Loss aversion is a phenomenon in psychology and behavioral economics. Defined simply, it means that the pain experienced from a loss is felt twice as much as winning. In politics, that intensity manifests itself in motivation. If you take something away from people, they are going to feel it more acutely than promising them something, and the theft produces a backlash. 

That’s what appears to be happening right now with Black voters. Across the country, they have been lining up to vote early, presumably against Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s MAGA agenda, in astonishing numbers, particularly in the South. That this comes only six months after the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais should not come as a surprise.

In the Trump era, Republicans have become experienced at taking rights away from the American people. For women, it was the roll back of their constitutional rights when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, sparking a backlash in that year’s midterm elections. Since Trump returned to office in January 2025, immigrants have come under assault from a xenophobic administration intent on carrying out mass deportations via masked, secret police rampaging through neighborhoods. The LGBTQ+ community, and trans people in particular, have seen their rights stripped away. 

These policies have come as a shock to some Americans who never thought Trump would go there, and they have also opened the eyes of others to the cruelty at the heart of MAGA, overseen by the highest court of the land. But to many Black Americans, the GOP’s agenda and behavior will not have come as a surprise. After all, it’s been at the core of their history going back to before the country’s founding.

Black Americans know what it means to have their civil rights taken away from them. They understand fully the fear of being targeted by brutal, marauding gangs of armed men. In the decade following the Civil War and the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments, Black people began to participate fully in civil society. Mississippi elected two Black U.S. senators and a lieutenant governor, and former slaves and their offspring enjoyed freedom of speech, movement and opportunity. But the white members of Southern society would not let that stand, and as soon as the federal government withdrew its troops, they stepped in with legal and social barriers to deny Black Americans their rights, this time backed by vigilante and state violence that became Jim and Jane Crow. 

Almost a century had passed by the time Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, a period characterized by subjugation and violence by the white majority. But Black America kept fighting, against all odds, until they won. 

This year, we have seen yet another attempt by reactionary politicians and judges to turn back the clock. After the Callais decision, several Southern states reverted immediately to form and radically redrew their congressional districts to favor the white majority, making it much more difficult for voters to elect a Black federal and state representatives.

They may come to regret that decision. This isn’t 1955 (or 1855) anymore, as much as Donald Trump would like to make it so, and the Black community is once again mobilizing. According to experts, early voting data is showing something unexpected: The vote is being driven by young voters rather than just those who went through the earlier battles. It’s muscle memory for the Black community.

After 2024, when Trump won a surprising 15% of the Black vote — nearly doubling his share of 8% in the 2020 election — Republicans thought they were defying history to make great inroads within the community. Then, incredibly, the administration began attacking Black America. The result is what some politicos are calling a “Blacklash,” and it could very well be decisive in some places where nobody expected the Democrats to do well. And even if it doesn’t result in flipping seats, it’s a shot across the bow. 

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In Mississippi, prosecutor and former judge Scott Colom, who is Black, is running an excellent race against Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, the GOP incumbent. Colom has made some very clever advertisements which have garnered a lot of national attention, but Republicans and Democrats alike had largely ignored the race until just a couple of months ago. Polling has tightened, and the GOP has dispatched an influx of luminaries, including Trump himself. For the first time in years, Democrats from Bill Clinton to Kamala Harris, along with a long line of senators, have descended on the state to support Colom. Former President Barack Obama even cut an ad for him. Mississippi has the largest population of Black voters of any state in the country. If Colum gets a big Black turnout with just enough disaffected whites, he could win. 

Louisiana, after giving birth to the case that saw the Supreme Court’s conservative majority gut the Voting Rights Act, has been winnowed down to one majority Black district in a state that is one-third African-American. But there has been a surge in Black participation akin to what is seen in presidential years, which could prove decisive in a race for Louisiana’s open Senate seat that has been a sleeper until the last couple of weeks. According to a recent poll, Republican Julia Letlow and Democrat Jamie Davis are tied. Among voters who have already cast their ballot, Davis — who is Black — holds a six-point advantage, and 34% of early votes have been cast by Black Louisianans.

Then there’s South Carolina, which has seen Trump make three desperate appearances to shore up Darline Graham’s torpid campaign. The endangered incumbent, foisted upon South Carolina Republicans by the president himself following the sudden death of her brother, Sen. Lindsey Graham, is not getting the job done. As numbers cruncher Nate Silver pointed out, a recent New York Times poll showing the race essentially tied is not an outlier; she is in deep trouble. As of late October, the Times reports, “Black voters accounted for around 28 percent of early votes, while making up around 20 percent of the overall electorate in recent cycles. The trend is not unlike what we’re seeing in Georgia and North Carolina thus far.” If that holds true through Election Day, we could see the biggest upset of the whole campaign, largely due to Black South Carolinians saying “Enough is enough.”

In a few short hours, all the ads, mailers, signs and rallies will mercifully come to an end. I am cautiously optimistic, but like many, I’ll never celebrate prematurely again. There is good reason, though, to feel more positive than we have in a long time. Trump and his acolytes have overreached. Opting for the big tech credo of “move fast and break things,” they vastly overestimated their abilities — and the American people’s tolerance. 

They have also aroused a group of Americans who know what it is to lose their rights and privileges. With all that history and so many battles, Black Americans have shown what it takes to never give up.

The post Black voters could sway the midterms in surprising places appeared first on Salon.com.

Ramaswamy Is Very Disappointed That Everyone is Talking About His Ad and Not ‘Policy’

Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign has stopped running the ad featuring his opponent Amy Acton’s estranged mother denouncing her as a liar.

The ad repulsed voters, especially after they learned the backstory: Acton’s mother, Donna Arthur, had not been in touch with her daughter since her husband, Acton’s stepfather, was accused of raping Acton in the 1970s, when Acton was 12 years old. Arthur and her husband then fled to avoid a trial.

One internal poll, described by Axios, found that voters who were aware of the ad disapproved of it 2-to-1 and found Ramaswamy falling behind in the polls as a result of it.

Earlier this week, Trump continued to defend Ramaswamy.”Vivek was treated very unfairly,” he said. “He had the mother of his opponent say that her daughter was a liar. I said, ‘why can’t I have an opponent like that?’ She said worse than that. Horrible things about her own daughter. And the press — the fake news — criticized him.”

Ramaswamy tried to claim his campaign had not pulled the ad.

“It ran to completion, and we put up four other ads,” he claimed, speaking to the press yesterday.

The campaign had set aside $4 million for it, according to the Columbus Dispatch, but only spent $1 million.

Ramaswamy then tried to shame a reporter for asking about it. “For all of the discussion around 30 second ads, I would love, even for this final close, for this campaign to really be about policy.”

Black Workers Flee Government; Administration Tries to Replace Them With Young Right-Wingers

• More than a year ago, TPM’s Layla A. Jones was flagging troubling numbers in federal jobs data, showing the impact that DOGE and other Trump efforts to remake the federal government were having on Black workers. Black Americans are overrepresented among the federal workforce.
• A Washington Post report yesterday followed up on this story, finding that about one in five black workers has left the federal government during Trump’s second term.
• Between late 2024 and September 2025, “the estimated number of Black people working for the government fell by 30 percent,” The Post reported. “By comparison, reported federal employment declined by 4 percent among all other races included in the survey.”
• On Thursday, TPM published a story by Bex Heimbrock on the Trump administration’s recruiting efforts. Office of Personnel Management head Scott Kupor has been touring the country with Turning Point USA aligned influencers, including Benny Johnson, seeking to recruit young — and presumably deeply conservative — college graduates. “What I really want to see is more people like ‘Big Balls,’ or Ed,” said Kupor, referring to former DOGE staffer Edward Coristine.

This week, the Pentagon released a full-resolution image of the vehicle, the capabilities of which remain rather mysterious.

Three Days Grace just lost their drummer for a good chunk of their 2026 Alienation tour. In a video posted on socials, Neil Sanderson revealed that he ruptured a tendon in his left bicep completely off the bone. Consequently, Shaun Foist, ex-drummer for Breaking Benjamin, is slotting in to replace him for at least the fall leg of their tour.

Sanderson didn’t provide much in the way of detail. However, he did share that some sort of incident went really wrong while he was outdoors. Thankfully, the injury won’t render him completely out of action. He’ll be able to slot in on keyboard and background vocals until he’s fully healed.

“As some of you may know, when I’m not on tour with THREE DAYS GRACE, I’m an outdoorsman. I’m a woodsman, and I love nature. But sometimes nature gets the best of you,” Neil Sanderson shared with fans.

“That’s unfortunately what’s happened here. Without getting into details, I fully ruptured my bicep tendon off the bone, and I need emergency surgery, which is happening Tuesday. So the bad news is I’m not playing drums on this tour,” he added. “The good news is, is I am playing keyboards and backup singing on this tour, and we’ve brought in Shaun Foist to fill in on drums.”

Neil Sanderson of Three Days Grace Won’t Be on Drums for a Chunk of their 2026 Tour

Lastly, Sanderson revealed that he’s missing the band’s first three dates in San Antonio, Houston, and Rogers, Arkansas in order to properly heal. However, he vowed to make it back for the rest of their tour. “But I’m gonna get this done, get it fixed, and be back on stage and on keys, backup singing, and we’re gonna make it fun,” Neil Sanderson concluded.

Currently, Three Days Grace are going to be on the road starting October 25th in San Antonio, Texas. Then, they’ll traverse the United States, eventually ending their tour at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles.

Alienation marks the first time Three Days Grace has had an album with more than one singer. Since 2013, Matt Walst has filled the void that their original frontman Adam Gontier left behind back in 2013. On their latest album, though, the pair shared their role on the mic. Neil Sanderson and the rest of the band reprised their roles as usual.

Photo by Ron Palmer/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

The post Three Days Grace Drummer Sent to the Hospital for Emergency Surgery With Ruptured Bicep Tendon appeared first on vice.

Republican Party Adds New Plank to Its Platform: Ramaswamy’s Ad Was ‘So Good’

For a day or so, Republicans expressed discomfort with Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy’s new ad, in which Democrat Amy Acton’s mother denounces her as a longtime liar. Left out of the ad: that Acton and her brother have not seen their mother since the 1970s, when her mother’s husband — Acton’s stepfather — was indicted for allegedly raping Acton, then fled to avoid trial. His wife, featuring in the video, stood by him then and still does.

In early October, Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, went for a classic “politician on the stump” move: He picked up a kid. Or at least he tried to. Ramaswamy fumbled the boy a bit, producing a clip that quickly went viral on social media. 

The next day, Ramaswamy posted a picture of himself with his son in his arms on social media. It was a cute retort. But many of the responses were ugly — racist attacks against Ramaswamy that drew on anti-Indian stereotypes.

It was the latest example of a broader shift on the right, where Indian Americans and Indian immigrants have become a conspicuous target of online conservative anger.

“The people who had negative stereotypes about Indians in their mind said, ‘Hey, look, the guy can’t even pick up a kid…he can’t even act like a normal American family man,’” freelance journalist Zaid Jilani told Today, Explained co-host Noel King.

Jilani, who recently wrote about the surge in anti-Indian racism for Vox, joined the podcast for a conversation about how he sees the bigotry as rooted in status envy, how Indian Americans and Indian immigrants are responding, and his surprisingly hopeful outlook for the future. 

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

American racism is very interesting, always has been. And there is a type that says, immigrants are dirty, they come here, they’re uneducated, they leach off the government, they’re taking our resources. 

The stereotype of Indian immigrants to America and Indian Americans is people who go to college, people who often have advanced degrees, people who often live in nice neighborhoods, make good money, are family-values people. 

Why do you think these values that seem as if they mesh with what Republicans want are so triggering to people these days? Is it just yes, but they’re brown?

I think that is a component of it. I spoke to one Indian American advocate who told me that Indians and South Asians more broadly are visible minorities, right? If you think about other minorities who are highly successful, that’s not always the case. 

For instance, I think that Jewish Americans have been known since the late 20th century as being a successful minority group, but they’re not necessarily highly visible. You can’t always identify someone. If [Texas Railroad Commissioner candidate] Bo French saw a bunch of white people in the stadium with the Longhorns, I’m not sure he would be picking out who’s Protestant, who’s Catholic, who’s Jewish. But with Indian Americans, they are highly visible.

That being said, I think you have to think about where Indian Americans are in society and the kind of feelings that can create among everyone else. If you look, for instance, at Silicon Valley, the major tech companies, Microsoft, Google — the head of [Microsoft’s] Xbox division is an Indian American woman now.

You have a group of people who I think are in many ways a very micro minority — we’re talking about 1 percent to 2 percent of the United States — visibly rising into so many positions that I think a lot of people have typically associated with white folks. White people generally run the Fortune 500, white folks run the universities, white folks are the most successful doctors and engineers. And that was true for the 20th century. 

But when you start seeing a much larger influx of Asian immigrants, starting with liberalization of immigration laws in the ’60s, but also when there was a rapid growth of the technology sector in the early 2000s, you start to understand a little bit more where the resentment comes from because it’s more, I would say, analogically similar to antisemitism than it is to the racism that Mexican Americans face or the racism that Black Americans face. 

“It’s a much larger anti-globalization backlash on the right, not only when it comes to things like immigration, but also trade and tariffs and restrictions like that.”

It’s not that Indian Americans are necessarily being stereotyped as antisocial, criminal, coming here illegally, so on and so forth. It’s more that they’re being seen as a status threat to a lot of particularly middle-class Americans, people who want their kids to rise to the top of their school, who want their kids to have the corner office. They want their kids to be able to get the most prestigious positions. 

I think in the minds of a lot of these people, not only now does their kid have to compete with all the other normal white kids in their community, they have to compete against the entire world. It’s a much larger anti-globalization backlash on the right, not only when it comes to things like immigration, but also trade and tariffs and restrictions like that.

When you talked to Indian Americans for this piece, what did you hear from them that surprised you?

Probably the most surprising thing was how much pragmatism they responded to all of this with. Nine times out of 10, when you have stories about racism, the victims of racism are outraged — understandably and justifiably outraged. Nobody wants to be mistreated. Nobody wants to be denigrated. They certainly don’t want to see restrictions on the right to immigration, or other things to limit their numbers, which is the end point of a lot of this.

At the same time, I think a lot of the people I spoke to were very upfront. They’re like, “Hey, look, we have found a lot of success in America. We got the golden ticket to be able to come here, for our kids to study here, to be able to really seek these opportunities, but we understand what’s happening in the economy. We understand there’s a lot of people who are struggling and then they see us rising to the top of all these organizations. They see us with our kind of well-ensconced place in the economy. And I think it’s important for us not to flaunt our success that much.” At least a couple people said something to that respect. They almost empathize with the people who were hating on them.

It struck me as such a classic immigrant pragmatism that you see from the first or second wave of immigrants: people who realize that they are newcomers to a society or maybe their parents were newcomers to a society, and that there is a certain level of grappling they have to do with, “Hey, how can we continue to have success? How can we continue to grind and resist this racism, but also not rub it in people’s faces that we’re doing well because the more they do that, the tougher it can be?”

A number brought up Vivek Ramaswamy in the sense that Vivek happened to go on social media and talk about what he felt like were deficiencies in American culture when it comes to studying, when it comes to working hard.

I think that in bringing that up, they were saying that that wasn’t particularly helpful because whatever positive aspects there may be to Indian immigrant culture, we shouldn’t talk about them in ways that denigrate other people because that’s obviously going to rub people the wrong way.

You’re making the point that some of the surge in anti-Indian racism on the right is about status anxiety. I was listening to this podcast that Chris Rufo and Jonathan Keeperman did. These are two influential right-wing activists. They called it “The Indian Question” — a lot of people’s eyebrows shot up — and they seem to be making the argument that it is about status anxiety. 

They also were making less coherent arguments about how it’s un-American to study for the spelling bee, which is what South Asian kids do, and that white kids are more American because they play football, then they go to a party and get drunk, and then they get 1,500 on the SAT. 

I’m not saying any of this makes sense. I’m saying it was fascinating. I’m assuming you watched that exchange. What did you make of that?

There’s a certain level of coping mechanism being deployed there in the sense that they are trying to explain the success of Indian Americans as a deficiency: “Maybe they’re getting to the top schools, but that’s because they’re shut in all day studying.”

But it’s not really true that Indian Americans are necessarily cloistered into unhealthy habits. They’re actually finding success across society. For instance, I’ve tutored kids for five, six years. I just really enjoy working with kids. And something you’ll find with a lot of the Indian American kids, they are actually getting increasingly well-rounded. 

Part of that is because you have to, to have success, to get college admissions and so on and so forth. They almost always play sports. They’re involved in extracurriculars. You’re seeing a lot more Indian Americans go into the arts, into cultural fields, into Hollywood. I think that’s actually a very normal path for immigrants.

I think the first or second wave of immigrants has to be very pragmatic. They have to keep their heads down. They have to grind, study, and their parents encourage them to do the same thing. Indian American parents are always like, “You got to be a doctor. You got to be an engineer. Don’t be foolish and try to be a journalist or go to Hollywood.”

But as they establish themselves, as they build nest eggs, they have a little more breathing room, and so they can do different things. I know that Christopher Rufo, for instance, is an Italian American, and I believe I read one time that he even speaks Italian at home because he really values that culture so much and he wants to raise his kids in that. The first wave of Italian immigrants were no different than that. They cloistered into a few sectors where they felt they could find success that was necessary for their integration into the economy and to get their footing. But now we don’t think of Italian Americans as stereotyped into just a few parts of the country or a few parts of society — we barely notice, unless maybe you notice from someone’s name that there even are Italian Americans. 

What they’re describing about Indian Americans is very normal. It’s actually very normal for first waves of immigrants to cluster in a few areas and then they spread themselves out as they’re able to get that a little bit of breathing room and room to ground to stand on.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, campaigned earlier this year at a church alongside an Islamophobic pastor who has preached that Muslims are building a “caliphate” in the U.S.; that “Satan” is using Islam to launch an “apocalyptic” and “multi-front war” against America; and that the global “rebellion of Islam” is led “by the Devil himself.”

Ramaswamy, a billionaire businessman and former presidential candidate, is currently trailing in the polls to Democrat Amy Acton in the state’s closely-watched gubernatorial race. Earlier this year, on May 21, he held a campaign stop at the Liberty Valley Church — which describes itself as a “Bible-Believing Non Denominational Patriotic Church” — alongside Pastor Jeff Tauring. 

Only two months before the event, according to a video reviewed by Talking Points Memo, Tauring delivered a Sunday sermon in which he told his congregation that the two main branches of Islam, Sunni and Shia, both posed existential threats to Americans. 

This summer, the rooftop at the Musée du Quai Branly is home to Bramble bar. Attached to the museum’s Alain Ducasse restaurant, Les Ombres, the bar is overseen by Margot […]

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Classique is a welcome new generation of Paris cocktail bar with a small menu of fancy snacks in an old pharmacy. 

The post Classique: 19th century pharmacy turned cocktail bar appeared first on Paris • Cocktails • Bars.

Paris landmark shop Samaritan has finally reopened and the cocktail bar if it's 7th floor brasserie has a stunning view with drinks worthy of this legendary location.

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