And we’re not even touching on people’s expectations of Asian food being cheap, despite all of the above mentioned and skill it takes to properly execute.

That’s for another day.

All this to say, Asian food is the lifeblood of Asian American communities, and I’m grateful for @npr & Juliana Kim’s coverage of this.

Tariffs are a regressive tax, but that doesn’t even begin to describe the disperate impacts they will have.

My trip to T&T made it where I was able to cook foods I had only previously accessed at hawkers in Asia. Priced reasonably for its scarcity, but roughly as expensive as a Whole Foods.

Now, I won’t be able to afford that access to my culture, and that’s assuming they don’t go out of business.

Asian food as a cuisine, even its Americanized version, is heavily reliant on access to the right sauces, spices, and Asian-specific fresh produce.

If you’re unfamiliar, the difference between soy sauces can be as large as the difference between ketchup and crushed San Marzano tomato’s.

It wasn’t special just because it was a big store, it was special because it offered things that other chains like H-mart, and Uwajimaya didn’t.

After standing outside, some people were happily standing in line in the store for over an hour to get the next batch of fried chicken.

A month into its opening, and there was a line still around the block to get in, and for good reason.

Asians are roughly 40% of the population in Bellevue, the city it is in, and the region has a higher than average Asian population, who are willing to make the pilgrimage (about an hour for me).

Sounds like a good way to pad some bottles…Duty Free is about to have its moment

Immigration for the most part isn’t like the economy where Dems can wait around and let failed policy speak for itself, and be flet by consumers/voters.

Criminalization of immigrants, all of them, is a foreign policy, economic, and moral liability, that risks millions of American lives.

It’s lazy, ineffective and shameful politics.

Why are we electing people who don’t want to lead, and lack the skills to articulate some type of vision to get behind?

Negative sentiments against immigrants have gotten to this place because Biden and Dems refused to stand on something…anything!

I just listened to Sen. Gallego, the new blood of the party, fumble through an interview with @podsaveamerica on responding to Trump’s El Salvador detention scheme.

He said, he thinks voters are with Trump on this one, with some caveats on due process for a handful of people he deemed worthy.

We’re stuck in a two party system where everyone knows there needs to be immigration reform. One party is laying out their brutalist version of it, and the other party is getting bulldozed with no vision for a system that works.

It’s what drove people to rush to airports during the Muslim ban, and protests during the height of family separation policies.

8 years later and Dems have got even weaker on the issue, and capitulated to Republicans to lead the national conversation.

I was 19, and despite my directness, I asked the question in good faith.

I was watching Dems fail to capitalize on a type of pro-immigration patriotism where people saw attacks on the immigrant community as a failure of the government to uphold the ideals people had about themselves as Americans.

Max, is the exception, however most former Red Bull Academy drivers find more success elsewhere on the grid…if they’re able to survive being dropped by Red Bull.