Two-time former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley announced her 2024 US Presidential run by playing up her Indian roots, but fellow Indian American and Republican rival, Vivek Ramaswamy, spoke of restoring American values. Unapologetic about their Indian identities, ideologically, the two represent America First, and understand that their ethnic background alone cannot win them an election in an overwhelmingly white, Christian voter base.
Indian American Aaron ‘Ronnie’ Chatterji has stepped down as a White House coordinator at the National Economic Council (NEC), and will return to his post as a business professor at Duke University. Chatterji was appointed by President Joe Biden’s administration in September 2022 for the implementation of the CHIPS and Science Act’s historic $50 billion investment in the semiconductor industry at NEC.
US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, Geeta Rao Gupta, an Indian American, is on a week-long visit to India to highlight and advance the American government’s gender equality policy priorities in the region and around the world.
President Joe Biden has announced new actions to protect communities from extreme heat. Biden on Thursday directed the Department of Labor to issue first-ever hazard alert for heat and announced new investments to protect communities.
Stating that the India-US relationship is “stronger than ever”, the White House reemphasized on Wednesday that there is still a strong future with the I2U2 framework and the grouping is deepening partnerships between the member nations.
The US Secret Service has ended its investigation of cocaine discovered at the White House earlier this month. In a statement on Thursday, the Secret Service said that it had attempted to determine a suspect through fingerprints, DNA traces and video evidence, but had not been able to do so.
The lab testing for a white, powdered substance, found at the White House on Sunday, has come back positive, a spokesman for the Secret Service told CNN. Previous field testing revealed a positive result for cocaine, but the drug was submitted for additional investigation and testing, the Secret Service had said earlier.
It was inevitable in the current climate of social media toxicity and invective that the Wall Street Journal’s White House correspondent Sabrina Siddiqui would be harassed and intimidated online for asking an anodyne question of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The online harassment of Wall Street Journal reporter Sabrina Siddiqui who questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his joint press conference with US President Joe Biden last week on religious rights and free speech, is “unacceptable”, the White House said.
The Biden administration has announced a more than $42 billion plan to expand high-speed internet access in the country. The White House said in a press release on Monday that more than 8.5 million households and small businesses are still in areas where there is no high-speed internet infrastructure, and millions more struggle with limited or unreliable internet options.
