CAPAC Releases ‘Spill the Tea’ Episode with Chair Emerita Judy Chu
CAPAC Chair Grace Meng and Chair Emerita Judy Chu discuss their efforts to protect federal language access and address AANHPI health disparities.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) released the tenth episode of its Spill the Tea with Chair Meng video series with Chair Emerita Judy Chu (CA-28), who led CAPAC from 2011 to 2025.
In the episode, Chair Emerita Chu discusses how the Trump administration is making life harder for Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders—from eliminating federal multilingual services to rolling back hepatitis B vaccine guidelines, a disease that affects one in twelve Asian Americans—and what she is doing to fight back.
Excerpts from the episode are below.
On what motivated Chair Emerita Chu to enter politics:
“I come from a district that has so many immigrants, especially many from all parts of Asia. So, it is essential for their survival to have these translated mailers, brochures, and people that they can talk to in government. In fact, the way that I got into politics was when there was an ugly English-only movement in Monterey Park, California, where longtime residents resented the new ones and wanted English only on the signs in the city and only English books in the library. The last straw was when they wanted only English to be spoken in the city. So, a multi-ethnic coalition of us had thousands of signatures on petitions and got it overturned,” said Chair Emerita Chu.
On the Trump administration’s decision to stop recommending Hepatitis B immunizations for newborns:
“I come from a community where everybody knows somebody who is living with hepatitis B. It used to be a death sentence... When I saw that [HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.] took hepatitis B vaccinations off the list, I thought, that is such a slap in the face to so many communities, but especially to the AANHPI community where we are 7 percent of the population, but we are 60 percent of the hepatitis B cases in this country,” said Chair Emerita Chu,
Watch the full video HERE.
Tune in to future episodes by following CAPAC on Instagram, Facebook, X, Bluesky, and Threads.
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