Good afternoon and welcome to a special edition of The Yappie's Asian American politics and activism briefing! Things are about to get real—we’re less than three weeks away from the first votes of the 2020 cycle and 294 days away from Election Day. That's why our friends at the Model Majority Podcast have launched a mini-series focused on Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) organizers in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. Let us know what you think by replying to this email, and send tips, ideas, events, and opportunities to [email protected].
The Big Story
THE LATEST ON IRAN—AAPI GROUPS EXPRESS ALARM OVER BORDER STOPS: Claims of Iranian Americans being stopped at the U.S.-Canada border have kicked off a furor among Japanese American civil rights activists as domestic backlash continues to grow in the wake of the Trump administration’s targeted killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. Here’s what you need to know…
- What happened: Dozens of Iranian Americans were singled out and detained for questioning by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at Washington state’s border crossing with Canada last week, according to viral allegations made by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The Los Angeles Times reports that more than 60 Iranians and Iranian Americans were subjected to intensive secondary screening, resulting in delays of up to 12 hours.
- Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) said that the Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights office is investigating the reports, but CBP disputed that Iranian Americans were ever detained or denied entry to the U.S.
- The reaction: “Our country should have learned its lesson when it targeted Japanese Americans because of our ancestry [and] we must not repeat the mistake of casting suspicion on American citizens simply because of their family’s country of origin,” the Japanese American Citizens League said in a statement. Members of Tsuru for Solidarity warned that “the weekend’s events have put us on a dangerous path.”
- Meanwhile… Activist Diane Narasaki called on Americans “to stand up for the rights of our fellow citizens,” and author Shirley Ann Higuchi described the situation at the border as “another uncomfortable reminder of the hysteria” that led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.
- The broader fight: The incident comes as AAPI groups and members of Congress, including 18 Million Rising and the Progressive Vietnamese American Organization (PIVOT), are mobilizing supporters against potential U.S. military action with Iran. Last week, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-California) joined Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) and eleven other colleagues to introduce legislation blocking funds for “unauthorized use of military force against Iran”; Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) introduced a companion measure in the House.
On The Agenda
FRESNO FALLOUT—SIX SUSPECTS ARRESTED AFTER MASS SHOOTING: A half-dozen members of the Mongolian Boys Society gang have been arrested in the wake of a mass shooting that rocked California’s tight-knit Hmong community in November, the Los Angeles Times reports. AAPI groups had called for federal action on gun violence in the days following the attack, which law enforcement officials suggested could be in retaliation against the rival Asian Crips gang. Read more.
KEY IOWA PAC OUSTS CHAIRMAN, CITING MISCONDUCT: Iowa’s small but influential Asian and Latino Coalition has dismissed its chairman Prakash Kopparapu for unspecified misconduct, according to a statement provided to The Yappie—though Kopparapu denies that he has been removed. The political action committee serves as the state’s only Democratic race-based political organization and has hosted several town halls with 2020 presidential candidates. Read more.
UPDATE—TURMOIL AT ORANGE COUNTY COUNCIL SPURS RECALL ELECTION: Three members of the Westminster City Council in California, the first with a Vietnamese American majority, are now at risk of being unseated on April 7 after months of verbal brawls and infighting, the Orange County Register reports. Read more.
- The members: Kimberly Ho, Charlie Nguyen, and Mayor Tri Ta comprise a majority voting bloc on the council and are often dubbed by critics as “the Gang of Three,” according to the Voice of OC’s Brandon Pho.
MAKING MOVES—CALIFORNIA GETS FIRST HMONG CHIEF OF STAFF AT STATE CAPITOL: State Sen. Melissa Hurtado (D-Sanger) has appointed Sherry Yang to become the state capitol’s first Hmong chief of staff, the Sacramento Bee’s Theodora Yu reports. Yang, a first-generation American, will take the lead in directing, coordinating, and supervising operations at the senator’s office. Read more.
APA TASK FORCE RETWEETS POTENTIALLY VIOLATED NY ETHICS RULES: A pair of retweets by the New York Assembly’s nonpartisan Asian Pacific American Task Force may have broken ethics laws, according to a November 2019 letter sent by the deputy counsel for the Assembly Democrats to Ron Kim and Yuh-Line Niou (D). Assemblyman Kim said the retweets were a minor error and that the situation had been “rectified,” the Queens Daily Eagle reports. Read more.
LEE RULES OUT SAN FRANCISCO SUPERVISOR RUN: Longtime City Hall legislative aide and civil rights attorney Ivy Lee will not run to replace San Francisco Supervisor Norman Yee, Mission Local reports. Read more.
2020 Watch
DEEP DIVE—WARREN’S AAPI ENGAGEMENT GOES LOCAL: Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Massachusetts) presidential campaign is ramping up targeted AAPI voter engagement across several key states as the Democratic primary enters a new phase. More from The Yappie’s Sunjay Lee and Andrew Peng in Brooklyn…
- The details: Organizers in the Bay Area and Washington, D.C. discussed ways to engage AAPIs during Lunar New Year festivities last week, and even more events are planned through next month. Warren’s Oakland, California office will host several AAPI phone-banking events starting on Jan. 15 and volunteers are set to canvass at San Francisco’s Lunar New Year festival on Feb. 8–9.
- The Warren campaign is also recruiting volunteers fluent in Asian or Pacific Islander languages as it prepares to roll out new translated literature ahead of an “AAPI Weekend of Action” in Nevada on Jan. 25–26; a smaller group of AAPI volunteers is exploring potential events in the New York City area.
- Distributed organizing: “We’re really empowering volunteers to be leaders in their communities, but it’s more than that,” National AAPI Community Engagement and Organizing Director Mary Lou Akai-Ferguson said in a call on Jan. 4. “We’re creating a groundwork for getting more people involved in the democratic process. We have a lot of work to do [to organize] our communities, and it starts with us.”
- The numbers: In addition to efforts in California, New York, and Nevada, Warren now has organizers on the ground in Washington, Virginia, and Texas who are focused solely on engaging with AAPI communities, the campaign tells The Yappie. Nearly 100 full-time AAPI staff are also in leading roles, according to campaign manager Roger Lau, and the AAPI subgroup on the campaign’s digital community platform recently hit 1,000 members.
BREAKING—BOOKER EXITS PRESIDENTIAL RACE: Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) has ended his presidential campaign, citing the lack of financial resources for his departure. His decision comes amid intensifying worries about the declining diversity of the current field, with tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) failing to qualify for tonight’s Democratic presidential debate. Read more.
- Why it matters: Sen. Booker assembled a robust AAPI engagement team and invested heavily in AAPI outreach in Nevada, home to one of the fastest-growing Asian American communities in the country. Those tapped to senior positions in his campaign included experienced AAPI political operatives like Director of Coalitions Linh Nguyen, Nevada State Director Phil Kim, Regional Organizing and Political Director Allen Chen, States Analytics Lead Cheska Mae Perez, and National Press Secretary Sabrina Singh.
- In December, Booker participated in a Tagalog caucus training and attended a “Boba with Booker” event in the Silver State with young AAPI community leaders; he became the second presidential hopeful to publish a policy plan specifically aimed at AAPIs and called AAPI voters a “sleeping giant” in an interview with Patriot Act host Hasan Minhaj.
NOTABLE—BERA HITS THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL FOR BIDEN: Rep. Ami Bera (D-California), co-chairman of the DCCC’s Frontline program and the longest-serving Indian American member of Congress, is in Iowa to help former Vice President Joe Biden just weeks before the February caucuses.
- “I’m going to do everything I can to elect President Biden… [and] I’m proud of what we’re accomplishing as an Asian American community,” Rep. Bera said in an AAPI volunteer call on Jan. 6. Bera, who formally endorsed Biden in December, also described AAPI voters as a potentially “consequential” force in 2020. You can listen to his comments here.
- In other news… The Biden campaign held a Hindi virtual caucus training with Nevada’s Indian American community on Monday, and a new podcast called “AAPIs Ridin’ with Biden” will be launched next week, according to National AAPI Director Amit Jani.
- Related: Nevada’s Asian American Pacific Islander Democratic Caucus hosted a mock caucus on Monday. It’s the first time the Asian arm of the Nevada Democratic Party organized such an event.
SANDERS CAMPAIGN TOUTS AAPI STRENGTH IN CHINESE-LANGUAGE PRESS CONFERENCE: Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (D-Vermont) presidential campaign joined nearly a dozen AAPI elected and community leaders to inform Californians about the state’s voting process and the senator’s policy priorities at a Jan. 8 event in San Francisco’s Chinatown, according to National Constituency Press Secretary Belén Sisa.
- “Asian and Pacific Islander Americans built this state and have contributed immeasurably to its prosperity; today, people in our community are struggling to pay rent, scrape together funding for their children’s college, and provide for their aging parents,” Chinese Progressive Association Action Fund political director Joyce Lam said. “I believe Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who is truly committed to delivering affordable housing, healthcare, and education to our community.”
- Other speakers at the Cantonese, English, and Mandarin press conference included Bernie 2020 California Political Director Jane Kim, San Francisco Supervisor Gordon Mar, California State Assemblymember Kansen Chu, Berkeley City Auditor Jenny Wong, City College of San Francisco Trustee Ivy Lee, Bay Rising Action Director Kimi Li, the CPA Action Fund’s Angela Zhou, and New Breath Foundation President Eddy Zheng, per the campaign.
- Meanwhile… The Sanders campaign is touting the endorsement of the Sunrise Movement—complete with a video featuring executive director Varshini Prakash—and Bernie 2020 is still seeking volunteers to join its language justice system for translation projects, according to AAPI organizer Supreet Kaur.
AAPI Nation
Welcome to The Yappie’s new (and occasional) section focused on congressional races involving Asian American and Pacific Islanders. Here’s what to know this week…
DCCC MOVES TO IDENTIFY AAPI VOTER PRIORITIES: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the entity charged with helping elect Democrats to the House, will begin conducting focus group research—some in-language—with AAPI communities later this month, AAPI media adviser Darwin Pham tells The Yappie.
- Why it matters: The research is aimed at strengthening the DCCC’s strategy to win AAPI support in key suburban districts in 2020 and will be coupled with the planned rollout of a constituency organizer program that includes field staff dedicated to AAPI community engagement. Note: We’ll have more on the DCCC’s efforts to reach AAPI voters next week.
DEM LAWMAKERS LAUNCH EFFORT TO BOOST ASIAN AMERICAN TURNOUT: A half-dozen Democratic AAPI lawmakers involved with Rep. Grace Meng’s (D-New York) ASPIRE PAC are making plans to travel to and “adopt” battleground states with large Asian American populations in hopes of boosting voter turnout, the Wall Street Journal’s Eliza Collins reports. Read more.
- On the other side… Trump Victory, the joint re-election effort between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, now has three full-time staff members focused on AAPI outreach. Trump Victory Director of APA Engagement Esther Lu previously told The Yappie that events for AAPI voters were held in 13 states and 17 cities in 2019.
UPDATE—WONG QUITS CALIFORNIA RACE AFTER JUST SEVEN WEEKS: University of California, San Diego Professor Tom Wong has dropped out of the race to succeed Rep. Susan Davis (D-California) in the state’s 53rd congressional district, citing the need to ensure “the health and well-being of my family,” the Times of San Diego reports. Wong, who previously served as an adviser to the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders during the Obama administration, raised more than $100,000 during his seven-week campaign and would have been the first formerly undocumented AAPI member of Congress. Read more.
ONE CANDIDATE TO WATCH—ZHAO RAISES $120K TO TAKE ON MURPHY IN FLORIDA RACE: Orlando businessman and conservative activist Yukong Zhao, one of six Republican candidates vying to face Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Florida) in November, raised more than $120,000 in less than two months, Florida Politics reports. Zhao serves as president of the Asian American Coalition for Education, which urged a federal judge to strike down Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policies. Read more.
The Trump Era
DEEP DIVE—LEGAL BATTLE OVER CENSUS CITIZENSHIP DATA RAGES ON: While the Supreme Court halted the Trump administration’s plans to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census last year, civil rights groups in Maryland—including Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC—are still seeking to block an executive order directing the Census Bureau to gather citizenship information through administrative records, the Associated Press reports. Read more.
- Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC Executive Director John C. Yang and Vanita Gupta, CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, were on the Hill last week to testify before the House Oversight Committee on the Census Bureau’s plans for reaching hard-to-count communities. Watch here.
- Why this matters: The Census Bureau concluded in December that the now-blocked citizenship question would have likely lowered self-response rates in parts of the U.S. where Asian residents make up between 5–20% of the population, NPR News’ Hansi Lo Wang reports—a factor that would have resulted in reduced public funding and representation for AAPI communities.
BREAKING—TRUMP ASKS SCOTUS TO INTERVENE IN ‘PUBLIC CHARGE’ FIGHT: The Trump administration has filed an emergency appeal that asks the Supreme Court to allow its controversial “public charge” rule to take effect after a federal appeals court in New York refused to lift a nationwide injunction blocking its enforcement last week, CNN reports. The rule, which allows immigration officers to deny green cards if an applicant used certain forms of assistance, came under fire from AAPI groups and sparked an intense legal battle late last year. Read more.
CHU BLASTS RUMORED TRAVEL BAN EXPANSION: Rep. Judy Chu (D-California), who chairs the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, is condemning President Donald Trump’s much-litigated travel ban as a “dangerous policy rooted in bigotry and xenophobia” amid fresh reports that the White House is considering expanding it to as many as seven more countries. Read more.
- According to internal documents viewed by BuzzFeed News, the proposed restrictions would affect approximately 2.5% of immigrant visas issued by the State Department; the current travel ban bars individuals from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, and North Korea from entering the U.S.
THE LONG READ—AS CHINA ANXIETY RISES IN THE U.S., FEARS OF A NEW RED SCARE EMERGE: Bloomberg’s Peter Waldman documents the fears of Chinese Americans following the publication of a controversial 2018 report on China’s influence in the U.S. by Stanford’s Hoover Institute. Read more.
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