Second lady Usha Vance arrives to speak in the Mega Hangar at the Marine Corps Air Station New River in Jacksonville, N.C., Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Since Donald Trump announced he would be picking JD Vance to be his running mate, Usha Vance has undergone the kind of scrutiny that has hardly ever occurred to an Indian-American. MAGA folks freaked out that she was a practising Hindu, and it was immaterial that her faith had helped JD find Christ again. Democrats wondered how a person with Usha’s credentials (Yale, academic family) could be with someone like JD or who followed JD’s politics. JD Vance hasn’t helped himself, like the time he told a Turning Point USA audience that he hoped his “agnostic” wife — what a way to erase her religion — would embrace Christ, even doubling down to claim that it was every Christian’s job to help others see the light. But even after all the disparaging rumours aimed at Usha Vance, a recent podcast featuring Joy Reid starkly shows how easy it is for people to dehumanise Indian-Americans.Reid, wearing a t-shirt that says F*** Trump, F*** ICE, Free Palestine, Unoccupy Chicago, and a bunch of other messages which combined explain the dire strait in which the Democratic Party finds itself, casually claims that JD Vance will drop his “brown Hindu wife” Usha for “white queen” Erika Kirk.

What makes this moment especially disturbing is how neatly it fits into the rise of anti-India hate online and offline. In recent years, Indians in the West have found themselves cast into every role except that of actual human beings. They are colonial agents one day, fascist foot soldiers the next, tech bros on Monday, caste villains on Tuesday, and accidental beneficiaries of “white adjacency” by the weekend. It is a rotating caricature factory that reduces 1.4 billion people to whichever label best suits the Western cultural mood. And Indian-Americans are often caught at the intersection of all these projections. The same progressives who champion diversity suddenly talk as if Hindu identity is a contaminated category. The same conservatives who praise family values treat brown families as demographic threats. Usha Vance, unfortunately, becomes the perfect canvas for the week’s anxieties. Not because of anything she said, but because her existence unsettles the simplistic narratives both sides prefer.

The moment Reid begins to speak, it is clear this is not analysis. It is improvisation dressed up as political insight. “They can’t have the successor to MAGA be the guy with the brown Hindu wife,” she declares, as if she has unlocked a hidden psychological truth about an entire voting bloc. She calls them “Christian nationalists,” insists Usha “won’t work,” and then suggests JD Vance is either sacrificing his wife for ambition or that Usha herself is complicit in the performance.She then fixates on JD Vance’s public hug with Erika Kirk, calling it “slap-and-tickle” and “the weirdest shit,” and pivots to critiquing Erika’s clothing with, “You’re supposed to be a widow. You in leather pants?” These are not the observations of a serious political thinker. They are the lines of someone scrolling through gossip threads and mistaking them for structural analysis.Finally she arrives at the centrepiece of her theory. “Wouldn’t it be the most perfect MAGA fairytale if he finally sees the light that he needs a white queen instead of this brown Hindu.” She adds a quick “I’m not saying that’s happening,” but the narrative is already complete. The hierarchy is drawn. The brown woman is written out.

Second lady Usha Vance meets with students at DeLalio Elementary School on the Marine Corps Air Station New River in Jacksonville, N.C., Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

What is most striking about the segment is the contradiction between Reid’s t-shirt and her argument. She wears slogans about liberation, solidarity, resistance and justice. Then she denies every one of those ideals to a brown woman who did nothing except marry someone with different politics.Reid says she is calling out racism, but she ends up performing it. She does not see Usha Vance as a lawyer, a mother, a daughter of immigrants or a woman balancing two faith traditions. She sees her as a demographic problem. A cultural obstacle. An inconvenient symbol of brownness and Hindu identity that, in her mind, cannot fit inside a movement she despises.It is easy to condemn racism when it comes from the other side. It is harder to notice when it slips out while criticising the other side. The t-shirt says “Free Palestine.” The monologue denies empathy to an Indian-American Hindu woman who is, by every measure, as much a minority as anyone Reid claims to defend.

Underneath the moral performance, the entire theory comes from three unrelated moments. Erika Kirk, grieving the murder of her husband, said she wished she had been pregnant when he died. It was a moment of pain, not a confession. JD Vance hugged her on stage in full public view. It was sympathy, not symbolism. And Usha Vance appeared without her wedding ring one afternoon. It was an ordinary oversight, not a marital crisis.None of these events belong together. They were stitched into a story only because the internet craves drama. And instead of challenging that logic, Reid absorbed it, embroidered it and presented it as something profound.The widow became an archetype. The wife became a liability. The husband became a character in a political telenovela.It was rumour inflated into racial prophecy.

First lady Melania Trump and second lady Usha Vance meet with students at DeLalio Elementary School on the Marine Corps Air Station New River in Jacksonville, N.C., Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

There is a special cruelty in dragging two women into a plot they never agreed to inhabit. Erika Kirk is barely beginning her life as a widow, yet she is recast as a “white queen” waiting in the wings. Usha Vance, who has kept an almost painfully private profile, is turned into an emblem of “brown Hindu” undesirability. Neither woman asked to be the heroine or the villain of this fever dream. Neither deserves to be reduced to the colour wheel of someone else’s political imagination.JD Vance, for all his flaws, becomes a piece on a board. In Reid’s story he is not a husband or father. He is a man conducting a marital reshuffle to please a base that exists only inside her claim.The humanity is lost. What remains is theatre.

The problem is not simply that Joy Reid repeated a conspiracy. It is that she treated it as obvious. She began with the assumption that MAGA is racist and ended with the conclusion that its chosen successor must behave in ways that confirm her view. It is commentary built backwards: the conclusion arrives first, the justification later. This is the same logic she spent years accusing right-wing media of using. Start with the villain. Start with the allegation. Fill in the rest. Do not worry about the truth. Worry about the story.

When the noise settles, the truth is small and human. A widow missing her husband. A woman who occasionally forgets her ring. A public hug meant as comfort. There is no conspiracy here. Only life happening in its messy, tender, inconvenient way.Yet three people were dragged through a podcast and reduced to plot points. Usha became the wrong kind of wife. Erika became the tempting “other woman.” JD became the protagonist of a love triangle that never existed.And this was said on a platform that presents itself as political thought.Imagine, for a moment, the mirror image. Imagine a conservative podcaster declaring that Michelle Obama was the “wrong kind of wife,” and that Barack Obama needed a “white queen” to be more acceptable to America. Imagine the outrage. Imagine the editorials. Imagine the rightly furious conversations about racism, misogyny and the dehumanisation of Black women.Now imagine what Usha Vance felt hearing her marriage framed the same way. This was not commentary. It was a small, callous story told with the confidence of someone who assumed there would be no consequences. It revealed how quickly empathy collapses when the woman in question does not belong to your political tribe. It showed how easily the language of justice can be used to justify the erasure of someone else’s dignity. The podcast will fade. The clip will scroll away. But the message remains. It tells us that for some commentators, solidarity is conditional. Dignity is selective. And some women are granted humanity only when their politics align. That should trouble us far more than any rumour ever could.

A man trapped for more than 24 hours inside one of the high-rise towers at Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court residential complex was pulled out alive on Thursday evening, even as the death toll from the devastating blaze climbed to at least 65, fire officials said. The survivor was located on the 16th floor of Wang Tai House, one of the buildings inside the complex, according to a fire department update released at 8 pm local time. Seventy others have been reported injured, including 10 firefighters, while one firefighter is among the dead.The rescue came as emergency crews continued to battle a fire of scale and intensity unseen in Hong Kong in decades. While parts of the complex have been brought under control, teams on the ground say the risk of collapse and extreme heat inside the structures has slowed efforts to reach those still missing or stranded.

Hong Kong government deploys social workers and psychologists to affected families

In response to the mounting casualties and rising trauma among survivors, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee announced the rollout of a “one social worker per household” system to support families affected by the disaster. The administration will also deploy psychologists to help provide emotional assistance. These measures, he said, are intended to help residents cope with loss, displacement and prolonged uncertainty as the rescue operation continues.

Aftermath and emergency response: Row after row of charred towers

More than a day after the blaze first broke out, thick smoke continued to drift from the remains of multiple high-rise blocks inside Wang Fuk Court. Fire officials confirmed that the flames have been extinguished in four towers, while three more remain under control. Despite progress, emergency teams are navigating dangerous structural conditions, collapsed scaffolding and intense heat pockets that make deep-entry rescue both slow and hazardous.The scale of the crisis has required more than 1,200 firefighters, marking what authorities say is the deadliest building fire in Hong Kong in over 50 years. Residents who managed to escape described chaotic scenes with flames racing vertically up the building exteriors, leaving many trapped inside units without alarm or warning.

Cause of fire still uncertain, but construction negligence suspected

Authorities continue to investigate what allowed the blaze to spread so rapidly across multiple residential towers. The fire began around 2.50 pm Wednesday before racing up the structure, aided by bamboo scaffolding that wrapped the exterior for ongoing construction.Police announced Thursday that two directors of a construction company and a consultant have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter. Senior police superintendent Lai Yee Chung said foam boards known to be highly flammable had been installed on every floor outside elevator lobbies. Authorities believe the use of such material may amount to “gross negligence.”

Community grief deepens as search continues

The Wang Fuk Court complex, constructed in the early 1980s, houses roughly 2,000 apartments. With dozens still missing, families spent Thursday scanning photographs of the deceased displayed at shelters set up by city authorities.Temporary accommodation has been opened in community centres and a nearby school, giving hundreds of displaced residents a place to sleep as the fire response continues. Many among them say warnings never reached their units and they escaped only because they spotted the blaze themselves.

Bamboo scaffolding under scrutiny again

The tragedy has renewed debate over Hong Kong’s widespread use of bamboo scaffolding, a construction practice that authorities last year vowed to phase out in favour of steel. In October, fire officials linked another major blaze in the city’s Central district to bamboo frames that fuelled rapid flame spread. The Wang Fuk Court disaster is now expected to accelerate regulatory changes already underway.

Longest and deadliest rescue in decades — and not yet over

More than two dozen people remain missing, officials said late Thursday. Firefighters continue to work floor by floor, often moving only metres at a time as temperatures inside some units remain dangerously high. Equipment limitations have slowed access to upper floors; ladder trucks have only been able to reach half the height of the 32-story towers, far below the level where residents are believed to be trapped.As rescue teams search for survivors and families prepare for news that may still worsen, Thursday’s dramatic extraction of a man from the 16th floor stands as the first major moment of hope in a catastrophe defined by loss.The survivor is stable, officials said. For others, the wait continues.

The Income Tax department will begin sending SMS and email alerts from November 28 to about 25,000 individuals flagged as “high-risk” for not disclosing foreign assets in their income tax returns (ITRs) for Assessment Year 2025–26, PTI reported citing sources. The cases were shortlisted on the basis of data received from foreign jurisdictions under the Automatic Exchange of Information (AEOI) framework.Sources told PTI that this first phase of the ‘nudge’ campaign by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) will advise taxpayers to file revised returns by December 31, 2025, to avoid penal consequences. A second phase, starting mid-December, will broaden the campaign to include additional cases as part of efforts to improve compliance.Industry bodies, ICAI and corporate employers whose staff may hold undisclosed foreign assets have also been approached to sensitise taxpayers, the sources added.In a separate statement, the I-T department said: “Analysis of AEOI information for FY 2024–25 (CY 2024) has identified high-risk cases where foreign assets appear to exist but have not been reported in the ITRs filed for AY 2025–26.”Under the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, non-disclosure attracts a penalty of Rs 10 lakh, along with a 30 per cent tax and a 300 per cent penalty on the tax payable.Last year, the department issued similar nudges to select taxpayers reported by foreign jurisdictions under the AEOI framework. That exercise led 24,678 individuals — including some who did not receive alerts — to revisit their ITRs and disclose foreign assets worth Rs 29,208 crore and foreign-source income of Rs 1,089.88 crore for AY 2024–25.Sources said that until June 2025, the department had assessed around 1,080 cases, raising tax demands totalling Rs 40,000 crore. They added that searches carried out in Delhi, Mumbai and Pune — based on data from Common Reporting Standards (CRS) and spontaneous exchanges on investments in Dubai — uncovered undisclosed foreign assets and income running into several hundreds of crores.CBDT receives information on the foreign financial assets of Indian residents through CRS and from the United States under the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), which helps identify discrepancies and guide taxpayers towards timely compliance. The campaign is aimed at ensuring accurate reporting in Schedule Foreign Assets (FA) and Foreign Source Income (FSI) in ITRs, a statutory requirement under the Income-tax Act, 1961, and the Black Money Act.

NEW DELHI: Gautam Gambhir was in the firing line when he sat for the post-series press conference in Guwahati on Wednesday. India’s head coach faced a barrage of questions on the team’s poor run at home, the whitewashes against New Zealand and South Africa, mindset of the team and selections before he was asked point blank whether he thinks he is the right man to do the job in Test cricket.“It is up to the BCCI to decide. Indian cricket is important, I am not important. I am the same guy who got results in England, won the Champions Trophy and Asia Cup,” came the prompt response with the game face on.

It will be a needless reminder of what the team has not managed to achieve under Gambhir but what needs to be remembered is that never before has this Indian cricket team surrendered so tamely in their own backyard. From the 0-3 vs New Zealand to the 0-2 annihilation by South Africa, the lows have touched newer lows and brick by brick the famed fortress built over a decade has collapsed in the space of a few months.From losing just five Tests in the 2012-2023 period to losing the same number of games in 2024-2025, there is no running for cover behind the wall of shame. A team which took a lot of pride in being the ultimate challenge – the final frontier – for visiting teams no longer poses the threat. The sentiment comes from the fact that the last time India lost two Test series at home across two consecutive years was over four decades ago when they went down to West Indies in 1983 and England in 1984/85.Four decades is a lot of time but it took the current setup a little over a year to emulate the unwanted feat. It isn’t something which happened overnight due to some instinctive call but a complete failure of the system which was once in cruise control – at least at home. The heat is on Gambhir, and rightly so, but it will be foolish to single out an individual for the catastrophe.

South Africa’s Keshav Maharaj (centre) with teammates poses with the trophy after team wins the second Test cricket match between India and South Africa, at ACA Stadium, Barsapara in Guwahati. (PTI Photo)

It takes an army to bring an empire down, even if it’s your own empire. Leading this battalion right now are coach Gambhir and chief selector Ajit Agarkar and it begs the question – is it the ideal combination to run Indian cricket? The two have been together for over a year now, tasted success but planning has been amiss – something which had been the highlight of their predecessors.There seems to be no blueprint in place for Indian cricket and the feeder line is running dry. Is the chief selector in a position to put a finger on India’s reserve opener in Tests? The ideal replacement for No.3? A solid No.4 if Shubman Gill is injured, like he was in the South Africa series? Who is the off-spinner apart from Washington Sundar? Do we have a seam bowling attack if both Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammed Siraj are unavailable?No. The answer is an unfortunate ‘no’ because not enough thought has been given to building a squad like how it’s supposed to be built. Many chief selectors in the past have seamlessly carried out the transition because they anticipated. They anticipated with cricketing intelligence and swung a plan into motion before reality could strike, and strike hard. That is why there was a Cheteshwar Pujara after Rahul Dravid, a Virat Kohli after Sachin Tendulkar and Ajinkya Rahane at No.5.

In terms of transition, Indian cricket managed things better in the past with Cheteshwar Pujara following in the footsteps of Rahul Dravid.

Transitions and movement in squads can’t be left to chance and even though coach Gambhir highlighted how there’s multiple transitions underway in both batting and spin department, it has reached the stage because no one planned for it. They would argue that Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and R Ashwin retired on their own but the truth is they didn’t anticipate what was inevitable. They didn’t anticipate the seniors would move on.Fair that the returns were diminishing but was a plan put in motion to fill those giant shoes? Gill was still a work-in-progress as a Test batter; Washington Sundar hadn’t played enough games in the format and there was no reserve opener in sight as the selectors picked Abhimanyu Easwaran but he never made it to the Playing XI.Gambhir explained the meaning of “transition” in his own words, highlighted how it has never happened in Indian cricket before but failed to explain why it reached the stage.

“Look, that’s why we are giving as many opportunities as we can to someone like Washy. But if you expect Washy to deliver straightaway what Ashwin did after playing more than 100 Test matches, it’s unfair on that young kid. And that is what you guys need to think as well. That he is what — 10, 12, 15 Test matches old? He is learning his trade. He is learning to bowl in different conditions. He is learning to bowl in different situations as well. And obviously, it’s tough when you lose so many experienced players at the same time.”“And that is why it is called transition. That is why these guys need time. Whether it’s the batting unit or the bowling unit. I don’t think ever in Indian cricket something like this has happened where the transition is happening in the spin-bowling department and in the batting department as well. Normally when your batting is secure or your batting has experience then your team goes through a bowling transition. But with this Test team, obviously the transition is happening in both the skillsets. So you guys and all of us need to give them time and I am sure they have got the skill, they have got the talent, they have got the ability. That’s why they are sitting in that dressing room and they have delivered,” reasoned Gambhir.

India lost both their Test matches against South Africa at Kolkata and Guwahati. (Image: TimesofIndia.com)

But were Gambhir and Agarkar not on the same page to tackle a situation like this?England series, which India drew 2-2, continues to find a lot of mention in both coach and chief selector’s media interactions but the fact is that even after dominating most of the sessions, the visitors were very close to returning with a 1-3 scoreline. A scoreline which should have been in their favour. That did cover up a lot of things which weren’t right on the tour and when the wrongs remain unaddressed, it leads to situations like the South Africa series.Not everyone in that changeroom, including Agarkar, are on the same page when it comes to certain calls – squad selection or playing XI. A couple of all-rounders were heavily debated before the Australia Test series too but there was adamance on depth, even if it came at the cost of a proper wicket-taker in Kuldeep Yadav. This Indian side is thin on experience but certainly not on international exposure. They all have had a fair bite of what it takes to excel at this well but it’s the confusion in tactics, strategy and planning which is leading to such debacles.

South Africa inflicted a 2-0 whitewash on India in the home Test series, winning both matches in Kolkata and Guwahati.

“I don’t give excuses. I’ve never done that in the past. I will never do it in the future as well. But four or five batters in this top eight have literally played less than 15 Test matches [each], and they will grow. They’re learning on the job. They’re learning on the field. Test cricket is never easy when you’re playing against a top-quality side. So you’ve got to give them time as well. So for me, I think that is something they’ll keep learning. That is important. Because I know that I hate using this word transition. This is exactly what transition is,” Gambhir further said.He made a fair point, yes there is inexperience but now is not the time to hide behind that. If you didn’t consider fixing something earlier don’t address it when it’s completely shattered. It will take a lot of doing to lift this dressing room back up and while the players have to be rightfully questioned for the horror show, the coach and selector remain answerable for the tactical mess Indian cricket finds itself in.A country which was once capable of fielding parallel XIs together, is now struggling to find the right men for the longest format. The obsession with all-rounders, depth and utility cricketers could well get you a one-off result like in England but the absence of specialists and right people for the right job will ensure 0-3 to New Zealand and 0-2 to South Africa remain a consistent affair.