I completed this project in 2024 as the activist-in-residence hosted by the Asian American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

My research questions began with the desire to more deeply understand the role of mis- and disinformation and their impacts on Asian America. In many Asian American activist and movement spaces, we are seeing tensions, conflicts, and fractures partly caused by the spread of mis- and disinformation. We are witnessing narrative trends that contribute to tensions within, across, and about Asian American communities. I was interested in deepening our understanding of how these fractures have been formed and what is the role of healing justice in mending these fractures.

In particular, I focused on California’s 45th Congressional District (CA-45) as a case study to shed light on these broader questions. CA-45 was most recently redistricted in 2020 and contains over 756,000 people with a significant Asian American population. It is a demographically diverse district with 37% identifying as Asian, 30% Hispanic, 27% white, 2% Black, 8% multiracial, and 0.9% other. CA-45 contains Little Saigon, located in Garden Grove and Westminster in Orange County, which is home to the largest ethnic Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam.

In 2024, CA-45 was represented by Michelle Steel (R), who was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2020 when she defeated then-incumbent Harley Rouda (D) in CA-48. Steel ran on a campaign opposing COVID masking, abortion, same-sex marriage, and pathway for citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Steel also accused Rouda of being a communist sympathizer in hopes of winning support among a largely anti-communist Vietnamese electorate. After redistricting, Steel ran in CA-45 in 2022 against Democratic nominee Jay Chen, a Taiwanese American veteran and school board member. Steel ran a heavy red-baiting campaign that spread mis- and disinformation about Chen’s affiliation with communism and won the election with 52.4% of votes. In 2024, Steel once again used red-baiting tactics to stage a campaign against her Democratic challenger, this time, a Vietnamese American candidate named Derek Tran. Steel also focused her campaign rhetorics on fighting inflation, restricting reproductive rights, ending sanctuary state and cities, increasing border security, and other conservative positions promoted by the Republican Party. This was the most expensive house race in the country, with over $50 million spent, and was the third-to-last to be called in the country. On November 27, 2024, Tran was leading by just 613 votes when Steel conceded and the Associated Press called the race for Tran, bringing one of the most watched House races in the 2024 election cycle to a conclusion.

CA-45’s House race is a story about a Korean American politician spreading mis- and disinformation to her Vietnamese American constituents in order to run against a Taiwanese American and later, a Vietnamese American candidate. It is a story about the weaponization of trauma for one’s personal and political gain, and in the process, fracturing Asian American communities. It is a story set in a house of mirrors: mirrors that refract narratives, showing clarity while also creating distortion. This house of mirrors is set against the backdrop of imperialism, war, trauma, displacement, grief, healing, identity-building, identity politics, electoral power, and most of all, our shared desire to be seen as who we are.