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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, Mary Yang, and Samson Zhang
Pulse
NUMBER OF THE WEEK — 879,000: That’s the number of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders now living in the United States, according to an Axios analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. The NHPI population in the U.S. grew by about 120% between 2000 and 2022, Axios found.
- While NHPIs saw a surge in migration to America in the 20th century due to the U.S. government’s foreign influence in the Pacific Islands, the impacts of climate change, nuclear testing, and other environmental threats have forced more NHPIs to flee to the U.S. in recent years, The Yappie’s Javan Santos and Joshua Yang reported last year.
- Caveat: Census data isn’t always accurate, especially when it comes to Pacific Islander populations. “For 20 years, Hawaiians were the first and only Pacific Islander group listed separately on the census due to their status as a U.S. state,” The Yappie’s Katrina Pham notes in her analysis of AAPI migration patterns post-1965. “This changed in 1980 when the census began including ‘Guamanian’ and ‘Samoan’ on the questionnaire.”
Meanwhile, the Asian population grew about 105% between 2000 and 2022. That figure was 80% for the Hispanic population and 31% for the Black population, per the analysis.
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Making moves: Last Thursday, the Senate confirmed Nusrat Choudhury as the first Bangladeshi and Muslim woman to serve as a federal judge, The Hill’s Nick Robertson reports.
- "As a Muslim young girl of color here in the Chicago area, race was a part of my reality. It led to police stops that shouldn’t have ever happened; it led to family members facing problems at airports; and led to what I saw around me, which was dramatic residential segregation and different opportunities for people of color than for white people,” Choudhury said in a virtual ACLU event in 2021.
- The former ACLU attorney will serve on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Meanwhile: Dale Ho, an American lawyer who is also the director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, became the fourth Asian American confirmed as judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
- “I’ll do everything I can to ensure that everyone who comes before the court gets a fair shake, a fair opportunity to be heard, and ultimately equal treatment under the law,” Ho told Roll Call’s Ryan Tarinelli.
What we’re watching: Roland Abante, a fisherman who is Filipino, stunned judges on the TV show “America’s Got Talent,” earning a standing ovation and the coveted four "yes" votes at his audition, NextShark’s Emi Tran writes.
City Spotlight: Sacramento County authorities held a community meeting last Thursday to address the growing number of robberies in south Sacramento targeting Asian Americans, The Sacramento Bee’s Samson Zhang reports.
- “Asians have been targeted because there is a perception. There is a perception we do not call the police. There is a perception we will not work with the government. There is a perception that we are weak. That we do not speak up and stand up and honestly that needs to change and we need to change that perception,” Sacramento District Attorney Thien Ho told ABC 10’s Gurajpal Sangha.
- A recurring theme: About a third of Asian adults have altered their daily routine due to worries of threats or attacks, Pew Research Center’s Mark Lopez finds. In addition, more Asian American adults give their local officials a bad rating than a good one when it comes to addressing violence against Asian Americans.
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