Anyone wondering where Donald Trump's America is headed could visit Huntington Beach, a Southern California city whose council is 100% MAGA. In two years, "Surf City" – the nickname of this seaside resort town renowned for its waves – has become a kind of laboratory for triumphant Trumpism. Members of the Make America Great Again movement have swept all the elected offices, but it would be naïve to believe that the culture wars have been buried. "We are a microcosm of what's going on in this country, politically and culturally, said Carol Daus, a member of the board of the Friends of the Public Library. It was happening here even before Trump was elected. It's frightening."

Located in Orange County, 65 kilometers south of Los Angeles, Huntington Beach, population 200,000, is an exception in California's primarily Democratic landscape. Named after the railroad magnate Henry Huntington, the city has always leaned to the right – and even to the far right, when the John Birch Society supremacists came to parade here in the 1960s, and in the 1990s, when skinheads showed up. After two racist crimes in 1994 and 1996, Mayor Ralph Bauer, a Republican, issued a "Declaration of Human Dignity" affirming the city's commitment to tolerance. Main Street was given a Hollywood-style makeover, with the names of the world's surfing legends engraved on plaques embedded in the sidewalks.

The pandemic made the city "implode," said Daus. "HB" was the center of California's anti-lockdown revolt, and the county sheriff refused to enforce state orders. As if Covid-19 had awakened atavisms, an April 2021 demonstration by White Lives Matter nationalists, thwarted by anti-racism activists, degenerated on the pier, the iconic jetty that juts 563 meters into the Pacific Ocean. At the forefront of the anti-mask rebellion was the evangelical Calvary Chapel of the Harbour Church and its pastor, Joe Pedick, who was also seen at the "Stop the Steal" rally against Joe Biden's win in the 2020 election. And who now comes to the City Council to congratulate Republican elected officials as if they were his protégés.

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