New York Times: House Democrats hold the first congressional hearing on anti-Asian discrimination in three decades.

Asian-American congresswomen warned the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday that the nation had reached a “crisis point” amid a spike in discrimination and violence targeting the Asian community, in the first congressional hearing on the issue held in over three decades.

The hearing, which was scheduled weeks ago, came on the heels of a mass shooting in Atlanta in which a white gunman killed eight people at  spas, six of whom were of Asian descent. As lawmakers pledged to confront the rising tide of violence, they turned to six female lawmakers of Asian descent, both Democrats and Republicans.

In often deeply personal testimony, the lawmakers described the fear and trauma rippling through the Asian-American community, and argued that the uptick in attacks on Asian-Americans was a direct result of the rise of anti-China rhetoric stoked during the pandemic. In one particularly heated moment, a Democratic congresswoman tearfully confronted a Republican on the panel, saying members of his party had used language she said put “a bull’s-eye” on Asian-Americans.

At another emotional point, Representative Doris Matsui, Democrat of California, who was born in an internment camp for Japanese-Americans, described how the hearing politicians including former President Donald J. Trump use xenophobic phrases to describe the coronavirus brought back memories of the discrimination her parents faced from the federal government decades ago.

Back then, Ms. Matsui said, “many leaders advanced the myth that the Japanese community was inherently the enemy. Americans across the country believed it, acceded to institutionalized racism, and acted on it.”

“Last year,” she continued, “as I heard, at the highest levels of government, people use racist slurs, like ‘China virus,’ to spread xenophobia and cast blame on innocent communities, it was all too familiar.”

The hearing briefly turned tense after Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, made a lengthy condemnation of the Chinese government’s handling of the coronavirus and asserted that objections to what he categorized as nothing more than hawkish rhetoric about China amounted to “policing” of free speech.

“There’s old sayings in Texas about, you know, ‘find all the rope in Texas and get a tall oak tree.’ You know, we take justice very seriously, and we ought to do that — round up all the bad guys,” Mr. Roy said, in comments that drew outrage on Twitter. “My concern about this hearing is it seems to want to venture into the policing of rhetoric.”

Representative Grace Meng, Democrat of New York, tookexception to the remark.

“Your president, and your party, and your colleagues, can talk about issues with any other country that you want, but you don’t have to do it by putting a bull’s-eye on the back of Asian-Americans across this country, on our grandparents, on our kids,” she said, growing visibly emotional.

“This hearing was to address the hurt and pain of our community, to find solutions,” she added, “and we will not let you take our voice away from us.”

Later, Mr. Roy issued a statement responding to the backlash over his comments, which appeared to refer to lynching, saying he stood by the idea that “we need more justice and less thought policing.”

“No apologies,” he added.

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