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      Progressive Network Will Spend $10 Million on Asian American Turnout

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      Two years after Asian American voters played a pivotal role in the presidential election, a coalition focused on building Asian American political power and engagement is launching a new $10 million midterm mobilization effort in critical battleground states. The Asian American Power Network, a coalition of organizations seeking to activate Asian American voters around progressive issues and candidates, is kicking off the initiative across six swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The network is also training its eyes on three competitive House districts in California — two in Southern California and one in the Central Valley.“Asian American voters have been progressive” in some recent presidential elections, Nadia Belkin, the executive director of the network, said. “It’s no secret, though, that some of the Asian American voters do tend to be more swingy in the midterms. That’s why our group is spending a lot of time on the ground.”“Organizing our community,” she added, “requires a cultural understanding and nuance.”The network is an effort to support state organizations that are working on year-round engagement of Asian Americans.The midterms-focused initiative includes door-to-door canvassing and outreach by phone, text, mail and digital engagement in an array of languages. Aspects of the programming got underway earlier this month.In Pennsylvania the goal is to conduct voter outreach in 15 languages total, in support of Democratic candidates like Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor, and John Fetterman, who is running for Senate. In North Carolina, efforts to engage Asian American voters will be conducted in 18 different languages across different media, including educational videos about voting.And the political arm of the Georgia affiliate is mobilizing for Stacey Abrams, who is running for governor, and Senator Raphael Warnock, both Democrats.In 2020, Asian American voters turned out in significant numbers in Georgia, as Democrats flipped the state first in the presidential election and then, in 2021, in a pair of runoff elections that cemented Democratic control of the Senate.But that result does not mean that the party has a lock on Asian American voters — a diverse and complex constituency — this year. A survey conducted this summer for the AARP by a bipartisan polling team of Fabrizio Ward and Impact Research found that in congressional battleground districts, Democrats were underperforming among Asian American voters over age 50 compared with past elections. However, the Asian American Voter Survey, a large-scale poll, found earlier this year that Asian Americans leaned toward supporting Democratic House candidates by a margin of 54 percent to 27 percent overall, numbers that varied notably by individual constituencies. Ms. Belkin emphasized the importance of engaging the Asian American voters who turned out for the first time in 2020. “We do have a responsibility around talking to those voters about what’s at stake,” she said. “We have good rapport with many portions of the community, but I would say, you know, just like any other demographic bloc, we are working to do more and make sure that it’s sustained.” More

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      In Orange County, House Race Tests What Asian Americans Want

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      WESTMINSTER, Calif. — Dozens of Vietnamese-speaking volunteers filled a community center on a recent Wednesday to phone bank for Representative Michelle Steel, Republican of California, a Korean American lawmaker whose campaign signs and fliers in Vietnamese and English lined the walls.A few neighborhoods down, Jay Chen, a Democrat and Navy reservist of Taiwanese descent who is challenging Ms. Steel, passed out fliers outside of Zippost, a shipping business that residents often use to send packages to relatives in Vietnam. Mr. Chen, donning a Navy hat, walked around the plaza with a Vietnamese-speaking volunteer in tow helping residents register to vote.Ms. Steel and Mr. Chen are vying to appeal to the Asian American voters who dominate the electorate in this slice of Orange County, making up a quarter of the voting population. Their race — one of only a few dozen competitive ones that could determine which party controls the House — is being watched closely for clues about what may move voters in this increasingly critical bloc.“The Asian vote can really give enough votes for a candidate to win,” said Mary Anne Foo, the executive director of the nonprofit Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance, a nonpartisan resource center. “What’s significant now is the number of Asian Americans running for office. Having representation is exciting.”Across the country, Asian American voters, who comprised 4 percent of the electorate in 2020, are the fastest-growing population of eligible voters. The Asian American Voter Survey found in July that nearly half of Asian Americans identified as Democrats, about a third as independents and about a fifth as Republicans. About two-thirds voted for Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump, surveys show.However, an analysis by The New York Times found that immigrant communities shifted to the right as they had a surge in voters in 2020. The Asian American Voter Survey found that older Asian voters tended to identify as independent or Republican at higher rates than those in younger generations. Vietnamese Americans, who make up a large proportion of Asian residents in Orange County, also leaned more to the right.Asian American voters dominate the electorate in this Orange County district.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesBoth candidates in the race have made tackling inflation the centerpiece of their campaigns, and both have also focused on safety amid an increase in reports of hate crimes against Asian Americans — themes that are top of mind for many Asian voters, according to analysts.Karthick Ramakrishnan, the founder of AAPI Data, which helps conduct the annual Asian American Voter Survey, said the economy and crime were top issues for respondents, which could give an advantage to Republicans. But health care has also been a major issue, he said, which could boost Democrats, who recently pushed through Congress sweeping climate, health and tax legislation that would lower prescription drug costs and subsidize health insurance, among other benefits.“The ethnicity of the candidate is a bit of a wash in terms of how much it will make a difference here, so it’ll be important to see the kind of appeals each of these candidates make,” Mr. Ramakrishnan said.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries winding down, both parties are starting to shift their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Abrams’s Struggles: Stacey Abrams has been trailing her Republican rival, Gov. Brian Kemp, alarming those who celebrated her as the master strategist behind Georgia’s Democratic shift.Battleground Pennsylvania: Few states feature as many high-stakes, competitive races as Pennsylvania, which has emerged as the nation’s center of political gravity.The Dobbs Decision’s Effect: Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the number of women signing up to vote has surged in some states and the once-clear signs of a Republican advantage are hard to see.How a G.O.P. Haul Vanished: Last year, the campaign arm of Senate Republicans was smashing fund-raising records. Now, most of the money is gone.Still, race has hung heavily over the contest, sometimes in ugly ways.Ms. Steel, who was born in South Korea and raised in Japan, has accused Mr. Chen of mocking her accent; he said at a campaign event in April that people need “an interpreter to figure out exactly what she’s saying.” Mr. Chen said in an interview that his comments were misconstrued and that he meant he did not understand her policies.In the campaign feud, he has accused Ms. Steel of “red-baiting” by painting him as sympathetic to China’s authoritarian government. An accusation of communist sympathies may be particularly resonant to the county’s many refugees who still have bitter memories of fleeing a communist regime.Mr. Chen, the Harvard-educated son of immigrants who is a member of the board of trustees of Mt. San Antonio Community College and owns a local real estate business, said he has tried to appeal to right-leaning voters with his military experience. He served stints in the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula with the Seventh Fleet, which helped evacuate refugees after the Vietnam War.“Whenever I mention that, it really resonates,” Mr. Chen said.Jay Chen, the Harvard-educated son of immigrants who owns a real estate business, is challenging Ms. Steel.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesMs. Steel became one of the first Korean American women to serve in Congress in 2020.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesMs. Steel, a former member of the county board of supervisors and a local business owner, is fighting to hold onto her seat in a changed political environment. She narrowly defeated Representative Harley Rouda, a Democrat, in 2020 in a district along the California Coast that leaned Republican, becoming one of the first three Korean American women to serve in Congress. But she was displaced by redistricting and opted to run in a new district that tilts slightly toward Democrats.Lance Trover, the communications director for Ms. Steel’s campaign, said in a statement that she was focused on standing up to China and lowering taxes.“Michelle is the campaign’s greatest asset because AAPI voters know and trust her,” Mr. Trover said in the statement, using the abbreviation for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Ms. Steel declined to be interviewed.Orange County was once described by President Ronald Reagan as a place “where the good Republicans go before they die.” Its partisan bent has since shifted as a younger, more diverse population has moved from the Los Angeles metropolitan area seeking more affordable living. Now, Democrats outnumber Republicans in voter registration, and there is a sizable no-party preference voter bloc, according to the latest statistics from the county voter registrar.The pendulum swung for the first time in 2018, when Democrats swept into the House majority by flipping four seats in the area, giving Democrats control of all seven congressional seats in the county. It swung in the other direction in 2020, when Republicans reclaimed two seats in Orange County.But the shifts reshaping the area are lasting, and they reflect similar ones underway in suburban enclaves across the country, as immigrant communities relocate out of cities, said Christine Chen, the executive director of Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote, which helps conduct the Asian American Voter Survey.As immigrant communities around the country move from cities to the suburbs, the politics of those areas are shifting.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesThe same trend is underway in Virginia, a state that has leaned toward Democrats in recent years, and in Georgia, she said. Mr. Ramakrishnan added that districts in New Jersey and the suburbs of Houston and Dallas are experiencing a similar dynamic.“The Asian American population, in all of those instances, has increased so much that, really, elected officials have no choice but to make sure they engage and develop a relationship with the Asian American voters, because they’re coming out to vote,” said Ms. Chen, who is not related to the Democratic candidate challenging Ms. Steel.Asian Americans make up over a fifth of residents of Orange County, which is known for having the largest concentration of Vietnamese people outside of Vietnam, many of whom sought refuge in the region after the Vietnam War.The district encompasses Little Saigon, a stretch of Vietnamese-owned homes and businesses in the city of Westminster, which looks like most aging suburbs in Southern California: palm trees, stucco single-family homes and sun-bleached signs. Vietnamese and occasionally Korean and Chinese characters are predominantly featured on storefronts, and the political signage clogging up street corners feature mainly candidates with Asian surnames. Both campaigns and local organizations have been investing heavily on advertisements in Vietnamese.The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced in July that it planned to make a seven-figure investment to reach Asian voters in California, and the Republican National Committee has opened several Asian Pacific American community centers across the county, a multimillion-dollar investment aiming to recruit volunteers for voter outreach to support Republican candidates, with one of the first in Little Saigon.John Le, 57, a Vietnamese American Microsoft engineer from Lake Forest who described himself as a traditional Republican, said that, partisan politics aside, he was proud to be in a district with two Asian American candidates. He said he planned to vote for Ms. Steel.“It’s the American dream,” Mr. Le said. “We should be proud of these people who are giving back to the community. I will look at who will represent me the most.” More

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      Will Asian American Voters Continue to Rally Behind Democrats?

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      The party confronts a mood of frustration among the rising electoral force that helped vault it to power. The campaign in Georgia will test that bond.JOHNS CREEK, Ga. — At a brightly lit restaurant in suburban Atlanta, nestled in a tidy neighborhood of office buildings and private drives, State Senator Michelle Au brought up the mass shooting that lingers as a singular trauma in the local Asian American community.Addressing a predominantly Chinese American group of about 40 people, Dr. Au, a practicing anesthesiologist, delicately alluded to “the shootings that took place in metro Atlanta on March 16 of 2021” as she launched into a plea for new gun-control laws that Georgia Republicans oppose. She did not need to remind her audience of the details of the deadly attack carried out last year by a white gunman against several massage parlors in the Atlanta area, killing eight people including six women of Asian descent.“Republicans, while they talk a big game about public safety, they don’t seem to be as interested in actually proposing concrete solutions to deal with it,” Dr. Au told the crowd.The issue of gun safety is one of several that Democrats like Dr. Au are putting at the center of their argument to Asian American voters ahead of the November elections, as they work to win over the array of communities that make up America’s fastest-growing demographic group.Dr. Au’s district — a well-paved tangle of shopping centers and office complexes where law firms list their names in Korean and Indian grocers compete for space with bubble tea chains — is a case study in the social and political complexity of an electoral force rising in swing states: the diverse collection of communities jammed into the census label “Asian American.”The attack last year by a white gunman against several massage parlors in the Atlanta area killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesIn 2020, Georgia voters turned out in force to eject Donald J. Trump from office and then elect two Democratic senators in a runoff that decided control of the Senate. It was a breakthrough in Asian American mobilization, with turnout surging nationally by about 40 percent over the 2016 election — the largest spike of any demographic group. It amounted to an emphatic repudiation of a president who trafficked in race baiting amid a wave of hate crimes against Asian Americans.Yet just two years later, Democratic candidates in states like Georgia are confronting a mood of frustration and fear among Asian American voters that threatens to weaken the political coalition that turned Georgia blue for the first time this century.The anxious mood, voters and local leaders say, comes from persistent alarm about public safety and a feeling of being overlooked by national political leaders despite growing electoral clout.They warn that too many Democrats are still treating Asian Americans as a constituency of secondary importance, while Republicans continue pushing an agenda that is broadly unfriendly to Asian American communities even as the G.O.P. makes sporadic overtures on issues like education and crime.The ongoing scourge of racist harassment and violence, stirred during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic and stoked by Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, has kept the electorate on edge and heightened concerns about lax gun laws and crime. At Dr. Au’s event in Johns Creek, one speaker brought up attacks against Asian Americans on the New York City subway as part of a national atmosphere of menace.Narender G. Reddy, Dr. Au’s opponent in her state legislative election this year, is an Indian American real estate agent and longtime Republican donor.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesSeveral state elections in Georgia will represent a revealing test of Democrats’ bond with the Asian American electorate. The party has nominated a number of Asian Americans for important races, including Bee Nguyen, a Vietnamese American state legislator running for secretary of state against the Republican incumbent, Brad Raffensperger, and Nabilah Islam, a Bangladeshi American seeking a State Senate seat in the Atlanta suburbs.Republicans have put forward a handful of Asian American candidates, too: Dr. Au’s opponent in her state legislative election this year, Narender G. Reddy, is an Indian American real estate agent and longtime Republican donor who has pressed Gov. Brian Kemp and other Republicans to do more to woo South Asian voters. There are signs this year that Mr. Kemp is making a meaningful effort.Gun Violence and Gun Control in America2022 Mass Shootings: Gun violence is a persistent American problem. A partial list of mass shootings this year offers a glimpse at the scope.Ending a Stalemate: A bipartisan bill, the most significant gun measure to clear Congress in decades, was forged by an unlikely coalition of senators.California’s New Law: Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation that provides a minimum $10,000 award to residents who successfully sue makers of illegal guns. The measure is modeled after a Texas anti-abortion law.Armed and Ready to Teach: Lawmakers in Ohio have made it easier for teachers and other school employees to carry guns. The move is part of a wider strategy by Republicans and gun rights advocates, who say that allowing teachers, principals and superintendents to be trained and armed gives schools a fighting chance in case of attack.Democrats are counting on voters in communities like Johns Creek, an affluent enclave some 25 miles from downtown Atlanta, to help Stacey Abrams defeat Mr. Kemp and re-elect Senator Raphael Warnock. About a quarter of residents in the area identify as Asian American.In an interview, Dr. Au, 44, said Democrats needed to connect with Asian American voters on policy issues like gun safety and abortion rights rather than assuming Asian Americans would continue to vote Democratic chiefly out of distaste for Republicans. Economic frustrations over inflation and gas prices were part of the Asian American experience, too, she said.The community, Dr. Au said, wants “to have a voice and have power and be listened to.”“It’s not a safe thing to say that all voters of color, uniformly, will vote for Democrats because they have a more inclusive platform,” she said. “And I think it’s not safe to say that all Asian voters will vote for Democrats, because of that same reason.”Johns Creek, an affluent enclave some 25 miles from downtown Atlanta, could be a pivotal community for the Democratic Party in November. About a quarter of the residents in the area identify as ethnically Asian.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesAsian American voters have steadily shifted in the direction of Democrats since the turn of the century, as a younger and more liberal generation has come of age politically, while conservative-leaning older voters have turned away from the Republican Party’s increasingly hard-line views on race and national identity.Tracy Xu, a voter at Dr. Au’s event, said she planned to vote for Democrats in November because she was upset about gun crime and the rollback of abortion rights. The law enacted by Georgia Republicans to ban most abortions, Ms. Xu said, reminded her of the repressive reproductive policies in China, where she lived for the first half of her life.But Ms. Xu, 51, who works in the financial industry, said she still considered herself a political independent and did not see either party as having a dominant advantage with voters like her.“Just like the country’s split, our community is very split,” Ms. Xu said.Tracy Xu, a voter at Dr. Au’s event, said she planned to vote for Democrats this year because she was upset about gun crime and the rollback of abortion rights.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesA Fragile AllianceThe relationship between Democrats and the Asian American community was tested almost immediately after the 2020 election, in tense exchanges between Mr. Biden and Asian American lawmakers who questioned whether the incoming president understood the role their community had played in his victory.Asian American voters made up about 4 percent of the national electorate in 2020, with studies showing they voted for Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump by a margin of roughly two to one. That was enough to secure victory for Democrats in a narrowly split state like Georgia.Still, Republicans maintained support in more right-leaning parts of the community, particularly among older and more religious voters; in Southern California, Vietnamese American voters helped elect to Congress two Korean American Republican women who branded the Democratic Party as a vehicle for socialism.Mr. Biden struggled at the outset to forge a tighter bond with Asian American political leaders, clashing with lawmakers over the near-absence of Asian Americans from early appointments to his administration. Private frustrations exploded into a damaging public spectacle when Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a Democrat of Thai ancestry, threatened a blockade of Mr. Biden’s nominees until the administration pledged to put more Asian Americans in important positions.Representative Judy Chu of California, the head of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said lawmakers had been “severely disappointed” during the transition but that the president had given convincing assurances he recognized the influence of the Asian American vote.After the spa shooting, Mr. Biden traveled to Georgia to meet with Asian American leaders. He was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, herself the daughter of an Indian American immigrant. Weeks later, Mr. Biden returned for a rally marking his 100th day in office.Asian businesses along Buford Highway in Doraville, Ga.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesIntroducing him on that April day was Long Tran, a cafe owner in Dunwoody who said he spoke backstage with Mr. Biden about the shooting and the impact of “anti-Chinese rhetoric.” The president, Mr. Tran said, stressed that he and Ms. Harris “haven’t forgotten that Asian hate is still rising in the country and it’s something that needs to be addressed.”Yet in the 2021 off-year elections, Republicans recovered some ground with Asian American voters in New York City and Virginia, offering a hard-edged message about crime and opposition to liberal education policies that would have reformed or abolished certain kinds of selective public-school programs that are popular with Asian families but that many Democrats regard as exclusionary of Black and Hispanic students.Asian American voters motivated by similar concerns helped upend local politics in San Francisco, ejecting members of a left-wing school board and a progressive district attorney in recall elections that showed powerful currents of discontent within the overwhelmingly Democratic city.This summer, focus groups conducted by national Democratic pollsters found Asian American voters expressing dismay that Democrats often prioritize other constituencies defined by race or sexual orientation above Asian Americans, according to two people briefed on the studies.Long Tran, a Democratic candidate for the state legislature in a district with a large community of Asian American voters, said many people he met were uneasy about left-wing ideas on police reform and concerned about support on the right for lax firearm laws.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesStill, the Asian American Voter Survey, a large-scale poll conducted annually, found in July that Asian Americans leaned toward supporting Democratic congressional candidates by a margin of 54 percent to 27 percent. Those voters trusted Democrats more than Republicans on issues including guns, the environment and race — but split evenly on which party they preferred to handle the economy.Mr. Trump remained intensely unpopular with Asian American voters.EunSook Lee, the head of the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund, a progressive nonprofit, said Democrats still had a window to solidify their political relationship with the Asian American electorate.Of Asian American voters, she said, “They care about reproductive rights. They care about gun control. And on all those issues, the Republican Party isn’t budging.”Divide and ConquerIn a real estate office in Duluth, Ga., minutes away from Johns Creek, Mr. Reddy — Dr. Au’s Republican opponent — gave a blunt assessment of his party’s efforts to court Asian Americans: “Still not there.”Mr. Reddy’s office is all but wallpapered with photos of himself with Republican politicians like George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, an expression of his personal devotion to the G.O.P. But Mr. Reddy, 71, said most of his Indian American friends saw the Republican Party as “all white.”“That’s the only popular perception,” he said. “And there is truth to it, actually.”The party, he said, had been harmed by episodes like a rally at the end of the Georgia Senate runoffs when Senator David Perdue, a Republican incumbent, had mocked the pronunciation of Ms. Harris’s first name. National Democratic organizations, including the advocacy group Indian American Impact, mounted a fierce campaign targeting Asian American voters with information about Mr. Perdue’s insulting conduct.The G.O.P.’s business-friendly economic agenda could resonate in the community, Mr. Reddy argued, but Republicans were still seen as “anti-immigrant” and overly tied to Mr. Trump. A supporter of Mr. Trump for years, Mr. Reddy said it had grown difficult to justify his behavior.Republicans in Georgia have taken something of a divide-and-conquer approach to the Asian American vote. The governor appointed the first Asian American justice to Georgia’s Supreme Court and Republicans have recruited a few Asian American candidates to run in state legislative seats.At the same time, the Republican-dominated legislature has used gerrymandering to break up ethnically Asian communities and mute their influence at the polls. Dr. Au became a victim of that strategy last year when Republicans demolished her State Senate district, prompting her to run for a Democratic-leaning seat in the lower chamber instead.Mr. Tran, the businessman who introduced Mr. Biden last year in Atlanta, is now a Democratic candidate for the state legislature in a district with a large community of Asian American voters. Mr. Tran, 46, said he often found voters expressing unease about left-wing ideas on police reform.He said he had encountered pervasive concern about gun violence and Republican support for lax firearm laws. “Everyone is scared to death about guns,” Mr. Tran said. “I was eating dim sum and the waiters were saying, ‘We can’t stop looking at the door and wondering if the next person who comes in will have a gun.’” More

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      The New York Times’s Interview With Yuh-Line Niou

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      Yuh-Line Niou is a state assemblywoman in New York’s 65th District, representing parts of Lower Manhattan since 2017.This interview with Ms. Niou was conducted by the editorial board of The New York Times on July 28.Read the board’s endorsement for the Democratic congressional primary for New York’s 10th District here.Kathleen Kingsbury: OK. Well, it’s very nice to meet you. I’m Katie Kingsbury. I’m the Opinion editor. Obviously, you have a range of our colleagues. We don’t have much time together, and we have a lot of questions. So we ask you to keep your answers relatively brief, if possible. And we’re going to dive in.I understand the premise of this question you may reject out of hand. But I hope we could start by talking a little bit about what you think you would be able to accomplish in a Republican-controlled Congress, if you could be as specific as possible. But also, is there one big idea that you would want to pursue on a bipartisan basis?I do reject that premise [laughs]. I don’t want us to lose, obviously. And I think that it’s really important for us to always come with preparation that there is going to be some kind of difficulty in negotiating things. As you know, I have represented part of this district for six years now. And when I first came in, I actually was elected the day that Trump got elected. I was also elected into a seat where it was Sheldon Silver’s seat.And then on top of that, we were still in a I.D.C.-controlled Senate situation where, obviously, there were Democrats who were elected as Democrats but voted with the Republicans, gave the power to the Republicans. And we were still able to get things moving. And I think that the reasons why we were still able to get certain things moving was because we had folks who were going to be moving on the ground, and we had outside influences, and we also had inside forces, like me, pushing for certain things.[The Independent Democratic Conference, or I.D.C., was a group of Democratic state senators who in 2011 broke with their caucus to work with the Senate’s Republican majority. It has been defunct since 2018.]I think that in the six years that I’ve been an elected official, I’ve definitely changed a number of ways that Albany moves and works. And I think that I would do the same here as well. And I think that it’s really about political courage. It’s about making sure that you’re standing up, giving transparency to how things are working, making sure that you have a communication with your constituents, fighting for the things that we care about.And obviously, I believe representation matters. And I believe that we have better government when more voices are involved. I think that — I represented a voice that I think was definitely not seen very often in Albany, if never. And I think that there were a lot of times when we needed to be the first and only, even though it was a difficult first and only.And I am not here to be an agent of the broken status quo. And I want to make government work. And I think that instead of being the status quo and just accepting that the I.D.C. was going to be the I.D.C., and that was going to be the Senate, I went out there. I supported candidates who were running against the I.D.C. I went out there myself to make sure that we were changing the Senate. And then I think that we’ve changed the way that Albany has worked forever.I will, I think, from my end, continue to fight for the things that I’ve always fought for. I’ve always been an anti-poverty advocate. I’ve always tried to make sure that we had a more fair and equitable government in all those things. I think that the way that I look at things is unique in the sense that I think I have lenses that I look through. I look at everything through an economic-justice lens, a racial and social justice lens, an environmental-justice lens and, of course, through a disability lens.[Ms. Niou has talked openly about being autistic.]And I think that it’s really important for us to make sure that every single bill that we do, every single policy that we enact, is seen through those lenses. And I think that’s where we have that change. And that makes that huge difference. So every single thing is interconnected in that way.And so when we’re talking about big legislation, one of the pieces that I’m really, really proud of that I think that I would continue to fight for on the federal level is to make sure that we have a prohibiting of unfair, deceptive, abusive and predatory practices.This was a state bill that I was working on because of the Dodd-Frank decision that people probably are very familiar with — the overturning of Dodd-Frank on the federal level that made it so that certain unfair practices and consumer protections were obviously lifted. So I think that it’s really important for us to continue to fight to make sure that we have an ability to be able to help those who need the most help.Mara Gay: Thank you. What would you do, as a member of Congress, to ease the burden on renters in New York City, in your district, and even on those who would like to own?So one of the biggest things, obviously, that people probably know me for is the fight that I’ve done for affordable housing and also for NYCHA. So folks probably also realize that one third of my assembly district is public housing. And public housing is the only true and deeply affordable housing that we have here in New York. And from my end, in Albany, I have been the leading voice fighting for the state government to actually put funding directly into our public housing’s capital budget.Folks probably know this, but time after time after time, every single year that I was telling them we need to make sure that we are funding our public housing, I was told, it’s a federal issue. It’s HUD. We can’t do this. And I was able to move our speaker, my very first term, to be able to get $250 million directly into public housing for capital dollars. Of course, Cuomo didn’t release it all. But we were able to get it.And in my sixth year now, we finally, in total, have now put over a billion dollars of state dollars into capital fixes for public housing. And obviously, for the federal level, I definitely want to continue to make sure that we are actually fully funding public housing.There are several bills right now that I obviously would support greatly. But Nydia Velázquez has her Public Housing Emergency Response Act, which would allocate $70 billion, I believe, to public-housing capital repairs, which would fully fund public housing, and a large portion would come to New York. A.O.C obviously has her Green New Deal package, which looks at public housing, making sure that there’s climate-change use savings from energy efficiency that would also fund more public-housing construction.And then also, one of the biggest things is — obviously the big piece is — we have to repeal the Faircloth Amendment, which makes it so that we cannot have more public housing. I think that we need more public housing and not less. And it’s really important to make sure to alleviate some of that housing burden. I believe that the Faircloth Amendment makes it so that the amount of public housing that we have to 1991 levels was the highest that we could ever have.Right now, there has been obviously a push on the Assembly side and the Senate side of the state government to make it so that there is a push towards privatization. And I’m very concerned about it. I think that the privatization of public housing is dangerous. But we have to make sure that we’re protecting Section 9.I will say that the plan that we ended up with was a lot better than the plan that I saw six years ago. And I think that our pushback was what made it so much better. I will say that I’m still concerned about some of the obvious election things that they have in there. They did not firm that up. But anyway, sorry. I get really wonky about these policy things.But I will say that if I had been in Congress this session, I would have been a vocal champion for the $350 billion in housing investments that Chairwoman Maxine Waters actually put together into the Build Back Better plan. I was really disappointed to see, of course, that those housing ideas actually seemed to vanish almost without anybody really fighting for it. But I will say that those housing ideas should probably be a stand-alone thing. It would be a really, really excellent thing to see.[The House version of Build Back Better passed last year includes a $166 billion investment in affordable housing.]We saw, yesterday, really exciting — well, I guess it’s still happening right now — but really excitingly, some of the climate stuff happening. So we’re in the midst of it. They’re doing these negotiations. I really hope that they also have a housing package that they can do like that.Mara Gay: Thank you.Jyoti Thottam: OK, great. Just going back for a bit, what do you think, in Congress, the Democrats can do to protect democracy and, particularly, secure voting rights?We’ve been going through it. And I think that one of the biggest things that I would say is really important is, obviously, the politicization of our courts has been really awful to see. It’s been really difficult for me to even stomach or swallow some of the things that are coming down the pike. I can only think of horrible things.But the politicization of our courts is a real issue. And I think that there are bills that will expand the [Supreme Court] or put in term limits for the court. I think that we have to really look at them and examine that. I think that right now, we have a couple of bills that are really great. One of them obviously is the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. And I think that we have to make that good trouble and protect our voters and protect our voting rights.And I will say that my mom, when she first came to campaign with me for the very first time — she told me something that remains in my heart every single time I take a vote, even. And it’s just that she said that she realized, with my campaign, that to cast a vote was to basically prove that you’re an American. Just, it’s the one act that makes you American.And for her, she never realized that until I was running. And then she saw how important it was to vote. And this is also why I have never missed a vote in Albany, never missed a committee vote or a floor vote. And I think that that’s why it’s so important for us to represent our people in that way.Patrick Healy: Do you think the Democratic elected officials are out of step with Democratic voters on immigration today, on L.G.B.T.Q. rights or on any other issue, as you talk to voters and listen to what party leaders and officials say?Maybe not in my district. In District 10, it’s going to be — it’s probably one of the more progressive districts in the state. So maybe that’s maybe not what I’m hearing as much in the district. I think a lot of people are definitely very much thinking the same when it comes to protecting our bodily autonomy, making sure to restrict — make sure that we have tighter gun laws, making sure that we have L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. protections, rights, making sure that we have a better answer to how we are looking at public safety.I think that my district cares the most about what The New York Times has to say. I think that it’s really about trying to make sure that we have a reason for also standing up for things that we do. And I think that that’s really what it is. I don’t think that Democrats are necessarily out of touch. But I think that what can be difficult for the rest of the state, maybe, and even the rest of America — I think that there are certain messaging pieces that are hitting home for my district, but maybe not necessarily for everyone else.Patrick Healy: Is there just, real quickly, an example of that?For example, I think that in my district, one of the things that we all care about is our bodily autonomy. I saw that almost all of my neighbors came out when Roe was overturned, right? We were all out there on the street. As I was walking through Washington Square Park, I kept on seeing neighbor after neighbor after neighbor. They’re like, ‘Hey, Line, what’s up? We knew you would be out here.’ It was like every single person that I knew was there.But it just seemed, I don’t know, just kind of shocking to me, in some aspects, because I live down here, that there were people who felt differently, obviously, elsewhere in America. And I also hear it sometimes in the very Christian Chinese community. I hear it sometimes in parts of the district.Like, we can talk to them, but it’s really about making sure that we actually answer people’s questions, give transparency and improve that messaging. But yeah, I think that’s one of the biggest things. I’m actually shocked when this has been law for so long.Eleanor Randolph: So we have some yes-or-no questions —OK.Eleanor Randolph: You mentioned —Is this the rapid-fire thing?Eleanor Randolph: No, Mara has that.Oh.[Laughter.]Eleanor Randolph: This is just yes or no. So you mentioned this, but do you favor expanding the Supreme Court?Yes.Eleanor Randolph: And what about ending the filibuster?Yes.Eleanor Randolph: And do you think there should be term limits for members of Congress?Yes.Eleanor Randolph: And what about an age limit?I don’t think that I would actually support ageism in any way, shape or form.Eleanor Randolph: So is that a no?No.Eleanor Randolph: A no. So should Biden run again?I think that it really depends on our party looking to see if there’s somebody who would make it so that we are represented by everyone. And that depends on a primary.Eleanor Randolph: OK, thanks.I obviously had supported the same person that you all supported, so —Alex Kingsbury: Can I ask you about Ukraine? I’m interested if —Sure.Alex Kingsbury: — you think there should be an upper limit on the amount of taxpayer dollars that go to that conflict and if we should ask for some more safeguards or conditions for the aid that we supply.I believe so. I think that — gosh. It’s a really big situation over there right now. And I think that we obviously do need to have transparency over all of the tax dollars that we spend on anything, I think. And so, for example, I would be supportive of the McCollum amendment. I think that there’s a couple of different things that would be good for us to do. And I think that it’s important for everybody to know where our tax dollars are going.We have to be extremely attentive to the possibilities of this conflict escalating and never forget that Russia is a nuclear-armed power. And I think that things have amped up recently, especially in the last couple days — I think this is, what, almost the anniversary of month five. Almost exact, right?I think that most wars ultimately don’t end with total victory and total defeat or anything like that, but with some kind of negotiation of peace. And I think that a real diplomatic solution to the conflict might not be possible at present, in what I’m seeing, anyway. And I don’t have all the information, obviously. I’m not sitting in the seat right now. But I would encourage, obviously, our government to prioritize peace and the preservation of Ukrainian sovereignty and hopefully not pursue certain dangerous aims.I think that there needs to be — yeah, there needs to be some point, I think, that we are making sure that national self-defense is appropriate, obviously, and that other things might not be as appropriate. So I will end it at that. It’s a very complex issue right now. I don’t have all of the information at hand. But from what I’m seeing, it’s very scary for us, actually.Alex Kingsbury: Great. Thanks.Jyoti Thottam: OK. So just moving to climate change, I know those congressional negotiations are still going on. But what else specifically do you think Congress could do, particularly given Republican opposition on so many issues, what could Congress do on climate change to meet America’s commitments there?[The Senate passed the climate, health and tax bill on Aug. 7 and the House on Aug. 12, both after this interview took place.]We’re in the middle of a negotiation right now, which is kind of exciting because we have a current plan that is — right now, we’re — yesterday night, I guess, at 6 p.m. or something. Was it 4 or 6? I don’t know. It was happening as we were talking. And so I was like, oh, no.But it was very, very exciting to actually see that we were actually putting together a plan, that there is something that’s going to be pushed forward for climate. And I think that right now, there is, I believe — I was reading about it and writing about it just a little bit earlier. But I think that it’s really great to see that there is going to be some help with making sure that there is some caps to some of the polluters.I think one of the things that I wanted to know — and I wrote this down for myself because it was so important. But obviously, if the legislation passes, it’s a huge victory. But I can’t remember what it was. But it was, I believe — the dollars that they were putting into making sure that there was going to be some money that would come back into $369 billion, I believe, for climate and energy, which is basically, I think, four times bigger than any kind of climate investment that we’ve ever made.I think that there was some kinds of need for — I don’t know. I didn’t like this part about the fossil-fuel subsidies and the new leases and the more pipelines that Manchin wanted, which I think is going to make us more dependent on fossil fuels. But I think that, overwhelmingly, this bill right now would help us to go towards our energy goals. And I think that it would be — experts are saying that it’s about 80 percent — would help us go towards 80 percent of our energy goals right now and climate goals right now.So I think that right now, I like the methane fee. And I think that I’m just hoping that Menendez or Suozzi don’t blow it up or obviously don’t not vote for it or something. So right now, it’s just something that we’re just seeing right now. So I’m trying to paraphrase it all. But I’m not very good at that. I like to dive deep.Kathleen Kingsbury: Mara, why don’t we go to the lightning round?Mara Gay: Great. OK. Here’s the lightning round for you. How does Plan B work?How does Plan B work?Mara Gay: Yes, in the body.It is a — yeah, so it basically helps you to get your period. So it basically forces you to your next period and is an infusion of hormones that will make it so that you are given your period or forced to shed.Mara Gay: It prevents ovulation.Yeah. Mhmm.Mara Gay: Do you own a gun?I do not.Mara Gay: Have you ever fired a gun?Yes.Mara Gay: Where?I was at a training where they — I was at R.A. training, where the police officers on campus took us to learn how to shoot a gun. It was strange.Mara Gay: This was —This was a college thing. I don’t know. It was very strange.Mara Gay: That will suffice. Thank you. What is the average age of a member of Congress?I actually don’t know that.Mara Gay: Take a guess. Any number.Sixty?Mara Gay: Fifty-eight. Pretty close. What about of a U.S. senator?I don’t know that, either. Probably around 70?Mara Gay: Sixty-four. And please name a member of Congress, either dead or living, who you most admire and would emulate if you are elected to serve.Elizabeth Warren, obviously. I think that she’s somebody that I greatly admire. I think that she and I are very alike in the way that we think about policy. I really like, obviously, a lot of her bills, when it comes to making sure that we are holding big corporations accountable, making sure that we are driving towards stopping cycles of debt, making sure that we have anti-poverty pieces into all of our legislation. And I really appreciate the way that she has a good lens on policy.Mara Gay: Thank you. What’s your favorite restaurant in the district?Oh, that’s hard. You know, I have so many lists. I would have to say probably — I’m going to be giving away my dumpling place — but Super Taste on Eldridge is the best dumpling place in all of New York.Mara Gay: Thank you. What is your pathway to victory in this exceptionally crowded race?I think I have a really great path to victory. My whole entire Assembly district is inside of this new New York 10. So I have a very large base. I think that it was really significant when the special master designated both Chinatowns to be inside of this New York 10 District for a reason. I think that I have the support of the Working Families Party. I’m endorsed by the Working Families Party. And a quarter of this district voted on the Working Families Party line in the 2020 election.I think that it’s really important to make sure that we have a lot of people turning out, even though I know this is a turnout election. I think that we excite people. We’ve helped people to come to the doors. And we have an incredible, incredible ground game. We have over 850 volunteers already. I think that it’s been really amazing to see how many doors have been knocked and how many people have been called.But I think that, yes, the turnout has been historically low. Because of the excitement that we generate, we will turn out what it takes to get our campaign the win. I think the other thing is that we have been endorsed by some folks who have already won this district before, multiple times, including Cynthia Nixon. We have an ability to be able to win this race, because —Eleanor Randolph: So can I ask you — you said that you support BDS, this movement to boycott Israel. You have a very large Jewish community in this district. How do you explain that to your Jewish voters?Well, I support the freedom of speech. I think that that’s really my point here, is that I think that people have the right to be able to exercise what we’ve always exercised in our American democracy, whether it’s the Great Boycott or the Montgomery bus boycotts or —I think that it’s really important to be able to exercise that freedom of speech. I think that it’s important to protect it. I think that it’s important to make sure that people have that. I think that the Jewish community is not a monolith, just like the A.A.P.I. community is not a monolith. And I think that there are a lot of people who also believe that Palestinian human rights are important in this moment and in all ways.I think that it’s really important that we are looking at protecting everyone. I think that it’s really about making sure that we have Israeli and Palestinian rights respected. It’s something that I strongly believe, because I think that no matter what I do, I look through a human-rights lens no matter what. That’s where we have to have that political courageous too.Eleanor Randolph: But does that mean you support boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel?I think that it’s important for us to be able to honor the fact that there is a movement of doing that. I think that that part is important.Eleanor Randolph: So you don’t —Kathleen Kingsbury: I have a question —Eleanor Randolph: Do you support it? Sorry. Sorry, Katie —Kathleen Kingsbury: Go ahead, Eleanor.Eleanor Randolph: Well, so you —Kathleen Kingsbury: You support BDS, the —Eleanor Randolph: Yeah.Kathleen Kingsbury: — BDS movement, correct?I support its right to exist. There are currently people all over the country who have put out laws that would prohibit people from doing certain things that are just their First Amendment rights. And I think that that part is really important to make sure that we are not prohibiting people from doing things that are protected by our law, right?We are allowed to criticize our government. We’re allowed to criticize how our government interacts with other governments. And I think that that’s something that must be protected, just like freedom of the press. We should make sure to protect our freedom of the press. We should make sure to protect our freedom of speech.Kathleen Kingsbury: OK. In the past, you’ve supported the movement to defund the police. Do you still? And if so, could you talk a little bit about how you talk about public safety to members of your community who are concerned about it right now?Yeah, and I think that one of the things that we obviously have seen — and I actually really appreciated Mara’s editorial on this. I think that we have to really look at how we are looking at facts, right? Our communities have been overcriminalized and overpoliced because of an obsession with crime, and when we really should have been focused on safety and real community safety.It’s important that we are looking at this problem just like we’re solving all other big problems, right? And we should be looking at what created that inequity and what created that unsafety, such as job insecurity, food insecurity, making sure that people have access to health care, right? We need to make sure that we have more security for people and safety for people, on a broad level.And I tell people this all the time, especially in our community, where we’ve been experiencing so much anti-Asian hate. And the anti-Asian sentiment and the anti-Asian hate is not new. It’s not something that’s new, and it’s not something that can be fixed with a silver bullet or a magic wand or some kind of instant kind of thing.It’s state-sanctioned racism, right? It’s built into our country, from the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese internment, from the anti-miscegenation laws. It’s built in. We can’t just throw more money or police at the issue. But what we need to do is actually invest in our communities to make sure that we have the language access services that will help people to actually get the services that they need.We need social services. I brought in $30 million last year and this year to our Asian American community organizations. We had never had a line item for Asian American community organizations inside of our state budget ever. And I was the first to bring in some dollars.And it was — it’s embarrassing, really. It’s $300,000, really, actually, the first time that I brought in some dollars for our Asian American communities. Then last year, we were finally able to get $10 million. Then this year, we got another $20 million. But again, it’s not a celebration. It’s money that’s owed to our communities, because it’s money that we should have been getting all along in order to make sure that our community organizations can thrive and grow and be able to get the services that people need every single day —Patrick Healy: Excuse me.Mhmm?Patrick Healy: Oh, yeah. We’re sorry. We’re just almost out of time. We just —Oh, no. I’m sorry.Patrick Healy: You live in Manhattan while most of the district is in Brooklyn. Why are you the best person to represent this district?I think that it’s 40-60, so it’s really even. But I will say that I think that I have the most of the district, more than anyone else. And I’ve represented this district for six years now. I obviously know my policies, city level, state level, federal level.I think that it’s been a really important thing to see that we have political courage in this seat in Congress right now. We are in crisis. We just talked a lot about what’s going on with the courts, gun laws, abortion. We’ve talked a lot about some of the other issues that have been coming down the pike that are really scary.And we need to make sure that we have people who are willing to have the political courage to be able to stand up. I have always had the political courage to do the right thing. And I promised Eleanor when I was first running that I was not going to be furniture ever. And I haven’t been.I think I’ve changed the way that Albany is shaped. And I know that I can change the way that Congress looks and Congress is shaped, because we don’t need people that are going to go along to get along. We need people who are going to fight for the things that we deserve. And right now, this seat is one of the most progressive seats in the state. This is one that we desperately need to be a change-maker seat. We have the ability to be able to make that change now.I have always been the person who stood up against Cuomo. I stood up against my own leadership, even. When it came to the austerity budget, I stood up and was the first to call out any kind of corruption, vetting issues from our own governor. It didn’t matter what it was that my constituents needed from me. I always made sure to be transparent and always led with accessibility and transparency and the ability to make sure that my constituents were heard.It didn’t matter what it was that was going to come down the pike at me, because I will tell you, it’s been scary for me. But I will say that it’s always important for us to have that powerful leadership in order to make sure to have the best representation. I think that this is an opportunity for us to weigh in in a way that will make change in history.I will be the first Asian American to represent this district. And I think that that’s a really big deal. We will be doubling the amount of Asian American representation that we have in Congress from New York, because it’s the first time that our two Chinatowns will be able to vote together. We are the most underrepresented racial and ethnic group inside of Congress right now. And I think that it’s important for us to be able to have representation.[After this interview took place, Ms. Niou’s campaign clarified her comment that this will be the first time Manhattan’s Chinatown and Sunset Park’s Chinatown in Brooklyn will vote together in an open-seat election.]I think that I come with a different kind of lens that looks at disability issues in a real way. I will be the first openly autistic legislator in Congress. And I think that it’s important that we are constantly centering our disability communities as well, because it’s actually every issue. Every issue is a disability issue. And if you’re lucky enough to go into a ripe old age, you’ll also have to — if you’re able-bodied now, you’ll have to have help sometime.So I think that it’s really important that we are centering all of our communities in that way. And I think that we have the ability to win, and we have the ability to make sure that we make that change for everyone.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      New York City Pulls Plug on Second Homeless Shelter in Chinatown

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      The Adams administration backtracked on the second shelter, one of three that had been proposed for the neighborhood, after protests from the community.For the second time in less than a week, New York City canceled plans on Monday for a shelter in Chinatown, where community opposition has complicated Mayor Eric Adams’s efforts to move homeless New Yorkers off the streets.The 94-bed shelter would have been in a closed hotel at the busy intersection of Grand Street and Bowery. The location is near where an Asian American woman was murdered in February in an attack for which a homeless man has been charged. The shelter’s would-be operator, Housing Works, had planned to allow illegal drugs in the building, a move that drew fierce condemnation from local residents.Both canceled shelters are of a specialized type known as safe havens or stabilization hotels, which offer more privacy and social services and fewer restrictions than traditional shelters. Mr. Adams announced plans last week to open at least 900 rooms in such shelters by mid-2023.The city Department of Homeless Services, which had previously said that the large street-homeless population in the neighborhood made it a crucial place to add shelter capacity, said on Monday that it would instead open a facility in an area with fewer services for the homeless.The department said in a statement, “Our goal is always to work with communities to understand their needs and equitably distribute shelters across all five boroughs to serve our most vulnerable New Yorkers.”This was the same reason that city offered last week when it announced it would not open the other Chinatown shelter, at 47 Madison Street.But uncertainty about which union’s workers would staff the shelter may have also played a role in the shelter’s cancellation.Charles King, the C.E.O. of Housing Works, said that the organization was required to use workers from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which represents Housing Works’ employees.But the powerful New York Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, which has close ties to the mayor and is better known as the Hotel Trades Council, said that it has an existing contract with the owner of the building, a former Best Western hotel, requiring the building to use its workers.“There’s only one contract with this building, and it’s ours,” said Rich Maroko, president of the Hotel Trades Council. Mr. King said that Housing Works proposed a compromise under which the building owner would hire eight Hotel Trades Council workers. But he said Gary Jenkins, the city commissioner of social services, who oversees the Department of Homeless Services, told him that the city was pulling the plug on the shelter at the Hotel Trades Council’s insistence.“It’s really clear to me that the mayor is more concerned about pleasing this one union than he is about addressing the needs of homeless people,” Mr. King said.The Department of Homeless Services did not respond to a request for comment on Mr. King’s assertion. Mr. Maroko said that the hotel union had urged City Hall not to go through with the shelter conversion.The R.W.D.S.U., which is in contentious contract negotiations with Housing Works, said for its part, “We have no desire to displace hotel workers or see this hotel converted.”During the 2021 mayoral campaign, the hotel union, which has nearly 40,000 members, gave Mr. Adams his first major labor endorsement. Susan Lee, founder of the Alliance for Community Preservation and Betterment, a Chinatown group that mobilized protests against the shelter, applauded the city for “listening to the concerns of the Chinatown community.”She said she hoped the hotel would reopen as a tourist hotel and help the neighborhood recover from the pandemic.Dana Rubinstein More

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      How Likely Is Another Civil War?

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      More from our inbox:Listen to Asian American VotersA Double Standard for Supreme Court NomineesHelping Students Fight DisinformationCovid’s Origins, and the Animal-Human LinkMr. Biden, Reach the HeartlandAt the Georgia State Capitol, demonstrating against the inauguration of President Biden on Jan. 20, 2021.Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Jamelle Bouie starts out by documenting the public feeling that the United States is indeed facing a second civil war. But he takes a wrong turn by suggesting that this conflict will not happen because today’s conditions do not mirror those of our 19th-century version (“Why We Are Not Facing the Prospect of a Second Civil War,” column, Feb. 17).However, we are in a very precarious position. Large portions of our population have adopted an antigovernment position, fueled by our former president and his minions. Racism is now out in the open, as evidenced by the rantings of anti-diversity proponents in raucous school board meetings throughout the country. The country is more armed than ever, and thousands of these citizens belong to organized militia.We learn more details every day about how close we came last year to a coup engineered by the former president. Too many elected officials no longer display commitment to our democratic principles. The organized campaign of disinformation that is destroying our country is buttressed every day by extreme-right media outlets and commentators.Contrary to Mr. Bouie’s piece, there is a serious risk that we will lose this precious experiment called American democracy. Yet there is still a modicum of hope it can be averted. But that will require that we all take responsibility by speaking up for our Republic.James MartoranoYorktown Heights, N.Y.To the Editor:The plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan, the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol to overturn the results of the 2020 election and the continuing trumpeting of the lie that the election was stolen approach the criterion that Jamelle Bouie sets for a second civil war: “irreconcilable social and economic interests of opposing groups within the society.”In her book “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them,” Barbara F. Walter, a professor of political science at the University of California San Diego, states that, according to the polity index score, which places countries on a scale from fully autocratic (-10) to fully democratic (+10), the United States is now a +5, which makes us an “anocracy,” a country that is moving from a democracy to an authoritarian regime.In just five years, we went from +10 to +5! “A partial democracy,” writes Ms. Walter, “is three times as likely to experience civil war as a full democracy.”Now is the time to strengthen our democracy to avert another civil war.Allen J. DavisDublin, N.H.Listen to Asian American Voters  Doris LiouTo the Editor:Re “Will Asian Americans Desert Democrats?,” by Thomas B. Edsall (Opinion guest essay, Sunday Review, March 6):Mr. Edsall’s essay ponders whether Asian Americans are bolting from the Democratic Party, using isolated examples of Chinese American voters swaying recent races in two major cities, New York and San Francisco. However, his claim that this is evidence of Asian Americans moving to the right is a flawed analysis.First, these were complicated elections that cannot be boiled down to one or two issues. Second, how Chinese Americans voted in two cities cannot represent the political preferences of Asian Americans everywhere — just as the fact that Asian Americans helped flip historically Republican-held Senate seats in Georgia and Arizona does not necessarily mean Asian Americans are moving left nationwide.Although not often reported in media analyses, our Asian American Voter Survey polling data includes Asian American suburban moms, college- and non-college-educated, rich and poor, and a wide range of ethnic identities across all 50 states. One would not say the trends of white voters in Little Rock tell the story of white voters everywhere. This should not be done with Asian American voters either.To understand the future of our communities’ votes, one must look at who is listening, engaging and working on our behalf. Parties and political candidates who can do this the most effectively are more likely to win our vote; it’s as simple as that.Christine ChenWashingtonThe writer is executive director of Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote.A Double Standard for Supreme Court Nominees  Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Another Working Mother for the Supreme Court” (Opinion guest essay, March 8):Melissa Murray opines that, at her confirmation hearings, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s status as a “working mother” might be for her a selling point among conservative senators, just as it had factored into their support of Justice Amy Coney Barrett at her hearings.Funny, I don’t recall any prospective male justices ever being asked about whether their status as “working fathers” might affect their abilities and opinions. Republicans clearly did not deem it relevant to find out if a nominee was a superdad — whether he could do laundry, help kids with homework and work outside the home, all at the same time!Lori Pearson WiseWinter Park, Fla.Helping Students Fight Disinformation  Alberto MirandaTo the Editor:Re “Combating Disinformation Can Feel Like a Lost Cause. It Isn’t,” by Jay Caspian Kang (Opinion, March 9):It is no revelation to me, a retired middle- and upper-school librarian, that students in lower-income environments and underfunded public schools do not register well on media literacy tests.The hiring of professional, credentialed librarians in these schools is often postponed and neglected in order to hire more subject-matter teachers to decrease class sizes, leaving no one with the training and skill sets to introduce these important literacy tools.It is a disservice to these vulnerable students not to provide a curriculum that addresses this gaping hole in their education.Sandra MooreTownship of Washington, N.J.Covid’s Origins, and the Animal-Human Link  Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Pair of Studies Say Covid Originated in Wuhan Market” (news article, Feb. 28):As we enter the third year of the pandemic, it is becoming increasingly clear that we may never know the full and exact details of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 in humans.Even as experts continue to uncover connections to the market in Wuhan, China, the spillover story may only remain a partial narrative, veiled by insufficient data. This is an uncertainty, like so many other unknowns on a shifting planet undergoing climate change, to which we must adapt.The one certainty we can rely on, however, is the inextricable link between humans and animals. From hunter-gathering to the industrial livestock production model, our relationships with animals cannot be unbound. What’s more, we’ve progressively dominated species and their habitats with dire consequences. This certainty is highlighted by the pandemic through which we are all living today.So, it’s time to start talking about our health differently. Public health does not exist in isolation from other beings. It’s time to become comfortable talking about public health as planetary health.Perhaps normalizing this discourse might have us, as a global community, face the destruction of natural habitats as the destruction of global human health. Perhaps it might have us cultivate a different type of care, a reciprocal care that might stand to benefit us all.Christine YanagawaVancouver, British ColumbiaMr. Biden, Reach the Heartland Ryan Peltier To the Editor:Re “What the Democrats Need to Do,” by Michael Kazin (Opinion guest essay, Sunday Review, Feb. 27):Mr. Kazin is right that President Biden could be more forceful in pushing for the stalled Build Back Better bill and the Protecting the Right to Organize Act.But the president needs to go beyond that and directly address the rural populace. He needs to tour the outposts of the heartland, the Rust Belt, the rural West and the South, bringing a message that Democrats have compassion for all Americans and that Democratic policies will make their lives better.We need to see more of the ol’ Empathetic Joe. The difference between a mountebank like Donald Trump and Joe Biden is that Mr. Biden can actually stand behind his promises to make America better — for all of us.Luc NadeauLongmont, Colo. More

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      Will Asian Americans Bolt From the Democratic Party?

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      Over the past three decades, Asian American voters — according to Pew, the fastest growing group in the country — have shifted from decisively supporting Republicans to becoming a reliably Democratic bloc, anchored by firmly liberal views on key national issues.The question now is whether this party loyalty will withstand politically divisive developments that appear to pit Asian Americans against other key Democratic constituencies — as controversies emerge, for example, over progressive education policies that show signs of decreasing access to top schools for Asian Americans in order to increase access for Black and Hispanic students.There is little question of the depth of liberal commitments among Asian Americans.“Do Asian Americans, a group marked by crosscutting demographic cleavages and distinct settlement histories, constitute a meaningful political category with shared policy views?” ask Janelle Wong, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, and Sono Shah, a computer scientist at the Pew Research Center, in their 2021 paper “Convergence Across Difference: Understanding the Political Ties That Bind with the 2016 National Asian American Survey.”Their answer: “Political differences within the Asian American community are between those who are progressive and those who are even more so.”Wong and Shah cite a 2016 New York Times article by my news-side colleague Jeremy W. Peters, “Donald Trump Is Seen as Helping Push Asian Americans Into Democratic Arms”:In 1992, the year national exit polls started reporting Asian American sentiment, the group leaned Republican, supporting George Bush over Bill Clinton 55 percent to 31 percent. But by 2012, that had reversed. Asian Americans overwhelmingly supported President Obama over Mitt Romney — 73 percent to 26 percent.In their paper, Wong and Shah note that “despite critical differences in national origin, generation, class, and even partisanship, Asian Americans demonstrate a surprising degree of political commonality.”With regard to taxes, for example, “More than 75 percent of both Asian American Democrats and Republicans support increasing taxes on the rich to provide a tax cut for the middle class.”Or take support for strong emissions regulations to address environmental concerns. This has 78.3 percent support among Asian American Democrats and 76.9 percent among Asian American Republicans.In a 2021 paper, “Fault Lines Among Asian Americans,” Sunmin Kim — a sociologist at Dartmouth — found that Asian Americans took decisively liberal stands on Obamacare, admission of Syrian refugees, free college tuition, opposition to the Muslim immigration ban, environmental restrictions on power plants and government assistance to Black Americans. The only exception was legalization of marijuana, which received less support from Asian Americans than from any other group.In an email, Kim cited the declining importance of communism as a key factor in the changing partisan allegiance of Asian American voters. In the 1970s and 80s, he said, “Taiwanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese chose the party that had a reputation of being tougher on communism. Obviously, it was the Republican Party. Chinese immigrants, many of whom retained the memory of the Cultural Revolution, were not too different.” After the 1990s, he continued, “the children of immigrants who grew up and received education in the United States replace the first generation, and their outlook on politics is much different from their parents. They see themselves as a racial minority, and their high education level pushes them towards liberalism on many issues.”In short, Kim wrote: “the Cold War ended and a generational shift occurred.”Despite many shared values, there are divergences of opinion among Asian Americans on a number of issues, in part depending on the country of origin. These differences are clear in the results of the 2020 Asian American Voter Survey, which was released in September 2020.Asked for their preference for Joe Biden or Donald Trump, 54 percent of all Asian Americans chose Biden to 30 percent for Trump. Biden had majority support from Indian (65-28), Japanese (61-24), Korean (57-26), Chinese (56-20) and Filipino Americans (52-34). Vietnamese Americans were the lone exception, supporting Trump 48-36.At the moment, affirmative action admissions policies are a key issue testing Asian American support for the Democratic Party. In educational institutions as diverse as Harvard, San Francisco’s Lowell High School, Loudon County’s Thomas Jefferson High School and the most prestigious selective high schools in New York and Boston, conflict over educational resources between Asian American students and parents on one side and Black and Hispanic students and parents on the other has become endemic. Policies designed to increase Black and Hispanic access to high quality schools often result in a reduction in the number of Asian American students admitted.Despite this, the 2020 Asian American Voter Survey cited above found that 70 percent of Asian Americans said they “favor affirmative action programs designed to help Blacks, women and other minorities,” with 16 percent opposed. Indian Americans were strongest in their support, 86-9, while Chinese Americans were lowest, 56-25.These numbers appear to mask considerable ambivalence over affirmative action among Asian Americans when the question was posed not in the abstract but in the real world. In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 209 prohibiting government from implementing affirmative action policies, declaring that “The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”In 2020, California voters were asked to support or oppose repeal of the anti-affirmative action measure — that is, to restore affirmative action. 36 percent of all Asian American voters said they would support restoration of affirmative action, 22 percent were opposed and 36 percent were undecided. A plurality of Chinese Americans, 38 percent, on the other hand, opposed restoration of affirmative action, 30 percent were in favor, and 28 percent were undecided.The debate over affirmative action admission policies has deep roots. In 2009, Thomas J. Espenshade, a sociologist at Princeton, and Alexandria Walton Radford, of the Center for Applied Research in Postsecondary Education, wrote in their paper. “A New Manhattan Project” thatCompared to white applicants at selective private colleges and universities, black applicants receive an admission boost that is equivalent to 310 SAT points, measured on an all-other-things-equal basis. The boost for Hispanic candidates is equal on average to 130 SAT points. Asian applicants face a 140 point SAT disadvantage.In 2018, the Harvard Crimson studied the average SAT scores of students admitted to Harvard from 1995 to 2013. It found that Asian Americans admitted to Harvard earned an average SAT score of 767 across all sections, while whites averaged 745 across all sections, Hispanic American 718, Native-American and Native-Hawaiian 712 and African-American 704.Scholars of Asian American politics have found that Asian American voters have remained relatively strong supporters of affirmative action policies, with one exception: Chinese Americans, who constitute nearly a quarter of all Asian Americans.In “Asian Americans and Race-Conscious Admissions: Understanding the Conservative Opposition’s Strategy of Misinformation, Intimidation & Racial Division,” Liliana M. Garces and OiYan Poon, professors of educational leadership at the University of Texas-Austin and Colorado State University, give the following reasons for the concentration of anti-affirmative action sentiment among Chinese Americans.Garces and Poon write that 1990 changes in the U.S. Immigration Act “increased by threefold the number of visas for highly skilled, professional-class immigrants, privileging highly educated and skilled immigrants” while “migration policy changes in China advantaged more structurally-privileged Chinese to emigrate.”Second, “growing up in mainland China, many of these more recent Chinese American immigrants were systemically and culturally socialized to strongly believe that a single examination is a valid measure of merit for elite college access.”Third, “The residential and employment patterns among more recent immigrants suggest that their social lives remain limited to middle and upper-middle class Chinese American immigrants and whites.”And finally,The social media platform, WeChat, plays an important role in fostering opposition to affirmative action among some Chinese American immigrants. Some studies have found that WeChat plays a central role in the distribution of information among the Chinese diasporic community, including fake news, to politically motivate and organize Chinese immigrants for conservative causes, especially against affirmative action and ethnic data disaggregation.Another issue with the potential to push Asian American voters to the right is crime.The 2018 Crime Victimization report issued in September 2019 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Department of Justice found that a total of 182,230 violent crimes were committed against Asian Americans in 2018. 27.5 percent were committed by African Americans, 24.1 percent by whites, 24.1 percent by Asian Americans, 7.0 percent by Hispanics, and the rest undetermined.The New York City police report on 2021 hate crime arrestees shows that 30 of the 56 men and women charged with hate crimes against Asian Americans were Black, 14 were Hispanic, 7 were white and five were Asian American/Pacific Islanders.While most of the experts on Asian American politics I contacted voiced confidence in the continued commitment of Asian Americans to the Democratic Party and its candidates, there were some danger signals — for example, in the 2021 New York City mayoral election.That year, Eric Adams, the Democrat, decisively beat Curtis Sliwa, the Republican, 65.5 to 27.1, but support for Sliwa — an anti-crime stalwart who pledged to take on “the spineless politicians who vote to defund police” — shot up to 44 percent “in precincts where more than half of residents are Asian,” according to The City.The story was headlined “Chinese voters came out in force for the GOP in NYC, shaking up politics” and the subhead read “From Sunset Park in Brooklyn to Elmhurst and Flushing in Queens, frustrations over Democratic stances on schools and crime helped mobilize votes for Republican Curtis Sliwa for mayor and conservative Council candidates.”A crucial catalyst in the surge of support for Sliwa, according to The City, was his “proposed reforms to specialized high school admissions and gifted and talented programs” — ignoring the fact that Adams had also pledged to do this. More generally, the City reported,A wave of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans during the pandemic has heightened a sense of urgency about public safety and law enforcement. Asian anger and frustration have, for the first time, left a visible dent in a city election.Grace Meng, a Democratic congresswoman from Queens, tweeted on Nov. 4, 2021:Pending paper ballot counts, the assembly districts of @nily, @edbraunstein, @Barnwell30, @Rontkim and @Stacey23AD all went Republican. Our party better start giving more of a sh*t about #aapi (Asian American-Pacific Island) voters and communities. No other community turned out at a faster pace than AAPIs in 2020.Similarly, Asian Americans led the drive to oust three San Francisco School Board members — all progressive Democrats — last month. As Times colleague Amelia Nierenberg wrote on Feb. 16:The recall also appeared to be a demonstration of Asian American electoral power. In echoes of debates in other cities, many Chinese voters were incensed when the school board changed the admission system for the district’s most prestigious institution, Lowell High School. It abolished requirements based primarily on grades and test scores, instead implementing a lottery system.In their March 2021 paper, “Why the trope of Black-Asian conflict in the face of anti-Asian violence dismisses solidarity,” Jennifer Lee and Tiffany Huang, sociologists at Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, point out that “there have been over 3,000 self-reported incidents of anti-Asian violence from 47 states and the District of Columbia, ranging from stabbings and beatings, to verbal harassment and bullying, to being spit on and shunned.”While “these senseless acts of anti-Asian violence have finally garnered the national attention they deserve,” Lee and Huang continue, “they have also invoked anti-Black sentiment and reignited the trope of Black-Asian conflict. Because some of the videotaped perpetrators appear to have been Black, some observers immediately reduced anti-Asian violence to Black-Asian conflict.”Working against such Black-Asian conflict, the two authors argue, is a besieged but “real-world solidarity” demonstrated instudies showing that Black Americans are more likely than white or Hispanic Americans to recognize racism toward Asian Americans, and that Asian Americans who experience discrimination are more likely to recognize political commonality with Black Americans. Covid-related anti-Asian bias is not inevitable. While “China virus” rhetoric has been linked to violence and hostility, new research shows that priming Americans about the coronavirus did not increase anger among the majority of Americans toward Asian Americans.Lee and Huang warn, however, that “anger among a minority has invoked fear among the majority of Asian Americans.”In “Asian Americans, Affirmative Action & the Rise in Anti-Asian Hate,” published in the Spring 2021 issue of Daedalus, a journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Lee makes the case that Asian American are at a political tipping point. She argues that:The changing selectivity of contemporary U.S. Asian immigration has recast Asian Americans from ‘unassimilable to exceptional,’ resulting in their rapid racial mobility. This mobility combined with their minoritized status places them in a unique group position in the U.S. racial hierarchy, conveniently wedged between underrepresented minorities who stand to gain most from the policy (affirmative action) and the advantaged majority who stands to lose most because of it. It also marks Asians as compelling victims of affirmative action who are penalized because of their race.In recent years, “a new brand of Asian immigrants has entered the political sphere whose attitudes depart from the Asian American college student activists of the 1960s,” Lee writes. “This faction of politically conservative Asian immigrants has no intention of following their liberal-leaning predecessors, nor do they intend to stay silent.”The issue is “whether more Asian Americans will choose to side with conservatives,” Lee writes, “or whether they will choose to forge a collective Asian American alliance will depend on whether U.S. Asians recognize and embrace their ethnic and class diversity. Will they forge a sense of linked fate akin to that which has guided the political attitudes and voting behavior of Black Americans?”The outcome may well have a major impact on the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans.Catalyst, the liberal voter analysis firm, found that from 2016 to 2020, Asian Americans increased their voter turnout by 39 percent, more than any other racial or ethnic constituency, including Hispanic Americans (up 31 percent) and African Americans (up 14 percent). This turnout increase worked decisively in favor of the Democratic Party as Asian Americans voted two to one for the party in both elections.The April 2021 Pew Research report cited above found that from 2000 to 2019, “The Asian population in the U.S. grew 81 percent from roughly 10.5 million to a record 18.9 million, surpassing the 70 percent growth rate of the nation’s Hispanic population. Furthermore, by 2060, the number of U.S. Asians is projected to rise to 35.8 million, more than triple their 2000 population.”What this means is that Republicans are certain to intensify their use affirmative action, crime, especially hate crime, and the movement away from merit testing to lotteries for admission to high caliber public schools as wedge issues to try to pry Asian American voters away from the Democratic Party. Indeed, they are already at it. For its part, the Democratic Party will need to add significant muscle to Jennifer Lee’s call for a “linked fate” among Asian and African Americans to fend off the challenge.The strong commitment of Asian Americans to education has been a source of allegiance to a Democratic Party that has become the preferred home for voters with college and advanced degrees. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is, at the same time, testing the strength of that allegiance by supporting education policies that reduce opportunities for Asian Americans at elite schools while increasing opportunity for two larger Democratic constituencies, made up of Black and Hispanic voters. This is the kind of problem inherent in a diverse coalition comprising a segmented electorate with competing agendas. For the foreseeable future, the ability of the party to manage these conflicts will be a key factor in its success or failure.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      in Elections

      San Francisco Voters Recall 3 Board of Education Members

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      The recall, which galvanized Asian Americans, was a victory for parents angered by the district’s priorities during the pandemic.In a recall election fueled by pandemic angst and anger, San Francisco voters ousted three members of the Board of Education on Tuesday, closing a bitter chapter in the city’s politics that was rife with infighting, accusations of racism and a flurry of lawsuits.More than 70 percent of voters supported the recall of each member when initial results were released just before 9 p.m. Pacific time, and one of the board members conceded defeat. Those votes made up about one-quarter of registered voters in the city, and turnout was not expected to be considerably higher.The vote stripped the members, Alison Collins, Gabriela López and Faauuga Moliga, of their positions on the seven-person board, which Ms. Lopez served as president. They will be replaced by members chosen by Mayor London Breed.“It’s the people rising up in revolt in San Francisco and saying it’s unacceptable to abandon your responsibility to educate our children,” said Siva Raj, a San Francisco parent of public school students who helped lead the signature campaign to put the recall election on the ballot.The recall was a victory for parents who were angered that the district spent time deciding whether to rename a third of its schools last year instead of focusing on reopening them. It also appeared to be a demonstration of Asian American electoral power, a galvanizing moment for Chinese voters in particular who turned out in unusually large numbers for the election.In echoes of debates in other cities, many Chinese voters were incensed when the school board introduced a lottery admission system for Lowell High School, the district’s most prestigious institution, abolishing requirements primarily based on grades and test scores. A judge last year ruled that the board had violated procedures in making the change.“The voters of this city have delivered a clear message,” Ms. Breed, who supported the recall, said in a statement on Tuesday night.The landslide result is already being analyzed for its implications for the city’s upcoming elections.District Attorney Chesa Boudin, a progressive prosecutor, faces a recall election in June fueled by moderate San Franciscans worried about a spike in property crimes and hate crimes during the coronavirus pandemic. Ms. Breed is running for re-election next year.On Tuesday, one of the ousted board members, Mr. Moliga, posted on social media that it had been an honor to serve the city. “It appears we were unsuccessful at defeating my recall,” he wrote. “We fought hard and ran a great campaign.”“There are many more fights ahead of us,” he added.In a city with more dogs than children, school board elections in San Francisco have for decades been obscure sideshows to the more high-profile political contests.That changed with the pandemic — data released by the district suggests that remote learning increased racial achievement gaps — and the profusion of controversies that plagued the board.The district captured national headlines last year for its botched and in some cases historically inaccurate effort to rename 44 public schools.The targeted schools carry the names of a range of historical figures including Abraham Lincoln and the three other presidents chiseled into Mount Rushmore; Spanish conquerors such as Vasco Núñez de Balboa; John Muir, the naturalist and author; and Paul Revere, the Revolutionary War figure.After a barrage of criticism, including from Ms. Breed, the board put the renaming process on hold. A judge ruled that the board had violated a California law on open meetings in its proceedings.Criticism of the board grew stronger, while signature gathering for the recall effort was already underway, when controversial tweets written by Ms. Collins, the board’s vice president, were discovered. In them, she said Asian Americans were like slaves who benefited from working inside a slave owner’s house — a comparison that Asian American groups and many city leaders called racist.The board voted to strip Ms. Collins of her vice presidency, which prompted her to sue members of the board and the district for $87 million. A judge dismissed the case.David Lee, a political science lecturer at San Francisco State University, said the combination of the tweets and the changes to the admission policies at Lowell had empowered Asian American voters.“It’s been an opportunity for the Chinese community to flex its muscles,” Mr. Lee said. “The community is reasserting itself.”Asian American voters had punched below their weight in San Francisco in recent years, making up about 18 percent of active voters in recent elections — well below their 34 percent share in the city overall. But supporters of Tuesday’s recall election say Asian Americans played an outsize role.Mr. Raj, the San Francisco parent, pointed to strong turnout in neighborhoods with large Asian populations as well as a relatively high return rate among people who requested a Chinese-language ballot.Ann Hsu, a San Francisco resident with two high school students in the public school system, helped register more than 500 Chinese residents in the months before the election. Education, she said, was a powerful issue.“That’s been ingrained in Chinese culture for thousands and thousands of years,” she said.Ms. Hsu said she had observed some of the inner workings of the district in her role as a P.T.A. president of a high school as well as the chair of a Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee, a body that oversees the district’s use of money raised through bonds. The oversight committee was formed last year after a whistle-blower notified the city attorney’s office that the school district had failed to create the board, which is required by law.“The board is incompetent,” Ms. Hsu said.Meredith W. Dodson, the executive director of the San Francisco Parent Coalition, a group formed during the pandemic to pressure the district to reopen schools, called the recall campaign a powerful demonstration of parental activism.“We can never go back to the previous world where parents weren’t organized and weren’t lifting up their concerns together,” she said. More