Daily Briefing: A golden path to the US?

Indian Express

11 hours ago

Good morning,
The England vs India series is hanging by a thread. It all comes down to Day 5 of the final Test in the Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy. Just 35 runs stand between India's young guns and glory, but England aren't backing down. It's been a heavyweight slugfest: Joe Root and Harry Brook have piled on the pressure with sublime hundreds, while Mohammed Siraj and Prasidh Krishna have hit back hard, rattling the English batsmen. As national sports editor Sandeep Dwivedi writes, this draining and engrossing series has had long stretches of intense battle, and very close 'who blinks first' moments. Who will blink first today? We are about to find out!
On that note, let's get to today's edition.
In April this year, US President Donald Trump flashed a prototype of the golden 'Trump Card' onboard Air Force One. The golden visa card was to become available two weeks later. So far, the launch has remained elusive, but the White House has created a dedicated website for people to sign up for the waiting list.
Briefly: The Trump Card or the Gold Card is a $5 million US residency visa programme. It is intended to replace the existing EB-5 visa program, through which wealthy foreign investors can finance a business in the US for a minimum of $500,000 or more than $1 million in some cases, thereby putting themselves on the path to securing a US visa. The EB-5 programme, however, has come under scrutiny for fraud and national security threats.
A rise: Interestingly, Indians have shown an increased interest in the EB-5 programme in the past year. As my colleague Divya A reports, over 1,200 applications were filed in the first four months of FY2025 alone, surpassing the total for any prior full year. In FY2024, over 1,400 EB-5 visas were issued to Indians, marking a sharp rise from the 815 in the previous year.
For context: The rise in EB-5 visa applications may have been fueled by the stricter rules and delays around H1-B visas and green cards. As many as 11 million US immigration applications are pending as of now. This has also created enhanced curiosity around the Trump Card, the timelines and details of which remain unclear. According to an earlier Washington Post report, it is unlikely that Trump Card would ever see the light of day, given that the President alone cannot create a new visa category and requires an 'act of Congress'.
Gaurav Gogoi, Deputy Leader of the Congress in Lok Sabha, led the Opposition's charge during the Operation Sindoor debate in Parliament. In the coming months, he will be in the thick of action, formulating strategies to revive Congress's fortunes in Assam, where Assembly elections are just months away. He joined us for the latest Idea Exchange session to talk all about holding the government accountable and the Congress's challenges in Assam.
Drone-fare: The Indian Army is set for an overhaul with renewed focus on drones. In the aftermath of Operation Sindoor and the lessons learnt from it, sources state that the Army will work towards creating a dedicated outfit within each unit, tasked with operating Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and counter-UAVs.
Rethink: The BJP-led Maharashtra government has rolled back seven key decisions in the education sector in the past months. Six of these decisions were rolled back following a backlash from stakeholders, and one was due to a High Court-granted relief to minority trust-run junior colleges. My colleague Pallavi Smart gives an incisive view of the government's decisions, from Hindi implementation to income-based quotas, and their rollback.
Fix-it: Do you recall that the launch of the Axiom-4 mission, which carried Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla to the International Space Station, was delayed for nearly a month before its intended launch date? Turns out, just weeks before its eventual liftoff on June 25, the ISRO team helped identify a crack in the rocket, which would have posed a danger to the mission.
Alarm bells: A sweeping cost-cutting exercise at India's largest IT firm, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), will put 2 per cent of its global workforce out of jobs. The move has triggered a wave of panic in the sector, strained under the advancement of artificial intelligence and the US-triggered economic uncertainty. What does the future of the Indian IT sector look like? Read Hitesh Vyas's report.
Missed opportunities: Last month, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, admitted that the Congress party had 'fallen short' in its relationship with the Other Backward Classes (OBCs). Not only has the grand old party missed opportunities to reach out to the community in North India, but also failed to take credit for its policy changes that have benefited the OBCs under its governments. Shyamlal Yadav traces the history of Congress and the OBCs.
Resist: Many have not taken kindly to Trump's recent criticism of India's trade barriers and transactions with Russia. Former diplomat Shyam Saran writes that it's time to recognise that India-US relations have become 'progressively adversarial' under Trump's presidency. He opines that it is in India's national interests to resist US demands, despite short-term pain.
Bollywood icon Shah Rukh Khan may have fun infinite hearts in his decades-long career, but a National Award remained elusive — until this year. While fans have celebrated the feat, many find it absurd that for an actor who has delivered Swades, Chak De India, Devdas, among others, it is a massy thriller like Jawan that caught the jury's eye. But for my colleague Anas Arif, the choice 'shows spine and sense'. Here's why.
Before you go, do tune in to today's '3 Things' podcast episode, where we deep dive into the arrest of two Kerala nuns in Chhattisgarh, the new malaria vaccine, and the first-ever grassland bird census at Kaziranga.
That's all for today, folks! Until tomorrow,
Sonal Gupta
Sonal Gupta is a senior sub-editor on the news desk. She writes feature stories and explainers on a wide range of topics from art and culture to international affairs. She also curates the Morning Expresso, a daily briefing of top stories of the day, which won gold in the 'best newsletter' category at the WAN-IFRA South Asian Digital Media Awards 2023. She also edits our newly-launched pop culture section, Fresh Take.
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