Moderated by John C. Yang, President and Executive Director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the webinar convened experts from five major civil rights organizations to examine voter purges, polling place intimidation, landmark Supreme Court cases, and the erosion of the federal Voting Rights Act.

Yang opened by saying, “At its core, this is about whether all of us as eligible voters, regardless of who they are and regardless of where they live, have a fair and equal opportunity to have their voices heard.” For the Asian American community specifically, the threat is concrete: roughly two in five Asian American voters rely on mail and early voting options now under legal attack, and face language barriers that make polling place assistance an essential lifeline.

Voter Purges and the Attack on the Rolls

Taifa Smith Butler, President of Demos, organized systemic barriers into three categories she called “roles, polls, and trolls.” On voter rolls, she described aggressive and inconsistently applied purges disproportionately harming voters of color, young people, and low-income voters. Georgia conducted one of the largest voter purges in its history last August, removing nearly half a million people due to inactivity. Alabama and Florida have similarly purged voters dangerously close to election cycles.

Butler flagged an emerging federal threat: the government’s efforts to obtain unredacted voter registration files from states to build a national database. “This, I believe, is another effort that we have to watch, that the federal government might try to use the rolls to actually do mass purges,” she warned, while crediting states like California for successfully pushing back in court.

Intimidation at the Polls and the Right to an Assistor

Tom Saenz, President and General Counsel of MALDEF, addressed the threat of voter intimidation, including the possibility of federal agents being deployed near polling places. “We cannot dismiss the possibility that even the federal government through executive order or otherwise may engage in activities including deploying immigration agents or other federal agents at or near polling places,” he said. Private individuals, potentially encouraged by White House rhetoric, could also appear at polling sites in security uniforms or openly carrying firearms.

Saenz also defended Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, which guarantees every voter not literate in English the right to bring an assistor of their choice to the polls, pushing back on any suggestion that the administration’s executive order making English the official language could override it. “Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act, as duly enacted congressional legislation, cannot be overruled by an executive order of any kind from the president,” he said flatly.

His organization’s own case, Arkansas United, illustrates how thoroughly that right is being dismantled. MALDEF challenged an Arkansas law limiting any single assistor to helping no more than six voters. The Eighth Circuit rejected every legal vehicle available to enforce Section 208. “Every avenue is foreclosed to guarantee and protect the rights granted under the Voting Rights Act,” Saenz said. The case now awaits Supreme Court review.

The Supreme Court and the Future of the VRA

Adriel Cepeda Derieux, Deputy Director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, delivered the briefing’s most urgent news: the Supreme Court may be days away from issuing one of the most consequential voting rights rulings since the civil rights era in Louisiana v. Callais. At the heart of the case is whether remedying racial discrimination under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is itself discriminatory.

“If the court rules against voters, it would be a profound setback for multi-racial democracy. It could roll back protections and strip voters of one of their core and meaningful legal defenses for over 60 years,” Cepeda Derieux said. She urged voters not to be deterred regardless of the outcome, noting that electoral maps for November have largely already been set.

On ICE presence at polling places, a fear growing in AAPI and immigrant communities, she drew a firm legal line. “Any deployment of ICE or any law enforcement officers for the purpose of intimidating voters or interfering with the right to vote would be unlawful,” she said, encouraging voters to remain calm and know their rights.

Native Voters and the Threat to Mail Ballots

Jacqueline De León, Senior Staff Attorney at the Native American Rights Fund, described two cases with potentially devastating consequences for Native voters. In Turtle Mountain v. Howe, the Eighth Circuit ruled that private plaintiffs have no right of action under the Voting Rights Act, meaning individuals harmed by racial discrimination could not bring their own cases. “If affirmed, Turtle Mountain would effectively leave the Voting Rights Act an empty shell,” DeLeon said.

A companion case, Watson v. Republican National Committee, threatens the ability to count mail ballots received after Election Day in over a dozen states. For Native voters in remote Alaskan villages, the consequences could be total disenfranchisement. “In some villages, the number of ballots that arrived after election day was over 50%,” DeLeon said. She also dissected the SAVE Act’s nominal inclusion of tribal IDs as a “disingenuous attempt at inclusion when really it’s about exclusion” — tribal IDs lack the place of birth and expiration date the law requires. For remote Native voters, presenting documents in person could require a thousand-mile journey. “Native voters that are disproportionately impoverished, that lack access to roadworthy vehicles, are just certainly not going to be able to make this trip,” she said.

State Voting Rights Acts: Going on Offense

Lordes Rousado, President and General Counsel of Latino Justice PRLDEF, offered the most forward-looking perspective, describing a push to pass state-level voting rights acts as an offensive strategy against federal erosion. Her organization collaborated with the Legal Defense Fund, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), the Campaign Legal Center, and the Harvard Election Law Clinic to develop model state voting rights legislation released in January.

“The states can, and I would say, must be laboratories for democracy and create rights that go beyond the federal minimums,” Rousado said. The model act includes pre-clearance provisions, protections against vote dilution and wrongful purges, translated materials for language minority voters, and remedies for voters facing intimidation. Rousado pointed to a recent New York victory as proof of concept, where a successful challenge under the state VRA resulted in redrawn maps that restored the voting power of Black, Latino, and Asian voters in Nassau County. Voting rights laws are now on the books in at least eight states, with active legislation in nine others.

The SAVE Act and the Myth of Voter Fraud

The SAVE Act, requiring documentary proof of citizenship to register or vote, drew sustained criticism as a solution in search of a problem. Rousado offered a personal example: her 83-year-old Cuban American mother, a citizen and dedicated voter since the 1960s, currently lacks a valid passport and cannot locate her citizenship papers. “My mother could be disenfranchised by this act when she’s been a citizen and voting since the 1960s,” she said. More than 21 million Americans currently lack ready access to a passport or birth certificate.

Saenz went further, calling the voter fraud narrative driving such legislation a “canard.” “Voter fraud is non-existent in this country and has been for 50 years,” he said, pointing to the first Trump administration’s quietly disbanded voter fraud commission that “could not prove anything.” He reframed the real problem: “The fact is the problem in this country is not over-participation of ineligible folks in voting. It is under-participation of fully eligible voters.”

A Message to Reporters

Closing the briefing, panelists converged on a unified message to journalists on the call: see the full scope of what is happening and name it accurately. Butler urged the media to resist false election security narratives. Cepeda Derieux asked reporters to connect the dots. “This is a broad, very far-reaching, multifront effort to shrink who can participate in our democracy,” she said. DeLeon kept the focus on race. “The shrinking of the electorate is often along racial lines, and I think too often we lose that narrative,” she said. Rousado called for human storytelling: “Uplift the individual stories of people who encounter difficulties in voting. The more those stories are told, the more people will understand that it is a big deal.”

Yang offered a closing summary that distilled the morning’s message: “Restrictions to voting is literally anti-democratic. The purpose of a democracy is to be able to vote, and anytime you are disallowing voting on the basis of imagined problems, that should be called out.”

On March 28, the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul was transformed into a sea of voices, signs, and songs as the latest No Kings rally drew an estimated 150,000 participants to the Capitol Mall and surrounding streets. This third rally, now expanded to include No War and No ICE themes, was part of a nationwide movement that has grown exponentially over the past year, from 2 to 3 million participants in March 2025, to 4 million in October, and now an estimated 8 million across the country. The discontent is swelling, even if the impact on federal policies remains minimal.

My husband and I began our journey at the U.S. Bank Stadium Green Line station in Minneapolis, joined by a friend attending his first rally. The train was already buzzing with anticipation, packed with people carrying homemade signs directed at the president. By the third stop, the train was so full that no additional passengers could board. I felt a pang of sympathy for those left behind, unable to join the collective march toward the Capitol.

When we arrived at the station closest to the Capitol, we stepped into a throng of humanity. Marchers had been converging for hours from multiple directions, and the Mall itself was overflowing, more than 60,000 packed shoulder to shoulder, with tens of thousands more filling the fringes. The sheer scale was breathtaking, a testament to the urgency felt across Minnesota and beyond.

On March 28, 150,000 people protested in St. Paul, MN. Nationwide, more than 8 million people took to the streets, marking one of the largest single-day protests in US history. Photo by SK Lo

As latecomers, we remained at the edges of the gathering. From there, the speeches were difficult to hear clearly, but the presence of national figures was undeniable. Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Ilhan Omar, and others addressed the crowd, while Bruce Springsteen’s performance added cultural resonance. Even from the margins, the spirit of the rally was unmistakable: peaceful resistance, collective defiance, and a shared determination to stand against authoritarianism, war, and ICE enforcement.

For me, the rally carried profound personal meaning. It was the second No Kings rally I had attended. The first was in October in our suburban neighborhood, but this one felt different. The sheer scale, the unity of purpose, and the energy of the crowd rekindled a pride in being Minnesotan that I had not felt in over fifty years. Standing alongside my husband and our friend, I felt part of something larger, something historic.

We left before the rally concluded, unable to push closer to the center of the Mall. Instead, we found respite in a local restaurant, one of many affected by the surge in activity across the Twin Cities. Conversations there reflected the day’s themes: frustration with federal policies, concern for immigrant communities, and hope that collective action could bring change.

Indivisible Twin Cities was the main organizer in Minnapolis-St. Paul. They will be speaking at the AAUC Unity Summit on June 28, 2026. Visit the Unity Summit event page for more information.

Yet, the rally also revealed a sobering reality. While mainstream populations dominated the crowd, minority ethnic groups were noticeably underrepresented. Many expressed fear of surveillance, worried that cameras capturing their presence could later be used against them. This absence was striking, given that minority communities often bear the brunt of discriminatory federal policies. Their hesitation underscores the challenges of building truly inclusive movements in an era of heightened scrutiny.

The No Kings, No War, No ICE rally was more than a protest; it was a declaration of values. It reminded us that democracy thrives when ordinary people take to the streets, raise their voices, and demand accountability. For Minnesota, it was a moment of unity and defiance, a reaffirmation that civic pride and resistance can coexist. And for me personally, it was a day that rekindled pride in my state, my community, and the power of collective action.

Host Michael German, a former FBI agent turned civil liberties advocate explained that since 2015, APA Justice has been “raising public attention and organizing opposition to biased national security and law enforcement programs that unfairly target people based on race, ethnicity, and national origin rather than individualized evidence of wrongdoing.”

German traced the organization’s work from its 2020 webinar series on the China Initiative, a Justice Department program that brought false espionage allegations against prominent Asian American scientists, through its 2024 examination of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He reminded attendees that the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program began in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and in direct violation of the FISA law, and that rather than being curtailed, it has been repeatedly expanded. He said, “Today, we’re seeing masked ICE agents engaging in abusive tactics against undocumented immigrants, as well as permanent residents, refugees, and asylum seekers, and even U.S. citizens.” He reminded attendees that ICE and border patrol agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti for monitoring and documenting their activities, and that agents had dragged Hmong American Chong Lee Tao from his home handcuffed in his underwear.

St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, born in the mountains of Laos and resettled in the United States as a refugee at age three, opened with a ground-level account of what her city endured, making clear it predated the national conversation. “What we saw here happening in Minnesota was happening to our AAPI community long before everyone else. The rest of the country, the world started seeing what was happening here,” she said. As a state legislator, she had convened meetings with ICE as early as the prior April, receiving almost no information about where operations were occurring or who was being targeted. “I remember distinctly asking them, are you sure you’re only going after people with criminal records? Because we’re hearing from our community that you’re just targeting anybody now.” By summer, community members with removal orders were refusing to attend their check-ins. “We had already heard that too many people were getting taken,” she said.

Her described a sophisticated community response that included constitutional observer training, growing from 30 or 40 attendees to hundreds per session, as well as Signal-based underground alert networks and volunteers who tracked ICE vehicle license plates from the Whipple Federal Building and maintained a database to warn neighborhoods in real time. Businesses saw revenues drop 60 to 70 percent. Her administration worked to quantify the full cost of what she called “the ICE occupation,” from school shutdowns and remote learning to patients too frightened to seek medical care. “What is the health impact of that,” she asked, “and the cost to the healthcare system when people are waiting until they’re really sick in order to go see a doctor because they’re afraid to leave?” The data was marshaled to support a proposed $40 million state relief package currently before the Minnesota legislature. “The aftermath,” she said, “is really rebuilding and supporting our communities.”

Saira Hussain, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, laid out the surveillance architecture enabling ICE enforcement. She highlighted Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, set to expire April 20th, which allows warrantless sweeping of Americans’ communications when they contact people abroad. She flagged the Trump administration’s “catch and revoke” program, a social media surveillance initiative targeting what she called “disfavored speech,” ranging from pro-Palestinian expression to anything deemed “anti-American.” She also described the breakdown of federal data silos, including IRS, DMV, and utility records now accessible to ICE. “When you break down these data silos, it means that ICE is able to build up profiles of people and identify targets for deportation,” she warned. On the question of protecting oneself at the border, Hussain was direct: border agents can demand your device passcode, you can refuse, and as a U.S. citizen you must still be admitted, though your device can be detained for weeks or months. She directed attendees to Surveillance Self-Defense, ssd.eff.org, for practical self-protection guidance and urged people to disable biometric phone locks before crossing. “Privacy,” she said, “is a team sport.”

Temple University physicist Xiaoxing Xi offered the webinar’s most searing personal testimony, a detailed account of what government overreach looks like when it lands on an innocent man’s doorstep. In May 2015, approximately a dozen armed FBI agents raided his home, rounded up his wife and daughters at gunpoint, and took Xi away in handcuffs. The charge: wire fraud, based on four emails he had sent to scientific colleagues in China as part of university-encouraged international research collaboration. “They charged me for sharing U.S. company technology with China, with my collaborators, which was not true,” he said. “All four emails had nothing to do with that technology at all.” The agents, Xi said, simply did not understand the science, and did not consult experts before making the arrest. “They should have done their due diligence and figured out whether they really had evidence to charge me for the crime.”

The government dropped its case four months later. But the damage, personal, professional, psychological, was permanent. “That changed my life and the life of my family forever,” Xi said. “When you are charged by the federal government for crimes — I’ve seen many cases after mine — people cannot think, they cannot eat, they cannot sleep. It’s just a huge pressure.” He described the disorienting experience of facing the full weight of federal prosecution while knowing he was innocent. “When you look at the indictment, it says very clearly — the United States of America versus — such a pressure on you.” Even exoneration brought no full relief. “Even today we are afraid that they are still listening to all my phone calls and looking at all my emails,” he said. “They told us that FISA was used in my case. They had all my emails. They tapped our phone and listened to conversations between myself and my family.”

Xi was emphatic that his case is not an anomaly. Because AAPI communities maintain connections to family and colleagues abroad, they are disproportionately exposed to Section 702 surveillance. “We came from China. We became naturalized citizens. We have families and friends back where we came from. And so, we are disproportionately targeted just for this.” He described the China Initiative’s broader toll: professors investigated by the NIH, researchers who resigned or returned to China, and one Northwestern University professor who took her own life under the pressure of federal scrutiny. His own lawsuit against the government, which was filed with ACLU representation, dismissed at the district level, and won on appeal, reflects how long the struggle for accountability can take. “What happened to me,” Xi said, “could happen to anybody who has done nothing wrong.”

John Yang, Executive Director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, connected the current moment to a long pattern of using national security as a pretext to scapegoat AAPI communities. “No matter how long we have been in this country, we are perceived as foreigners,” he said. “You couple that with this notion of so-called national security — and historically that has always caused the Asian American community to be scapegoated.” He drew a direct line from Japanese American incarceration during World War II to the post-9/11 racial profiling of Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian Americans, to the China Initiative and today’s ICE crackdown. A recent poll, he noted, found that about 56 percent of Asian Americans oppose the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, and that four times as many Asian Americans have been arrested under the current administration compared to the Biden administration. “Behind each of these statistics,” he said, “are individual instances that we also have to care about and lift up.”

Yang urged a three-part framework for community response: advocate, educate, and empower. He called on community members to contact their congressional representatives about Section 702, warning against the assumption that individual voices don’t matter. “What they do in congressional offices is — when they get a call from a constituent, they have a little tally sheet,” he said. “That does make a difference.” He closed with a call to vote in the upcoming midterms and to hold elected officials accountable on the specific issues shaping AAPI lives. “This is about privacy,” he said. “This is about individual liberty. And those are issues that resonate across the board.”

The webinar was co-sponsored by Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the Asian American Scholars Forum, and the Committee of 100.

The honor acknowledges residents who risked their lives to protect their neighbors and immigrant community members from an unprecedented federal law enforcement operation, peacefully defending the human rights and values that serve as the foundation of constitutional democracy.

Beginning in 2025, a sharp escalation in federal immigration enforcement swept cities across the country, disrupting workplaces and neighborhoods and stoking fear among immigrant families. In the Twin Cities, the surge was especially intense: more than 3,000 federal agents from ICE and Border Patrol were deployed to the metro area, in an operation the Department of Homeland Security described as the largest federal immigration enforcement action in U.S. history.

Tens of thousands of residents took to the streets to peacefully protest federal overreach and threats to immigrant families and constitutional protections. Others documented enforcement activity and alerted neighbors to federal agents’ presence, including two community members, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were killed by enforcement agents.

Faith leaders organized demonstrations, community groups built rapid-response networks, labor leaders and small businesses defended workers, and volunteers provided critical support and resources. Across religious, racial, and political lines, a broad coalition of residents of the Twin Cities and surrounding suburbs united in peaceful resistance despite violent confrontation and real personal risk, defending their neighbors’ rights and strengthening what the foundation called the national movement to protect American democracy.

The JFK Library Foundation described the community’s response as a defining act of civic courage. “The people of the Twin Cities responded with extraordinary courage and resolve,” the foundation said in its announcement.

Caroline Kennedy and her son Jack Schlossberg issued a joint statement saying, “Without public servants of integrity committed to maintaining the highest standards of institutional excellence and independence, and citizens willing to put their lives on the line to hold America to its promises, our democracy can’t survive.”

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) praised the recognition. “This winter, Minnesotans showed the world what courage looks like,” she said. “Our state was the center of America’s heartbreak, but we were also the center of America’s hope. This award is a recognition not just of how our state persevered, but of how Minnesotans led the way in defending the freedoms that define our democracy and the rule of law.”

The deaths of Good and Pretti galvanized thousands of demonstrators to take to the streets in frigid temperatures to demand that ICE and related agencies stand down. The protests drew national attention, with Bruce Springsteen and British folk rocker Billy Bragg each releasing songs in solidarity with the Twin Cities community.

The Twin Cities’ award was announced alongside recognition for Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who is being honored for protecting the independence of the Federal Reserve despite political pressure and personal attacks from the highest levels of government.

Caroline Kennedy and Schlossberg will present the awards via livestream on May 31, 2026, at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

The original program had been designed to celebrate AANHPI contributors to the U.S., a fitting theme as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary. But the U.S. and Israeli military strikes on Iran changed that. AAUC Executive Director Ted Fong acknowledged, “We would have been remiss if we conducted this without even talking about the war, because the war sets the stage for a lot of issues, not just globally, but locally.”

Before diving in, Fong asked participants to describe the current global climate in one or two words. The responses came quickly, and they were unsparing: dystopian, dysfunctional, chaotic, divisive, disappointment, uncertain, and crazy times.

Why Are We at War?

Jack Hanna, a retired attorney, AAUC’s vice president, and a man of Arab American heritage, gave the sharpest legal framing to the war discussion. Drawing directly on the Constitution, he noted that the power to declare war rests with Congress, and that this foundational check had once again been bypassed. “This is an erosion of what the intent of the founders of our country established,” Hanna said, “in order to prevent ambitious, improper military actions against foreign countries, which is what I think we have exactly here today.”

He went further, questioning not just the legality of the war but its strategic coherence. “The reasons for the war are changing moment by moment,” he said. “Is it because of ballistic missiles? Is it because of suppression of civil rights of the Iranian people? Does it have to do with nuclear materials? Is it regime change? This is a reflection of a government that’s making it up on the spur of the moment.”

Voices from the Community

The discussion that followed was wide-ranging and deeply personal.

Benny Lee, a veteran of local politics, reflected on the collapse of the political center and what it has cost the country. “When I got into politics, there was always 20 percent on the left, 20 percent on the right, and 60 percent in the middle, and that has eroded significantly,” he said. Where that middle once held, he argued, the country has drifted toward the extremes, making the kind of deliberate, consensus-driven governance the founders envisioned increasingly difficult to achieve. “We’ve taken three steps forward and four steps back.” Lee returned, as Hanna had, to the Constitution, “It begins with ‘We the People,’ and it’s no longer about the people.”

Sing Lo, who has lived in the United States for 60 years, was succinct and cutting: “I’m not too sure it’s the country that I knew when I was here 60 years ago.”

Kim Sin, a leader in the Cambodian community in Rochester, Minnesota, said the war in Iran has already driven up gas prices and everyday costs, hitting Asian American seniors on fixed incomes especially hard. The federal freeze on Medicare and Medicaid programs has cut off services for the elderly and people with disabilities, with no clear end in sight. “There’s money for war,” he said, “but there’s no money for the people living in the U.S.” Kim also explained why Cambodian and Laotian Americans are often less vocal about advocating for themselves. “In Cambodia, it was the Khmer Rouge. Anything you say or anything you do, they’ll execute you. So, they learned to be silent.” That silence, he made clear, is a generational wound and one the community is now working to overcome.

Fong connected with Sin’s comments by saying he had just returned from the Southeast Asian Freedom Network’s Uniti Fest in Sacramento, held on the 50th anniversary of the end of the War in Southeast Asia. “Most of the attendees were young Hmong, Cambodian, and Laotians who were still deal with their families’ escape from these countries. “The thing that you heard was, ‘We escaped the very thing that’s happening to us now. Our families came to a country with a dream that seems to be forsaken.’”

Carla Mays, from #SmartCohort based in California, drew a sharp contrast between U.S. policy priorities and those of Asian nations like Singapore, Japan, and China. “We’re so distracted by our old way of doing things,” she said. “In Asia, there’s always talk about healthcare, housing, transport — investments that keep people alive. Here, those things aren’t important.” She warned that the current administration’s budget priorities would shred an already thin safety net.

Marsha Golangco, who immigrated from Hong Kong decades ago, reflected on a sense of national fragmentation. “Each of us has our freedoms including, our own opinions. But as a people, we are not together,” she said. “I call it a decline of the American empire. It’s not well.”

Hedy Tripp, joining from St. Cloud, Minnesota, offered a reminder of Iran’s ancient civilization and its deep global ties. “Persia is an ancient, ancient civilization,” she said. “Persians and Mediterranean, African communities have all been trading and connecting themselves all over the world, including Asia. We have ties to Iran, globally as well.” She also raised a pointed question: how do we shift America’s narrative to treat people, not weapons systems, as the nation’s primary asset?

Fong added his own blunt perspective, “I just don’t see, given our historical record, how we can bomb other countries into democracy. We failed to do that in Vietnam, Afghanistan and in many other places.”

Champions of Democracy, The AANHPI Legacy

With the weight of the present firmly established, the town hall pivoted to its core program: a review of AANHPI figures who have upheld democracy, rule of law, and governance, from the 19th century to today.

Jack Hanna led with Wong Kim Ark, the San Francisco-born man whose late 19th-century legal battle established the constitutional right to birthright citizenship. The case is newly urgent. President Trump’s executive order challenging birthright citizenship is set for Supreme Court argument on April 1st, with a decision expected by late June. “Tens of millions of immigrants since then have birthright citizenship for their children who were born here,” Hanna noted, adding that despite winning his case, Wong Kim Ark was continuously harassed, and his son was deported years later. “The remnants of prejudice continued.”

Hanna then profiled Fred Korematsu, who in 1942 refused to comply with the executive order incarcerating 120,000 Japanese Americans, was arrested, and fought his case all the way to the Supreme Court and lost, in one of the worst decisions in American judicial history. Decades later, newly discovered military records proved the government had concealed evidence that Japanese Americans posed no security threat. In the early 1980s, Korematsu reopened his case, won, and successfully advocated for reparations. “Now we see that detention camps are already being reconstructed,” Hanna observed. “Fred Korematsu’s legacy is impacting us today.”

Hanna also honored Corky Lee, the self-taught New York photographer who for 50 years documented Asian American communities without profit or fanfare, often borrowing cameras to get the job done. “We must document what’s happening,” Hanna said. “We have to show and expose when wrong and improper actions are being committed. His work is a pathway to protecting ourselves and our communities going into the future.”

Fong spotlighted Kaohly Her, the newly inaugurated mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota, born in a bamboo hut in Laos, raised as part of the Hmong diaspora created by U.S. military operations, and thrust into the national spotlight just three days after taking office when the first ICE-related killing occurred in her city. As she took to the national stage, her response was swift and steady. She passed ordinances prohibiting ICE activity on city property and required masked law enforcement to identify themselves. “Her family described her as a protector, tough, and one who never took crap from anybody.” In person, however, people report that she is cordial. “Her temperament is perfect for a job like that,” Fong said. “She is a good example to all immigrants that they can have a place at the table.”

Hanna reserved some of his deepest admiration for civil rights activist and author Helen Zia, who spoke at the AAUC’s national summit last summer and whose decades of advocacy span virtually every major social justice movement of the modern era. Her activism began at Princeton in the late 1960s, where she was among the first women admitted, connecting immediately with Black and Latino communities and opposing the Vietnam War. In the early 1980s she organized the country around the unlawful killing of autoworker Vincent Chin. He said, “Her coalition-building across communities of color established a model of solidarity that continues to define how AANHPI communities respond to injustice, discrimination, and hate.”

The program also covered Texas State Representative Gene Wu, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, Congressman Ted Lieu, John C. Yang of AAJC, and Karthick Ramakrishnan of AAPI Data.

SK Lo’s Closing Word

AAUC Board Chair Dr. SK Lo was given the final word.

“The town hall reminds us of a very simple but powerful truth,” Lo said. “Asian Americans have always played a very essential role in safeguarding the nation and strengthening democracy, especially in times of conflict and uncertainty. Our community has served and led and sacrificed, even when our contributions are overlooked and our loyalty is questioned.”
She called the current moment “a redefining time,” and issued a direct call to action: “We should not be a silent minority. We are a vibrant, engaged, and essential part of America’s story. Our voice matters more than ever. Together, we need to lead, to serve, and to stand for the values that define this country.”

The AAUC will hold its next town hall on April 16, 2026. AAUC’s 2026 Unity Summit, “From Crisis to Coalition: Lessons from the Front Lines,” is scheduled for June 27–28 in Minneapolis, with community visits to Hmong, Latino, and Somali leaders on day one, and presentations and networking at the University of Minnesota Alumni Center on day two. Visit the event page.

SEAFN UNITI Fest was a three-day retreat held March 10–12, 2026, at the Jose Rizal Community Center in Sacramento. More than 100 community leaders, organizers, artists, and advocates attended from across the United States, representing Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, and Vietnamese communities. Many came from small, grassroots organizations that had never before been in the same room together. They were welcome by Co-Executive Directors of SEAFN, Chhaya Chhoum and Pheng Thao.

UNITI stands for “Unite, Nourish, Inspire, Transform, and Ignite.” The event was organized by SEAFN, the Southeast Asian Freedom Network. The agenda covered many topics including movement strategy, gender justice, and creating “healing space” for people grappling with their family’s journey to American and now doing frontline community work. An outdoor screening of “Taking Root,” a documentary series about Southeast Asian refugee communities rebuilding in America, capped one of the evenings.

The timing of UNITI Fest marked the 50th year anniversary of the end of the Wars in Southeast Asia. The fall of Saigon, the end of the Khmer Rouge’s rise to power, and the conclusion of the Secret War in Laos are conflicts that displaced millions and sent waves of refugees to the United States. SEAFN framed the anniversary as a strategic inflection point for the attendees.

Who Came and Why Sacramento

Attendees traveled from Maine, Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and California. Most represented organizations less than five years old.

Chhaya Chhoum said the Sacramento location was chosen in part because of what she and a colleague heard while touring the Central Valley ahead of the event. “When we were having conversations with folks in the Central Valley, particularly in Sacramento, Southeast Asian organizations who were saying, ‘This is the first time we’re in a room with each other,'” Chhoum said. “So, for us, it was an opening, an opportunity, an invitation to come to Sacramento.”

Chhoum said the goal of the gathering was not to respond to immediate crises like deportation fights, immigration enforcement, daily political pressures, but to step back from them.” All of our folks are urgently surviving, making decisions around who do we fight for around deportation, detention, all that stuff,” she said. “We really want to curate a space that allowed for people to dream and imagine what the next 50 years and beyond look like to Southeast Asian people in this country.”

Inside the Sessions

The program was built around sessions that moved from reflection to action The opening session, “Many Struggles, One Fight,” brought together speakers to discuss what connects communities whose histories (Cambodian genocide, the Vietnam War, the Laotian Secret War) are distinct but intertwined. Another session, “From Silos to Systems,” had attendees map their organizational ecosystems by region and affinity group, identifying gaps, overlaps, and potential collaborators.

The most discussed session was “The Horizon,” facilitated by Emil Sao of Collective Acceleration, a learning community focused on long-term systems change. Sao asked participants to envision what Southeast Asian communities would look like not in five or ten years, but seven generations, or roughly 150 years, into the future.

The exercise, he acknowledged, runs counter to how most advocacy organizations operate. “We’re so focused on reactivity and triage and thinking about what we need right now,” Sao said. “Actually, the best way to move towards a thriving world is to envision and strategize much further beyond.”

He pushed participants toward specificity, away from policy abstractions. Instead of “food sovereignty,” he asked: what does it mean to farm the exact seeds you want, in the garden you want? The framing came from indigenous traditions, he noted. Seven generations is a timeframe used by many indigenous cultures worldwide as a planning horizon.

Another session was “The Future Is Ours,” used a rotating chair format to let attendees share what they were taking away and what actions they intended to take.

What Young People Said They Were Fighting For

A notable feature of the gathering was the number of young attendees, people in their 20s and early 30s who are a generation or more removed from the refugee experience but still navigating its consequences. Chhoum said a clear theme emerged when she asked young participants what they were fighting for.

“They’re fighting for belonging,” she said. “And they’re fighting for the accountability of the harm that was caused to their parents and their grandparents. Part of belonging is also understanding how you got here, how your people got here, how your family survived.”

TK Le, SEAFN’s Communications Coordinator, said the question of whether young Southeast Asians are focused on their own present-day struggles or their parents’ and grandparents’ histories may be a false choice. “We’re always all looking to the past, the present, and the future all at the same time,” Le said. “The past never goes away — the genocides, the wars, the immigration. We carry all that with us.”

Le pointed to a hand-lettered piece on the event’s community quilt wall, a collaborative art installation where attendees contributed writing and images throughout the weekend. The text read: “We struggle from different forms of colonial violence imposed by the same colonial capitalist hands. The system cannot protect you from violence. We protect us.”

“Our oppressions are related,” Le said. “We have to remind ourselves that our liberations are also connected.”

What Attendees Envisioned

The written reflections produced during the Horizon session formed a sprawling, unfiltered record of what participants said they were working toward. Taken together, they described a world without borders, a criminal justice system replaced by community-based accountability, free and universal healthcare, multilingual education, rights for ecosystems, queer Southeast Asian people living openly and safely, and an end to billionaire wealth accumulation.

The writing was sometimes lyrical, sometimes blunt. One participant described the work ahead this way: “I see horizon work as us, in a boat, on the shore of collapse, making the decision that we have a direction of where we want to go. We have some, not all, of the supplies. But despite that uncertainty, we move towards the horizon.”

Another wrote: “There are people not yet born, or even a concept yet, who will experience turmoil, strife, struggle that may not even exist in this world yet, who I am dedicating my life, my time on Earth to.”

What Organizers Said They Wanted Attendees to Take Home

SEAFN’s stated goals for the gathering included building a shared policy and advocacy platform across racial, gender, and economic justice lines, and strengthening collaboration among Southeast Asian organizations that have historically operated independently of one another.

Chhoum was direct about her expectations for what happens after people leave Sacramento. “We hope they continue to do community work,” she said. “Doesn’t have to be through a nonprofit. They can become farmers, healers, business people, social media influencers. But that they do it all towards this horizon that we create collectively together, that wherever they are, they do all of their work towards that horizon.”

A Growing Community, and a Longer History Than People Assume

Asian Americans are a little over 7% of the U.S. population, but we have been present at key turning points for generations. Chinese workers blasted tunnels and laid track for the railroads; Filipino laborers organized in the fields; Japanese Americans served in uniform even as their families were incarcerated; South and Southeast Asian activists pushed civil-rights battles in workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods. Long before we were widely seen, or even counted, we were building and defending the country alongside everyone else.

The past six decades, in particular, reshaped the size and visibility of Asian America. Today our communities show up everywhere: in labs and hospitals, small businesses and startups, classrooms, newsrooms, city halls, and the arts. We are not a single story or a single culture; we are many, and we are increasingly part of the decisions that shape what the country becomes.

What 2026 Can Mean for Us

If the Semiquincentennial is a national mirror, it should reflect Asian Americans too. Here is what’s worth marking:

• Belonging: We’re no longer on the margins of American life; we’re in every industry, every region, and every kind of community.
• Progress: More AANHPI leaders are winning local races, leading schools and agencies, and running community organizations.
• Possibility: A younger generation is organizing, speaking up, and stepping into leadership without asking for permission.
• Pluralism: The country’s diversity is not a footnote; it’s the engine. Asian Americans are part of that engine.

None of this requires pretending the country has lived up to its ideals. A real celebration makes room for both: pride in what people built, and clarity about what still needs fixing.

What Still Has to Change

If we want to be fully present in the country’s next 250 years, we can’t treat citizenship as something that happens to us. It takes choices like these:

• Show up civically: vote, serve on boards, run for local office, and build leadership in our neighborhoods.
• Tell the truth about our past: in schools, museums, family archives, and public memory, so our history doesn’t disappear between chapters.
• Build coalitions that last: partner with Black, Latino, Indigenous, and other communities on shared fights for fairness and safety.
• Defend democratic norms: push back on hate and political violence, and don’t let disinformation set the terms of our debates.

In other words, our place in the story isn’t something we wait for. We claim it by participating, organizing, and leading.

Renewing the Ideals America Claims

Anniversaries can become empty pageantry if they don’t lead to repair. The United States has faced recurring tests, including corruption, polarization, and distrust, and it will face more. Keeping a democracy healthy is not only the job of elected officials; it depends on what ordinary people demand, tolerate, and choose to do together.

Asian Americans can contribute to that work in practical ways, including:

• Protecting elections, voting rights, and the rule of law
• Expecting, and practicing, ethical, accountable leadership
• Investing in innovation, from science and technology to climate solutions
• Building cross-cultural understanding and showing solidarity when it matters

Renewal, in the end, looks like people refusing cynicism and then doing the unglamorous work: showing up, staying informed, and holding power to account.

Pride, Dissent, and the World We Live In

In a time of war and humanitarian crisis, from Ukraine to the Middle East, it can feel complicated to take pride in a nation that projects power abroad. But pride doesn’t have to mean endorsing every decision made in our name. It can be grounded in:

• The ideals of liberty, equality, and justice—even when the country fails to deliver them.
• The freedom to dissent, to protest, to organize, and to argue for peace, rights that are not protected everywhere.
• The contributions of our communities, which often reflect the country at its best.

Patriotism, at its healthiest, isn’t blind loyalty. It’s the willingness to insist the country live up to its promises, especially when it’s uncomfortable.

Looking to the Next Chapter

As America turns 250, Asian Americans can help write what comes next through coalition politics, public service, and the everyday work of making communities safer and more fair. Our collective history in the United States may feel recent to some, but it is already deep, and it is stitched into the country’s institutions and culture. The next 250 years will be shaped by who participates; we should be among the people shaping them.

Every year, as winter gives way to the promise of spring, billions of people around the world mark the arrival of the Lunar New Year, known widely as the Chinese Spring Festival. While rooted in centuries-old traditions, today’s celebrations reveal a fascinating blend of ancient folklore, modern technology, and the diverse ways communities across the world interpret and honor this important cultural holiday.

The Lunar New Year remains the largest annual human migration on Earth. In 2024 and 2025, reports estimated 7–8 billion individual trips over the 40-day travel period known as Chunyun, far eclipsing anything seen in Western holiday travel. This massive movement reflects the enduring importance of family reunion in Chinese culture. No matter how far people journey for work or study, returning home for New Year’s Eve dinner remains non-negotiable for many, a cultural heartbeat that has not faded with modernization.

Today’s China celebrates with dazzling scale and cutting-edge technology. Drone shows illuminate entire city skies, forming intricate 3D images and animations. Robotic performers appear alongside cultural artists on televised galas. Major cities host massive parades combining traditional opera, martial arts, and contemporary choreography. Fireworks, still an iconic symbol, continue to thunder across the landscape, although many cities now balance them with environmentally friendly laser or drone displays.

It is a celebration where old and new do not compete. They coexist, reinforcing the idea that cultural heritage can evolve without losing its soul.

Despite technological transformation, the foundational stories remain alive. One of the most beloved is the tale of Nian, a terrifying sea monster said to emerge each New Year to terrorize villages. According to folklore, the creature feared loud noises, bright fire, and the color red. To protect themselves, villagers banged drums, lit firecrackers, hung red couplets on their doors, and later created the costumed lion and dragon dances that have become iconic.

These customs: fireworks, festive red attire, rhythmic drum, continue today, serving as a reminder of resilience, unity, and renewal.

Photo by RM on Unsplash

Photo by Chen Heng on Upsplash

While the energy in China is spectacular and larger-than-life, Lunar New Year celebrations across the global diaspora tend to be more modest. Many families outside Asia do not have public holidays for the festival, so the observances often center around:

• Shared family meals, usually on a single evening rather than 15 days of festivities.
• Red envelopes (hongbao) filled with lucky money for children and younger relatives.
• Auspicious greetings, wishing prosperity, longevity, and good fortune.
• Community-hosted lion or dragon dances, accompanied by drums and cymbals, often in cultural centers, school gyms, or local plazas.
• Cultural fairs, showcasing calligraphy, crafts, and traditional performances.

These diaspora celebrations may be quieter, but they carry immense emotional meaning. They keep cultural roots alive and offer younger generations an anchor to identity in multicultural societies.

Like many living away from our home country, I often feel a twinge of nostalgia during the Spring Festival season. I miss the immersive atmosphere of the nonstop firecrackers, the bustling markets, the scent of festive foods drifting from every home. At the same time, I do not miss the overwhelming travel crowds or the logistical chaos that comes with billions of trips crisscrossing the nation.

What remains universal, however, is the heart of the celebration: family, renewal, and connection. Whether marked with drones and fireworks or with a simple shared meal, the Lunar New Year continues to remind us of where we come from and what we carry forward.

Photo by Remi Chow on Upsplash

The meeting was chaired and moderated by Dr. Thomas Abraham, Chairman of GOPIO USA and a Member of the Board of Governors of Asian American Unity Coalition (AAUC), who presented an overview of the challenges facing the community and outlined potential strategic responses. Prakash Shah, President of GOPIO International, noted that recent hostility and anti-Indian rhetoric appear to be driven by a small fringe group from the extreme right and do not reflect mainstream American values.

Participants reaffirmed that the Indian American community is peaceful, law-abiding, and socially constructive, with no history of organized violence or social aggression. While isolated misunderstandings may occur—as they do in broader society—the community’s overall record reflects overwhelmingly positive contributions to American civic life, economic growth, and social cohesion.

Strategic and Measured Response – Participants observed that recent increases in online hostility and bias incidents are driven less by crime or lack of integration and more by economic anxiety, the politicization of skilled immigration, racial profiling, and the amplification of stereotypes through digital platforms.

Strengthening Civic Engagement and Integration – A key theme of the meeting was reinforcing assimilation alongside cultural pride. Leaders emphasized the importance of full participation in civic institutions, local communities, and democratic processes. The group discussed expanding voter engagement, civic education, youth leadership development, and bipartisan outreach initiatives to promote long-term inclusion and meaningful civic participation. Community members were also encouraged to actively engage in local activities and support charitable and interfaith initiatives.

Action Plan – GOPIO has established a Task Force to document hate campaigns and civil rights violations affecting the community. The Task Force members are Rajender Dichpally (Chair), Nagaraj Subbarao Sarma, Pankaj Sharma, Miraj Joshi and Jayashri Chintalapudi. GOPIO has requested community members to report any hate campaign against Indian American community or any civil rights violation to GOPIO’s exclusive email address at watch@gopio.net or call 203-329-8010.

Yen Marshall, President of AAUC, opened the gathering by framing the moment as one that demands understanding before action. “We cannot resist what we do not understand,” she said, setting the tone for a wide-ranging conversation that moved from on-the-ground stories of neighborly courage to a deeper analysis of authoritarian tactics being employed nationwide.

“We are not alone”

Speaking from Minneapolis, the epicenter of the crisis, AAUC founding president and board chair SK Lo described both the trauma and the solidarity she had witnessed firsthand. She spoke with urgency about how fear has settled into the daily lives of Minnesota’s immigrant communities, even as ICE activity has slowed. “The fear they created simply hasn’t gone away,” Lo said. “It still lingers in our homes, our workplaces, and the decisions we want to make about how to stay safe.”

Lo had joined Minnesota Indivisible, participating in a rally organized in January despite bitter cold weather, and described a wave of creative, peaceful resistance across the Twin Cities, from an SOS sign lit with lanterns on what was once Lake Calhoun, to “ICE Out” signs placed near the airport so arriving passengers could see them, to the formation of a singing resistance group whose voices, Lo said, remind the community that “music can carry the truth other than fear.”

Following the first AAUC town hall, Lo and others helped distribute a community guide on constitutional rights and personal safety. Her message was ultimately one of collective strength. “If we stand together and share our knowledge and remind each other of our rights and our dignity, then I think we would have a way of overcoming the challenges facing us,” she said.

“Minnesotans have really impressed me”

Christina Morrison, editor-in-chief of Minnesota Chinese World and founder of the Association of Sino-American Neocultural Exchange, brought the perspective of a journalist who covered the ICE incursion across six or seven reports while also living through it as a community member. What she witnessed, she said, was something she had never seen in her 25 years in Minnesota.

“I saw extraordinary efforts of neighborly support by Minnesotans,” Morrison said, describing neighbors buying groceries for people too afraid to leave their homes, co-workers covering shifts for those who feared coming in, employers supporting struggling small businesses, and residents passing out whistles and joining secret chat groups to document and track ICE activity.

She shared a personal account from January 15th, when two Chinese restaurant workers were detained and quickly transferred to Texas. Within hours, community members formed a WeChat group called “Community Safety,” with members contacting the ACLU in Texas, reaching out to the Chinese Consulate General in Chicago, and working through every available channel to secure the men’s release. Though their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, Morrison said the story illustrates the speed and determination of community response.

“What happened in Minnesota has really encouraged people in other places,” she said, noting that protesters in Boston were heard chanting, “We are not cold, we are not afraid. Minneapolis has taught us to be brave.” She closed by reminding attendees of the constitutional importance of state authority: “The states in the U.S. have considerable autonomy and power at the state level. Not to allow federal overreach in areas where the states have the final control by design.”

“We can decide the kind of America we want to be”

Professor Yolanda Moses, a cultural anthropologist at UC Riverside, offered historical context, placing the current crisis within a long arc of American struggles over identity, belonging, and power. From the nation’s founding, she argued, the central question has always been the same: whose America is this?

“This country has only been dealing with issues of true integration for less than 100 years,” she said, tracing the line from the abolition of slavery through the Civil Rights Act of 1965 to today. She urged everyone to read Project 2025, describing it as a blueprint for those who “want to purge the country from unwanted people.”

Moses drew a direct line from the murder of George Floyd, which she said “woke up white America” to the reality of state violence, and to the current wave of community resistance in Minnesota. She called on participants to move beyond conversation and into coordinated, nonviolent action, pointing to organizations like Indivisible as vehicles for that effort.

“We’re going to have to act in unison,” she said. “And we’re going to have to be non-violent, because that is what has worked.”

“We Want a Truth Commission to be set up”

Rajeev Singh, a board member of the Hindu American Foundation, brought a perspective shaped by both concern and a call for rigorous inquiry. He emphasized that while the Hindu American community is deeply troubled by recent events, they are pressing for something specific: accountability through investigation.

“We want a truth commission to be set up,” Singh said. “We want Minnesota, Minneapolis to be investigated impartially just like we had an inquiry after 9/11. This is just big enough. This is our future at stake.”

Singh also raised pointed questions about the nature of ICE itself, who is being recruited, and whether the agency is being shaped into a force that serves narrow political interests rather than the public. He expressed deep alarm at the killing of community members by federal agents without prior arrest or due process. “No arrests made, no rounding up. We go straight to shooting people. That is what worries me. That is what we have to get investigated.”

He acknowledged the urgency of street-level action and is hearten by what he sees in Minnesota. AAUC has the opportunity right now is bring together people with diverse backgrounds in advocacy, policy making, academia to do the same.

“We are in plain sight”

David Capelli and Carla Mays, co-founders of #SmartCohort, a California-based organization focused on equitable civic development and AAPI leadership, joined from Vancouver, British Columbia, where they had already expanded operations in anticipation of what they saw coming.

Mays, who has an Afro-Indigenous background and grew up in Wisconsin with an Afghan-born mother, connected the current moment to generations of forced displacement. For her and many of her peers, she said, safety means not just legal protection but the freedom to build a life without fear. For some, that increasingly means looking beyond U.S. borders.

“We are professionals. My mother graduated from Columbia University as a medical doctor,” she said. “It’s important that people live their truth, don’t hide their accent, be proud of who they are.”

At the same time, she spoke candidly about a generational divide in how Asian Americans and mixed-identity communities are responding to the current climate, with younger people increasingly exploring options for relocation and international mobility. “We are part of the new American diaspora,” she said. “And we need to look at what getting safe looks like in 2026.”

“So proud to be Minnesotan”

Chen Zhou, based in Minnesota, brought an intimate view of how the ICE incursion has shifted attitudes within the Chinese community, including among those who were initially supportive of stricter immigration enforcement.

“When it first started, a lot of people thought it was a good thing,” he said. “But when you see how it’s carried out, you realize this is just brutal. This is not what we signed up for.”

That recognition, he said, has become a unifying force. Local police chiefs spoke out about how ICE operations have changed. Mayors came forward. The Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans organized community gatherings at the local Asian Mall to support struggling small businesses. Lunar New Year celebrations at Burnsville Mall and other venues drew large crowds, both as cultural affirmation and as acts of economic solidarity.

“I’m so proud to be Minnesotan right now,” Zhou said. “So many people came out to demonstrations and told their immigrant neighbors, ‘If you don’t feel safe, don’t go out. We are here, we will go on.’ It’s minus 20, 30 degrees, and they’re out there.”

Zhou recently wrote an article for AAUC News, “When Fear Replaces Freedom.”

“We are trying to hold onto each other”

Rio Saito, director of the Japan America Society of Minnesota, described the unique situation facing Japanese nationals and expats living in the Twin Cities. As non-U.S. citizens, many face the prospect not of detention in Texas, but of immediate deportation, and the sense of vulnerability is compounded by the novelty of the experience.

“We are realizing that our faces can be targeted by the faceless so-called federal agents,” Saito said. “For many of us, it’s a very new concept.”

The Japan America Society has responded by hosting online and in-person networking events — spaces for community members simply to check in with one another. Saito also took comfort in the outpouring of support from outside the Asian community, particularly from white neighbors and allies standing up on their behalf. “To see how many non-Asian people out there are trying to make things better on behalf of us. That, by itself, is comforting to know that we have friends out there.”

Saito and her colleagues, she said, are holding on to each other and holding on to hope.

“We must resist!”

AAUC Vice President and retired attorney Jack Hanna presented “The Authoritarian’s Playbook,” an ongoing document he and Ted Fong have developed and published on aauc.us/playbook. It is a framework for identifying the specific tactics the Trump administration has employed to concentrate power and suppress dissent, drawn from historical patterns seen in authoritarian regimes worldwide.

The first tactic Hanna identified is the use of false pretexts to justify illegal actions. The administration invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law, to authorize mass deportations by claiming that immigrants constitute a national “invasion.” It used a fraud case involving Somali immigrants as justification for deploying ICE into Minneapolis, and declared Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. in a state of rebellion to justify sending in the National Guard. “These are false pretexts,” Hanna said flatly, “and they must be refuted.”

Closely related is the tactic of blaming and scapegoating without proof, such as accusing Renee Good of being a domestic terrorist and Alex Pretti of being a would-be assassin to justify their killings. Other examples included scapegoating migrants for housing costs and job losses, and labeling critical news organizations as “the enemy of the American people.” The goal, Hanna explained, is to demonize perceived opponents and normalize violence against them.

The administration also relies heavily on distraction, what Hanna called “flooding the zone,” releasing a relentless torrent of outrageous statements and executive actions designed to exhaust attention and prevent people from focusing on any single abuse of power. Controversies over annexing Canada or renaming the Kennedy Center serve this purpose. “They use culture wars and imagined threats to motivate the base and distract from policy failures,” he said.

Then there is simply lying, whether it’s about the 2020 election, the economy, the price of eggs, about settled wars that are worthy of earning the president the Nobel prize. Hanna noted authoritarians lie loudly, repeatedly, and without shame, because repetition makes falsehoods stick.

Weaponizing government agencies for retribution has become a defining feature of the administration’s approach to dissent. Investigations have been launched against FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. Subpoenas were issued to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Law firms representing opponents have been extorted and stripped of federal contracts. Hanna urged communities document every retaliatory action, support targeted individuals with legal defense funds, and build coalitions that present unified resistance.

Hanna noted that blatant hypocrisy does not faze the administration. Championing the Second Amendment while condemning Alex Pretti for carrying a legal firearm, pardoning a convicted the former president of Honduras, convicted drug trafficker while kidnapping Venezuela’s president on drug charges — these double standards announce that the rule of law does not matter.

In conclusion, Hanna reiterated Yen Marshall’s earlier point that “we cannot respond to things we don’t understand.” The Authoritarian’s Playbook explains the administrations tactics and offers concrete ways for the community to take action.

Moving Forward Together

Yen Marshall closed the town hall by expressing gratitude to all who spoke and reminding participants that understanding is the foundation of effective resistance. “Fear isolates,” she said, “but solidarity transforms, and that’s what AAUC stands for.”

The next AAUC Town Hall is scheduled for March 19th and will focus on AAPI contributions to U.S. progress and democratic values, timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Community members are invited to submit nominations and present their perspectives. Register here.