REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS, 2-year term Districts 1, 3, and

PAGE 1 Investment and Jobs Act and the Build Back Better Act. Meanwhile, Nguyen spoke about AAPI representation in government and its impact on policies and resources for the growing community.

Other attendees included AAPI Democratic Caucus Chair Angelyn Tabalba, Marcus Manabat, the DCCC’s AAPI Constituency Organizing Director in Nevada, community leader Gloria Caoile, and representatives of various local organizations.

“Home means Nevada to one of the fastest-growing AAPI populations in the country, and I’m proud to be working with the DCCC and Nevada Democrats to engage our community earlier than ever before. As a young Filipino American and Nevadan, I’m so passionate about this work because it’s very personal — I’m always thinking of new ways to engage more Pinoys in politics and ensure AAPI voters across the Silver State have the tools we need to make our voices heard next November,” said Manabat.

AAPIs comprise 10% of the Silver State’s electorate, with 61% of them living in Clark County alone. n

COVID-19 vaccine-or-test requirements...

PAGE 3 their health insurance companies foot the bill.

Local governments have a smorgasbord of policies on who is subject to the vaccine-or-test requirement and how it’s enforced. For example, all unvaccinated employees of San Diego County, California, who do not work in a health care setting need to provide proof of weekly testing to their supervisor, said spokesperson Michael Workman.

Miami-Dade County’s policy applies only to nonunion workers, or about 9% of its 29,000 employees. About 380 undergo weekly testing. The Florida county is still negotiating with unions about adding the requirement.

Virginia’s Department of Corrections requires unvaccinated employees who work in crowded settings to get tested every three days, and the rest, every seven days. And the expense? It cost the department nearly $7,000 to test 442 staff members over two days in October. The state is tapping federal covid relief funds to pay for the testing.

Securing scarce testing supplies can be difficult. The Virginia State Police had to wait more than a month to start a testing program in part because of delays in delivery.

While the Biden administration hoped its rule would motivate more people to get vaccinated, counties have had mixed results.

Officials in Fairfax County, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., said they have not seen a significant increase in employees submitting vaccination verification since its mandatory shot policy took effect in October. More than 80% of county employees are vaccinated.

The county distributes and pays for self-administered tests for its 2,300 employees who need them, said spokesperson Dawn Nieters. The cost ranges from $35 for a rapid test to $53 for a PCR test, considered the gold standard for detecting covid.

Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, which includes Charlotte, did see the needle move. Employees there are responsible for getting their own tests. The vaccination rate jumped from 62% to 85% one month after the requirement was implemented in early September.

George Dunlap, chairman of Mecklenburg’s Board of County Commissioners, said he prefers the vaccine-or-test requirement to a vaccine-only mandate because “you have to allow for human behavior that might be different than yours.” But he isn’t sure the policy will encourage any more workers to get vaccinated.

“The people that I know personally who decided to do the testing are still getting testing. They didn’t change their mind about the vaccination,” he said.

Some health experts question the value of testing as a backup and instead favor mandating the shots.

“A vaccine-and/or-testing policy is second best,” said Jeffrey Levi, a professor of health management and policy at George Washington University. “A testing policy catches a problem early. It doesn’t prevent a problem, whereas the vaccination requirement helps to prevent it.”

Marc Elrich, the executive in Montgomery County, Maryland, in suburban Washington, supports a vaccine-only mandate in theory but worries imposing it would result in workers leaving for jobs in neighboring jurisdictions without similar requirements.

“I wish the federal government would impose a [vaccine-only] mandate, because if the feds were to do it, there wouldn’t be any job portability,” said Elrich. “I wouldn’t have to deal with an employee’s ability to go from, particularly in this region, Montgomery County Police Department to pretty much every other police department around here.”

Robb Pitts, who chairs the Fulton County Board of Commissioners in Atlanta, would also like to do away with the testing option. “But I don’t think my colleagues would necessarily go along with that,” he said. About a third of county employees have opted for testing instead of vaccination.

“Why did I compromise? Because I felt, well, we had to do something,” Pitts said. “A lot of times, politics is the art of compromise.”

According to Pitts’ office, Fulton County saw its largest increase in vaccinations since May in September, when the vaccineor-test policy was implemented. The vaccination rate now hovers around 72%. n PAGE 1 incidents take place in public, and women — who comprise 62% of the reports — are more likely to be the targets.

Stop AAPI Hate’s finding coincides with other survey findings. Last month, a survey from NPR and Harvard found that 1 in 4 Asian Americans feared their families would be attacked because of their race. In the spring, Morning Consult relased a report that found that 3 in 5 Asian adults feel that the rise in anti-Asian harassment and violence greatly affected their mental health.

Notably, Asian American respondents with a high school education (41.2%) are experiencing hate twice as much as those with college degrees (19.8%). One in three Asian American parents also reported their child was targeted in a hate incident at school.

“It’s tragic but not surprising that Asian Americans with lower education levels are experiencing more hate,” said Cynthia Choi, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and coexecutive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, in a statement. “Anti-Asian hate is tied to systemic racism against our community. Stopping hate is not about quick fixes like law enforcement but about deeper investment in our communities.”

The hate crime tracker — which gathers self-reported hate incidents via website submissions — has been tracking anti-Asian hate since the beginning of the pandemic when anti-Asian xenophobic harassment began rising. Stop AAPI Hate has been among the leading organizations pushing for more communitybased solutions and investment from lawmakers to prioritize solutions that address anti-AAPI harassment, discrimination, and violence.

“The levels of Asian American children experiencing hate in school is devastatingly high,” Russell Jeung, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University, said in a statement. “There needs to be an urgent push toward incorporating solutions that promote racial understanding in schools, including through investment in Ethnic Studies.”

Victims can anonymously report the details of an incident on the website after which they will prompted questions about how they feel about what happened and if they’ve sought any legal or emotional counsel. n

Attorney General Bonta co-leads multistate...

PAGE 1 than any other state in the country.

“From defending DACA in court to supporting new federal efforts to fortify it, California will continue to lead the way in standing up for our nation’s Dreamers,” said Bonta. “DACA is critical, it is needed, and it’s important we get these updated regulations done. DACA recipients — many of whom are on the front lines of this pandemic — deserve to have peace of mind about their status. Bottom line: For hundreds of thousands of Dreamers across the country, home is here. They continue to show up for our communities and we’re going to keep showing up for them.”

The DACA program has allowed recipients to live, study, and work across the United States free from the fear of being forcibly separated from their families and communities. DACA has enabled hundreds of thousands of grantees to enroll in colleges and universities, complete their education, start businesses that help improve our economy, and give back to our communities as teachers, medical professionals, engineers, and entrepreneurs — all on the books. These contributions became especially evident as the deadly coronavirus pandemic began to sweep through the nation and thousands of DACA recipients stood, and continue to stand, on the frontlines as essential workers. As of April 2020, an estimated 27,000 healthcare workers and support staff depend on DACA for their authorization to work in the United States, including nurses, dentists, pharmacists, physician assistants, home health aides, technicians, and others. DACA has also advanced public health and societal interests in another way: by giving its recipients the opportunity to procure employer-provided health insurance, which has been particularly critical as the states fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the comment letter, the coalition asserts, among other things: • DACA has public safety and public health benefits for the states;

Attorney General Rob Bonta • The states benefit economically from DACA and DACA recipients; • DACA and DACA recipients are important to the states’ higher education institutions; • The states have adopted laws, regulations, and programs in reliance on DACA; and • Opponents of DACA are unable to substantiate any alleged harms.

In filing the comment letter, Attorney General Bonta is joined by the attorneys general of New Jersey, New York, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia. n