[Updated] Everything is Trump. Everything is on us.
Welcome to Export Quality, your home for news by and about South Asian Americans and Canadians - and everything in between.
I had written a draft of this whole newsletter issue out on my phone in the early morning hours, in bed, because it was too cold to face the 385th day of January, the longest known month in the history of the world after March 2020.
Everything is Trump again. Every news story, meme, tweet/skeet/thread, every Saturday Night Live preview. It’s happening again and we’re careening towards another round of losing millions of Americans to political disgust or worse, apathy. [Author’s note: Go read How Everything Became War and The Military Became Everthing by Rosa Brooks. It’s an excellent study and will also put Pete Hegseth’s confirmation as Secretary of Defense in a new, horrifying light.]
For us journalists, this looks like burnout and droves of us leaving reporting, if not the profession. (And, there’s no shame in this happening! I stopped reporting for three years after Biden and Harris took office because Trump’s first administration + the pandemic were tiring, to say the least.)
I struggled to even figure out what to write today that wouldn’t add to the deluge of executive orders (AP News), the confusing information about raids on public schools that has Chicagoans on edge (The Guardian), and potential economic (Paul Krugman’s free newsletter) doom you’re likely experiencing right now.
Should I discuss Bishop Mariann Budde of the Washington National Cathedral whose boldness and clarity puts much of the U.S. Congress to shame? Or perhaps the several times VP J.D. Vance tried - and failed - to make eye contact with Second Lady Usha Vance in some attempt to affirm and validate his eye-rolling disdain of the Bishop’s pleas for mercy for the most vulnerable? The dynamics of that moment, I could write a tome. An angry tome.
Or maybe I should talk about Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s prominent placement on the stage during Inauguration? Pichai was born and raised in India and has children who are Indian Americans - a mix common for all South Asian families in the U.S. Whether he chose to be front and center with other tech CEOs and billionaires or not, it was just hours before the president avowed to revoke birthright citizenship. That assemblage was like the final scene of the Lord of The Rings trilogy if Frodo and Sam failed to destroy that damn ring - or maybe more apt (be we love some dark humor at EQ HQ) is the boardroom of villains from an Austin Powers film.
Then again, there’s a host of new executive orders I could talk about or I could switch gears to address some more Terrible Men with the news of sexual assault allegations against Neil Gaiman and the slew of his canceled projects. I would have told you I was never a fan, not because of some hindsight haughtiness - just the opposite. I genuinely thought I was never smart enough to fall in love with his writing, his being, the way some of my Very Very Smart friends had. The Sandman was too dark for me, and though that was partly the point, I had chalked it up to simply not being intellectual enough to bring myself to be comfortable with the discomfort it caused. Had I written more fully about it, I would have said though, this news has hit many people I admire like a ton of bricks and for that, I empathize with them.
Then it struck me, all this news from the first few weeks of 2025 boils down to one sentiment: disappointment.
If you too have felt the vibes have been off the last few weeks, in between periods of indignation and resignation (and freezing), it’s disappointment that you’re likely feeling. Your rage is disappointment. Maybe even your news avoidance.
We expected better from fellow Americans, from men, from artists we venerated for years because they called themselves ‘feminists,’ and from news organizations. Even though Indian Americans did not overwhelmingly vote for Trump, anecdotally we expected better from those who grew up here and those who chose to make their home and children here.
Is the answer for all of us to become monk-like and live without expectations? Maybe. But in my view that would require removing oneself from the shared buy-in of a community, whatever that may look like to you. It looks like it would be more peaceful in terms of interpersonal relationships but ultimately, wholly unrealistic and kind of sad for most of us here in the glaringly real world who don’t want to feel so alone all the time.
I think the answer is to actually have higher expectations.
We need to expect more from our political parties and elected officials. I don’t mean absolutism either. I mean, we should expect more human candidates and officials instead of canned responses; more book and street smarts than uninformed ignorance; more courage than cowardice.
We should expect more of people in power,not just those in a lofty office but also the everyday power of being in a room with a person who admires you and has less agency than you in a given situation.
We should want better from each other, too. There are a fair amount of people on both the far right and the far left who are saying certain people “deserve” the deleterious effects of this administration for voting for Harris. But, as we say at EQ, this kind of political blame game has only losers. I can’t say this next part any better than Mayor Pete did in the clip below so I’ll just let him handle it.
One catch: I have no idea if this will work and could be full of it, but maybe we owe it to each other to try?
Let’s get into some work from our neighborhood desi diaspora journalists:
After Helene and Milton, Farmworkers Play an Outsized Role in the Cleanup - Siri Chilukuri for Scalawag Mag. It’s a piece from December but it’s about farm workers on H-2 visas, a vulnerable population as Trump’s maligning of immigrants continues
Here's what New Yorkers need to know about President Trump's immigration orders and Biden grants presidential pardon to NYC immigrant rights leader Ravi Ragbir - Arun Venugopal for WNYC/Gothamist
So Much for Tariffs? Businesses Could Avoid Paying $250 Billion in Levies, Goldman Sachs Says. - Karishma Vanjani for Barron’s
Former staff at Spokane youth psychiatric unit blame Providence for closure - Kaylee Tornay and Whitney Bryen for InvestigateWest
From dargahs to coffee shops, how qawwali lives on in the diaspora - Zoya Wazir, Astha Lakhankar for CentralDesi
[Op-Ed] Why regulating AI is tricky - Bina Venkataraman for Washington Post
My All-Nighter in a Vanishing World: the 24-Hour Diner - Priya Krishna for New York Times
New York City Seeks Jolt for Midtown With Plan to Build 10,000 Homes - Mihir Zaveri for New York Times
Portland nonprofit expands anti-violence work to help homeless people - Zaeem Shaikh for The Oregonian/OregonLive
Trump says he wants to overhaul FEMA as he travels to North Carolina and California - Asma Khalid and Deepa Shivaram; Jason Breslow for NPR
Replacing fossil fuel-fired ‘peaker plants’ can help Massachusetts meet climate goals, according to new report - Bhaamati Borkheteria for Commonwealth Beacon
What to watch in health care legislation in 89th Texas Legislature - Jishnu Nair for Houston Business Journal