By Kenneth Tiven
President-elect Donald Trump has a clear affinity for Indian-Americans, judging by the number of them he has appointed to various key positions. They include:
Harmeet Dhillon, Age 55
Most likely to gain confirmation is Harmeet Dhillon, born in Chandigarh, who will lead the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. Trump promises the DOJ will be pivotal in seeking reversal of laws and regulations in this area and retribution against those with whom he disagrees. Dhillon, a Sikh, gained prominence as a Republican lawyer and activist in California, focused on issues in the liberal city of San Francisco. Her advocacy of civil liberties, is defined by ultra-conservative positions on racial and gender issues.
Dhillon’s nomination signals her pivotal role in shaping policies in Trump’s second term, as outlined in Project 2025. This GOP manifesto heavily emphasizes an evangelical Christian theological approach to every aspect of life and governance.
Kashyap Patel, Age 44
Perhaps among the most controversial nominees is Kashyap Patel to lead the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He prefers “Kash” Patel since becoming a far-right conspiracy theorist with little to no government or national security experience.
Patel’s family roots are in Gujarat. They emigrated via Uganda and Canada to the USA, where he was born near New York City. With a law degree and a brief stint as a federal prosecutor, he was working for a right-wing Congressman trying to defend Trump against charges of Russian involvement in the 2015 election campaign. From this came his reputation as a man who would do anything for Trump. This behaviour landed him in the Trump White House.
Patel makes no excuses for his agenda, which includes score-settling and political vengeance, prosecuting journalists for their investigative work, or cleaning out career FBI officials in his quest against the “deep state”. His nomination is likely to be acrimonious, as will that of Pam Biondi as Attorney General and Pete Hegseth for the Defense Department.
Tulsi Gabbard, Age 43
The nomination of Tulsi Gabbard as chief of the intelligence agencies will be difficult because she has no experience in national intelligence-gathering and assessment. She was the first Hindu member of Congress, representing Hawaii. Her military experience was as national guard officer. Her eight years in Congress as a Democrat were marked by several distinct changes in position on issues, making her something of a political enigma. This is sure to be a central issue in her nomination hearing.
Early in her House career, she strongly supported India out of “mutual respect”, not the least of which was the war against terrorists. She disputed the suggestion that as a Hindu she favoured Prime Minister Narenda Modi.
A question that has existed in her political career is her tie to the Science of Identify Foundation, a group considered to be an offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement. “Everybody is thinking her allegiance is to Trump, but in reality, her allegiance was already given away to her guru,” a former colleague said in an interview on the website CivilBeat. “You can’t just go in and out of that. That’s a lifetime commitment.” Her former and current husband are lifelong members of the cult and remain involved as do her parents. She left Congress and the Democrats in 2022, only officially becoming a Republican in 2024.
In 2015, Gabbard obliquely seemed to support Bashar al-Assad in Syria, voting in March 2016, against a House condemning the government of Syria and “other parties to the conflict” for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Gabbard had two unplanned meetings with Assad during a trip to Syria and Lebanon. Gabbard said that the Syrian people’s message was “powerful and consistent: there is no difference between ‘moderate’ rebels and al-Qaeda (al-Nusra) or ISIS—they are all the same”. Gabbard expressed skepticism regarding claims that Assad used chemical weapons against Syrian civilians, saying that “there is evidence to suggest that the attacks may have been staged by Opposition forces for the purpose of drawing the United States and the West deeper into the war. Given the fall of the Assad regime and revelations about brutal conditions in Syrian political prisons, her position on Assad will be a big issue in her nomination for an intelligence position which requires attention to consistency and details.
Jay Bhattacharya, Age 56
Covid lockdown skeptic Dr Jay Bhattacharya is the nominee to direct the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This makes sense, if only because Trump and the national health establishment disagreed on the Covid-19 pandemic response. Trump is determined to hire people with whom he agrees for national health agencies. Anti-vaccine advocate Robert F Kennedy Jr gets most of the headlines as the nominee to manage the Health and Human Services Department.
Bhattacharya, if confirmed, will manage the world’s most prominent government-funded bio-medical research entity. He was born in Kolkata, West Bengal, attended Stanford University in California, graduating as a trained physician and economist. He became the face of opposition to NIH during the pandemic by writing a disputed open letter—known as the Great Barrington Declaration—opposing widespread lockdowns.
Trump said Bhattacharya would work with Kennedy to “restore the NIH to a Gold Standard of Medical Research as they examine the underlying causes of, and solutions to, America’s biggest health challenges, including our Crisis of Chronic Illness and Disease.”
Usha Chilukuri Vance, Age 38
She is the wife of the Vice-President-elect, JD Vance, whom she met in law school. Raised in San Diego, California, she graduated from Yale University and from Yale’s law school. Her mother is a biologist, while her father is an engineer. She had been working as a lawyer in a Washington firm, but resigned after he was elected vice-president. In political terms, she is the Second Lady and may bring a distinctly Indian attitude to her role. Trump’s wife—the First Lady—is foreign-born Melania Trump.
Vivek Ramasamy, Age 39
Ramaswamy, born in Ohio to Indian immigrants, is a bio-tech entrepreneur who briefly competed in the Republican presidential primaries in 2023. He joins Elon Musk in an informal role as an adviser on Trump’s desire to cut government spending. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency is unofficial, basically, a Trump campaign marketing slogan. The Republican idea of efficiency is to cut the cost of programmes that benefit middle and lower-class Americans while cutting taxes for wealthy people.
A clear example of how absurd this can be is obvious in efforts to reduce the “SNAP” programme that provides free food for low-income families. Farmers and food producers lose revenue if millions of government dollars are unspent on hunger.
In his first term, Trump levied tariffs on Chinese imports. China retaliated by cancelling the purchase of large quantities of American agricultural products. Farmers, who tend to vote Republican, demanded and received an extra 16 billion dollar handout to keep them voting for Republicans and, for example, not complaining about unsold soy beans.
Some Indian media suggest Ramaswamy will make a substantial impact with his law degree and entrepreneurial success, which will put him in an ideal position to push for systemic changes in Washington. This thinking ignores the one thing every government understands: how to resist systemic change.
Some Indian media mixes respect for successful Indians abroad without considering any political beliefs, perhaps because aspects of current Republican thinking are consistent with the BJP party attitudes.
The US electorate is sharply divided on Trump’s policies. Voters who came within a whisker of electing Kamala Harris see these appointments as counter-productive to good government. If the most radical aspects of Trump policy come into force, even more people may intensely dislike its creators. Trump’s vote margin was 1.5 percent of all votes cast, not the “landslide” he likes to claim even considering a slim congressional majority. His propensity for exaggeration is well-documented.
Most neutral appraisals of his nominations suggest confirmation battles in January will highlight that his choices are outside the mainstream of federal political management and lack serious qualifications or any applicable experience.
Anyone who understands Trump’s entire career can see that this echoes his selection process for the Apprentice TV show he hosted during the first decade of the 21st century. Trump and those closest to him understand that TV exposure turned his image from that of a failing businessman into a political character who won the presidency in 2016.
The diversification of the American population, with an influx of post-graduate English-speaking Indians began after 1965. Democrats under President Lyndon Johnson changed immigration rules to prioritize family reunification and the importation of skilled workers.
Today Indian-Americans are considered the most educated racial group in the United States: 82 percent of Indian-Americans aged 25 to 55 are college-educated, compared with just 42 percent of white Americans who have a degree. Now the second-largest immigrant group in the United States, with a population exceeding 5 million and a median annual household income of $1,53,000—or more than double the national figure. Now, many Indian families are endowed with both generational wealth and education and will be increasingly present in many aspects of public life. Indian-Americans—though mostly men—have become CEOs of Fortune 500 companies like Pepsi Co., Google (Alphabet), Adobe, IBM and Microsoft.
—The writer has worked in senior positions at The Washington Post, NBC, ABC and CNN and also consults for several Indian channels