Reporter wins support after Nebraska governor dismissed story because the journalist is Chinese

Advocates and Nebraska lawmakers are defending a reporter after Gov. Jim Pillen said her story about environmental concerns at his farms wasn’t worth discussing because the reporter was from “communist China.” The Asian American Journalists Association, the chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and some state lawmakers have condemned Pillen and demanded that he apologize to Flatwater Free Press reporter Yanqi Xu. “And then, of course, I was thinking about the community behind me and, you know, who also might have felt really hurt because of the governor’s comment.” Tweets flooded in, offering her support as the column began to circulate, and she said she was “deeply, deeply moved.” Among those tweeting was Omaha Sen. Megan Hunt, a left-leaning lawmaker who fled the Democratic Party mid-session to register as an independent, who called that the governor’s remark “Racist and disgusting.” Omaha Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh retweeted the rebuke and chastised the governor in a phone interview. She noted in an interview that during the signing ceremony for the new law, the governor suggested that children and their parents who seek gender-affirming treatment are being “duped,” and called it “absolutely Lucifer at its finest.” Asian Americans have increasingly been the target of racially motivated harassment and assaults in recent years, particularly since the coronavirus pandemic began, with many worrying that anti-Asian rhetoric linked to fraught relations between the U.S. and China could lead to more violence. Naomi Tacuyan Underwood, executive director of the Asian American Journalists Association, described what happened to Xu in an interview as another example of how “people always resort to the perpetual foreigner trope and question our loyalties.” She said journalists aren’t the only ones subjected to this, recalling that earlier this year a GOP lawmaker questioned the loyalty of U.S. Rep. Judy Chu based on her Chinese heritage.