The age of Donald Trump and the future of American democracy are dominated by a question: What does it mean to be a real American, and who gets to decide?

One answer is embodied by the nearly 1 million people who choose to become naturalized Americans each year. At the end of that journey, they receive an American flag, copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, their citizenship papers — and a welcome letter from the president.

Traditionally, these letters offer a hopeful and inclusive vision of what it means to be an American: A member of a political community defined not by creed or fixed attributes, but by shared values and belief in democracy and the American experiment.

President Ronald Reagan famously articulated this vision in 1988: “You can live in Germany,

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