Welcome to my portfolio! My name is Yaopeng "Casey" He, and I'm a third-year student at Northwestern University studying journalism, political science and legal studies. An aspiring journalist and storyteller, I'm especially interested in covering topics and issues at the crossroads of politics, technology and community.

You can read some of my best work below. Thanks for stopping by!

What Safe-State Status Means for Ohio

While the 2024 presidential election is expected to be close nationally, the outcome in Ohio seems to be beyond a doubt. Ohio’s rightward shift over the past decade appears likely to continue, and Donald Trump is set to win the Buckeye State for a third time. “I think everybody generally agrees that Donald Trump is going to win Ohio in 2024 with relative ease, using that populist coalition that he’s built,” Matt Dole, chair of the Licking County Republican Party, said.

How the 2020 Election Changed Ohio’s Political Identity

In 2020, Ohio voted for incumbent President Donald Trump, marking the first time in 56 years that Ohio failed to select the winner of a presidential election. Trump received 3,154,734 votes in Ohio, accounting for 53.3% of all votes cast, while President Joe Biden won 2,679,165 votes — just 45.2%. This marked the first time that any candidate had won over 3 million votes in Ohio and the best result for Republicans in the state in a presidential election since 1988.

How America’s Quintessential Battleground Broke Down

As Ohio goes, so goes the nation. At least, it used to. The Buckeye State — the seventh most populous and 34th in size among the states — has been a longtime focus of politicians, pundits and political scientists alike for a simple but peculiar reason. In each presidential election between 1964 and 2016, the candidate that won Ohio also won the presidency. Ohio’s streak stands as the longest in American history. During this period, Ohio was not only a bellwether, but also the quintessenti...

A New Federal Program Aims to Create the Nation’s Next Silicon Valleys — in the Midwest

When Silicon Valley — the iconic northern California tech cluster home to thousands of companies like Apple, Google and Netflix — started in the 1950s, it had all the right ingredients for innovation and tech-fueled growth: pioneers of the semiconductor, personal computer and internet industries, scholarship and research at area universities, and generous government funding. Now, a new federal program is trying to reproduce this recipe for the 21st century around the country — including in Am...

From ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’ to the ‘Great American Comeback Story’: How a Wisconsin Town Becomes the Focus of Re-Industrializing the Midwest

In 2017, Taiwanese electronic manufacturer Foxconn announced its plan to build a $10-billion, 13,000-people display factory in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin. But the factory never came, and much of the land it claimed remains empty. Now, residents are hoping Microsoft will follow through with building an artificial intelligence data center at the same site.

Downtown lease sparks concerns over cost, transparency amid discussion on Civic Center’s future

Growing up in Evanston in the 1980s, Emilio Vargas remembers the Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center as the building at the center of the city. His mother would bring him to art shows, book fairs and other events. Now, as an adult, Vargas said he most recently went to the Civic Center to vote.
The city, however, is poised to leave the Georgian Revival-style building at 2100 Ridge Ave. — the building that has been the heart of Evanston civic life since 1979 — before the end of the year. 
At its Jan....

After China’s surprised chip breakthrough, Washington has new worries about future of export controls

WASHINGTON – When Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo was in Beijing in August to discuss trade with economic officials, she and others in the tech industry were shocked by a new smartphone, unveiled by Chinese telecom giant Huawei. The phone was named the Mate 60 Pro, featuring a seven-nanometer processor developed by a Huawei subsidiary and produced at the Chinese semiconductor fabrication plant SMIC. It immediately set off alarm bells among Western nations because it meant that China had achieve...

Biden signs executive order, takes ambitious step toward AI regulation

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden signed a long-anticipated executive order on artificial intelligence Monday, marking the federal government’s most comprehensive effort to rein in the technology to date. “One thing is clear: to realize the promise of AI and avoid the risks, we need to govern this technology, and there’s no other way around it,” Biden said during the signing ceremony. The executive order expanded upon a “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights” the Biden administration issued in 2022...

‘Democracy working in action’: Evanston, NU collaborate on participatory budgeting pilot program

PB Evanston invites community members to develop proposals for their ideas and then allows the community to vote on how the money is spent, according to the program website. Evanston received $43 million from the American Rescue Plan Act in 2021 and 2022 to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hoping to identify areas of need, the city put $3 million toward a novel solution: participatory budgeting. The program allows residents, with the support of city staff and volunteers, to submit their ideas...

Juan Geracaris, 9th Ward incumbent, talks affordable housing and Latine representation on council

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, Ald. Juan Geracaris (9th) didn’t think the city provided enough information or assistance to Evanston’s Latine community. Though he did not yet serve on City Council, Geracaris worked to fill in the gaps with the nonprofit organization Evanston Latinos that he helped found. “Through my community organizing, especially my work with the Latino community, I becam...

‘More representation, more visibility’: Evanston’s Asian American community claims its voice in participatory budgeting

When Melissa Raman Molitor, a first-generation Filipino-Indian-American, moved to Evanston in 2011, she saw little recognition for the city’s Asian, South Asian and Pacific Islander American community. “There have been no spaces or organizations that specifically support or offer resources for the ASPA community in Evanston,” Molitor...