The Brief

A seemingly noncontroversial proposal to help California police identify and address instances of violence motivated by international politics is hitting a nerve among South Asian communities who believe they could be targeted by the bill.

The new opposition to a law enforcement training bill by California’s only Sikh state lawmaker is reviving the battle lines from a bill Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed last year that would have banned caste discrimination in the state.

Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains wrote the new bill after the June 2023 killing of a prominent Sikh activist in Canada that set off a political rift between Canada and India. Hardeep Singh Nijjar’s slaying and a subsequent foiled plot in New York galvanized an estimated 127,000-plus Sikhs to cast a symbolic vote in San Francisco in favor of creating a separate Sikh state from India named Khalistan.

That movement and its tense history with India triggered backlash in the Golden State. Two Hindu temples in the Bay Area were defaced with anti-India and pro-Khalistan graffiti on the cusp of the new year, and the FBI has reportedly begun to visit and call some Sikhs in the state to warn their lives could be under threat.

Bains’ legislation, Assembly Bill 3027, would create a training program for law enforcement to combat and prevent transnational repression, which the FBI defines as foreign governments reaching into the United States to intimidate or harm members of their diaspora. The measure sailed through the Assembly unanimously in May and is coming up for a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing as soon as today.

“U.S. ally or not, India and other foreign governments violating our national sovereignty must be held accountable,” Bains, a Democrat from Bakersfield, said in May on the Assembly floor.

Much like last year’s caste legislation, though, the devil is in the details. The bill lists India alongside Russia, China and Iran as governments that “increasingly rely on transnational repression as their consolidation of control at home pushes dissidents abroad.”

Two of those states, Iran and Russia, have long been adversaries to the U.S., while the U.S. and China are economic rivals who often compete for geopolitical influence. India, by contrast, does not have as strong of a history of direct conflict with the United States. It is regarded as the world’s largest democracy, and has a thriving diaspora in the U.S.

South Asia experts and activists often challenge that view, pointing to the country’s Hindu nationalist government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi and division on the lines of caste, religion and class. Last year, those inequalities were on full display when California’s caste-diverse and often working class Sikh community largely backed last year’s anti-discrimination bill, while more-wealthy and caste-privileged Hindu Americans sought to derail it.

This year, some leading conservative Hindu activists oppose Bains’ law enforcement training bill. They want her to remove India from its language and believe the legislation risks teaching officers to overlook violence from the Sikh separatist movement.

They cite examples such as a report that separatists attempted to set fire to the Indian consulate in San Francisco the month after the Canada shooting, an accusation reported by India-aligned media but that the U.S. State Department has not publicly affirmed.

“If you are of Indian origin and if you are countering these radical groups — Islamists, Maoists or Khalistanis, this provision… can be used to silence you,” said Utsav Chakrabarti, executive director of the Hindu advocacy groups HinduPACT USA and HinduACTion during a livestream in July announcing opposition to the bill. “That’s a pretty dangerous situation to be in.”

Chakrabarti did not respond to requests for comment. The organizations have been linked to the Indian government. The Washington Post in a December investigation said both groups were a key spreader of an online campaign by Indian intelligence to discredit critics abroad. A member of HinduPACT told the Post at the time they were not aware of the campaign’s origins and denied any wrongdoing.

Transnational repression in California

Law enforcement agencies, including the California State Sheriff’s Association, support Bains’ bill. They’re looking for training and guidance on crimes that appear motivated by international events.

California, home to more immigrants than any other state, is particularly susceptible.

One prominent California case goes back to 2020, when a Russian asylum seeker was detained in an ICE facility after the Russian government used international alerts to U.S. authorities to accuse him of criminal activity.

He endorsed Bains’ bill.

“My story underscores the pressing need for legislative action to safeguard California residents from international oppression,” wrote Gregory Duralev, now an Orange County resident, in an April statement.

Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, a Delano Democrat , wrote a bill that aims to help California police identify acts of transnational repression, which occur when a foreign government attempts to intimidate members of its diaspora in the U.S.

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Rahul Lal

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In Kern County, on the southern end of the Central Valley home to over 30,000 Sikhs and several Sikh temples, a lack of training among officers has made it difficult to track the prevalence of transnational repression, Sheriff Donny Youngblood told CalMatters.

Currently, officers would probably log such concerns “as a threat” but “in fact, it could go much deeper than that,” he said, such as retribution toward a person’s family by a government back home. “This is a huge issue that really is relatively new to law enforcement.”

The Legislature is well aware of the plight of Sikhs in India. Last July, lawmakers swiftly approved Bains’ resolution that recognized anti-Sikh mobs in 1984 India as a genocide.

Many Sikhs in California who fled that violence “are very concerned about the safety and risk of their loved ones, their children, their folks who are engaged in local politics or who do vocalize their political opinions about India,” said Puneet Kaur, senior state policy manager for the Sikh Coalition, a national civil rights advocacy group. “A huge part of the reason that communities, including Sikhs, migrated here (was) for the purpose of freedom and escaping violence.”

The Indian government has denied allegations by the Canadian government regarding the killing of Nijjar. Indian authorities have previously accused him of terrorism. Bains’ legislation says the training should teach officers that accusations like that can be used by repressive governments to target dissidents abroad, and it’s not just for immigrants from India.

Around the world, 854 direct incidents of transnational repression occurred between 2014 and 2022, according to a 2023 report from Freedom House, a nonprofit organization that tracks such cases.

What will Newsom do?

It’s not yet clear whether Newsom is ready to send a strong rebuke to the governments called out in Bains’ bill. Newsom visited China in October to promote a climate partnership with California.

He also visited India in 2009 when he was mayor of San Francisco.

Recently, South Asian news outlets reported that the governor met with a prominent opponent to last year’s caste legislation.

In early July, Newsom met with Ramesh Kapur, an Indian American political donor who told the San Francisco Chronicle in October 2023 that he helped persuade Newsom to veto the caste bill. Kapur later walked back that statement to the Chronicle and other media, telling the Post that he let the governor know he couldn’t take his support for granted.

Kapur donated $27,000 for the governor’s Campaign for Democracy initiative from April to May, campaign finance records show. He also held a Bay Area fundraiser for Newsom in June, according to the publication Indica News.

Newsom’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

His office previously told CalMatters that the governor met with individuals on all sides of the issue, denying that any one meeting influenced his decision. The governor wrote in his veto message last October that the caste bill was legally “unnecessary.”

At Kapur’s Massachusetts home on July 7, Kapur reportedly thanked the governor for last year’s veto and the two affirmed the role of Indian Americans in the state, according to New India Abroad.

Kapur’s pro-India advocacy organization did not respond to requests for comment.

Last year, the caste bill’s author, Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Democrat from Hayward, faced death threats and xenophobic attacks upon introducing the legislation. Bains, one of California’s two South Asian lawmakers and a co-sponsor of that legislation, did not speak out publicly about her support.

This time, she has yet to receive any public opposition from lawmakers.

“In California, where we embrace our diaspora and exile communities, Republicans and Democrats have unanimously supported my legislation,” she wrote in a statement to CalMatters. “My bill simply makes it the policy of the state to protect Americans from foreign governments and gives law enforcement the training and tools to recognize the signs of transnational repression.”

Different views on transnational repression bill

Not all Hindus in California oppose Bains’ bill, and some say they have seen the effects of India’s politics on their ability to express themselves. The liberal group Hindus for Human Rights is blocked on X, formerly known as Twitter, in India.

Raju Rajagopal, a Berkeley-based Hindu activist and a key founder of that group, has long battled with Hindu groups on the right. Bains’ legislation hasn’t sparked the crowds that held rallies over last year’s caste bill, but he said he is hopeful that will happen if opposition from the right grows.

As wounds from last year linger, though, some who oppose Bains’ effort are less confident about their ability to stop the bill.

Jeevan Zutshi, a real estate broker and activist known in many Hindu American circles, said he believes those who accuse other Indians Americans of domestic terrorism could be labeled as foreign agents if the bill is passed. But he noted that last year’s caste bill sailed through the Legislature even though Hindu groups fiercely pushed back.

He’s well aware of the concern about the graffiti on Bay Area Hindu temples. At the same time, he cautioned, authorities there have yet to make an arrest or publicly identify a suspect. Local and national Sikh groups condemned the vandalism at the time.

“We have to be very careful in our life before you start some kind of accusation without evidence, or you make comments which are not healthy for relationships and bringing people together,” he said from his Fremont home. “Sometimes hate begets hate."

SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. — The idea came to Danielle Boyer in a toy store. The inspiration? It was Tickle Me Elmo.

"Whenever you'd press his belly, he would talk, and he would teach you things," she said. "There are toys that teach us in English, but there aren't toys that teach us Anishinaabemowin. And I wanted that to be different."

Anishinaabemowin includes the Potawatomi, Odawa and Ojibwe languages. Exact estimates vary, but there are fewer than 10,000 people in the U.S. who speak Anishinaabemowin. That number is around 25,000 in Canada. Some Native languages have just a few dozen fluent speakers, while others have none.

Boyer has seen how quickly language loss can happen. Her grandmother speaks Anishinaabemowin, but she is one of the last fluent speakers of their dialect.

"It is devastating to feel like your language could be lost," said Boyer, a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. "You lose your culture, you lose a way to describe who you are."

U.S. Indian boarding schools played a major role in the loss of Indigenous languages. Children separated from their families were taught, sometimes violently, not to speak their native tongues, and many did not pass them on to their children.

Today, some Native youth are learning their languages in schools. But Boyer said many of them still aren't invested. "They see it as another homework assignment."

Boyer and Hoy work on some last-minute adjustments to his AI-powered SkoBot before presenting at his school's end-of-year showcase, called the STEAM Museum.

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That's why she invented the SkoBot. It's a customizable toy robot designed to get Indigenous children excited to learn their languages.

"I can say 'Hey SkoBot, what is bear?' And it will say, 'Bear is makwa, makwa,' and it'll repeat it, right? So I can say, 'What is crane?' It'll say, 'Crane is ajijaak, ajijaak.'"

SkoBots use a form of artificial intelligence to speak Indigenous languages, and they're small enough to mount on the user's shoulder. They sort of resemble mini R2-D2 droids, from Star Wars, except these robots are designed to look like woodland creatures and decorated in Native American florals.

Through a nonprofit she started when she was 18, Boyer, now 25, has mentored hundreds of Native American children across the country, teaching them to build SkoBots of their own. One of them is 12-year-old Holden Hoy in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

"I was already a big fan of robotics and how they work, how you can bring inanimate objects to life," he said. "And I'm Ojibwe, and so I've always wanted to save the Ojibwe language."

Hoy, a rising seventh-grader, showed off his design at an end-of-the-year science fair at his school, JKL Bahweting Anishinaabe School in Sault Ste. Marie. Like Boyer, he is a member of the Sault Tribe.

He programmed his SkoBot to answer three questions ahead of his presentation. One of them was, "What's your name," to which the robot would respond in Hoy's voice: "Aaniin, Hello. Sabe indizhinikaaz, Bahweting indoonjibaa. I was built by Holden Hoy. I will not gain sentience and take over the world. Or will I?"

Hoy named his SkoBot Sabe, which means Bigfoot in Anishinaabemowin. In Ojibwe culture, Bigfoot represents honesty, one of seven sacred teachings.

His classmates and their parents stopped by his booth to see Sabe in action. Boyer was there too, helping Hoy with his presentation.

"I'm very happy that people are actually coming to this booth," Hoy said. "I'm happy that they are learning things, and I'm really happy that I'm part of the Ojibwe."

Sabe has one eye, a sensor that detects movement and lets it know to start listening.

Hoy's Sabe, or Bigfoot, SkoBot on display (right), alongside three other SkoBots that Boyer brought with her to show off at the STEAM Museum. Each represents a specific animal: a wolf, turtle and bear. Hoy's SkoBot is 3D printed in light gray, and its face is adorned with a footprint surrounded by floral designs.

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"Basically, when it hears that one trigger word, it then plays a prerecorded audio file. So there isn't synthetic speech, there isn't any generative AI," said Boyer. "It's simply listening to what you're saying, identifying it and playing [audio files] that already exist."

That means the SkoBots will never make things up, often called AI hallucinations. Hoy said it's important not to use generative AI. "AI tends to falsify things a lot, not get things from trustworthy sources."

Boyer's goal isn't to replace interactions with real language speakers. Instead, it's to get kids interested in not only their languages, but in subjects like science, math and engineering as well. That includes getting them to think about how to use AI ethically.

"Artificial intelligence, especially when it's not created by Indigenous people, stands to do a lot of harm to our communities," she said. "When you are putting accurate information into these models … you're giving away sacred information to companies that don't have our best interests at heart."

And as chatbots have become more popular, Boyer said some people have turned to them to help them learn their languages. She's even seen large language models like ChatGPT invent fake words in Anishinaabemowin, which she said is dangerous. "If we're not learning our language correctly, we shouldn't learn it at all."

Jocelyn Hoy is Holden's mom. She's excited that her son is not only exposed to their culture, but he's eager to know more. She said he's even been teaching her new things.

"As someone who, at a time in my life, did not want to be identified as Native American … now as an adult, I cannot wait to learn more, and I think the SkoBots are going to help me and so many kids — so many people in general — learn their heritage and who they are."

Holden Hoy said that heritage and the language are inseparable: "The language is the culture!"

He added, "It is important to protect it, because it's some people's way of life. Generation after generation is based around this culture."

Edited by: Steve Drummond and Lauren Migaki
Visual design and development by: LA Johnson
Copyright 2026 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Murals depicting Korean drummers, dancers and historical figures were a large part of Dave Young Kim’s childhood in Koreatown.

At the time, the Korean American artist didn’t know what all of the imagery meant, but it left a lasting impression on him.

“We don’t learn culture via formal education. It’s all gleaned,” Kim said. “It’s just what we sense, and we feel a connection to it without actually knowing anything about it. It belongs to us, and it feels very familiar.”

Many of the murals Kim remembers from his childhood have since disappeared. With his latest mural at the Korean Resource Center, Kim hopes to bring some of that visual imagery back to the neighborhood.

Completed this summer, the mural is Kim’s first in Koreatown.

The mural shows a group of traditional Korean drummers moving beneath sweeping ribbons of color, with plum blossoms blooming across the bottom of the wall. Faint outlines of traditional Korean architecture appear in the background.

At the center of the mural is 풍물놀이 (pungmulnori), a traditional Korean folk performance that combines drumming, dance and acrobatics and has long been part of village festivals and celebrations.

A close-up view of artist Dave Young Kim’s mural at the Korean Resource Center in Koreatown. The work depicts traditional Korean drummers.

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For Kim, the project was a chance to reconnect the neighborhood with the kind of cultural imagery he says shaped his own understanding of identity growing up.

“It was important to me growing up, and for me to see myself through very purposeful art, very intentional art,” he said. “For my own formation and identity, I think it was very important. I’d like to do that for future generations.”

Kim, 46, who was born and raised in Koreatown, said the project felt different from his other murals because it was rooted in the community where he spent his childhood.

“The formative years of my life are here,” he said.

The project grew out of the Abbey Mural Prize, a national grant program that supports community-based public mural projects.

As part of the project, Kim partnered with the Koreatown Storytelling Program, which trains youth to interview community elders. Students interviewed residents at Durae Crenshaw House, an affordable senior housing complex and home to the Korean Resource Center, and shared transcripts with Kim as he developed the mural.

The architecture in the mural reflects the idea of home that emerged repeatedly in interviews with elders, Kim said.

“There were a lot of iterations of the mockups. The very initial ones were very, very, very rooted in the stories, the narratives from the elders,” Kim said.

The interviews also left an impression on Daisy Yeon, 17, one of the students who conducted them. She said participating in the project changed the way she thinks about Koreatown and its history.

Yeon said she believes traditional Korean imagery still has a place in a neighborhood that has changed rapidly in recent years.

“Personally, the way Koreatown has evolved in these few last years from the pandemic and the shift where people move into other Korean enclaves like Buena Park and Torrance, Koreatown is partly becoming a place of pop-up matcha spots, for example,” she said. “So I think it’s important for tradition to still be here.”

Seeing the finished mural was “a full-circle moment,” she said, after spending months interviewing elders whose stories became part of the artwork.

While researching Koreatown’s public art history, Kim learned many of the murals he saw as a kid grew out of cultural initiatives and public funding that no longer exist. He also discovered an earlier generation of Korean American muralists whose work once covered parts of Koreatown.

In 1993, artist Dong-In Park completed a mural of traditional Korean farmers’ dance in the Korean Community Center at 981 S. Western Ave.

He told the Los Angeles Times he hoped “the 1.5- and second-generation Korean kids” would not forget their language and history. Park, along with artists including Sonia Hahn and Kuk Chol Han, helped establish a tradition of public art celebrating Korean culture during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

An undated photo of Dong-In Park’s mural depicting a farmers band playing music and dancing to provide entertainment for Korea’s largely agricultural population. The mural was previously located at 981 Western Avenue in Koreatown.

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Kim wants his mural to carry that tradition forward while also reflecting the history of the community it was created for.

The Korean Resource Center, founded by South Korean democracy activist Yoon Han-bong, has long organized around immigrant rights, workers’ rights and civic engagement. During the project, Kim learned that traditional Korean drumming has long played a role in the organization’s activism.

In the mural, an older drummer who immigrated from Korea leads the group, followed by a middle-aged performer who learned from him and younger drummers wearing sneakers, modeled after college students who continue the tradition today.

“Where we landed was very much to the core of what KRC is,” Kim said. “They are very activist and progressive.”

The Koreatown of today is filled with Korean-owned businesses and Korean-language signs, Kim said, but far fewer public murals reflecting Korean culture.

His latest mural isn’t about recreating the past so much as restoring something he believes has faded from the neighborhood.

As an artist, Kim said, public art has the power to shape how people experience a place.

“There’s something about the everyday landscape that you kind of are forced to take in,” he said, “and then as an artist, having the ability to shape what that might be.”

Lineage Logistics, the company that operates the burned cold-storage warehouse in Boyle Heights, announced yesterday it's removed “nearly half” of the food waste there.

The waste, the company said, has been sealed in deodorized containers and is being transported off-site.

Lineage estimated that demolition and cleanup of the rest of the burned structure should be largely completed in the “coming days.”

Before the weeklong fire that began on June 17, the warehouse stored approximately 44,000 tons, or 88 million pounds, of food.

The company said it has started removing the wall separating the burned and unburned sections of the building this weekend to speed up the cleaning of the unburned structure.

The process includes installing plastic sheeting where the wall used to be to help tamp down odors

That part could take up to three days and may temporarily increase odors. To mitigate the smell, the company said three carbon filters will be added on the Union Pacific side of the warehouse.

The company is trying to meet a 45-day deadline set by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass to complete the cleanup. Lineage has faced citations and warnings from L.A. County and the South Coast Air Quality Management District for "an ongoing odor nuisance" and “unsanitary and nuisance conditions.”

A slate of popular peptide therapies has won the backing of a key advisory panel to the federal government — a step that could eventually open up broader access to the experimental drugs.

In a marathon two-day meeting last week, the panel of doctors, academics and pharmacists recommended the Food and Drug Administration reclassify almost all of the compounds under consideration so that specialized pharmacies in the U.S. could begin offering them.

Seven different peptide therapies — none of which are FDA-approved drugs — were under consideration.

Currently, these peptides can't be made in the U.S., except for research purposes, leading many peptide users to buy unvetted substances sold online, with disclaimers such as "for research use only" and "not for human consumption."

By narrow margins, the panel voted in favor of all but one. The FDA isn't required to follow advisory committee recommendations but typically does.

The outcome represents a win for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has publicly supported peptide therapies, and the broader wellness and longevity industry, which stands to profit substantially.

These peptides are promoted for a wide range of uses and are often taken together, including for injury recovery, muscle growth and fat loss, improving athletic performance, enhancing metabolism and more.

If the agency takes the panel's recommendations, clinicians could have the ability to prescribe six peptide therapies: BPC-157, MOTS-c, KPV, TB-500, Epitalon and Semax.

A compound called Emideltide, sometimes used for insomnia, was the only one to receive a down vote.

The panel's endorsement of peptides was a striking rejection of the FDA's stance against them.

While the level of evidence for each compound varies, all of them lack the kind of large, well-controlled trials in humans that are necessary to establish safety and effectiveness, which is required for drug approvals. Peptides are strings of amino acids — smaller than a protein — that often act as signaling molecules in our bodies and carry out many critical functions.

They can be synthesized and delivered as drugs, often by injection. Some of those, like insulin, are naturally occurring in the body. Others are modified versions, as with the blockbuster GLP-1 obesity drugs.

Scientists for the agency spoke extensively about the lack of reliable data for any of the seven peptides before the committee. They advised the panel to vote no.

In some cases, they couldn't find any published clinical studies in humans — and there were safety concerns like the potential to encourage cancer growth or to trigger a massive immune response.

A "foundational challenge" was simply defining the substances, because the chemical composition for peptides labeled with the same name varied considerably, explained FDA official Russell Wesdyk.

"You will see many, many different forms," he said. "We can't create quality standards until we actually know what it is."

The divide among the experts on the panel was a study in contrasts.

Ahead of the meeting, eight new members were appointed. Most have ties to the peptide industry and include physicians who work for medical practices and companies that promote them.

In almost all cases, they voted in favor of lifting restrictions.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services pushed back on criticism about potential conflicts of interest and said all underwent the standard ethics and vetting process.

"I think it's about patient access," said Dr. Asare Christian, one of the panel members who runs a Pennsylvania-based clinic that advertises peptide protocols and hormone optimization.

That sentiment was echoed throughout the many hours of public comment.

Compounding pharmacies, large telehealth providers and others from the industry underscored the perils of the unregulated marketplace, with some offering anecdotes of patients obtaining unmarked vials from sketchy suppliers.

"What we are advocating for is not the Wild West," said Brigham Buhler, who runs a telehealth company that offers hormone optimization and peptides and is an ally of Secretary Kennedy.

"What we are advocating for is to slow down or shut down the gray and black market and to allow patients to have a safe and effective manufacturing process," he told the panel.

But some panelists were skeptical of that argument.

"I'm concerned that we are responding to market-induced demand rather than a decision based in solid science," Dr. Elizabeth Rebello, an anaesthesiologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, commented after casting a no vote.

The FDA committee was tasked with reviewing data that supports using these peptides to treat a variety of specific conditions, such as BPC-157 for treating ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease.

However, if the FDA ultimately reclassifies them and they are produced by compounding pharmacies in the U.S., clinicians would have discretion to write prescriptions outside of those narrow indications.

During the meeting, industry groups — and some on the panel — repeatedly criticized the FDA presentations for not reflecting more recent scientific data on the substances, including results from other human studies that had been submitted ahead of time.

FDA staff said they had considered everything submitted by the meeting deadline and would still take new information into account as they weigh next steps.

The decision to place the products on the FDA's official list for compounding doesn't come close to the standards for drug approval, but some worry that nuance will not be clear to the public, which may not be aware of the limited data for humans.

"I think this endorsement can be potentially harmful and I cannot in good conscience vote yes," said Dr. Brian Lee, a member of the panel and an associate professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

If the FDA moves to reclassify the peptides so that compounding pharmacies can make them, it will be through a formal rulemaking process that could stretch into next year or 2028. There is a possibility that Kennedy could invoke special authority to make them available sooner.

The panel is scheduled to meet again in February to consider additional peptide therapies.
Copyright 2026 NPR