The Felonious Case of the Inaguration in the Daytime; an airing of grievances and a list of hope
Welcome to Export Quality, your home for news by and about South Asian Americans and Canadians - and everything in between.
Thank you to Mark Haddon, who wrote The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. If you’re new here, welcome! Here’s what this newsletter is all about.
First up, some wonderful work from my desi diaspora colleagues:
Jaweed Kaleem of the LA Times has been covering the fires. Here’s his latest: Free camps are offering a safe space for kids as L.A. fires cause child-care upheaval. Colleague Sandhya Kambhampati has also been mapping the fires’ damage.
OpenAI Whistleblower’s Death in SF Has His Parents Skeptical of City’s Investigation - Lakshmi Sarah for KQED
An Extremely Detailed Map of the 2024 Election from Saurabh Datar and team for The New York Times. Stay tuned this year for more fascinating and important data reporting from him!
What's next for Kamala Harris - Deepa Shivaram for NPR
Some H-1B workers say they feel insulted by debate over visa holders - Sakshi Venkataraman for NBC News Asian America
Congrats to Rachel Dalloo for being named one of The Washington Media Scholars Foundation (WMSF)’s Spring 2025 Media Fellows!
Shanelle Kaul has had some great segments on CBS News of late, covering everything from the ceasefire in the Middle East to the trend of young people living the sober life.
Surge in Americans getting sterilizations given states’ abortion laws - Sabrina Malhi for Washington Post
How Biden’s Foreign Policy Destroyed His Presidency - Jeet Heer for The Nation
This is from December, but it’s an important piece from Angilee Shah, CEO and Editor in Chief of Charlottesville Tomorrow Reporting the news is important — but what you do with it matters most
Community leaders call on Louisville Metro to protect immigrants ahead of next Trump term - Divya Karthikeyan for Louisville Public Media
Beehiiv is the latest platform to try to lure independent journalists with perks - Hanaa’ Tameez for Nieman Lab
Why people post themselves crying online - Harmeet Kaur for CNN
How Detroit wants to spend $346M in federal disaster recovery aid - Nushrat Rahman for Detroit Free Press
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There’s much for those who did not vote for Trump to be angry about in the lead up to the Inauguration, but this is the way of democracy. He won the popular vote and the electoral college both, with room to spare. He will be the president the next four years and many Americans will have to figure out a way to survive, hopefully in a collective manner.
Darth Vader marks the day in my planner.
There’s been lots and will continue to be more said about how to work together to help those most negatively affected by the incoming administration. Organizers and those who care in your community are working hard on that already.
I’m here to be a little petty and soothe your soul a bit, in equal measure. Let’s make two lists, a traditional airing of grievances and then, things for which we are grateful and hopeful.
Inspired by Frank Costanza of Seinfeld fame:
There are few things about journalism as an industry I truly detest more than ‘company’ journalists, the ones who adhere to some sort of inside the Beltway/Southern pseudo-decorum by never admitting their news outlets got things wrong or did irreparable harm. I say this deeply admiring most of the people I know from these institutions, but just because you attended Columbia Journalism or work at The New York Times (or similar institutions) doesn’t mean you have a monopoly on what journalism should look like or what constitutes good reporting. You have a take on it, just like the rest of us working to serve the public. And, maybe catering to a monolith of an idea is what got us into this mess of distrust in the first place; maybe we need to respect and hold an amalgamation of ideas instead. I understand being professional on public platforms/panels/etc, but you look like kind of ignorant when you can't even have these honest conversations in private, among industry colleagues. All this behavior has done is cement the fact that you are out of touch with the reality millions of Americans face and what they care about. One could argue a byproduct of this, in part, has made it harder for journalists across the board to survive in the industry if they don’t work for a mega-funded news outlet. It’s wild, considering those with the least funding often have the most reader-interaction like community and ethnic media - who I think will be on the frontlines of democracy and disasters of all kinds over the next four years.
Abortion and reproductive health access. Read
’s newsletter.Healthcare in America.
People who keep calling Donald Trump stupid. STOP. He acts stupid because he is actually a marketing genius. Much like Kris Kardashian who took 6 no-talent clowns and turned many of them into billionaires, Trump took a middling real estate career of a spoiled boy from Queens and turned it into a Page Six darling, hit television show, and two presidential administrations. I do not admire him for his policies and or his public lack of empathy (even for his supporters at times), but treating him like he is a fumbling idiot has done the Left and Center Left absolutely no favors. It’s time to outmanouever him instead of relying on people - exactly who no one seems to really know - being aghast by his perceived lack of intelligence.
The hypocrisy among so many wealthy South Asian Americans who will shout on social media about everything from climate change to casteism to data privacy. But privately, they are never willing to acknowledge how their own incredible privilege and deep-seated need for white-adjacency holds up some of the very systems they say they hate. They don’t see poorer South Asians, even the ones who live in their own neighborhoods, as equal and they practically fetishize Black and Muslim people in their quest to claim the Left. I’m using this space, our space, to ask you to do better.
The UX on the Spotify app. Seriously, why is it so terrible and why do we all continue to put up with it?
That any of us has to defend the continued existence of Sesame Street, which has been put ‘on sale’ by its host Max as the culturual institution launches its 55th season.
Someone better step in before this earns an even higher spot during my Airing.
White girls who say too-MER-ic instead of turmeric. Please leave the internet.
Phew, that felt good. Now on to the good stuff, the things that give me hope about what’s to come in the world.
The spirit of Angelenos in the wake of devastating fires. I imaginge losing your home and possessions - your cherished memory-keeping objects - because of the very nature of nature is a special kind of debilitating. But everything I’ve seen from here in NYC have been images of neighbors helping neighbors, celebrities using their privilege to help those without it, and badass journalists like Zohreen Shah of ABC News focus on asking all the right questions and turning her work towards the majority-minority community of Altadena - all just days after she lost her own hard-earned home. She did the damn thing. Speaking of Altadena, another journalist and friend of the newsletter Jasmine Mithani of The 19th is going through it too and if you can help her parents rebuild their family home, it would be greatly appreciated.
Some really wonderful newsletters. Here’s a shout out for two of them from dear friends. has started writing and I was thrilled to read her recent issue on political images. It’s fascinating and an angle on campaigns we don’t get to see in major news outlets anymore because it’s subtle - but it’s so important. Stay tuned for her forthcoming issues on indigenous land in L.A. that has since burned in the tragic fires and suprising information on slavery in Brooklyn, among other posts. has her Port of Entry newsletter she’s been refining which I’m also excited to read with every issue. You may not know this about her but she was a foreign correspondent in Bangladesh, telling the stories of women and refugees the world had forgotten about and now she’s giving us stories about immigrant communities, what it means to move across the world and the generational impacts, and interviewing the people who work on those issues. Give both of them a follow!
Kyle McLachlan’s tribute to the late and brilliant film director David Lynch
The ire both Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama (who friends of the newsletter know I adore) drew for their actions this past week was a grienvance but their responses have given me hope. Harris did not invite VP-Elect JD Vance for a visit and the Forever FLOTUS said she would not be attending Trump’s second inaguration. And, why should they? Pence never invited her and Vance literally called her “trash.” And why should Michelle Obama sit through the inauguruation of the man who was partly responsible for death threats her children received? Washington perpetuating its fake politeness on the rest of the country at this point in history and calling it ‘diplomacy’ will make me have a rage stroke one day, but to see two much-maligned women be human makes me feel like we don’t have to take the high road or the low road, there’s a way to do this fight otherwise.
The mute button on Whatsapp group chats.
AOC. If Gen Z’s (understandable) problem with the current slate of Democrat power-holders is that they don’t have the courage of conviction, perhaps she’s one of the solutions. I first interviewed her when she was still bartending down the street from my newsroom. She had just moved into an ‘office’ in the back of a taxi stand in the Bronx and to see her education and fight over the course of the last seven years is something that makes me believe in the American political system just enough.
The Libby app and audiobooks.
Dark chocolate Digestives biscuits, dipped in chai.
What are on your lists? Tell me below!
I vote for a petty list in every newsletter! Loved both lists, thank you for all you do.