@LauraPowellEsq, there's more to investigate. Once I heard Becerra say that he was the “son of two immigrants who came to this country with $12 in their pockets,” it caught my attention. So I did what genealogists do; I ignored the political biography and started reconstructing the family from the records themselves. What began as checking a single sentence ended up taking me through California, the Mexican border, Guadalajara, Mexico City, and eventually Berlin, yes, the one in Germany. The first significant finding was his father. Manuel Guerrero Becerra was born in Sacramento, California. Whatever his family's Mexican origins or the circumstances of his later life in Mexico, Manuel himself was American-born. That immediately creates a problem with describing Xavier as the son of “two immigrants” who came to the United States together. Then I traced his mother, María Teresa Schmidt (yes, Schmidt), and found something even better; her actual 1943 border-crossing record. She was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, about 1932, and on June 13, 1943, eleven-year-old Teresa entered the United States through Nogales, Arizona. The record does not merely give us her name and age. It identifies her mother, Margarita Schmidt Pérez, as accompanying her and her grandmother, María Pérez, as her departure contact. So we can actually place three generations of women in the migration story; María Pérez, her daughter Margarita Schmidt Pérez, and eleven-year-old María Teresa Schmidt. From there, I kept going backward. María Teresa's parents were José Luis Reynoso Guzmán and Margarita Schmidt Pérez. José Luis's parents were Juan Reynoso and Ofelia Carmona, and I located their 1904 marriage record in Guadalajara. That record allowed the Reynoso and Carmona branches to be pushed back another generation. The Schmidt branch produced another surprise. Margarita Schmidt Pérez's father was Hermann (also known as Francisco or Frank) Schmidt, born around 1870 in Berlin, Germany. Her mother, María Pérez, was born about 1898 in Mexico City. So Xavier Becerra's maternal ancestry is not exclusively Mexican; it includes a documented German Schmidt line that moved from Berlin to Mexico, became part of a Mexican family, and eventually continued into the United States. The genealogy we have reconstructed now runs through the Reynoso, Carmona, Pérez, and Schmidt families. That is what made the investigation so fascinating to me. The actual family history is far more interesting than the political slogan. His father was born in Sacramento. His mother was born in Guadalajara and crossed into the United States at eleven with her mother, with her grandmother identified in the same record. Her ancestry combines Mexican and German lines, including a grandfather born in Berlin. Xavier himself was then born back in Sacramento. So I started out checking whether one sentence was historically accurate and ended up reconstructing several generations of the man's family. And you know how this goes; once one record names the parents, you pull their marriage record; that record gives you another set of parents and places; then another record takes you somewhere you never expected. In this case, Sacramento led to Guadalajara; Guadalajara led through the Reynoso and Carmona families; the Schmidt line led to Mexico City; and ultimately, it took me all the way to Berlin. That's exactly why I love this kind of research. The documents don't need a campaign narrative. They tell their own story, but a true story! @SteveHiltonx There, @latimes @CNN, I've done the research for you

He may be the most hated man in Sacramento — and the future of the California Republican Party. Make time for @wrmccart deep dive on @carldemaio, the man who could achieve a MAGA victory in California politico.com/news/magazine/2…

I am ecstatic that @GavinNewsom just signed AB 2222, historic legislation I authored w/@AsmChrisWard that vaults CA to the forefront of protecting & rebuilding journalism in our communities. This is the capstone to vital work that began 5+ yrs ago, & our road has not been easy.

Since counties began implementing the CARE Act in 2023, 10,000+ Californians with complex mental illnesses have been reached to coordinate treatment and housing services. We'll keep delivering on our promise to deliver care, dignity, and hope for all Californians.

🚨 Here is the full 38-minute video exposing America's deadly fentanyl crisis. In every major city in America you will find people "zombified" in the fentanyl fold who are stuck in a trance on the streets. Like it, share it, people need to understand how deadly it is. Every 7 minutes someone dies from overdose in the US. Fentanyl is 50x more powerful than heroin and can be bought on the streets for less than $5. All major cities and thousands of lives are being affected each day by this drug. Time for America to wake up to the reality of what fentanyl is and how it is killing Americans and our cities.

I say this as a retired Brigadier General with 30 years of service: Pete Hegseth is an unqualified frat boy.

A lesbian bar in Greenfield eased its stringent mask mandate, a decision that has splintered the queer community in the city and beyond. trib.al/FyZjBWs

WRONG! Bonta struck a great deal for jobs and democracy. The alternative was: A HUGE LOSS of California jobs. Paramount MOVING to Tennessee. *ZERO* oversight to protect editorial independence at CNN and CBS.