79% of Americans Back Immigration
A record 79% of Americans now consider immigration beneficial to the country, reversing from 2024 when 55% wanted immigration reduced, according to a new Gallup poll.
The Rebel Yellow — Issue #96
We put out a call for help — and I want to thank everyone who answered. Right now, we have 200 paid subscribers. However, we need at least 1,000 just to break even.
NextShark and myself are still covering newsroom costs out of pocket through our other work. But that can only last so long. The good news? Over 5,000 of you are already subscribed for free — so the path forward is possible.
If we can get enough support, I promise we’ll keep growing this into something bigger: A stronger newsroom, deeper stories, big-name AAPI writers and authors telling the stories we all want to see
If you believe in what we’re building, and you have the means — please consider becoming a paid subscriber - Benny Luo
Americans’ views on immigration have dramatically shifted
A record 79% of Americans now consider immigration beneficial to the country, reversing from 2024 when 55% wanted immigration reduced, according to a new Gallup poll.
Key findings
The survey, which polled 1,402 adults from June 2-26, saw those wanting less immigration down to 30%. The change crossed all political parties but was most pronounced among Republicans, whose support for cutting immigration fell 40 percentage points to 48%. Meanwhile, support for allowing undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship rose to 78%, up from 70% last year, with Republicans posting the largest increase at 13 percentage points.
On enforcement, Americans showed less appetite for harsh measures. Support for deporting all undocumented immigrants declined from 47% to 38%, returning to 2019 levels after reaching unusually high support during Trump’s 2024 campaign. The poll also found widespread disapproval of the president’s immigration approach, with 62% rating him negatively versus 35% positively, including especially low approval among Hispanic Americans at 21%.
Dig deeper
Asian Americans present a complex picture within this broader shift. Earlier this year, an AAPI Data/AP-NORC survey showed immigration had risen as a priority concern for the community, with 42% naming it among their top five federal priorities, up from 29% in 2024. At the time, their views on deportation were deeply divided: about 38% supported deporting all immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, while a similar share opposed the measure.
By April, a separate AAPI Data/AP-NORC poll found strong opposition to key Trump immigration policies, including eliminating birthright citizenship for children born to parents on temporary visas (56% oppose) or those in the country illegally (50% oppose). While 43% supported deporting all immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, a much larger portion (83%) backed deportations specifically for those convicted of violent crimes, showing the community’s preference for targeted enforcement over broad deportation policies.
Why this matters
The data suggests Trump’s hardline immigration enforcement may be politically counterproductive. Despite border crossings hitting historic lows, Trump has grown more unpopular on immigration, with ICE’s aggressive tactics driving much disapproval. For Asian Americans — the nation’s fastest-growing racial group — this gap between the president’s approach and community views could carry significant political weight heading into the 2026 midterms.
Despite the apparent uproar, the Trump administration remains committed to immigration as a core political strategy. “Now that President Trump has reversed Biden’s disastrous immigration policies and stopped the flood of criminal illegal aliens pouring into the country, Americans have a lot less to be worried about,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson, citing other polls that purportedly suggest more support for the administration’s actions.
California secession support reaches record high, poll suggests
A record 44% of Californians would support their state leaving the United States, according to a recent poll showing rising tensions between California and the federal government.
By the numbers: The Independent California Institute survey from June 11-23 revealed major changes in how Californians view independence and self-governance. Half of residents now trust Sacramento over Washington — up sharply from 34% in January — while only 23% favor the federal government. Secession support hit 44%, topping the previous peak of 42% from June 2021. Support for special autonomous status within the U.S. was even higher, with 71% wanting more state control over federal decisions and tax revenue.
Why now: The survey results emerge as tensions escalate between California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Trump administration. Last month, Trump sent 4,000 California National Guard troops and 700 Marines to Los Angeles over Newsom’s objections after widespread protests against immigration enforcement. The federal deployment triggered a legal fight and worsened existing policy disputes. California’s financial autonomy adds to the friction, with residents paying $17,731 per person in federal taxes while getting back only $15,603 in 2022 — among the worst ratios nationwide. Asian Americans, who make up 18.4% of California’s population as the state’s largest minority group, face particular impact from these debates given their concentration in major cities.
Pros and cons: Advocates point to California’s massive economy — worth $3.9 trillion in 2023 and ranking fifth globally — as proof the state could stand on its own. The survey showed strong backing for sovereign-style policies, with 80% supporting border controls with other states and 72% wanting arrests of federal immigration agents who overstep their authority. Yet major obstacles persist, as 54% still oppose secession and many question whether it is legally possible. The CalExit movement also fell short of gathering enough signatures for a 2028 ballot measure, though organizers plan to try again. Legal scholars reject the movement’s claims about constitutional authority for secession, disputing their reading of 19th-century Supreme Court cases.
The CalExit movement plans to refile its ballot initiative within weeks, targeting a September restart for signature collection.
New York ends STEM race-based policy amid anti-Asian claims
The New York Department of Education has reportedly eliminated race-based admissions criteria for a major STEM enrichment program following a federal lawsuit by Asian parents who alleged discrimination against their children.
Catch up
The controversy centers on the Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP), which enrolls 11,000 middle and high school students each year across 56 colleges and medical schools throughout the state. Established in 1985 to increase STEM participation among underrepresented groups, the program had different admission standards based on race: Black, Hispanic and Native American applicants faced no income restrictions, while Asian and white students needed to demonstrate economic hardship.
Legal advocates first filed the suit in January 2024, contending the system created an unfair racial bias where economically struggling students who “barely top the poverty line” remained “categorically ineligible” solely due to their ethnicity. The case was brought by multiple organizations including the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York alongside parent groups and individual plaintiff Yiatin Chu, whose seventh-grade daughter was reportedly denied access to NYU’s summer 2024 program for being Asian.
The latest
Now, State Assistant Commissioner Anael Alston has instructed administrators to “determine student eligibility without regard to historically underrepresented minority status, race or ethnicity” and rely on “economic-based eligibility criteria only,” according to a July 8 memo seen by the New York Post. The move follows a federal judge’s November 2024 ruling allowing the discrimination suit to advance after rejecting the state’s dismissal motion.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys, however, expressed dissatisfaction with the new language. “The state of New York has raised the white flag of surrender in our lawsuit, but not high enough,” William Jacobson of EqualProtect.org told the Post, arguing that terms like “may” and “encouraged” still permit discriminatory practices.
Broader implications
The policy reversal reflects the broader impact of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision striking down college affirmative action programs. In their suit, Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Erin Wilcox argued that “race-based decision-making violates the Constitution’s equal protection guarantee” and has been repeatedly rejected by the Supreme Court. The case demonstrates growing legal challenges to racial preferences in education, with Asian American advocacy groups increasingly leading such efforts nationwide.
Despite their move, Alston reportedly vowed to “continue to vigorously defend” the program’s mission in court.
RFK Jr. urges Americans to “stop trusting experts” as he touts AI at HHS
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on “The Tucker Carlson Show” earlier this month, calling on Americans to “stop trusting experts” and announcing that an “AI revolution” is underway at the department.
Kennedy claimed HHS has brought in “top people from Silicon Valley who walked away from billion dollar businesses” to implement artificial intelligence across agencies, including the FDA, CDC and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. “At FDA, we’re accelerating drug approvals so that you don’t need to use primates or even animal models. You can do the drug approvals very, very quickly with AI,” he said.
Kennedy, a longtime vaccine opponent, also described the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System as “antiquated” and promised to overhaul it with AI, saying, “We’re going to absolutely change VAERS and we’re going to create either within VAERS or supplementary to VAERS a system that actually works.” He repeated false claims that vaccines have “never been properly studied” and told viewers, “Trusting the experts is not a feature of science, it’s not a feature of democracy, it’s a feature of religion and it’s a feature of totalitarianism.”
Public health experts have pushed back, warning that while AI could help flag trends, it cannot determine vaccine safety or causality without expert oversight. Kennedy’s push for AI at HHS comes amid criticism over the White House’s Make America Healthy Again report, which he oversaw. Reviewers found broken links, duplicate citations and references to studies that do not exist, many apparently generated by AI.
AI could wipe out half of white-collar entry jobs, experts warn
Artificial intelligence is poised to eliminate up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years, according to Dario Amodei, CEO of AI company Anthropic. In a recent interview with Axios, Amodei warned that industries such as tech, finance, law and consulting are especially vulnerable, with U.S. unemployment potentially rising to 10% to 20% if these shifts go unaddressed.
Warning from the inside
Amodei criticized both corporate leaders and policymakers for failing to prepare for the scale of disruption AI could cause. “Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen. It sounds crazy, and people just don't believe it,” he said. Though optimistic about AI’s long-term benefits in medicine and productivity, he stressed that the short-term risks to job stability are not being taken seriously enough.
The “Great Displacement”
The warning aligns with concerns raised by other industry leaders. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently emphasized how AI will change the competitive landscape for workers. “You're not going to lose your job to AI; you're going to lose your job to someone who uses AI,” Huang said during a panel at the Milken Institute Global Conference earlier this month.
Andrew Yang, entrepreneur and former presidential candidate, offered a broader view in his 2018 book “The War on Normal People.” Yang describes the rise of automation as the “Great Displacement,” warning that not just manual labor but also routine cognitive jobs — including those held by doctors, lawyers and accountants — are at risk. His 2020 presidential campaign proposed a universal basic income as a direct response to the technological forces reshaping the labor market.
Yang anticipated the scale of disruption years before the current wave of white-collar displacement. “Hey, it’s not your imagination that the economy is changing," he warned in a 2019 op-ed for NextShark. "We automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs in the Midwest, leading to Donald Trump’s election, and we’re about to do the same thing to retail workers, truck drivers, call center workers as well as accountants, insurance agents and many other positions.”
Early signs of disruption
The latest report by SignalFire reveals that AI is contributing to increased unemployment among recent college graduates in the U.S. While the national unemployment rate remains relatively low, joblessness among young graduates has risen disproportionately — a trend some analysts describe as a “white-collar recession.”
AI’s growing influence on the workforce is also reshaping how younger professionals view higher education. A March 2025 survey by the Harris Poll on behalf of Indeed found that 51% of Gen Z degree holders question whether their college education was worth the cost. Thirty percent of respondents said AI has already made their degrees obsolete — a figure that rises to 45% among Gen Z.
The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 also reported that 40% of employers expect to reduce their workforce where AI can automate tasks. The report forecasts a net loss of 2 million jobs globally by 2029, with technology acting as both a creator and destroyer of roles in nearly every sector.
Beijing expands reach as Voice of America exits global airwaves
China’s government is gaining more control over the international media landscape as the U.S.-funded Voice of America (VOA) and other American government broadcasters reduce their presence worldwide. The shift accelerated after the Trump administration ordered deep funding cuts to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, Radio Free Asia and related services. By mid-March 2025, over 1,300 VOA staff members were suspended or laid off and the network largely ceased broadcasting in many regions.
Filling the void
With VOA’s retreat, Chinese state broadcasters such as China Global Television Network (CGTN) and China Radio International (CRI) have expanded operations in Asia and Africa. These organizations air news and feature content in languages including Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Indonesian, Thai, Tibetan and Uyghur. In Nigeria, Information Minister Mohammed Idris noted VOA’s absence left a “perceptible void … especially in terms of trusted, independent international news content.”
In China, state-owned media outlets have publicized VOA’s decline, with editorials describing VOA as a “carefully crafted propaganda machine” designed to advance Washington’s ideological interests. Meanwhile, Chinese broadcasters have added at least 80 new shortwave channels and have begun jamming some of the frequencies formerly used by the U.S.-backed services.
VOA’s global legacy
Since its founding in 1942, VOA has broadcast in almost 50 languages and reached audiences in more than 100 countries. Its role was especially significant in areas with tight state media controls, including China, North Korea and Iran, where VOA and its sister agencies transmitted news via shortwave radio and satellite channels.
Reports indicate that before the cutbacks, VOA and Radio Free Asia together reached as many as 92.5 million weekly listeners in East and Southeast Asia. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 98% of surveyed Radio Free Asia listeners considered its content trustworthy.
What’s next
While a federal judge in the U.S. has restored some VOA services, including Persian-language broadcasts, the network continues to operate at minimal capacity. The White House’s proposed 2026 budget calls for the permanent defunding of the agency. Congressional leaders remain divided on whether to eliminate or restructure U.S. international broadcasting, which some consider a critical tool for U.S. foreign policy. The outcome will determine whether the current gap in global media influence remains or shifts further toward state-backed outlets from China.
Khmer Rouge sites added to UNESCO World Heritage List
Three former torture and execution sites used by Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime have been inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, recognizing their transformation “from centres of repression to places of peace and reflection.”
Historic milestone
The sites were inscribed Friday during the 47th Session of the World Heritage Committee in Paris, shortly after the 50th anniversary of the Khmer Rouge’s rise to power in April 1975. Cambodia held ceremonies across the country Sunday to celebrate the recognition, with Prime Minister Hun Manet directing people to simultaneously beat drums.
The inscription represents Cambodia’s fifth World Heritage listing and its first modern-era nomination among the earliest globally tied to recent conflict. Previously, UNESCO had recognized only seven “sites of memory” associated with recent conflicts under its criterion vi. The World Heritage Committee decided in 2023 to no longer preclude such sites for inscription, partly recognizing how these sites may “serve the peace-building mission of UNESCO.”
About the sites
The three sites document the systematic violence of the Khmer Rouge regime from 1975 to 1979, when an estimated 1.7 million to 2.2 million people died from starvation, torture and execution. The Tuol Sleng prison, known as S-21, held approximately 15,000 prisoners in a former high school and now operates as a genocide museum. Meanwhile, the M-13 prison in rural Kampong Chhnang province was where the Khmer Rouge developed their security techniques before seizing full power. Choeung Ek, located about 15 kilometers south of Phnom Penh, functioned as an execution site and mass grave, immortalized in the 1984 Hollywood film “The Killing Fields.”
The sites have been preserved and memorialized since the regime’s fall, with the Tuol Sleng Museum maintaining extensive archives documented by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.
The “darkest chapters”
“This is a model for the world, showing the long struggle of Cambodia, reconciliation, the spirit of national unity, finding justice for the victims and building peace,” interim Culture Minister Hab Touch said in Paris.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Hun Manet emphasized in a video message, “May this inscription serve as a lasting reminder that peace must always be defended. From the darkest chapters of history, we can draw strength to build a better future for humanity.”
Philippines VP Duterte used snack-brand names to get millions in government funds
Sara Duterte, vice president of the Philippines, has for the first time addressed allegations that her office used names based on Filipino snack brands to withdraw millions in government funds, a controversy now at the center of her impeachment. Speaking to a reporter at an international conference in The Hague, Duterte claimed the aliases were part of intelligence protocol for security operations.
Flavorful characters
The issue began last year when Philippine audit officials and lawmakers found that receipts submitted by Duterte’s office for nearly $10.5 million in confidential government funds listed unusual names such as Mary Grace “Piattos,” Fernando “Tempura,” Reymunda Jane “Nova” and Carlos Miguel “Oishi.” These names correspond to well-known Filipino snack brands including potato chips and crackers.
Cover for intelligence?
Duterte had not responded publicly for months as the scandal fueled calls for transparency. “There are rules in intelligence operations, and you already heard some people who work in intelligence say that aliases are often used in intelligence operations,” she told reporters in The Hague.
Critics and lawmakers, however, point out that under Philippine auditing and legal standards, financial receipts and documents submitted for the liquidation of government funds must contain the verifiable, legal identities of recipients. While intelligence reports may redact real names for security reasons, receipts used for audit and accountability must be traceable and allow proper verification by the Commission on Audit and Congress.
Chinese K-pop idol told to “go back” after pushing One China policy on fans
Xinyu, a Chinese vocalist of the 24-member K-pop girl group tripleS, is facing backlash after echoing her support for Beijing’s “One China” policy. The controversy erupted on fan platform Fromm, where the Beijing-born performer reportedly wrote, “Macau is Chinese from the beginning. Hong Kong and Taiwan also.” Fans urged caution but the idol responded defiantly, saying, “People who don’t agree with me shouldn’t [follow] me on Fromm. Why should I be scared of being told off? Did I say something wrong?”
Xinyu’s statements support Beijing’s official position that mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau constitute one country under its rule. In response, Korean netizens clapped back with harsh criticism, with one demanding, “Wow if you’re gonna spew that kind of nonsense, go back to your country and do it to those ignorant people there.” Others wrote “Hope you’ve booked your flight back to China girl” and “This is why we don’t stan Chinese idols.”
The backlash reflects historical tensions as similar controversies erupted in 2015 when Twice’s Tzuyu apologized for waving Taiwan’s flag and in 2019 when Chinese idols posted Chinese flags during Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests. It also occurs amid heightened geopolitical tensions, with a recently leaked audio suggesting that President Donald Trump threatened to “bomb the shit out of Beijing” if China invaded Taiwan. In 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly asked former President Joe Biden to change Washington’s language from “does not support” to “we oppose Taiwan independence.”
Hybe artists gain Grammy voting rights as K-pop’s influence expands
Sixteen artists and producers from Hybe have been granted Grammy voting privileges starting with the 2026 awards ceremony.
The Recording Academy’s July 10 announcement of membership invitations included Huh Yun-jin from Le Sserafim, Jungwon from Enhypen, Woozi and Vernon from Seventeen, Yeonjun from Tomorrow X Together, solo artist Zico and all six Katseye members, as well as producers Bumzu, Slow Rabbit, Supreme Boi and Wonderkid. Katseye’s recognition coincides with the recent release of their mini album “Beautiful Chaos,” which claimed the fourth position on the Billboard 200 chart for the week ending July 12. The new members will join Hybe’s existing Academy voters, including founder Bang Si-hyuk, producer Pdogg and BTS’ seven members.
Formed in 1957, the Recording Academy conducts annual member selections through peer-driven nomination processes. Notable credentials among inductees include Bumzu’s sweep of Popular Music categories at South Korea’s 11th Music Copyright Awards, while Woozi and Vernon have accumulated over 200 and 100 registered works, respectively, with the country’s Music Copyright Association. “This milestone reflects K-pop’s rising global impact and Hybe’s growing influence,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.
The 67th Grammy Awards ceremony will take place on Feb. 1, 2026.