many Democrat-friendly tech companies, among other employersthat require immigrants to work in a particular job to remain in the U.S. Some scholars believe such programs drive down wages; they certainly inhibit assimilation. And, as Schachters research suggests, strengthening the bonds of identity between natives and immigrants is harder when natives and immigrants are not equal under the law.

The next Democratic presidential candidate should say again and again that because Americans are one people, who must abide by one law, his or her goal is to reduce Americas undocumented population to zero. For liberals, the easy part of fulfilling that pledge is supporting a path to citizenship for the undocumented who have put down roots in the United States. The hard part, which Hillary Clinton largely ignored in her 2016 presidential run, is backing tough immigration enforcement so that path to citizenship doesnt become a magnet that entices more immigrants to enter the U.S. illegally.

Enforcement need not mean tearing apart families, as Trump is doing with gusto. Liberals can propose that the government deal harshly not with the undocumented themselves but with their employers. Trumps brutal policies already appear to be slowing illegal immigration. But making sure companies follow the law and verify the legal status of their employees would curtail it too: Migrants would presumably be less likely to come to the U.S. if they know they wont be able to find work.

Schachters research also shows that native-born whites feel a greater affinity toward immigrants who speak fluent English. Thats particularly significant because, according to the National Academies report, newer immigrants are learning English more slowly than their predecessors did. During the campaign, Clinton proposed increasing funding for adult English-language education. But she rarely talked about it. In fact, she ran an ad attacking Trump for saying, among other things, This is a country where we speak English, not Spanish. The immigration section of her website showed her surrounded by Spanish-language signs.

Democrats should put immigrants learning English at the center of their immigration agenda. If more immigrants speak English fluently, native-born whites may well feel a stronger connection to them, and be more likely to support government policies that help them. Promoting English will also give Democrats a greater chance of attracting those native-born whites who consider growing diversity a threat. According to a preelection study by Adam Bonica, a Stanford political scientist, the single best predictor of whether a voter supported Trump was whether he or she agreed with the statement People living in the U.S. should follow American customs and traditions.

In her 2005 book, The Authoritarian Dynamic, which has been heralded for identifying the forces that powered Trumps campaign, Karen Stenner, then a professor of politics at Princeton, wrote:

The next Democratic presidential nominee should commit those words to memory. Theres a reason Barack Obamas declaration at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that there is not a liberal America and a conservative America There is not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; theres the United States of America is among his most famous lines. Americans know that liberals celebrate diversity. Theyre less sure that liberals celebrate unity. And Obamas ability to effectively do the latter probably contributed to the fact that hea black man with a Muslim-sounding nametwice won a higher percentage of the white vote than did Hillary Clinton.

In 2014, the University of California listed melting pot as a term it considered a microaggression. What if Hillary Clinton had traveled to one of its campuses and called that absurd? What if she had challenged elite universities to celebrate not merely multiculturalism and globalization but Americanness? What if she had said more boldly that the slowing rate of English-language acquisition was a problem she was determined to solve? What if she had acknowledged the challenges that mass immigration brings, and then insisted that Americans could overcome those challenges by focusing not on what makes them different but on what makes them the same?

Some on the left would have howled. But I suspect that Clinton would be president today.

*Opening photo credits: AFP; Alain Jocard; Alfons Teruel / Eyeem; Bloomberg; Brooks Kraft; Chesnot; David McNew; David Ramos; Drew Angerer; Erik McGregor / Pacific Press / LightRocket; Frederic J. Brown; Gerard Julien; Getty; Hector Vivas / LatinContent; Jonathan Nackstrand; Lars Baron; Mike Roach / Zuffa; Omar Torres; Orlando Sierra; Paul Bradbury; Paul Morigi / WireImage; Pradeep Gaur / Mint; Rodin Eckenroth; Saul Loeb; Spencer Platt; Tasos Katopodis; Thomas Koehler / Photothek; Victor J. Blue; Vitaly Nevar / TASS; Zach Gibson

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How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration - The Atlantic