Commentary Culture Investigations

So.
The results of the 2026 midterm sound and fury — aka a midterm election — are in.
And as publicized everywhere, things did not go well for Republicans.
Contrary to the implications or bald assertions out there, the world has not ended for the GOP.
But wait! Contrary to the implications or bald assertions out there, the world has not ended for the GOP. For those who think it has, a walk through some midterm history should be required. And in this space there is a happiness in guiding along observers on just such a walk. And doing so for one simple reason: History counts. (RELATED: Golden Lessons and Silver Linings After a Well-Deserved Cataclysm)
With that in mind, here are a few milestones from midterm election history since, yes, 1954. (RELATED: Trump vs. the Midterms)
1954: Two years earlier, in 1952, Republican and war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower had won a landslide presidential victory, ending 20 years of Democrat presidential rule with FDR and Harry Truman that began with the 1932 presidential election. At last, putting a Republican back in the White House. And then…..
And then came the 1954 midterm elections, and, to say the least, they did not go well for Ike Eisenhower and his GOP. Republicans lost the Congressional majorities they had won a mere two years earlier, majorities that they had won in 1952 — for the first time in 20 years.
But two years later? In 1956, with Ike on the ballot for re-election, he was re-elected in a landslide. With a GOP Congress to boot.
Then in 1958 came a second round of midterms, these for Ike’s second term. And the GOP got clobbered in its second midterm of the Eisenhower years. The GOP lost 48 House seats and 13 — 13! — Senate seats to Democrats.
1962: Democrat Senator John F. Kennedy won a decidedly narrow victory over the GOP’s Vice President Richard Nixon in 1960. Next up was JFK’s presumed first midterm in 1962. And this was one for the history books. Republicans were seen as on a roll for victory. In California, JFK’s old nemesis Nixon was making a huge splash as the GOP’s candidate for governor of California. And then.
And then, out of the blue, there was President Kennedy on national television in mid-October telling the American people he had caught the Russians — the Soviet Union then led by the ever so boisterous Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev — putting nuclear missiles into Cuba. Which is to say, the Russians were installing nuclear missiles a mere 90 miles from American shores. Kennedy gave Nikita a deadline to both get the missiles out and also to stop sending in ships bringing more missiles. To ensure no more ships were coming in, JFK directed the U.S. Navy to blockade the island. In short: the world was seen teetering on the brink of World War III. Safe to say, the world held its breath. Khrushchev was thus persuaded to stop this craziness, stop sending in missiles, and to take the ones that were already installed out.
Suffice to say Americans rallied to JFK and his Democrats. Thus the GOP got nowhere in the 1962 midterm, with Nixon losing his once sure-thing run for California governor. Breaking with the usual midterm pattern for incumbents, and decidedly thanks to the drama of the Cuban missile crisis, JFK’s Democrats won the midterms.
1966: Two years earlier, in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson, JFK’s successor after JFK’s assassination, rolled to a landslide victory over the GOP’s Senator Barry Goldwater. Goldwater carried a mere 6 states. Political circles were discussing the possible end of the GOP.
And then. And then comes the 1966 midterm, with Americans seriously tired of the overwhelming Texan in the White House and a growing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Republicans won 47 House seats and 3 Senate seats. Out there in California, there was much talk that the GOP had elected a movie actor named Ronald Reagan to be Governor. While the GOP had not yet taken back Congress, they made serious gains.
1970: Two years after Nixon won the 1968 election for the presidency, Democrats strengthened their control of the House, adding 12 seats. The GOP at least picked up 2 Senate seats, although not enough to win control.
1974: Alas for the GOP, this was the first election set in the midterm that came in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and Nixon’s resignation. Democrats gained four Senate seats and 49 seats in the House.
1978: The midterm in this year came in the middle of what turned out to be Democrat President Jimmy Carter’s single term. With Carter on the political ropes, Democrats lost 3 Senate seats and 15 House seats, although they still held on to control.
1982: Reagan had won a landslide victory 2 years earlier in 1980, and the Senate elections in 1982 essentially kept the chamber the same. But on the House side, Democrats gained 26 seats.
1986: It was Reagan’s second term, and the year of what politicians called the “six-year itch.” Democrats won 8 seats in the Senate, taking back control. And five seats in the House.
1990: Coming in the middle of the Gulf War, Democrats picked up but one Senate seat and seven House seats in this midterm.
1994: This was the year of what was called the “Republican Revolution,” run against the Clinton presidency and led by Georgia Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich. The GOP won 8 Senate seats and 54 House seats, giving the GOP control of both the Senate and House. (RELATED: The Meaning of the 2026 Election)
There have been many more midterm elections since these, suffice it to say. The point from history, of course, is that midterm elections — as with presidential elections themselves — have consequences. They can be policy consequences, or they can be personnel decisions, with the sudden appearance of a rising star who is a new governor or senator or other.
Recall that in 1965 the New York Times was running a front page story saying the California Republican Establishment was alarmed because it was becoming obvious that a non-member of that GOP Establishment — a movie actor of all things! — was thinking of running for governor in the 1966 midterm. That would be, of course, Ronald Reagan. Who, the Establishment horror notwithstanding, did run and win. And we all know the rest of that story.
All of which is to say, elections have political consequences. And so it is with the 2026 midterms. It may be too early yet to say what those political consequences will be. But that there will be political consequences coming out of the 2026 midterm election one can be sure.
Which is to say: History was made this last week. What kind of history we don’t yet know. And who among this new crowd is the new rising star for either (or both!) political parties, we don’t know either. But rest assured, a page of history has turned again, and someday we will look back to the 2026 midterm and understand exactly what the consequences of this election were.
Meanwhile, President Trump has to deal with the results. The consequential and seriously capable president that he is, he will doubtless do just that.
Stay tuned.
READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord:
The Trump Era Marches On
2028 Begins!
The Department of War: True to History

SACRAMENTO — Before you worry that some of the nuttier ideas from the Democratic Socialists of America will instantly take root across the country, be sure to consider California, where those viewpoints would presumably be more popular than in most other parts of the nation.
Yet on Tuesday, voters soundly rejected one of the most DSA-ish proposals that was floated on any ballot anywhere: a one-time billionaires’ tax, with proceeds mostly funding public healthcare. It flopped in a state where bashing billionaires is as popular as rooting for the San Francisco 49ers. There’s still all the usual slow counting left, but the margin likely is far too large to overcome.
Proposition 40 was led by a prominent union, SEIU-UHW, and backed by the California Democratic Party, the Democratic Socialists of America, a variety of other unions, Bernie Sanders and progressive U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-San Jose). Given how much it costs to place a measure on the statewide ballot, this involved serious effort in an election driven by a blue wave. (RELATED: France Should Export a Warning, Not Its Tax Ideas)
And it was pitched with all the usual left-wing gusto: “Of course these billionaires and their puppets don’t want a billionaire tax, but you should — because someone has to pay, and working people are already paying enough for healthcare,” backers explained in their official ballot argument. As of the latest counting, however, it was losing decisively, 56 percent to 44 percent. Even in lefty San Francisco, Prop. 40 was ahead by only four percentage points.
Despite the largest Democratic wave election we’ve seen in many years, the state’s Democratic-leaning electorate resoundingly said “no” to eating the rich.
It would have imposed a one-time 5 percent tax on every billionaire’s net worth, excluding real estate, retirement funds and pensions. “The state would decide how and when to spend the money from the wealth tax, but it would have to be spent on certain types of services,” as the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office explained. While it could bring in tens of billions of dollars, the LAO noted, the tax would also possibly lead to a decrease in state income-tax revenues if wealthy people fled the state. (RELATED: What’s Behind the Wild New Wealth Tax Proposals?)
It’s clear some of these billionaires had already made that choice before the election. The tax applies retroactively — to anyone who was a resident as of Jan. 1, 2026 — but that portion of the measure was legally dubious and almost certainly would be challenged. And any politically savvy person knows how often temporary taxes are extended and become permanent. California’s highly progressive income tax system cannot afford losing its wealthiest residents. (RELATED: The Wealth Tax Endgame)
That clearly explains why even Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is likely to run for president in a primary that presumably requires DSA support, strongly opposed the proposition. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to do [it] at a state level. It’s a badly written initiative. It focuses just on one part of the state’s budget. It’s one-time money and the impact is already being felt. People have left the state,” the governor said, per Fox News.
Newsom also backed the defensive measure, Proposition 42. Currently leading, 54 percent to 46 percent, it would have negated Prop. 40 had it passed (provided Prop. 42 received a higher vote share than Prop. 40) and is poised to prohibit such nonsense in the future.
According to its official summary, Prop. 42, “Prohibits any new state tax (1) imposed on the ownership of personal property (all things people own other than real estate), or (2) that applies retroactively based on taxpayer’s past activities. Nullifies taxes enacted after January 1, 2026 that conflict with this measure.”
California dodged a bullet, although I never expected the billionaire’s tax to gain traction. As I’ve noted on these pages before, Californians generally vote in a more conservative direction on ballot measures than they do with their candidate choices. (READ MORE: Direct Democracy and Its Complications)
The statewide candidate elections went mostly as expected. The usual variety of Democrats won congressional races after the state egregiously redistricted its seats in response to Texas’s poorly conceived “dummymander.” Democrat Xavier Becerra, the uninspiring former state attorney general and Biden administration official, won by expectedly large margins over Republican Steve Hilton, who never had any serious chance. Most of the statewide Democratic candidates won by the 65-to-35 percent margins that are commonplace.
The only real suggestion of a DSA shift came in the race for insurance commissioner, where Jane Kim is in the lead over legislator Ben Allen. She wants to create a publicly run disaster insurance program that would muck up the state’s otherwise noteworthy recent efforts to shore up its insurance system. With the other initiatives, voters rejected an ill-fated Voter ID proposal (Proposition 39) and, sadly, rejected efforts to reform our environmental regulatory process (Proposition 45) and place limits on the ability of local governments to raise special taxes (Proposition 43).
My guess is that when faced with a laundry list of complicated measures, voters tend to vote “no” more often than “yes” unless the measures somehow stick in their mind. Prop. 40 certainly did that given the massive news coverage, as did Prop. 42 because of Newsom’s public efforts to support it. Despite the largest Democratic wave election we’ve seen in many years, the state’s Democratic-leaning electorate resoundingly said “no” to eating the rich.
My hopeful take: If Democrats think that a DSA agenda will play well in America, they better think twice, as it doesn’t play that well in California.
READ MORE from Steven Greenhut:
At Last, Officials Question ‘Housing First’
Direct Democracy and Its Complications
Why Prediction Markets Are a Safe Bet
Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

While the rest of Europe is up in flames and riots, Poland is now under pressure as a recent dispute between Prime Minister Donald Tusk and President Karol Nawrocki highlighted the country’s struggle with the European Union. (READ MORE: Poland’s Return to the Bad Old Days?) 
The Spectacle Podcast hosts Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay react to Poland and the general unrest happening in Europe. Melissa and Scott criticize France’s response to the riots, and how the globalist Left is continuing to rot the West. They also speculate about recent pushes from 33 countries that are advising their citizens to stockpile food and water — with Melissa flagging an eerie prediction from The Simpsons about a three-day blackout. (RELATED: Why Do So Many Countries Seem To Be Preparing for Disaster?) 
Tune in to hear their discussion!

Listen to The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Spotify.
Watch The Spectacle with Melissa Mackenzie and Scott McKay on Rumble.

There’s no shortage of analysis explaining the disaster for Republicans this past Tuesday. I don’t for a second believe that this butt-kicking can be explained by a single factor, but one thing seems clear. The American people were profoundly unhappy — more than two-thirds of those polled unhappy — about the Iran war and all its downstream effects on the economy.
Vice President JD Vance’s election post-mortem presents the war as the decisive issue that cost the Republicans the Senate, the House, and multiple governorships. In an X post, Vance wrote: “The real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone. The reason we lost is the war…. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost.”
Given the exit poll numbers, given almost every thoughtful analysis, given, in short, the evidence of our own eyes as we survey the morning-after landscape, it’s impossible to argue with Vance’s conclusion. There were certainly other elements involved. In many races, the Republican Party fielded epically bad candidates and in many more, nonentities. Those of us of a certain age are reminded of the comic parody of basketball featuring the dominant Harlem Globetrotters and their always hapless opponents, the Washington Generals. It was that bad.
Other explanations abound. Numerous pundits attribute this shellacking to “Trump fatigue,” or to a generalized unhappiness with the state of the nation that almost always punishes the party in power. This becomes particularly acute when, with majorities in both houses of Congress, the Republicans had so little to show for the opportunity this should have provided. (RELATED: Golden Lessons and Silver Linings After a Well-Deserved Cataclysm)
Even Trump’s most signature success, the complete turnaround of illegal immigration, may have succumbed to the “what have you done for me lately” vibe. The Democrats and the media were never going to view this positively, but the success has been so dramatic that the voters who were furious with Biden two years ago somehow came to be bored — and this even when it remains obvious that much work remains to be done.
There are other, even more terrifying factors at play. The “Red-Green” alliance that united the radical left and radical Islamists has now given us a Senator from Michigan who clearly hates the United States. And the election of Abdul El-Sayed was only the most salient of numerous similar results. In one form or the other, across many constituencies, a murderous hatred for Jews and traditionalist Christians was on the ballot, and hatred won. (RELATED: Republicans Shouldn’t Have to Work This Hard to Beat Crazy)
Still, it seems clear that the Iran war provided the overarching issue that unified Democrats, independents, and a frustrated subset of Republicans. The purported downstream effects, most notably higher gas prices, captured the public imagination, and this despite the fact that gas prices never reached the peaks recorded during the Biden years. But memories are short, and frustration — particularly well-packaged frustration from the media — tends to defy both logic and evidence. Nothing else, not tariffs or ballrooms or anything else, accounts for public anger like the war. (RELATED: The Meaning of the 2026 Election)
So, then, I agree wholeheartedly with Vance’s diagnosis of the Republican catastrophe, but I also completely disagree with the policy conclusions he seems determined to draw. Nor do I think he deserves a free pass when it comes to the impact of the war, or, particularly, with respect to where it all went wrong for the American people.
It all started with the Memorandum of Understanding, the famous — I would argue, infamous — MOU signed between the Trump administration and Iran back on June 17. This promised a 60-day ceasefire so that talks could take place to end the conflict, pausing hostilities and lifting oil sanctions so that a permanent end to the war could be negotiated.
Almost immediately it became evident that the real power in Tehran, the radicals of the IRGC, had no intention of negotiating in good faith. On the contrary, to the extent that they allowed the so-called “moderates” to participate in talks, it was blindingly obvious that this was all a sham, a means of relieving the military and economic pressure that was fast becoming unbearable. Instead, it enabled the IRGC to portray themselves as having “won,” demoralizing the long-suffering Iranian people, effectively undermining any popular pressure from the Iranian street.
It also played into an emerging propaganda narrative in which the IRGC’s victory represented a humiliating defeat for the U.S. and, personally, for Donald Trump. This, of course, played very well with those elites in Europe and the U.S. who detested Trump. It also played well with the “hate Israel” crowd in all its manifestations, from Islamist radicals on the left to the Tucker Carlsons on the right.
It only got worse. By July, the failure of the MOU had become so obvious that Trump declared it was over and authorized a two-week-long campaign of strikes that, once again, substantially crippled any residual or re-emergent Iranian military and naval capabilities (the latter fueled by covert Chinese and Russian aid). And then, on July 24, the U.S. once again announced a bombing halt. (RELATED: Trump Faces a Choice on Iran: Make a Deal or Escalate the War)
Since then, it’s been on again, off again, tit for tat, pick your description. The IRGC launches some kind of attack on shipping or on American bases, and the CENTCOM responds with “measured” counterstrikes. Less visibly, the U.S. naval blockade continues, by all accounts to notable effect, supported by increasingly potent economic sanctions. The condition of the IRGC regime has become parlous.
But it’s not gone. The IRGC still has enough guns to keep an unhappy populace in check, and enough missiles and drones (including, again, capabilities renewed with Russian, Chinese, and North Korean assistance) to threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. While the actual kinetic capabilities may be largely degraded, their ability to inflict occasional damage remains. This drives insurance and other shipping costs and, despite the U.S. Navy’s best efforts, depresses the volume of oil shipments.
Moreover, the IRGC propagandists play this to the hilt, abetted by their willing accomplices in the Western media. It’s scarcely accidental that the myriad news outlets long ago proclaimed that Iran had “won” the war, which, of course, played directly into Democrat messaging in the run-up to the midterms.
Popular support for the war peaked last April after the triumphant rescue of the two airmen from the F-15 shot down over Iran. It was a moment when the incredible skills and courage of the U.S. military could be celebrated, and also a moment of assurance that, unlike Vietnam or Mogadishu, we would not be held hostage by our enemies. This support lasted, unsurprisingly, until the June MOU. Since then, it has been steadily frittered away.
[Trump’s] failure instead was in allowing himself to be persuaded to accept an utterly incoherent mixture of limited strikes followed by fruitless ceasefires.
Many pundits have complained that Trump never made the case for this war to the American people, but this was always misleading. The case was always clear. Iran can never be allowed to have nuclear weapons, for the simplest of reasons. Unlike every other nuclear power — and I include North Korea — the Iranian regime has always been messianic and expansionist; it has never made a secret of its desire to see its brand of sharia tyranny expand throughout the Middle East, obliterating Israel, but also dominating every other “moderate” Arab regime.
Further, Tehran has never made a secret of its wider ambitions. It’s scarcely accidental that IRGC fingerprints are all over the rising tide of Islamist violence in Europe, or even more disturbingly, behind the Islamist political beachheads expanding every day in the U.S. Such a regime, protected by the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons, represents a metastasizing cancer to our way of life.
From the beginning, then, Trump made the case for the war in the most fundamental terms — Iran must never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. Instead of the geopolitical bankruptcy of the Obama approach, when the opening finally presented itself, he acted to destroy the threat. And, if one looks back to last spring and early summer, the American people clearly understood this — and accepted it.
Where Trump failed — and this is the failure that cost the Republicans the midterms — wasn’t in choosing to destroy Iran’s potential nuclear capabilities and its subsidiary ability to use its position on the Strait of Hormuz to hold energy markets hostage. His failure instead was in allowing himself to be persuaded to accept an utterly incoherent mixture of limited strikes followed by fruitless ceasefires.
This demoralized Iran’s Gulf neighbors just as they were beginning to get on board with the U.S. campaign against the IRGC regime. Worse, it demoralized support for the war among Americans, who might well have been persuaded to accept a spike in gas prices to support seeing the war through to a successful conclusion.
Despite the IRGC propagandists, despite the left-wing media, despite Democrat campaign messaging, the combination of naval blockade and economic pressure has been working. What has been missing has been the continued, high-visibility degradation of Iranian military and naval capabilities. Instead of “we’ll hammer them after the midterms,” what was needed was a hammer blow at Pickaxe Mountain and a sustained destruction of every remaining threat to the Strait of Hormuz. Not one set of strikes, then a bunch of idle talk.
That remains what is needed, but actually accomplishing this has now become massively more difficult. The pressure campaign that should have already reached its peak now faces incredible headwinds. The IRGC can tell itself that it only needs to hold out until the new Democratic majorities assume congressional power, at which time the U.S. will start to fold.  We’ve seen this play out before, when a Democrat Congress betrayed South Vietnam, or when Biden bailed out of Afghanistan. The world is watching, and, even if Trump does try to continue the pressure, the writing is on the wall.
It won’t help that a substantial element in the Trump administration decided long ago not to support the president in effectively prosecuting the war. The internal pressures that led to the June MOU and to the subsequent attempts at a negotiated settlement came from somewhere, and most accounts suggest that the vice president lent his considerable influence to these decisions. One might wish that the president had resisted these pressures, but they always played into his otherwise laudable “peacemaker” instincts.
Perhaps Trump will follow through on his oft-repeated “we’ll hit them very hard after the midterms” promise, but the dealmaking pressures may now prove irresistible. Vance may believe that staking out a position against the war represents a strong first step toward leading the Republican Party in 2028. But however much the American people punished Republicans for the war last Tuesday, they will likely punish them even more for the defeat that follows from yielding an obvious victory to the IRGC.
Americans didn’t like to pay the price at the pump for the Iran war, but, above all, they didn’t like paying that price for a war the U.S. seemed to be losing. If there’s one thing that Americans hate even more than high gas prices, it’s being paraded before the world as losers. No matter how hard he may try, this is something Vance will never be able to finesse by shifting the blame for this outcome elsewhere.
READ MORE from James H. McGee:
The Tyranny of #BeNice
The War Iran Chose: Remembering the Beirut Bombing
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James H. McGee is a retired nuclear security and counter-terrorism professional. His most recent novel, The Zebras from Minsk, was featured among National Review’s favorite books in 2025. His next novel, The Cathedral of Sorrows, will directly focus on the plight of Africa’s Christians. You can find The Zebras from Minsk and his previous thriller, Letter of Reprisal, in paperback and Kindle editions at Amazon. The Cathedral of Sorrows will appear this fall.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Loud, activist student protests directly adjacent to classroom buildings are once again interfering with teaching and learning at Harvard.
Thursday afternoon in Harvard Yard, about 15 Harvard graduate students marched in a circle, banging on drums and obstructing the main entrance to Emerson Hall, a classroom building that also houses Harvard’s philosophy department. They held signs—”No contract, no peace,” and “UAW on Strike,” a reference to the United Auto Workers union of which the Harvard Graduate Student Union is an affiliate.

The protesters chanted rhyming slogans referring to Harvard’s endowment. “$60 billion with a ‘B,’ now is there enough for me?” “You’ve got $60 billion bucks. Union busting really sucks.” (Much of the endowment is in private equity, allowing Harvard’s managers and the protesters both to pretend it’s still worth $60 billion notwithstanding Thursday’s stock market slide in publicly traded companies.) They also chanted “If we don’t get it, shut it down,” a threat also favored by the anti-Israel protesters.

Students, parents, Harvard administrators, and alumni privately described to the Washington Free Beacon a situation that sharply contrasts with the story that the university is publicly presenting in the press and in court filings and oral arguments. By that account, the disruptive campus protests that made national headlines and contributed to toppling Harvard President Claudine Gay are a thing of the past, and Harvard has implemented and enforced new policies and priorities emphasizing teaching and learning instead of protests and activism. The Wall Street Journal even ran a widely shared front-page news article by Pamela Paul glowingly depicting a Harvard humanities class limited to 90 students as something like a cross between the Sanhedrin and St. John’s College in Annapolis.
Among the impacts of the strike, which began on October 27:
— Harvard classes known as “sections”—smaller discussion groups led by graduate student instructors—have been widely canceled, with undergraduates in the classes provided no tuition refund or alternative educational experience. Among the courses where section meetings have been canceled, the Free Beacon has learned, are Humanities 10, or “Hum 10,” the course admiringly depicted in the Wall Street Journal article as “distinctly old school.” Would a genuinely “old school” class let a strike cancel learning for students? Other classes with sections canceled include Gov 30, a class in Harvard’s government department taught by Stephen Ansolabehere, who was one of the professors Claudine Gay was accused of having plagiarized. Other classes that have had sections canceled include Philosophy 14: Morality and the Good Life: An Introduction to Ethics. If the class had met perhaps the students could have discussed the ethics of a professor leaving tuition-paying students in the lurch with less educational time because of a strike. Also canceled were sections in History of Science 100, an introductory course in the history of science.
— In some classes where the sections weren’t completely canceled, like math or economics, sections were merged together because some of the instructors were graduate students, so what are supposed to be smaller classes are now large and full of new students.
— Midterm exams that students took haven’t been returned with grades or comments.
— In some classes where graduate student instructors had office hours for students with questions, those office hours have been scaled back.
— Some professors have moved classes from in-person to zoom at the request of the union when the union sets up picket lines outside classroom buildings.
— An author and video personality, John Green, who was scheduled to deliver the 2026 George W. Gay Lecture on Medical Ethics, decided to appear virtually instead of in person after the union wrote to him asking him not to cross their picket line. A Harvard Medical School spokeswoman declined to reply to my question about whether he’d be paid his full honorarium for the appearance. Such speaking fees can be lucrative; Harvard’s English and history departments paid a $35,000 honorarium and $7,500 in travel expenses “for a 5 star hotel” to have Ta-Nehisi Coates appear on campus on September 24, 2025, the second day of Rosh Hashana, and “read from his chapter on Palestine.” Green’s representatives did not reply to my emails seeking comment. Harvard describes the Gay lecture as “the oldest endowed lectureship at Harvard Medical School, and quite possibly the oldest medical ethics lectureship in the United States.”
— A midterm exam in GenEd 1116, “Medical Ethics and History,” was targeted by such a loud student protest that the professor distributed 100 pairs of earplugs, the Harvard Crimson reported.
A Harvard spokesman, Jason Newton, sent me a copy of a November 4 letter from a Harvard labor relations official, Paul Curran, warning that the strike activity that targeted the GenEd 1116 midterm “is in direct conflict with multiple University policies, including the University-wide Statement on Rights and Responsibilities (USRR) and the Anti-Bullying Policy.” It went on, “Our teachers have a right to teach our students, and our students have a right to learn. … In violation of University policy, the picket activity on Thursday outside Emerson Hall interfered with students’ and employees’ rights and obstructed community members from performing their normal duties and activities. This serves as notice that student workers who exercise their right to strike in a manner that violates University policy will be subject to employment disciplinary action.”
The mildly phrased letter—”Thank you for ensuring that the union will conduct all picket activity in accordance with University policies. If you have any questions regarding the relevant policies and expectations for picket activity moving forward, please let us know”—didn’t seem to have discouraged the union activists from a loud protest outside the same classroom building this afternoon.
Newton also sent along an October 26 letter from Harvard’s provost, John Manning, and its executive vice president, Meredith Weenick, claiming, “If a strike occurs, we will continue to fulfill our obligations to our students and researchers.” That letter also notes, “The University provides over $425,000 in financial support to all PhD students over a five-year period, including grants to cover tuition, fully subsidized health insurance premiums, fully subsidized dental insurance, living expense support, parental accommodation support, and a parental benefit stipend, among other benefits.”
The Harvard graduate student union is virulently anti-Israel and voted in November 2023 to back the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement to wipe Israel off the map. “We categorically reject U.S. support of the murderous Israeli regime in its ongoing genocide of Palestinians,” the statement “in support of Palestinian liberation” said. “As members of the labor movement, we call on U.S. labor unions to cut all ties with Israeli unions.” The anti-Israel protests that wracked the Harvard campus in 2023 and 2024 frequently featured UAW signs so that if Harvard did anything to quash the protests it could be accused of labor rights violations as well as infringing on the free speech and assembly of the protesters.
The post ‘Shut It Down’: Grad Student Strike at Harvard Disrupts Learning appeared first on .

Some Democrats are misreading the mandate.

A fictitious poll meant throw off the public was closer to reality than real polls conducted by real firms using real people.

Voters concluded that there is no point in keeping faith with a president clearly uninterested in keeping faith with you.

The best news of the night for pro-lifers came from Idaho.

Even though Republican candidates were largely defeated in Tuesday’s midterm elections, voters in multiple states did succeed in passing ballot measures bolstering the integrity of their elections.On Tuesday, three states – Ohio, Nevada and North Carolina – passed ballot initiatives amending their constitutions to require voters to provide photographic proof of identity in order to cast a ballot. The North Carolina measure approved by voters extended the requirement of photographic evidence to mail-in ballots.In the previous two-year period (2024-25), voters approved 10 state ballot initiatives requiring voters to provide proof of identity, while rejecting three. This calendar year, three such state measures failed and four passed.In August, Oklahomans passed measure 846, a constitutional requirement for voters to provide proof of identity, as defined by the state legislature, when voting in any election in the state. Photo ID is the currently-defined proof of identity.Thus, from 2024-26, voters have approved 13 of 19 state measures requiring voters to provide proof of identity at the polls.Voter ID initiatives failed in California, Arizona and Colorado on Tuesday. Both California and Arizona are considered to be Red (Democrat-majority) states, while Arizona is known as a swing state (Purple).Notably, all three ballot measures that failed included additional provisions. The ill-fated Arizona initiative included a constitutional amendment requiring citizenship to vote in state and local elections.In Colorado, not only did the failed constitutional amendment require photo ID for in-person voting, it required provision of a voter identification number in all mail-in ballots.And, in California, the Voter ID measure rejected would have created a list of registered voters in the state and provided requirements for state government administration of that list.Regarding the citizenship issue, five states passed measures related to citizenship requirements to vote in state and local elections:Alaska.Arkansas.Kansas.South Dakota.West Virginia.Arizona had the only voter citizenship-related measure that failed. As noted above, that measure also included a Voter ID requirement. Additionally, the Arizona Constitution currently contains a reference suggesting citizenship is a requirement to vote in state and local elections.