What lies behind the decidedly Anglo-Saxon name of Mike Johnson? Italian roots, reaching all the way back to Sicily — the land where the Republican Speaker of the House traces his family history.

The first people to be surprised by this admission were a few American reporters. It was March 2024, at the Republican Retreat in West Virginia. Mike Johnson, who had become the leader in the House only a few months earlier, had stopped to chat with a handful of journalists who had driven nearly five hours to reach the heart of Appalachia. He was sipping a glass of wine — Californian, as it happens.

We introduced ourselves. There were fewer than ten of us, almost all Americans, of course. What foreign journalist, unless driven by an extraordinary (insane?) passion for the intricacies of congressional politics, would cover a gathering of one faction of the Grand Old Party?

“My name is Alberto Simoni. I am Italian, and I write for La Stampa” I said.

Johnson did not let me finish. He shook my hand. “Nice to meet you. Welcome,” he said, and with a broad smile he began talking about his Italian family, their settlement in Louisiana, and the Sicilian food that had been a fixture in his home.

And so, for two days, I became “the Italian reporter who covers the Italian Speaker.”

In nearly five years I have been living in the United States, I have crossed paths with countless people of Italian descent. Older generations still carry vivid memories of their origins; younger ones can barely speak a word of Italian, yet can tell you with remarkable precision where their grandfather or father came from.

Melanie Zanona has become a friend. She is one of the most knowledgeable congressional reporters around, having moved from CNN to NBC. We met in 2023 at a gala.

“My grandfather comes from a small town in the north… Trento,” she told me.

When I said, with undisguised amazement, that Trento was few miles away from my hometown, she was incredulous. The next day she sent me a long text message. She had told her father about our conversation. “You know, I met someone from Trento,” she had said. Her father was delighted as well.

Whenever I return to Trentino, I send her a pic of the Dolomites or Trento’s cathedral.

Uber drivers, builders, politicians, lawyers and intellectuals, workers, and, of course, restaurant owners and chefs. Italians are everywhere.

Some of my most curious and rewarding encounters have been entirely accidental.

In Maine, Tom Saviello, a former Republican state senator, a whirlwind of ideas and enthusiasm, became my guide for a story about the construction of an AI data center in Jay. His grandparents had left Salerno, settled in New Jersey, and he eventually moved to Maine, where he became a manager at a paper mill.

A former Clinton administration official once told me he used to go white-water rafting on the Noce River, in Trentino.

I have breathed in Italy here: the sense of community, the instinct to share a meal and an evening together, on the streets of a Boston suburb where roads — and even pedestrian crossings — had been painted in the colors of the Italian flag, causing more than a few problems.

But what about the list of Italian Americans who have risen to the very top of their fields?

Before Johnson, there was Nancy Pelosi leading the House. And then there is the Supreme Court, with Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito. Ron DeSantis wanted to become the first Italian American president.

I asked him at the Republican presidential debate in California in October 2023 why he seemed to keep his Italian roots in the background. Trump used to mock him: “How can you vote for a guy who doesn’t even know whether his name is pronounced De Santis or Dii Santis?”

“I’m an American,” DeSantis told me. “I’m running for president with the Constitution as my benchmark. I’m not running because I’m a descendant of Italians.”

Then he added: “But I’m proud of my roots.”

It is precisely in that sentence, and in that distinction, that I have repeatedly found something of the essence of America — not while talking to political “VIPs,” but to ordinary people.

America is a nation built by immigrants who chose to become Americans while carrying with them the baggage — and the richness — of their own history.