Good morning, and welcome to The Yappie’s AAPI politics briefing — your guide to the policy news and activism affecting Asian Americans + Pacific Islanders. Send tips and feedback to [email protected] and support our work by making a donation.
— Edited by Shawna Chen
The Biden Era
✈️ BIDEN VISITS MAUI AMID WILDFIRE DEVASTATION: After signing a major disaster declaration for Hawai‘i and working with several federal agencies to support recovery efforts, President Joe Biden traveled to Maui last week to assess the destruction and meet with survivors, first responders, and government officials.
- The death toll of the devastating wildfires is now believed to be at least 115, though the total count remains unclear as over 1,000 people were reported missing. The wildfire is one of the deadliest in U.S. history and is a reminder of the effects of climate change, such as drought, rising temperatures, and other forms of extreme weather.
- “I don’t think anybody can deny the impact of a climate crisis anymore,” Biden said during his visit. “Just look around.” His administration has since announced $95 million in funding to strengthen Hawai‘i’s electrical grid and improve the state’s infrastructure, including critical transmission lines.
- Biden also noted that he has directed his team to help “rebuild in a way that respects and honors Hawaiian traditions and cultures and the needs of the local community … We’re not going to turn this into a new land grab.”
- The president previously received criticism for his slow public response to the fires and appearing to brush off reporters when asked about the death toll during his vacation. The White House has since said he did not hear the question.
- AAPIs' vulnerability: “This tragedy hasdealt a significant blow to the Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities that call Maui home,” Katherine Tai, co-chair of the White House Initiative and President’s Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (WHIAANHPI), wrote in a press release. “AA and NHPI people are disproportionately impacted by severe climate events, and this disaster is no different.”
- In a press briefing earlier this month, Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell encouraged all residents of Hawai‘i to apply for federal assistance. FEMA has released a toolkit with resources on how to apply in several languages, including Ōlelo Hawaiʻi, Chamorro, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Tagalog.
🏫 WHITE HOUSE RELEASES AFFIRMATIVE ACTION RESOURCES: The U.S. Departments of Justice and Education have collaborated to provide guidance for colleges and universities following the Supreme Court’s ruling against race-based affirmative action.
- What’s included: The Biden administration issued two resources—a “Dear Colleague” letter and a Q&A document—to help school administrators better understand what the ruling does and doesn’t do so that they can preserve diversity in their student populations.
- Something to consider: “Institutions of higher education remain free to consider any quality or characteristic of a student that bears on the institution’s admission decision, such as courage, motivation, or determination, even if the student’s application ties that characteristic to their lived experience with race,” the Q&A notes.
- One example: A college “could consider an applicant’s discussion of how learning to cook traditional Hmong dishes from her grandmother sparked her passion for food and nurtured her sense of self by connecting her to past generations of her family.”
❤🩹 ICYMI—WHIAANHPI partnered with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to host its first summit on improving behavioral health care services for AAPI communities.
- Federal data shows that suicide was the leading cause of death among AAPIs ages 10-19 in 2020.
- The summit is part of a broader strategy announced earlier this year.
On The Hill
📜 DEPORTATION RELIEF LEGISLATION RE-INTRODUCED: The Southeast Asian Deportation Relief Act would limit the deportation of Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Laotian individuals who arrived in the U.S. before 2008—more than 17,000 of whom have faced removal orders since 1998, according to the advocacy group Southeast Asia Resource Action Center.
- Preventing “double punishment”: Advocates have decried the deportation of formerly incarcerated refugees after they complete their prison sentences as cruel and unfair. Many of those facing removal orders grew up in the U.S. and are unfamiliar with the country they could be deported to.
- A 2008 memorandum of understanding between Vietnam and the U.S. prevented the deportation of Vietnamese nationals who had arrived in the U.S. before 1995, but the Trump administration signed a new MOU in 2020 removing that protection.
- Reps. Judy Chu (D-California), Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), and Grace Meng (D-New York) are among the co-sponsors of the re-introduced bill. Former Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-California) introduced the first version of the bill last September, which died in committee.
✍️ DOCUMENTING THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE: Rep. Ted Lieu (D-California) has re-introduced a bill that would provide federal grants for unemployed writers and journalists, inspired by the 1935 Federal Writers’ Project of FDR’s Works Progress Administration.
- As the New Deal FWP produced the American Guide Series and Slave Narrative Collection, which documented firsthand experiences from each state during the Great Depression, the new program is meant to support writers documenting American experiences of the “once-in-a-century pandemic that changed our world,” Lieu said in a statement.
🔍 AID AND ACCOUNTABILITY FOR MAUI: As recovery efforts continue, attention has turned toward officials’ failure to warn Lahaina residents before the fire reached them.
- Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawai‘i) said she would not “make any excuses” for state officials, citing their failure to activate emergency sirens that would have warned residents of fire, POLITICO's Kelly Garrity reports. The state’s attorney general has launched an investigation into the policies and decisions made leading up to the wildfire spread.
Campaign Watch
🗣️ RAMASWAMY COMMANDS ATTENTION AT GOP DEBATE: Vivek Ramaswamy was the most-Googled candidate after the first GOP primary debate, in which he doubled down on unapologetic pro-Trump and anti-establishment stances in back-and-forth spars with Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, and other candidates.
- The 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur has steadily gained traction since entering the race as a long-shot candidate in February. He reliably comes third in national polls after former President Donald Trump and DeSantis, with around 10% of Republicans favoring him.
- During the debate, Ramaswamy attacked the other candidates as “super PAC puppets” and portrayed himself as a political outsider and a voice for the younger generation. The rest of the field fired back, with Pence calling him a “rookie” and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie saying he “sounds like ChatGPT.”
- Extreme positions allowed Ramaswamy to command the debate at key moments. As candidates dodged questions on climate change and Trump’s indictments, Ramaswamy was the first to shoot up his hand to affirm that he would endorse Trump if he secured the nomination or pardon him if elected, and the only candidate to call the “climate change agenda” a “hoax” as others demurred.
- Ramaswamy’s Indian American identity didn’t escape him. Christie threw his self-introduction as a “skinny guy with a funny last name” back at him, while Ramaswamy referenced his identity in closing remarks about visiting inner-city Chicago and building a multiethnic Republican majority.
- Meanwhile, Nikki Haley leaned into her own identity as the only woman on stage. Haley urged compassion for women on the topic of abortion, describing herself as pro-life but against incarceration or the death penalty for those who seek abortions. Analysts pointed to her comments as a bid to appeal to women voters pushed away by the party, but Pence attacked her for being too soft.
- She lags far behind frontrunners with around 3.4% of GOP support.
📡 WHAT WE'RE TRACKING: Candidates relied heavily on anti-China rhetoric during the debate, which shaped responses to a variety of domestic and foreign policy questions.
- “The USSR doesn’t exist anymore … The real threat is Communist China,” Ramaswamy said, arguing for an end to military aid for Ukraine. Opponents’ responses also centered on China as a threat: “A win for Russia is a win for China,” Haley said.
- Asian Americans remain scapegoated as a result of anti-China rhetoric around economic and national security, advocates have warned.
- In recent months, Montana, Virginia, and North Dakota joined Florida in passing bills to restrict Chinese citizens’ ability to buy property—an echo of the Chinese Exclusion Act and Alien Land Laws, which prevented Chinese people from entering or staying in the country for most of the 20th century. Over a dozen other states, including Georgia, Iowa, and Kansas, are considering similar bills.
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