November 5, 2026

Photo credit: RONALDO SCHEMIDT / Contributor / AFP via Getty Images

Since 1934, the president’s party has lost House seats in every midterm but three. Does that mean that every voter is a centrist, or that every election brings about more moderate policy?

Of course not, Jesse Arm and Matthew Shor argue. It only means that even if a party doesn’t fully convince voters to embrace its priorities, it can still benefit from dissatisfaction with the party in control.

The midterm election results in California illustrate this reality. Voters elected Democrat Xavier Becerra as governor, but nearly two-thirds of them supported limiting public-sector union power, while a majority supported restricting Medi-Cal eligibility to legal immigrants, according to a Manhattan Institute survey. “Indeed, it may be the case that progressives won in spite of their views, rather than because of them,” Arm and Shor write. “Winning a race in a state Trump carried does not, by itself, establish that a candidate’s ideology helped him—or that a less ideological Democrat would have done worse.”

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California voters appear ready to reject Proposition 40, which would have implemented a 5 percent tax on residents worth more than $1 billion. Even so, the damage may have already been done, Shawn Regan argues.

Indeed, seven billionaires have already left the state, removing $540 billion of wealth and nearly 30 percent of California’s potential wealth-tax base. That figure is likely higher than any amount the tax itself would have generated. And the proposal will surely prevent future billionaires from moving there. “For wealthy residents deciding where to live, invest, and build their businesses, concerns about future tax policy may be enough to make California a less attractive choice,” Regan writes.

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New York may have just elected its most extreme congressional representative yet. Darializa Avila Chevalier won with 88 percent of the vote, claiming during her victory speech that she defeated “corporate PACs and lobbyists”—never mind that she received $845,000 from the Justice Democrats PAC and $500,000 from the anti-Israel American Priorities PAC.

Chevalier won the Democratic nomination this summer even after demanding that prisons be abolished and private property be seized and writing that she “forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.”

Her victory party Tuesday night was telling. Signs adorned the walls with statements like “Free Palestine,” “tax the rich,” and “we will beat the billionaires.” Attendees wore keffiyehs and pins that said, “Abolish ICE” and “corporate PAC money? I don’t know her.”

Josh Appel spoke with some of the attendees. Read what they had to say.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) is a nonprofit that wants to expand welfare for illegal migrants and abolish ICE. California has awarded the group more than $100 million since 2019, which it has used to fight deportations and develop “progressive policies.”

Last week, Christopher Rufo, Kenneth Schrupp, and Austen Hufford visited CHIRLA’s headquarters to observe its get-out-the-vote event, at which it was hosting an official L.A. County voting station. One of CHIRLA’s employees relayed the group’s endorsements, including for Karen Bass, Marissa Roy, Xavier Becerra, and Rob Bonta, the last of whom, the employee said, had been “very supportive.”

This behavior “potentially violates state law,” Rufo, Schrupp, and Hufford write. “In California, it is a misdemeanor to ‘solicit a vote or speak to a voter on the subject of marking the voter’s ballot’ within ‘100 feet’ of ‘the entrance to a building that contains a polling place’ or ballot-drop location. Given the voting infrastructure in CHIRLA’s office that day, the employee’s remarks could constitute a prosecutable offense.”

CHIRLA’s voting operation could violate federal law, too. Read more about the group and its efforts here.