5 years later, still no justice for Atlanta spa shooting victims
Read and share the stories of Issue #191 today, March 18, 2026.
Rebels,
Issue #191 covers the five-year anniversary of the Atlanta spa shootings and renewed calls for justice, alongside new data showing ICE arrests of Asian and Pacific Islanders have nearly quadrupled under the Trump administration. We also have coverage of the president’s eugenics-inflected immigration rhetoric, a UN-backed panel’s findings on human rights violations at the U.S. border, a new $5.5 million small business loan program aimed at AAPI entrepreneurs in New York City and more.
Featured
Victims of Atlanta spa shootings remembered 5 years later
Five years after Robert Aaron Long killed eight people, six of them Asian women, at Atlanta-area spas, communities nationwide are holding vigils and renewing demands for accountability. CAPAC Chair Emerita Judy Chu and fellow Democrats introduced a formal resolution honoring the victims. Long is due back in court March 30, and the question of whether this was a racially motivated attack remains as contested, and as consequential, as ever.
What else we’re tracking
ICE arrests of Asian and Pacific Islanders have nearly quadrupled under Trump, new report finds
Stop AAPI Hate’s latest analysis shows ICE arrests of people from A/PI countries jumped from roughly 2,000 in the first 10 months of 2024 to more than 7,700 in the same window in 2025. The data’s most striking finding is that U.S. citizenship offered almost no protection, with those holding legal status affected at nearly the same rate as those without.
UN panel cites Trump’s “racist hate speech” as factor in human rights violations of immigrants
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued a non-binding ruling last week finding that dehumanizing rhetoric from Trump and other U.S. political leaders has contributed to grave human rights violations. For Asian Americans, the findings land with particular weight given that the same racialized political rhetoric identified as a driver of harm is familiar ground for the community.
Trump tells white Fox News host that immigrants who should be barred from U.S. don’t have “your genetics”
In a recent phone interview, Trump told “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade, who is white, that migrants entering the country don’t have “your genetics,” explicitly linking criminal behavior to inherited biological traits. Immigration analysts and journalists noted that the remarks track closely with core eugenics ideology and echo language historians have tied to Nazi racial ideology.
NYC’s AAPI small businesses get a $5.5 million lifeline
A new loan program backed by the Social Justice Fund, The Asian American Foundation, Renaissance Economic Development Corporation and the State of New York is putting up to $100,000 in affordable capital within reach of small business owners across all five boroughs, with a particular focus on AAPI entrepreneurs who have historically been shut out of traditional financing. One early recipient says it is already opening doors that might otherwise have taken years to unlock.
Tracing Asian American growers’ role in shaping California’s floral industry
A Stanford-led public history initiative called Forgotten Flowers is documenting how Japanese, Chinese and Filipino American growers built California’s commercial flower industry despite exclusionary land laws, cultivating flowers on leased parcels across the Central Valley and coastal regions until World War II incarceration dismantled much of what they had built. The project is assembling an interactive digital archive mapping former farm sites using land records, family photographs and oral histories.
Graham Platner now defends Nazi-linked tattoo as new attack ads roil Maine primary
Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner has reversed course and is now defending his chest tattoo as “an eminently reasonable thing,” walking back a prior pledge to have it removed. The reversal comes as his primary against Gov. Janet Mills turns sharply negative.
Fee to renounce U.S. citizenship slashed by 80%
The State Department has cut the cost of renouncing U.S. citizenship from $2,350 to $450, following ongoing legal challenges from advocacy groups representing Americans abroad who argued the original fee was unconstitutional. The reduction, however, does not change the multi-step renunciation process.
China offers solar support to blackout-hit Cuba as Trump says he would “take” island
As Cuba recovers from a nationwide blackout affecting 10 million people, China is accelerating solar energy partnerships with the island. Meanwhile, Trump escalates rhetoric about a “friendly takeover” of Havana. The standoff is unfolding against a backdrop of U.S. airstrikes in Iran and a broader Trump administration push to assert control over foreign territory, with Cuban President Díaz-Canel warning his country will resist any external aggressor.
Why read Issue #191?
Half a decade after the Atlanta spa shootings, the forces that enabled that violence are not receding but intensifying. These include racialized political rhetoric, the invisibility of immigrant workers and the myth that legal status equals safety. Together, the new ICE data and the UN-backed panel’s findings make a case that should concern every Asian American regardless of how they arrived here or how long they have been citizens. The NYC loan program and Forgotten Flowers show that communities are also building, recovering history and pushing back.
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The Rebel Yellow is supported in part by funding from The Asian American Foundation (TAAF). Funders do not influence story selection, reporting, or editorial decisions. All editorial content is independently produced by The Rebel Yellow team.