After nearly a year of licking wounds and playing defense in the face of the Trump administration’s consolidation of power, the Democratic Party is suddenly poised to regain some of the momentum lost in its 2024 electoral drubbing. In special elections around the country last night, Democratic candidates notched striking victories that many have taken as an encouraging sign for next year’s midterms. Still, as Republicans move to downplay the blue wave, some Democrats are similarly hesitant to fully embrace their wins.

‘Major questions’
For Democrats, last night’s victories were a “circuit-breaker” that ended the past “annus horribilis” for the party, said Politico. Beyond simply winning “every closely watched election,” the striking takeaway from the races is that their victories “were so sweeping.” There were double-digit gubernatorial wins for Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively, two states previously expected to be close. 

The Democrats’ “good news” continued in “lower-profile elections,” as well, including in two statewide seats that Georgia Republicans had warned could be a “bellwether for the 2026 midterms,” said Vox. But even if election night was a “sign of tides turning Democrats’ way,” the candidates “leave major questions about the party’s path forward,” said The Wall Street Journal. 

‘Tug-of-war’
Perhaps no race has engendered those types of major questions like New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s dark horse upset of Andrew Cuomo. Many “top Democrats” have been “reticent” to embrace Mamdani for fear his progressive stances could “alienate their voters,” said Al Jazeera. They are “embroiled in a tug-of-war over the future of the party” with moderates warning against “overreading Mamdani’s success in an overwhelmingly blue city,” said Bloomberg.

“The factional grifters will hate this,” said The New Republic’s Greg Sargent on Bluesky, but despite their ideological and campaign differences, the “Mamdani-Spanberger-Sherrill axis” isn’t a sign of intraparty discord at all. Instead, it highlights a “broad, emerging Dem coalition” focused on “affordability politics” and on being “anti-Trump.”

“It doesn’t really matter if you run as a Democratic socialist, as a moderate, as a conservative,” said Democratic strategist Trip Yang to Al Jazeera. “Voters care if you are a disciplined candidate who can speak to their most pressing issue.”

Half of the world’s remaining uncontacted Indigenous groups face extinction within a decade, due to growing contact with missionaries, miners, drug traffickers and social media influencers, according to a report from Survival International. The human rights group has identified 196 “uncontacted” communities around the world living “at the edge of survival.” 

Who and where are they? 
Uncontacted peoples are those who reject contact with outsiders as an active and ongoing choice, said Survival. Some are entire peoples who are uncontacted, while others are subgroups of bigger tribes with whom they share a language and often a territory. These groups are self-sufficient and resilient. 

The Amazon basin accounts for the vast majority of these communities, with the rest living in the Asia-Pacific, including India and Indonesia. Some people romanticize them as “lost tribes” frozen in time, said Fiona Watson, Survival’s research and advocacy director, but the reality is that many are contemporary societies whose avoidance of outsiders is “rooted in memories of devastating past contact and invasion.” The threats they are facing now are “what I would call silent genocides.” 

Why are they under threat? 
Resource extraction is by far the biggest threat to uncontacted peoples, many of whom live on land ripe for mining, logging and agribusiness. Deforestation and infrastructure projects, like roads and railways, often leave food and water sources destroyed and polluted, bringing starvation. 

Drug-trafficking gangs also pose an existential danger to Indigenous communities, as do missionaries who are “bankrolled by multimillion-dollar evangelical organizations” to track and convert people to Christianity, said Survival. A new but growing threat is the rise of “adventure-seeking tourists” and social media influencers who expose uncontacted groups to deadly diseases. 

What can be done? 
Brazil adopted a policy in 1987 to protect isolated peoples and demarcate their land. This “allowed many populations to grow,” said The Guardian, but the agency set up to protect them has been “deliberately weakened” by successive governments over the years. 

Survival has called for a global no-contact policy and urged private companies to ensure their supply chains are free of material sourced from land inhabited by Indigenous groups. Protecting uncontacted peoples will require not only “stronger laws,” said The Independent, but also a “shift in how the world views them: not as relics of the past but as citizens of the planet whose survival affects everyone’s future.”

The full beaver supermoon rises over Mount Tai in Tai’an, China. Peaking last night, this beaver moon is the largest and brightest supermoon of 2025, as it’s the closest the moon will get to Earth all year.
Xu Dedong / VCG / Getty Images

Chocolate is always good, but at these destinations, it’s a straight-up experience. See all the ways that chocolate can be an on-the-ground adventure and how it can be used even in body treatments. 

Cacao ceremony at W Punta de Mita, Mexico
At the blissful W Punta de Mita in Riviera Nayarit, guests can take part in a cacao ceremony, an ancient ritual “honoring the Mayan ancestors of the region,” said Forbes. Led by a shaman, the ceremony takes place outside of the hotel on the white sand beach, with participants drinking the cacao before relaxing with a sound bath meditation. 

Chocolate Laboratory at Jade Mountain Resort, St. Lucia
Chocolate is part of St. Lucia’s culture and has been since the first cocoa trees were planted during the early 1700s. At the luxe Jade Mountain Resort, guests can learn more about the island’s sweet side while visiting the Chocolate Laboratory. There are over 2,000 cocoa trees at the property and its sister estate, and at the lab guests can taste the fantastic chocolates made from those beans.

Cacao-centered spa day at Rancho La Puerta, Mexico
Rancho La Puerta, a wellness resort spanning 4,000 acres only an hour’s drive from San Diego, is a special property. The legendary spa offers a native-inspired Xocolatl Skin Replenishment treatment that uses nourishing antioxidant-rich cacao butter and sugar to soften the skin.