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    Vivek Ramaswamy Loves His Heritage. Just Don’t Call Him an Indian American.

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    The Republican presidential candidate says the celebration of diversity in America has come at the cost of national unity.Vivek Ramaswamy does not shy away from his Indian heritage.It is present in his name (his first name rhymes with “cake,” he explains) and his Hindu faith. He has explained on the campaign trail that he is vegetarian because of his family’s tradition. And during a Republican debate in August that was a breakout performance, he introduced himself as a “skinny guy with a funny last name,” echoing former President Barack Obama.Still, Mr. Ramaswamy recently said in an interview that he does not identify as an Indian American. Being Hindu and Indian is “part of my cultural identity, for sure, and I’m proud of that and very comfortable with that,” he said after a campaign stop in Marshalltown, Iowa. “But I’m an American first.”Mr. Ramaswamy, fourth from left, waves at the crowd as he takes the stage for a debate with other Republican primary candidates, from left, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott and Mike Pence.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesMr. Ramaswamy, 38, a first-time presidential candidate and conservative author, is at once deeply in touch with his Indian roots and adamant that the growing focus on diversity and racial inequality in America has come at the cost of national unity. His message is geared toward a Republican electorate that is heavily white and Christian, and he has tailored his personal story for his audience. When asked by voters about his Hindu faith, for instance, he is often quick to emphasize that it allows for him to hold “Judeo Christian” values.Brimming with energy and brash talk, Mr. Ramaswamy seized enough attention at the party’s first debate in August to get a bump in polls — some briefly showed him leaping into second place, albeit well behind former President Donald Trump. He has since fallen back behind Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump.Still, Mr. Ramaswamy has attracted enough support to qualify for the third Republican debate on Wednesday in Miami. Many Indian Americans, even those who are critical of Mr. Ramaswamy’s political beliefs, have said in interviews they have a special pride seeing him on the national stage — more so than they have had for other Republican presidential candidates of Indian descent, like Bobby Jindal and Ms. Haley, who converted to Christianity in their youth and adopted Anglicized names.Mr. Ramaswamy’s story is emblematic of many Asian American millennials whose parents came to the country after immigration laws were liberalized in 1965 and migration from outside Europe grew dramatically. Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the country, and Indian Americans now comprise the largest stand-alone group in the United States among them.As a child, Mr. Ramaswamy was enmeshed in a small but tight-knit Indian community in a Greater Cincinnati region that was mostly white. He belonged to a Hindu temple but attended a private Catholic high school, where he has said he was the only Hindu student in his class. As a teenager, he co-founded an India Association at school and also worked for a local Indian radio station, according to a 2002 article in The Cincinnati Enquirer.Mr. Ramaswamy speaking with voters in Iowa City, Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesAs an undergraduate at Harvard University, Mr. Ramaswamy seemed to comfortably move between different worlds, his classmates said in interviews. He studied biology, served as chair of the Harvard Political Union and rapped under a libertarian alter ego known as ‘Da Vek.’ (At the time, he told The Harvard Crimson that Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” was his life’s theme song, which he unexpectedly reprised this summer at the Iowa State Fair.)At Harvard, he took a comedic turn in the annual cultural show organized by the South Asian Association and was active in Dharma, the Hindu student association. And he served as a student liaison for Mr. Jindal, at the time a rising political star who was a visiting fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics in 2004 before he became governor of Louisiana and the first American of Indian descent to run for president.“If you had asked me when we were in college if being an Indian American was a big part of his identity, I would have said yes,” said Saikat Chakrabarti, Mr. Ramaswamy’s classmate at Harvard and a former chief of staff to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York.Mr. Ramaswamy went on to make a fortune as a biotech entrepreneur. After the police murder of George Floyd in 2020 propelled the racial justice movement, Mr. Ramaswamy made a name for himself in conservative circles by railing against identity politics and a corporate commitment to diversity and inclusion, which he referred to as “wokeism.” Since then, Mr. Ramaswamy has said he believes liberals have been fixated on skin color and race in a way that has contributed to divisiveness in the country.Like many Republican candidates of color, he has spoken at times about his own experiences facing discrimination, but he has said the country does not have systemic racism.“I’m sure the boogeyman white supremacist exists somewhere in America,” Mr. Ramaswamy told voters at a late August event in Pella, Iowa. “I’ve just never met him, never seen one, I’ve never met one in my life.”Mr. Ramaswamy, walking in a Labor Day parade in Milford, N.H. with his wife, Apoorva, has railed against identity politics and “wokeism.”Sophie Park for The New York TimesAt an event in late August with voters at Legends American Grill in Marshalltown, David Tracy, 37, an entrepreneur, asked Mr. Ramaswamy to elaborate on what it meant to him to be Hindu with “Judeo Christian” values. Mr. Ramaswamy responded by explaining that he had gone to a Christian school and shared the same values, and he wove in a biblical story as if to prove the point.“I may not be qualified to be your pastor,” Mr. Ramaswamy told the overflow crowd of mostly white, older voters. “But I believe that I am able to be your commander in chief.”Mr. Tracy, who lives in Des Moines, said in an interview last week that he understood why Mr. Ramaswamy has at times downplayed his Indian and Hindu roots in trying to appeal to Republican voters. But he also said that Mr. Ramaswamy has lost some authenticity in doing so. “He speaks more like a conservative white male than he does a Hindu son of immigrants,” Mr. Tracy said.Mr. Tracy said that he did not think Mr. Ramaswamy was against diversity but that the candidate felt too many Americans were focusing on their individual identity.“I think the point that Vivek is making is there’s personal identity and there’s national identity, and I think right now young people are collectively at a loss for what that national identity means,” he said.Susan Kunkel, 65, an undecided Republican, said last week at a campaign event for Ms. Haley in Nashua, N.H., that she did not like Mr. Ramaswamy’s constant pandering to the Trump base. But she appreciated that he was a fresh face in the party and agreed with his opposition to affirmative action.“It’s nice to have all different ages and sexes and genders, and you know, minorities, but it should be based on merit,” Ms. Kunkel, a practice administrator for a medical office, said of recent corporate diversity efforts.Mr. Ramaswamy greeting potential voters at the Salem G.O.P. Labor Day Picnic in Salem, N.H., in September.Sophie Park for The New York TimesOn the stump, Mr. Ramaswamy has often cited his family’s bootstrap story as an example of how anyone can achieve the American dream and should not blame racism for holding them back. “My parents came to this country 40 years ago with no money,” he has said. “In a single generation, I have gone on to found multibillion-dollar companies.”But many immigrants from India after 1965 arrived with advantages that other people of color have lacked, noted Devesh Kapur, a professor of South Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of the book “The Other One Percent: Indians in America.” Mr. Ramaswamy’s parents came with advanced degrees; his father was an engineer at General Electric and his mother was a geriatric psychiatrist.“It’s a severe underestimation and underplaying of his privileged background,” Mr. Kapur said of Mr. Ramaswamy’s back story.“At some point along the way in the last 20 years I think we did fall into the trap of celebrating that which can be beautiful but which is only beautiful if there’s something greater that unites all of us,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesIn October, through posts on social media, Mr. Ramaswamy agreed to a debate with Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, that was held last Wednesday at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics in Manchester, N.H. Mr. Khanna’s team had framed the event as a civil conversation between two children of immigrants who were rising Indian American political voices.In an interview, Mr. Khanna, who grew up in suburban Philadelphia, said that recognizing the history of racism and discrimination in America was crucial to building a cohesive, multiracial democracy. He said that not everyone in America was able to have “the opportunities that people like Vivek and I had,” referring to their middle-class upbringing.Until “everyone has that opportunity, we can’t say that race and class don’t matter,” he added.Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Ramaswamy campaign, said Mr. Ramaswamy’s decision to debate Mr. Khanna had little to do with their shared Indian identity.It was more about Mr. Ramaswamy being Mr. Ramaswamy.“Vivek does pretty much go on anything,” she said.Jonathan Weisman More

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      As Haley and Ramaswamy Rise, Some Indian Americans Have Mixed Feelings

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      Democrats and Republicans have been courting the small but fast-growing and vital demographic in purple suburbs and swing states.Suresh Reddy, a centrist Democrat and city councilman, is watching the Republican presidential primary with a mix of pride and disappointment.When Mr. Reddy and his wife, Chandra Gangareddy, immigrants from southern India, settled in the Des Moines suburbs in September 2004, they could count the number of Indian American families on one hand. Only one Indian American had ever served in Congress at the time, and none had dared to mount a bid for the White House.Now, for the first time in the nation’s history, two Indian Americans — Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy — are serious presidential contenders who regularly invoke their parents’ immigrant roots. But their deeply conservative views, on display as they seek the Republican nomination, make it difficult for Mr. Reddy to fully celebrate the moment, he said.“I’m really proud,” he said. “I just wish they had a better message.”That disconnect, reflected in interviews with two dozen Indian American voters, donors and elected officials from across the political spectrum — in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and across the country — may complicate the G.O.P.’s efforts to appeal to the small but influential Indian American electorate.Indian Americans now make up about 2.1 million, or roughly 16 percent, of the estimated 13.4 million Asian Americans who are eligible to vote, the third largest population of Asian origin behind Chinese and Filipino Americans, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the 2021 American Community Survey. Indian Americans also have tended to lean more Democratic than any other Asian American subgroups, according to Pew.Though a small slice of the overall electorate, the demographic has become one of the fastest-growing constituencies, and is large enough to make a difference at the margins in swing states and in purple suburbs, including in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada.Debate over the prominence of Ms. Haley and Mr. Ramaswamy is playing out in Indian American homes and places of worship in Des Moines and beyond. In interviews, many described their rise as a political triumph at a time when Indian Americans have become more visible in fields beyond medicine, tech and engineering.Venu Rao, a Democrat and retired engineer and program manager in Hollis, N.H., said Ms. Haley and Mr. Ramaswamy captured the ideological diversity among South Asian Americans, even if he doesn’t agree with their positions.“I am glad that we have a choice,” Mr. Rao said.But many of those interviewed also expressed frustration and dismay over the candidates’ hard-line positions on issues like race, identity and immigration. Some worried Mr. Ramaswamy’s pledges to dismantle agencies like the Education Department would destroy the same institutions that had been crucial to Indian American success and upward mobility.Others said they appreciated Ms. Haley’s attempts to strike a more center-right tone on some topics like abortion and climate change but indicated concern about what they described as her tepid pushback against former President Donald J. Trump and his 2020 election lies.“It can be really easy to see this as a win and be like, ‘Oh my god — look there, those are two brown faces on national TV. That’s amazing,’” said Nikhil Vootkur, 20, a student at Tufts University in Boston. But, “the diaspora, it has matured, and when a diaspora matures, you have a lot of ideological cleavages.”Over the past decade, Indian Americans have been rapidly climbing the political ranks. Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat and the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, is the first woman, first Black person and the first Asian American to hold her office.Khimanand Upreti, the priest at a Hindu temple in Madrid, Iowa, described Mr. Ramaswamy as “very fresh and clean” and without former President Donald Trump’s controversies.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesIn 2015, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a onetime rising Republican star, became the first Indian American to run for president. But Mr. Jindal, who changed his name, Piyush, to Bobby and converted to Christianity when he was young, made a push for assimilation that turned off many Indian American voters. Ms. Haley and Mr. Ramaswamy have toggled between proud embraces of their roots and scorching criticism of the “identity politics” that has been known to alienate the Republican Party’s largely white and evangelical Christian base.Mr. Ramaswamy, 38, a political newcomer and millionaire entrepreneur from Cincinnati, Ohio, uses his Hindu faith to connect with Christian voters and expresses gratitude that his parents immigrated from the southwestern coast of India to the “greatest nation on Earth.”Ms. Haley, 51, a former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador from Bamberg, S.C., has written and spoken extensively about her experience as the daughter of Sikh immigrants from northern India, including the pain of watching her father, who wears a turban, endure racism and discrimination.Mr. Ramaswamy, who is running in the mold of Mr. Trump, has made a concerted effort to appeal to Indian Americans in the primary. He has made several appearances at the Hindu Temple and Cultural Center of Iowa, where many patrons have met his parents, and he has drawn the independent support of its Hindu priest, Khimanand Upreti, who in an interview described Mr. Ramaswamy as “very fresh and clean” and without Mr. Trump’s controversies.On the trail, Ms. Haley has talked less about her identity and often describes her immigrant family in general terms. But in a response to a voter question at a town hall in Hampton, N.H., on Thursday night, she explained how her father’s experience with prejudice helped her connect with a hurting community and persuade state lawmakers to take down the Confederate battle flag at the South Carolina State House, after a white supremacist shot and killed nine Black parishioners in Charleston. She also used her parents’ immigrant background to tear into President Biden’s decision to provide temporary protected status and work permits for Venezuelan migrants.“My mom would always say if you don’t follow the laws to get into this country, you won’t follow the laws when you are in this country,” she said.At their home in Waukee, west of Des Moines, Nishant Kumar and Smita Nishant, who immigrated from New Delhi and Mumbai some two decades ago, and their daughter, Anika Yadav, 17, said the 2024 Iowa caucuses would be the first election they would all be able to participate in. The Nishants have only recently obtained citizenship, and Ms. Yadav will be old enough to vote in the next presidential election.The Nishant family in Waukee, Iowa: Smita Nishant and her husband, Nishant Kumar, with Anika Yadav and Atiksh Yadava. They are looking forward to voting next year.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesThe family first became politically engaged when Barack Obama ran for president in 2008 — and would have backed Democrats in the past few elections if they could have voted. But as they weigh the 2024 presidential contenders, they have found Mr. Ramaswamy smart and refreshing, they said.They have seen less of Ms. Haley, but Ms. Yadav says she likes Ms. Haley’s experience on foreign policy and the way she holds herself on the national stage, even if she has not made her Indian American identity central to her campaign.“I think a lot of women, specifically young women, are leaning toward Nikki Haley — even young women who are Democrats,” she said.Still, some Indian American Democratic-leaning voters and prominent Indian American Democrats expressed concern or sadness over Mr. Ramaswamy’s and Ms. Haley’s approaches to issues of race and identity, saying they fed into “model minority” stereotypes and carried dog whistles that minimized or diminished the specific systematic racism faced by Black Americans.Both, when discussing their life story, tend to emphasize their successes as evidence of racial and ethnic progress in the United States. Both promote hard-line immigration measures and denounce race-conscious policies such as affirmative action in school admissions.Mr. Ramaswamy in particular has generated criticism for suggesting white supremacy was an exaggerated “boogeyman” and for pledging to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. Ms. Haley has said she opposes birthright citizenship for people who have illegally entered the country.Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, criticized their approach on immigration and faulted them for ignoring the history of Asian exclusion in the nation’s immigration laws. The work of Indian and Black leaders during the civil rights movement helped open the pathways to migration and citizenship for Indian families to enter the United States, he said.“Their story about the Indian American experience will not fully connect because it has so many omissions,” Mr. Khanna said.But Bhavna Vasudeva, a longtime friend of Ms. Haley’s in Columbia, S.C., argued that Ms. Haley’s Republican values held real appeal for second-generation Indian Americans, adding that her approach to her family’s racial struggles exhibited a strong sense of “Chardi Kala,” an expression that for Punjabi and Sikh Indians and Indian Americans has become synonymous with “resilience” and a “positive attitude” in the face of fear or pain.“You can’t tell anyone who is a brown woman about racism and discrimination,” Ms. Vasudeva, a donor to Ms. Haley’s campaign, said. “We have faced it all with our heads high and crown straight.” More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy Is Happy to Be Talked About, Even if His Name Is Said Wrong

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      At the debate and on the campaign trail, rivals, pundits and voters have stumbled on his name. (Rhymes with “cake,” he says.)To former Vice President Mike Pence, he’s “Vih-veck.” To a “Fox and Friends” panelist on Thursday morning, he was “Vee-veck.” And to some Iowa voters, it’s “Vy-vick” — if they said his name at all.Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur running for president who has climbed the polls in recent weeks, has branded himself as a political newcomer who, despite participating in his first Republican debate Wednesday night, seemed at ease bringing the event to near-chaos several times as he sparred with the likes of Mr. Pence and Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor.A different hurdle he may face, however, is getting others to say his name correctly.The son of Indian Americans, Mr. Ramaswamy has both leaned into and away from his racial background. He has often expressed gratitude that his parents immigrated to the “greatest nation on Earth,” and on Wednesday, he echoed a line from former President Barack Obama’s speech onstage when he introduced himself as a “skinny guy with a funny last name.” (Mr. Ramaswamy has said that “Vivek” rhymes with “cake” and pronounces his last name “Rah-muh-swah-mee.”)When Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, asked after the debate why Mr. Ramaswamy hadn’t corrected the mispronunciation sooner, the candidate laughed and said, “I appreciate best efforts.”Karthick Ramakrishnan, the director of AAPI Data, said that because Mr. Ramaswamy is running as an “insurgent candidate with radical ideas,” it “wouldn’t make sense for him to start policing, or suggesting how others should be pronouncing his name.” (One of the “10 commandments” in Mr. Ramaswamy’s platform asserts that “reverse racism is racism.”)“It’s a recognition that different people may be at different stages along the way in terms of even knowing who he is and how to pronounce his name,” Mr. Ramakrishnan said. “He is trying to activate a generational kind of debate and divide in America that needs to be addressed and to move away from racial identity politics.”Nicole Holliday, a linguistics professor at Pomona College, attributed the struggle for some to pronounce names correctly to a number of factors, including a sentiment that “English speakers in general expect to be accommodated everywhere in the world” and a lack of foreign language training in the United States from an early age.Past presidential candidates from diverse racial backgrounds have faced racist insults related to their names. In 2020, David Perdue, then a senator from Georgia, faced a backlash after he appeared to make fun of Kamala Harris’s name at a rally just before the November election: “Ka-ma-la, Ka-ma-la, Kamala-mala-mala, I don’t know, whatever.” And some critics of Mr. Obama often invoked his middle name — Hussein — to falsely claim that he was Muslim.Of the few prominent South Asians in G.O.P. politics, many have used names friendly to a less-diverse voter base. Bobby Jindal, the former Republican governor of Louisiana, changed his name from Piyush to Bobby when he was young. And Nikki Haley, another Indian American in the 2024 presidential race, has long used Nikki, her middle name, instead of her first name, Nimarata.While the overwhelming majority of Indian Americans are Democrats, a 2020 survey of Indian American voters found that almost 60 percent said they would be open to supporting an Indian American candidate “regardless of their party affiliation.”Mr. Ramaswamy’s name mispronunciations are all too familiar for South Asian Americans, said Sara Sadhwani, a political science professor at Pomona College. But, she noted, the acknowledgment of such mispronunciations by Mr. Hannity and others may point to a “slow recognition” among Republicans that “not only do we need to diversify, but we’ll have to be respectful to some extent of the folks who we’re able to bring to the table.”Beyond his name, Mr. Ramaswamy may “hit a ceiling” as a result of his Hindu faith, predicted Mr. Ramakrishnan, the AAPI Data founder.On Wednesday, the conservative commentator Ann Coulter made a comment largely condemned as racist, on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, that “Nikki and Vivek are involved in some Hindu business, it seems. Not our fight.” (Ms. Haley was raised Sikh but later converted to Christianity.)“Ann can tweet whatever she wants to,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Ramaswamy campaign, said of the comment. “Vivek has traveled this country and is very grateful for the warm support he has received from Christian voters across the country.” More

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      Modi’s Visits Abroad Help to Build His Image in India

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      For an audience in India, the prime minister is linking his diplomatic reception abroad, and himself, to the country’s growing importance on the world stage.His grip on the levers of national power secure, his hold on India’s domestic imagination cemented, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has increasingly turned to advancing himself on a new horizon: the global stage.With a packed diplomatic calendar that includes India’s hosting of the Group of 20 summit later this year, Mr. Modi is building an image going into his re-election campaign as a leader who can win respect and investment for his vast nation. The state visit accorded to Mr. Modi in Washington, which ends on Friday, is perhaps the biggest prize yet in that quest.“It’s not just about a fairer bargain abroad,” said Ashok Malik, a former government adviser who is the India chair at the Asia Group, a consulting firm. “It’s also that ‘my investments in key foreign policy relations are actually helping to build the Indian economy and therefore create opportunities for Indians at home and strengthen India overall.’”At home, Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist party has continued to sideline institutions that were once important checks on the government. It has persisted in its vilification of the country’s 200 million Muslims, even as Mr. Modi used an exceedingly rare news conference in Washington to claim that there was no discrimination against anyone in India.But abroad, world leaders eager to court an ascendant India have offered little pushback. And often, they have given Mr. Modi invaluable fodder for an information campaign that shapes perceptions of him among many Indian voters who are ecstatic to see their country’s importance affirmed.Eid-al Fitr prayers in Chennai, India, in April. Mr. Modi used a news conference in Washington to claim that there was no discrimination against anyone in India, including the country’s huge Muslim minority.Idrees Mohammed/EPA, via ShutterstockWhen Mr. Modi traveled to Australia last month, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese referred to him as “the boss” in front of an arena in Sydney packed with about 20,000 people. Mr. Modi then returned to New Delhi to a large crowd gathered for his welcome at 6 in the morning, telling supporters that the grand welcome for him abroad was about India, not him.On Friday, as Mr. Modi was wrapping up his meetings in the United States before arriving in Egypt for another grand greeting, his political party and the large sections of the broadcast media friendly to him reveled in the reception he had gotten from President Biden and other American leaders.The red carpet in Washington played perfectly into one of Mr. Modi’s talents: He can build a media campaign out of virtually anything, projecting himself as the only leader who can expand India’s economy and usher a nation coming into its own to new heights.While opposition leaders back home were holding their largest gathering yet, hoping to find a formula for uniting to challenge the prime minister in elections early next year, Mr. Modi was reaching for the world.Social media was flooded with montage videos, set to regal background music, of Mr. Modi making a grand entrance into the House of Representatives for his address to a joint session of Congress. The speech, after which several lawmakers sought Mr. Modi’s autograph, made him one of only a very small number of world leaders to have addressed that body twice.Another video online kept count of the number of times Mr. Modi received applause or standing ovations during his speech. A third cut to dramatic images of Mr. Modi contrasting him with the dynastic leaders who came before him, advancing a constant narrative that he represents a subversion of the old elite that long ruled India.“History tells us that powerful people come from powerful places. History was wrong,” a deep voice intones in the video. “Powerful people make places powerful.”Congress offers a standing ovation for Mr. Modi’s speech on Capitol Hill on Thursday.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesMr. Modi’s next major opportunity to appear as a global statesman will come in September when India welcomes the Group of 20 leaders, a summit meeting he has framed to his support base as his bringing the world to India.His government has turned promotion for the meeting into a roadshow, hosting hundreds of G20 events, so many that foreign diplomats in New Delhi quietly complain about travel fatigue. Cities and towns across India are decked out with billboards bearing the G20 logo — which cleverly incorporates the lotus, a symbol both of India and his Bharatiya Janata Party — and pictures of Mr. Modi.In promoting the G20 presidency, Mr. Modi has taken to frequently describing India, the world’s most populous nation, as the “mother of democracy.” Abroad, however, he has pursued a transactional brand of diplomacy built not on practicing democratic values, but on what best serves Indian economic and security interests, and what elevates India in the world.The image of “a rising India, a new India being seen more seriously abroad” helps Mr. Modi politically, Mr. Malik said. But Mr. Modi is also investing heavily in U.S. relations with an eye toward how they could help an Indian economy that is struggling to create enough jobs for its huge young population and that must put up a fight against an aggressive China next door.“Addressing China is not just about soldiers and weapons at the border, it’s also about building economic alternatives to what China offers,” Mr. Malik said.Supporters of Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party cheer during a rally in Bengaluru, India, last month.Manjunath Kiran/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe list of agreements between the United States and India, announced at the end of a bilateral meeting at the White House, was long, covering defense, space and a wide range of technological cooperation.Defense cooperation, in particular — including deals on Indian manufacturing of General Electric jet engines and purchasing Predator military drones — received a major boost after what had been a history of reluctance and bureaucratic hurdles on both sides. Dr. Tara Kartha, a former senior official in India’s security council who dealt with U.S. on defense, said the agreement on aircraft engines was “an affirmation of trust” that would help the military partnership beyond the smaller steps of the past two decades.“Each country is trying to get past its bureaucratic constrains,” she said. “Until the bureaucracy can catch up, there will be frustrations.”Among ordinary Indians on the streets of New Delhi, opinions of Mr. Modi’s diplomatic efforts were divided.Vijay Yadav, a 26-year-old taxi driver, said Mr. Modi’s outreach abroad could not cover for how India’s economy was struggling to create enough jobs.“I saw on Instagram a news feed which was constantly touting Mr. Modi’s trip to America as if no other Indian leader had been there before,” he said. “Firstly, he must get down to solving the problems of his own countrymen before he goes abroad to project himself as a hero.”Nidhi Garg, 41, who has inherited a vegetable and fruit shop from her father, said her heart swelled each time she saw Mr. Modi representing India abroad.“Today, wherever you see, the name of our nation is being taken,” she said. “The first thing that comes to anyone’s mind when they mention the word India, they immediately connect it to Prime Minister Modi.”Suhasini Raj More

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      Assessing Modi’s Leadership of India

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      More from our inbox:Trying to Make Sense of Donald Trump: ‘An Exercise in Futility’Depoliticize Helping the HomelessThose Annoying Noise Machines Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor: As an Indian American living in the United States for a long time, I have been a strong supporter of the media for their active stance against people like Donald Trump who engaged in egregious behavior while in office. But I’m totally aghast at the tirade against Prime Minister Narendra Modi in “During Modi’s Visit, Biden Plans to Focus on Common Interests” (news analysis, June 22).For the past year or so, you have published articles critical of Mr. Modi, accusing him of being authoritarian and anti-democratic. You seem to lump him in the same group as Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Viktor Orban.This article talks about a crackdown on dissent under Mr. Modi and India backsliding in democracy. Similar articles have pointed out large-scale incarceration of political opponents ever since Mr. Modi’s party has been voted to power.Are we living in an alternate world? I’ve not seen any mass jailing or subversion of democracy in India as is happening in other countries like Turkey.I can understand that the West is upset about India’s neutral stance in the Ukraine-Russia war and India’s continuing to buy oil from Russia despite Western sanctions. As S. Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister, has said, India will do what is good for India.Every country has an obligation to take care of itself first.Mudi RameshKensington, Md.To the Editor:Re “Modi’s India Isn’t What It Seems,” by Maya Jasanoff (Opinion guest essay, June 22):Like Professor Jasanoff, I am Indian American. For many years after Indian independence in 1947, except for a brief period when J.F.K. was president, Indo-U.S. relations were marked by misunderstanding and acrimony.Perhaps the lowest point was reached in 1971 when the U.S. Seventh Fleet sailed into the Bay of Bengal, threatening India during its war with Pakistan.For Indian Americans, the joint Indo-U.S. effort to finally acknowledge shared interests in a global order based on the rule of law is a welcome relief, and we are grateful to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for encouraging this initiative. However, all this has to be set against the erosion of civil rights that is ongoing in India today.The resilience shown by U.S. career officials against the authoritarian dictates of former President Donald Trump has been absent in India. The U.S. has to exert greater pressure to strengthen civil governance in India or all our mutual interests in good governance will come to nothing.Bharat S. SarathEast Brunswick, N.J.To the Editor:Prof. Maya Jasanoff makes some valid points about harassment of minorities, journalists, media, etc., and the sliding of democratic norms in India. But Narendra Modi becoming an autocratic ruler is far-fetched. The Indian public will not stand for it. Case in point: His party recently lost an election in the Indian state of Karnataka.In the mid-1970s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed an emergency rule to subdue opposition. At the time I believed that the Indian populace would not stand for it. Sure enough, Gandhi’s party lost in 1977 when she called for an election. Having learned her lesson, she was back in power three years later.Mr. Modi is popular because he has provided a stable government and made substantial progress during the last 10 years. The general public cares about that and will ignore faults of his and his party’s rule. Opposition parties are splintered.With a country as large as India, there are bound to be some imperfections from our Western point of view. But I am confident that India will handle it as best as it can and prosper.Eswar G. PhadiaWayne, N.J.Trying to Make Sense of Donald Trump: ‘An Exercise in Futility’ Justice DepartmentTo the Editor: Re “To Jail or Not to Jail,” by Maureen Dowd (column, June 18):Everyone seems to be trying to make sense of Donald Trump’s disordered mind and unpredictable behavior. As if he did this because of this, and then this happened and he did/said this other thing.Trying to make sense of Mr. Trump is an exercise in futility. He is impulsive, irrational and thoughtless, lacks introspection and has no conscience. He acts on a whim, makes up things as he goes along, and everything is done in his own interest without concern or consideration for anyone else in the world. That’s it.If I were explaining him to a child, I’d say, “He’s a bad man.” And he is. Now, what are we going to do about it?Kathryn JanusChicagoTo the Editor:Maureen Dowd compares Donald Trump to Hamlet. But he’s more Macbeth or Richard III, men who violate higher moral laws to grasp power. And in many ways Mr. Trump ticks the boxes of the tragic protagonist: a man of high estate whose reversal of fortune flows from fatal flaws, usually overweening pride and blindness to his own weaknesses.What remains to be seen is if Mr. Trump’s downfall will bring about an anagnorisis, the tragic hero’s recognition that he brought it all upon himself. Will a playwright or opera composer or movie director portray him tragically? Or will he only inspire satire. “Springtime for Trump”?Arnold WengrowAsheville, N.C.The writer is professor emeritus of drama at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.Depoliticize Helping the Homeless Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “Policy to Fight Homelessness Becomes a Target of the Right” (front page, June 21):Everyone loses when we politicize our response to homelessness, especially those we say we are trying to help. It is shameful that in America nearly 600,000 people experience homelessness on any given night.I have worked as a shelter director and service provider for 25 years. To suggest that our policies are enough and our efforts are meeting the need is irresponsible, yet to throw them out is misguided too. We need to build upon what we have, open our minds, expand our options and listen to people with lived experience, rather than fighting about which solution is right.There simply is no one-size-fits-all solution to address homelessness. People experiencing homelessness are diverse, and our solutions need to match that diversity. Communities need more tools including shelter, treatment, employment and housing.I have worked with the right and the left, and common ground is possible if we move beyond labels toward an integrated response.Isabel McDevittPhiladelphiaThe writer is the former C.E.O. of Bridge House, a homeless services agency in Colorado, and co-founder of Work Works America, which helps communities address homelessness.Those Annoying Noise MachinesNoise Could Take Years Off Your Life. Here’s How.We used a professional sound meter to measure the din of daily life and talked to scientists about the health risks it can pose.To the Editor: Re “Chronic Noise Proves Deadly” (Science Times, June 20):The bane of suburbia is the gas-powered, two-stroke leaf blower. Not only do those infernal things emit an ear-piercing sound, but they also generate an incredible amount of exhaust. Ban them!!Mark MaddaloniCloster, N.J.To the Editor:Your analysis is much appreciated. In Brooklyn, the noise from helicopters heading to and from the Hamptons has gone from an occasional annoyance to a constant. To ferry, what, two or four people at a time, tens of thousands are subject to noise so loud that it sets off car alarms on the ground and scares children.On Friday and Sunday evenings their low-altitude flyovers happen dozens of times in the space of a few hours. Flying at such low altitude may save fuel and time for the carriers, but doing so over densely populated areas is the height of selfishness.John WilkensBrooklyn More

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      The United States and India Can Be Better Partners

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      Idealism and pragmatism have long made rival claims on American foreign policy, forcing hard choices and sometimes leading to disappointment. There was a moment in the 1990s when the collapse of the Soviet Union looked to clear the way for a universal political and economic order, but that chimera soon gave way to the more complex world we inhabit today, in which the ideals of liberal democracy — often in otherwise well-functioning democracies — sometimes seem to be in conflict with the popularity of strongmen leaders, the desire for security or the forces of xenophobia or grievance.For American presidents and policymakers, this poses a challenge; it is no longer enough to champion the ideals of liberal democracy and count on the rest of the world to follow. Lecturing any country, be it global powers like Russia or China or regional powers like Turkey and Saudi Arabia, can embolden autocratic tendencies; engagement can, at least sometimes, lead to further dialogue and space for diplomacy. Advancing American ideals requires being pragmatic and even accommodating when our democratic partners fall short of the mark — and humility about where the United States falls short, too.Take India, and the quandary it poses for Washington, which is on display as Prime Minister Narendra Modi makes a state visit this week.India is a democracy in which the world’s biggest electorate openly and freely exercises the fundamental right to choose its leader. Its population is the largest in the world, and its economy is now the fifth largest in the world; its vast diaspora wields huge influence, especially in American business. With its history of close relations with Moscow, long and sometimes contested border with China and strategic location in a highly volatile neighborhood, India is destined to be a critical player in geopolitics for decades to come. Mr. Modi, the prime minister since 2014, commands sky-high popularity ratings and a secure majority in his Parliament, and is in the enviable position of leading a country with a relatively young, growing population.While India has a long history of wariness toward America — most of its military equipment comes from the Soviet Union and Russia, and it would prefer to steer clear of direct involvement in the U.S.-China rivalry — senior American officials believe that India’s views of the United States have fundamentally improved in recent years.This is partly through the work of the dynamic Indian diaspora, partly through greater strategic partnership, and partly because of the growing interest by American companies in India as an alternative to China for expansion in Asia. India has joined the United States, Japan and Australia in the “Quad,” an informal grouping that seeks to counter China’s increasingly assertive behavior in the Indo-Pacific region. And hundreds of American business and industry leaders will gather to meet with Mr. Modi this week. The visit is expected to include major deals to build American jet engines in India and to sell American drones.So it is not hard to fathom why India’s leader is getting rock-star treatment in Washington, from a state dinner at the White House to an address on Capitol Hill. President Biden is right to acknowledge the potential of America’s partnership with India using all the symbolism and diplomatic tools at his disposal.But Mr. Biden cannot ignore the other, equally significant, changes in India during the last nine years: Under Mr. Modi and his right-wing, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, India has witnessed a serious erosion of the civil and political rights and democratic freedoms guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. Mr. Modi and his allies have been accused of policies that target and discriminate against religious minorities, especially India’s 200 million Muslims, and of using the power of the state to punish rivals and silence critics. Raids on political opponents and dissenting voices have become frequent; the mainstream news media has been diminished; the independence of courts and other democratic institutions has been eroded — all to a chorus of avowals from the B.J.P. that it is acting strictly within the law.In March, a court in Mr. Modi’s home state sentenced the opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, to a two-year prison term for defaming the prime minister; though Mr. Gandhi has not been jailed, the sentence led to his expulsion from Parliament, and will most likely prevent him from running again. Before that, in January, the Modi government used emergency laws to limit access to a BBC documentary that reexamined damning allegations that Mr. Modi played a role in murderous sectarian violence in Gujarat State 20 years ago, when he was chief minister there. As this editorial board warned, “When populist leaders invoke emergency laws to block dissent, democracy is in peril.”This remains true, and it behooves Mr. Biden and every other elected official and business leader who meet with the Indian delegation this week to make sure that a discussion of shared democratic values is on the agenda.That may be a tall order. Mr. Modi has demonstrated a prickly intolerance for criticism and may still harbor resentment from the nearly 10 years he was effectively barred from traveling to the United States for allegations of “severe violations of religious freedom” over the Gujarat violence. (He has repeatedly denied involvement, and the visa ban was lifted by the Obama administration when Mr. Modi became prime minister.) A public scolding from the White House, especially when the United States is wrestling with its own threats to democracy, would serve little purpose except to anger the Indian public.Nevertheless, Mr. Biden and other American officials should be willing to have a forthright, if sometimes uncomfortable, discussion with their Indian counterparts. America’s own struggles are humbling proof that even the most established democracies are not immune to problems. As Human Rights Watch notes in a letter to Mr. Biden: “U.S. officials can point to how the U.S. political system has itself struggled with toxic rhetoric, while working to maintain an open and free media. These topics can be discussed openly and diplomatically in both directions.”The quandary is not limited to India. How the United States manages its relationships with “elected autocracies,” from Poland’s Law and Justice government to Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition in Israel to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government in Turkey, is one of the most important strategic questions of American foreign policy. The leaders of these countries and others will be watching closely to see how the Biden administration deals with this indispensable but increasingly autocratic Asian democracy.The administration also faces the problem that the United States’ democratic credentials have been tarnished by Donald Trump and the possibility that he may be back in the White House before long. Mr. Trump’s politics have been openly hailed as inspiration by many an elected autocrat — including Mr. Modi, whose magnetism Mr. Trump likened to Elvis Presley’s at a rally in Houston on an official visit in 2019.President Biden knows, from his many years in public service, that there will always be points of friction even in the closest partnerships between nations, let alone in relationships with leaders who have a very different view of the world. And senior U.S. government officials say that the administration is keenly aware of the flaws of the Modi government. Yet they believe that India’s vital role on the global stage supersedes concerns about one leader. Far better, they say, to raise concerns in private; and they insist they have raised them in many difficult conversations, and said they would raise them in this week’s meetings with Mr. Modi.It is essential that they are raised. India has shaped a great and complex democracy out of a rich panoply of people, languages and religious traditions, and it is reaching for a more prominent role in global affairs.But it is also critical to make clear that intolerance and repression run counter to everything that Americans admire in India, and threaten the partnership with the United States that its prime minister is actively seeking to strengthen and deepen. America wants and needs to embrace India; but Mr. Modi should be left with no illusion about how dangerous his autocratic leanings are, to the people of India and for the health of democracy in the world.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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      Indian Americans Rapidly Climbing Political Ranks

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      In 2013, the House of Representatives had a single Indian American member. Fewer than 10 Indian Americans were serving in state legislatures. None had been elected to the Senate. None had run for president. Despite being one of the largest immigrant groups in the United States, Americans of Indian descent were barely represented in politics.Ten years later, the Congress sworn in last month includes five Indian Americans. Nearly 50 are in state legislatures. The vice president is Indian American. Nikki Haley’s campaign announcement this month makes 2024 the third consecutive cycle in which an Indian American has run for president, and Vivek Ramaswamy’s newly announced candidacy makes it the first cycle with two.In parts of the government, “we’ve gone literally from having no one to getting close to parity,” said Neil Makhija, the executive director of Impact, an Indian American advocacy group.Most Indian American voters are Democrats, and it is an open question how much of their support Ms. Haley might muster. In the past, when Indian Americans have run as Republicans, they have rarely talked much about their family histories, but Ms. Haley is emphasizing her background.Activists, analysts and current and former elected officials, including four of the five Indian Americans in Congress, described an array of forces that have bolstered the political influence of Indian Americans.Vice President Kamala Harris was first elected to the Senate in 2016, a watershed year for Indian Americans in federal office.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesIndians did not begin moving to the United States in large numbers until after a landmark 1965 immigration law. But a range of factors, such as the relative wealth of Indian immigrants and high education levels, have propelled a rapid political ascent for the second and third generations.Advocacy groups — including Impact and the AAPI Victory Fund — have mobilized to recruit and support them, and to direct politicians’ attention to the electoral heft of Indian Americans, whose populations in states including Georgia, Pennsylvania and Texas are large enough to help sway local, state and federal races.“It’s really all working in tandem,” said Raj Goyle, a former state lawmaker in Kansas who co-founded Impact. “There’s a natural trend, society is more accepting, and there is deliberate political strategy to make it happen.”When Mr. Goyle ran for the Kansas House in 2006 as a Democrat against a Republican incumbent, he was told that the incumbent’s reaction to learning she had a challenger had been, “Who is Rod Doyle?”Politics Across the United StatesFrom the halls of government to the campaign trail, here’s a look at the political landscape in America.In New York: The state almost single-handedly cost Democrats their House majority in the midterms. Now, a leading Democratic group is hoping New York can deliver the party back to power.Blue-Collar Struggles: A new report from Democratic strategists found that the economy was a bigger problem than cultural issues for the party in the industrial Midwest. It also found hopeful signs for Democrats.Black Mayors: The Black mayors of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston have banded together as they confront violent crime, homelessness and other similar challenges.Wisconsin Supreme Court: Democratic turnout was high in the primary for the swing seat on the court, ahead of a general election that will decide the future of abortion rights and gerrymandered maps in the state.“It was inconceivable that someone named Raj Goyle — let alone Rajeev Goyle — would run for office in Wichita,” he said. Today, “the average voter’s a lot more familiar with an Indian American face on TV, in their examining room, in their classroom, at their university, leading their company.”In retrospect, the watershed appears to have been 2016, just after then-Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana became the first Indian American to run for president.Representative Pramila Jayapal speaking last year at a rally for Senator Raphael Warnock alongside two fellow representatives, Grace Meng and Raja Krishnamoorthi.Nicole Craine for The New York TimesThat was also the year Representatives Pramila Jayapal of Washington, Ro Khanna of California and Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois were elected, bringing the number of Indian Americans in the House from one — Representative Ami Bera of California, elected in 2012 — to four. It was also the year Kamala Harris became the first Indian American elected to the Senate.Since then, the number in state legislatures has more than tripled. This January, the four House members — who call themselves the Samosa Caucus — were joined by Representative Shri Thanedar of Michigan.Political scientists have long found that representation begets representation, and that appears to have been true here.“Within the Indian American community, political involvement wasn’t really a high priority, because I think people were much more focused on establishing themselves economically and supporting their community endeavors,” said Mr. Krishnamoorthi, the Illinois congressman. “I think that once they started seeing people like us getting elected and seeing why it mattered, then political involvement became a part of their civic hygiene.”Notably, the increase in Indian American representation is not centered on districts where Indian Americans are a majority. Ms. Jayapal represents a Seattle-based district that is mostly white. Mr. Thanedar represents a district in and around Detroit, a majority-Black city, and defeated eight Black candidates in a Democratic primary last year.“This is quite a different kind of phenomenon than what we often are seeing from Latino and Black representation,” said Sara Sadhwani, an assistant professor of politics at Pomona College in Southern California and a senior researcher at AAPI Data, a group that provides information about Asian Americans. “It means they’re pulling a coalition of support behind them.”She and Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Riverside, and the founder of AAPI Data, pointed to characteristics of Indian American communities that may have eased their movement into politics.Immigrants from India are often highly educated and, because of the legacy of British colonization, often speak English, “which lowers barriers to civic engagement,” Professor Ramakrishnan said.India is also a democracy, which Professor Ramakrishnan’s research has shown means Indian Americans are more likely to engage in the American democratic system than immigrants from autocratic countries.By and large, Indian Americans have been elected on the Democratic side of the aisle. All five Indian Americans in Congress, and almost all state legislators, are Democrats. Ms. Haley’s candidacy could be a case study in whether an embrace of Indian immigrant heritage can resonate among Republicans, too.Before Ms. Haley, the most prominent Indian American to seek office as a Republican was Mr. Jindal, who made a point of discussing his background as little as possible during his presidential run.“My dad and mom told my brother and me that we came to America to be Americans, not Indian Americans,” Mr. Jindal said in a speech in 2015. Representative Ro Khanna of California said young, highly educated Indian Americans were likely to be turned off by Republican stances on abortion and guns.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMr. Ramaswamy, a multimillionaire entrepreneur, author and “anti-woke” activist, has taken a similar tack so far, but Ms. Haley has not. Since her time as governor of South Carolina, she has repeatedly invoked her life experience as the daughter of a man who wore a turban and a woman who wore a sari. In the first line of her campaign announcement video, over images of her hometown, Bamberg, S.C., she told voters: “The railroad tracks divided the town by race. I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. Not Black, not white. I was different.”Mr. Bera, the California congressman, called that “smart politics,” saying Ms. Haley seemed to be tapping into a desire for upward mobility among immigrant communities.It’s an approach Democrats have taken for some time.“I ran as an immigrant, South Asian American woman,” Ms. Jayapal said of her first campaign. “I really ran on my story, I ran on my experience, and even though I represent a district that is largely white, I think that that story is a big part of the reason that people elected me.”But whether Republican voters are interested is an open question, given the party’s criticism of discussions of race and ethnicity as “identity politics.”Vikram Mansharamani, a New Hampshire Republican who ran for Senate last year and recently hosted an event for Ms. Haley, said that Ms. Haley’s life story — being a child of working-class immigrants whose parents could never have imagined her success — reminded him of his own, and that this drew him to her. But he didn’t see representation as a goal to strive for.“Insofar as identity impacts experience, it’s relevant, but I would never lead with identity,” he said. Harmeet Dhillon, a former co-chair of the election-denying group Lawyers for Trump and a Republican National Committee member who recently lost a bruising battle to lead the committee, emphasized that Ms. Haley would be running on her track record as a popular governor of her home state and member of the Trump administration. “I think most Republican voters are not motivated by race or gender,” she said. Although Ms. Dhillon and her parents immigrated from India, she said she did not identify as Indian American.Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana receives applause from Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina at the Heritage Action Presidential Candidate Forum in fall 2015 in Greenville, S.C.Sean Rayford/Getty ImagesIndian American voters are overwhelmingly Democratic: 74 percent voted for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the 2020 presidential race, more than voters of other Asian backgrounds, according to a survey by AAPI Data, APIAVote and Asian Americans Advancing Justice. In primaries, that means fewer Indian American voters for Republicans to draw on. In general elections, it makes it harder for Republicans to tap into a base excited to promote its own representation.In a 2020 study, nearly 60 percent of Indian Americans did say they would be open to voting for an Indian American candidate “regardless of their party affiliation.”“Indian Americans really want to see more Indian Americans elected to office, and in the survey that we conducted, that was true even if it meant someone from another party,” said Professor Sadhwani, one of the 2020 study’s authors. “My sense is that there will be a lot of excitement amongst Indian Americans to see Nikki Haley stepping into this role.”But that willingness is not absolute — particularly if, to compete with former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Ms. Haley adopts more of their anti-immigration rhetoric.Experts and politicians said support for an easier immigration process, and opposition to nativism and xenophobia, were major factors in Indian Americans’ political preferences. Mr. Makhija said climate change and other scientific issues resonated, too.Raman Dhillon, chief executive of the North American Punjabi Trucking Association, said his interest in Ms. Haley had been piqued by the fact that her family is from the same city he is, in the northern Indian state of Punjab, where a significant portion of truckers in Canada and the United States trace their roots.But he had more important questions for politicians than ones about shared heritage: How will the government address a shortage of big-rig parking along Highway 99, a main artery through California’s agricultural heartland? What policies will improve driver retention?Ironically, the very increase in representation that Ms. Haley is part of could make her ethnicity less compelling to voters not convinced by her policies.“I do think that the more we have diversity, the more the actual ideological views will be paramount,” Ms. Jayapal said. “Once we’re not sort of wowed by the fact that there’s an Indian American woman running for whatever office it is, I think we’ll be able to focus more on the actual ideas. And that should be the way it is.” More

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      Nikki Haley Announces 2024 Republican Presidential Bid, Challenging Trump

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      Ms. Haley, 51, a former South Carolina governor and a United Nations ambassador in the Trump administration, called for “generational change” in the party.Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, entered the race for president on Tuesday, a well-hinted-at move that is likely to leave her as the lone major Republican challenger to former President Donald J. Trump for many weeks, if not months, as other potential 2024 rivals bide their time.By announcing her campaign early, Ms. Haley, 51, who called for “generational change” in her party, seized an opportunity for a head start on fund-raising and to command a closer look from Republican primary voters, whose support she needs if she is to rise from low single digits in early polls of the G.O.P. field.She made the announcement in a video that does not mention Mr. Trump’s name, but makes clear her intention to break with the Trump era. In addition to calling for a new generation to step up, she urged Republicans to rally around substantive issues and a candidate with appeal to mainstream America.“Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections,” she said. “That has to change.”Ms. Haley’s campaign has drawn encouragement from many polls showing that in a hypothetical multicandidate field, Mr. Trump wins less than 50 percent of Republican voters. Her entry into the race underscores how the former president has failed to scare off rivals in his third presidential campaign, announced in November after a disappointing midterm election for Republicans.Her announcement reversed a statement in 2021 that she would not run if Mr. Trump were a candidate. She was a rare figure to leave the Trump administration while earning praise from Mr. Trump rather than a parting insult. Mr. Trump recently said that when Ms. Haley informed him she was considering a run, he told her, “You should do it.’’That the former president has so far not coined an insulting nickname or otherwise attacked Ms. Haley is a sign, perhaps, that he does not perceive her as a major threat.Since leaving the Trump administration in 2018, Ms. Haley has walked a fine line with the former president, praising his policies and accomplishments in office while offering criticism that appeals to Republican moderates. The day after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, she said his actions “will be judged harshly by history.”But she opposed his impeachment for his actions surrounding the riot. “At some point, I mean, give the man a break,” she said on Fox News in late January 2021.In interviews last month, Ms. Haley swiped at the advanced age of both Mr. Trump, 76, and President Biden, 80. “I don’t think you need to be 80 years old to go be a leader in D.C.,” she told Fox News.The Run-Up to the 2024 ElectionThe jockeying for the next presidential race is already underway.G.O.P. Field: For months, Donald J. Trump has been the lone Republican to formally enter the 2024 presidential contest, but that is about to end. Here is a look at who is eyeing a run.DeSantis’s Challenge: Gov. Ron DeSantis has pursued a strategy of conflict avoidance with Mr. Trump in the shadow G.O.P. primary. But now he faces the pressing question of how long this approach can work.Education Issues: Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis are seizing on race and gender issues in schools, but such messages had a mixed record in the midterms.Harris’s Struggles: With President Biden appearing all but certain to run again, concerns are growing over whether Kamala Harris, who is trying to define her vice presidency, will be a liability for the ticket.To advance into the top tier of Republican presidential hopefuls, Ms. Haley’s campaign is banking on her skills as a retail campaigner in early nominating states. She is traveling to New Hampshire after a rally planned in South Carolina on Wednesday, for two town hall-style events, and she plans to be in Iowa next week.Ms. Haley was largely a bystander as cultural battles enveloped Republican primary races in 2022 and as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Trump’s leading potential rival, has increasingly leaned into such issues to stoke support from the G.O.P. base.But now she is jumping into the cultural fray, using her 3-minute 33-second announcement video to criticize those who say “our founding principles are bad” — text that was laid over images of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, and the “1619 Project,” an interpretation of U.S. history, created by The New York Times, that focuses on the consequences of slavery.Ms. Haley, who is best known on the national stage for pursuing Mr. Trump’s foreign policy agenda for two years at the United Nations, is seeking to broaden her following through such cultural appeals, denouncing Democrats as pushing “socialism” in government and “wokeism” in schools. At the same time, she highlights her biography as the daughter of immigrants who rose to be South Carolina’s first female governor, and first nonwhite governor, as a rebuke of liberal arguments that America harbors systemic racism.“I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants, not Black, not white,” Ms. Haley, who was born in Bamberg, S.C., says in the announcement video..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Ms. Haley’s father, Ajit Singh Randhawa, and her mother, Raj Kaur Randhawa, are immigrants from the Punjab region of India, who moved to South Carolina when her father accepted a teaching job at a historically Black college. Raised in the Sikh faith, Ms. Haley converted to Christianity after she married Michael Haley in 1996.After graduating from Clemson University, Ms. Haley worked for her family’s dress boutique, including as bookkeeper, before winning the first of three terms in the South Carolina House of Representatives.She was first elected governor in 2010, originally entering the Republican primary as an underdog but with the support of the departing incumbent, Mark Sanford. She was trailing in primary polls when an endorsement from Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor, helped lift her to the nomination.In her second term, after a mass shooting in 2015 at an African American church in Charleston by a white supremacist, Ms. Haley called for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the State Capitol.As a former South Carolina governor, Ms. Haley is theoretically well positioned for the state’s 2024 primary, the third nominating contest and the one that has historically culled the Republican field.But things could be complicated in her home state, whose conservative Republican voters fully embraced Mr. Trump in 2016. There is also the potential competition from another home state candidate, Senator Tim Scott, who is thought to be exploring a presidential run and has proved to be a formidable fund-raiser.Curtis Loftis, the South Carolina treasurer and a Trump backer, said there was little chance the former president would lose the 2024 primary there. “I’m not aware of many Republicans that would be Haley supporters over Trump supporters,” he said. “You have a lot of people who are independents. They’ll be with Nikki as opposed to President Trump.”But Wes Climer, a state senator and Haley supporter, said she could “absolutely” win the South Carolina primary if she did well in Iowa and New Hampshire. “She’s an outstanding retail candidate, and the presidential race tends to reward those skills,” he said.Other Republicans exploring presidential campaigns include Mr. DeSantis; former Vice President Mike Pence; and Mike Pompeo, a former secretary of state and C.I.A. director under Mr. Trump. Governors Chris Sununu of New Hampshire and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia are also thought to be eyeing a run, along with former Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland.In early polls, which are partly a reflection of name recognition, Ms. Haley has been in the low single digits. She was the choice of 1 percent of Republican voters in a Monmouth University poll this month that showed Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis tied at 33 percent, with all other potential rivals at 2 percent or less. One out of four Republicans was undecided.Ms. Haley has long been a favorite of Republican donors. A political action committee she created in 2021 to build a donor list, support midterm candidates and pay for her political travel, Stand for America PAC, has raised $17 million.By comparison, Mr. DeSantis had about $64 million left from his record-shattering fund-raising for his re-election campaign last year; that money can potentially be rolled into a federal race. Mr. Pence, since leaving the White House, has raised $1.2 million through a political action committee (which spent $91,000 on copies of his recent memoir).The executive director of Ms. Haley’s PAC, Betsy Ankney, a former political director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, will manage Ms. Haley’s campaign, which is based in Charleston, S.C. Others on Ms. Haley’s political team include Jon Lerner, her pollster and a senior consultant, and Chaney Denton, her longtime spokeswoman.A second political group Ms. Haley created, a nonprofit with a similar name to her PAC that is not required to publicly disclose supporters, took in contributions of $250,000 and more from major donors in 2019, according to information disclosed to Politico. The donors included the casino mogul Sheldon G. Adelson (before his death in 2021), the hedge fund manager Paul Singer and the investor Stanley Druckenmiller and his wife, Fiona Druckenmiller.During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, in which Ms. Haley first backed Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, she got into a high-profile spat with Mr. Trump after calling for him to release his tax returns. Mr. Trump, on Twitter, called her an embarrassment to South Carolina. “Bless your heart,” Ms. Haley tweeted back at him.But Ms. Haley went on to endorse Mr. Trump when he became the nominee, and he named her as his United Nations ambassador in 2017. She vowed to take on foreign adversaries in her announcement video, describing China and Russia as “on the march.”“They all think we can be bullied, kicked around,” Ms. Haley says in the video. “You should know this about me: I don’t put up with bullies. And when you kick back, it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels.”The first Indian American to hold a cabinet-level post, she earned respect from colleagues from other nations, even those who disagreed with the Trump administration’s foreign policy. Speaking at the United Nations in September 2018, Mr. Trump was laughed at when he boasted of his administration’s achievements.Ms. Haley’s departure later that year was viewed as her taking the next step toward a long-anticipated presidential run. More

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