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President Biden signed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act into law – a momentous step towards confronting the uptick in anti-Asian racism seen since the pandemic began. Hate crimes have historically been underreported by Asian Americans due to a lack of culturally competent and language accessible resources, among other issues. In response, this bill expedites the review of COVID-19-related hate crimes, makes online hate crimes and hate incident reporting language accessible, and expands the public awareness of campaigns designed to increase awareness and outreach to victims. This bill will also disaggregate victims’ protected characteristics and expand restorative justice practices and alternative sentencing, a step away from the carceral system. In summary, this bill improves the overall infrastructure needed for hate crime reporting, data collection, and justice. -- CLICK STORY TO READ MORE

By Robin Bleiweis

The Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community is a vibrant, diverse, and growing segment of the U.S. population. Yet despite the rich cultural diversity within this group—which together speaks more than 100 languages, practices a wide variety of religions, and represents more than 50 ethnic groups—economic narratives often fall short of capturing the income and employment disparities that exist within it, particularly among AAPI women. It is past time to remedy that oversight, which has roots in racial, ethnic, and gender biases. -- CLICK STORY TO READ MORE

By Lorena Roque and Galen Hendricks

Despite the fact that the United States is losing an estimated $600 billion per year in unpaid taxes, IRS funding has fallen precipitously over the last decade, forcing the agency to shed a large share of its workforce, including 35 percent of revenue agents responsible for examining complex tax returns and conducting audits. Largely because of this steep drop in funding, the agency has dramatically reduced the audits that it conducts on high-income individuals and large corporations. Those trends have meant that a greater share of audits are of lower-income taxpayers, especially the low-wage workers who claim the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). These trends have had negative implications on communities of color, as a disproportionate share of EITC claimants are Black and Hispanic. In particular, some of the most heavily audited places in the country are predominantly Black communities. -- CLICK STORY TO READ MORE

By Claudia Flores and Nicole Prchal Svajlenka

In the near future, a federal judge in Texas will rule on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which allows certain eligible young immigrants who arrived to the United States as children to access a renewable, two-year work permit and a reprieve from deportation. Since its inception in 2012, DACA has allowed over 800,000 young immigrants to remain with their families and communities in the United States. Although it’s widely popular—a majority of Americans across the political spectrum support a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers—for the past four years, DACA and its beneficiaries have been under attack. The Trump administration made multiple unsuccessful attempts to end DACA, culminating in a Supreme Court ruling that left the policy in place. -- CLICK STORY TO READ MORE

By Max Bergmann and Alexandra Schmitt

U.S. security assistance is broken and in need of an overhaul. Over the past two decades, the bureaucratic system developed to deliver billions of dollars of military aid to partner nations has evolved and expanded not by design but as the result of a series of ad hoc legislative and policy changes. Though the U.S. Department of State was initially in charge of security assistance policy and accounts, since 9/11, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) has established a separate, well-funded security assistance bureaucracy at the Pentagon. This has inhibited effective congressional oversight, harmed coordination between diplomacy and defense, and contributed to the growing militarization of U.S. foreign policy. It has created a dysfunctional and bifurcated security assistance system. -- CLICK STORY TO READ MORE​

Washington, D.C. — Last April, the leadership of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) met with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the Oval Office to discuss critical priorities for the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. Meeting attendees included CAPAC Chair Rep. Judy Chu, First Vice Chair Rep. Grace Meng, Second Vice Chair Rep. Mark Takano, Freshman Representative Kaiali‘i Kahele, Senators Tammy Duckworth and Mazie Hirono, and Rep. Doris Matsui.

country since 2005. -- CLICK STORY TO READ MORE