Are the Democrats really going to take Texas? If there is going to be a blue wave, as polling suggests, winning the Lone Star state is going to be essential. James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for US Senate, is currently leading against Ken Paxton, a scandal-ridden political survivor. Even the gubernatorial race in Texas, pitting Greg Abbot, the current governor, against Gina Hinojosa is within the margin of error. These elections, and ultimately control of the US Congress, are likely to be decided by one key demographic – Latinos. Hispanic men were key to Donald Trump’s 2024 win. But Carlos Eduardo Espina, a news commentator, and Stephanie Valencia, a pollster, tell Kai Wright there are signs that the economy, the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign and Republican redistricting efforts are backfiring – and Latinos seem to be swinging back to Democrats this year. Espina and Valencia break down what we really mean by 'the Latino vote' and how those voters might just swing right back next election if Democrats aren’t careful.
Are the Democrats really going to take Texas? If there is going to be a blue wave, as polling suggests, winning the Lone Star state is going to be essential. James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for US Senate, is currently leading against Ken Paxton, a scandal-ridden political survivor. Even the gubernatorial race in Texas, pitting Greg Abbot, the current governor, against Gina Hinojosa is within the margin of error. These elections, and ultimately control of the US Congress, are likely to be decided by one key demographic – Latinos. Hispanic men were key to Donald Trump’s 2024 win. But Carlos Eduardo Espina, a news commentator, and Stephanie Valencia, a pollster, tell Kai Wright there are signs that the economy, the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign and Republican redistricting efforts are backfiring – and Latinos seem to be swinging back to Democrats this year. Espina and Valencia break down what we really mean by 'the Latino vote' and how those voters might just swing right back next election if Democrats aren’t careful.
In order to eliminate global racism, we must dismantle the ideological architecture that allows it to thrive worldwide
Around the world, racism is fueling a new wave of global unrest. In recent weeks, demonstrations in France turned violent amid mounting frustrations over socioeconomic and racial inequities, led by a younger generation that has had enough. Earlier this month, the Green party of England and Wales’s decision to define Zionism as a form of racism sparked controversy and renewed public debate about what racism is and who gets to decide it. In September, electoral gains by Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party raised alarms in a nation with a dangerous history of racist, antisemitic fascism. And for the past year, the Trump administration has pushed ahead white supremacist agendas throughout the United States, highlighted by violent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids targeting people by race, regardless of citizenship status.
To understand each of these examples of racism in isolation would be a mistake. They are connected. Racism is not merely a series of random occurrences affecting certain people in certain places. It is more than institutional discrimination in schools or workplaces or even systemic inequalities in healthcare and policing. Racism is an interconnected, global phenomenon, spreading throughout our human ecosystem and embedded in world order. This global racism,which I name and define in my new book Global Racism: A Challenge for the World, is dangerous – it underpins wars and threatens our very humanity.
Anna Spain Bradley is the author of Global Racism: A Challenge for the World and a professor of law at the UCLA School of Law
Psychopatriarchy is jet fuel to racism, colonialism, imperialism and capitalism
For those of us who have spent our lives trying to dismantle this endlessly destructive paradigm of patriarchy, it has become increasingly clear in recent months that something more terrifying is afoot.
The wheels are off the cart. We are in the midst of a chaotic, demented acceleration of the most violent and cruel aspects of this system which has evolved into what I am calling Psychopatriarchy.
V (formerly Eve Ensler) is a playwright and activist and the founder of V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls
Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for governor of Ohio, at a campaign event in Vandalia, Ohio, on October 3, 2026. | Jessica Phelps/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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.
Login
