We had a midterm election in which the Democrats and the Left were wildly successful. There is one way in which this makes some of them look either deeply stupid or dishonest. Many of them who rejoice now tried to claim there wouldn’t be any more elections if Donald Trump won in 2024, or that he might cancel the midterms.  On Oct. 18, 2023, Rachel Maddow plugged her new book about American fascism on ABC’s “The View,” claiming that Trump is “basically portraying a future for America, if he is put back in the White House, in which we don’t have another election after that.” Then it got even dumber. Co-host Sara Haines claimed Trump would “cancel the news. Like, the news, you’re done.” Maddow agreed and added: “He wants to put MSNBC on trial for treason so that he can execute us.”  Insert “Twilight Zone” theme song here. But there’s more.  Right before the 2024 elections, then-MSNBC host Joy Reid ranted: “We’ve laid out the stakes in this crucial election, where one side stands for freedom, while the other meets the textbook definition of fascism.” Trump was Hitler, so: “Make sure that on the morning of Nov. 6, you can say that you are proud of what you did in this moment. That you didn’t sit out what could be our last election.”   This continued in Trump’s second term. On Nov. 6, 2025, on the “Amanpour & Co.” show on PBS, guest host Bianna Golodryga aided writer David Graham of The Atlantic in laying out the conspiracy theories: “You open the piece with a fictional but plausible scenario, and that is Marines seizing voting ballots in Arizona. Just walk us through some other possible scenarios that you envision.”  Graham elaborated, “You know, I’ve had people ask me if we’ll have elections in 2026, and I think the answer is yes.” He suggested a hybrid authoritarianism, where “you don’t cancel elections, you don’t ban an opposition media entirely. You just make it much harder for the opposition to compete. So, there’s an election, but they can’t fundraise as effectively, or they don’t have the media to get to it, or the votes are suppressed in some way.”   Does it look like that conspiracy theory turned out?   On Jan. 13, 2026, Joy Behar of “The View” followed up their kooky claims about the 2024 election being stolen with this: “I really worry about that Trump is looking for this kind of pandemonium to go on like you just described, so that he could declare martial law or something and also cancel the midterms.”   On the June 17, 2026, “Jim Acosta Show,” Behar’s old colleague Rosie O’Donnell set off the bells on the Kook Alert: “We’re going to have an event here in the United States, maybe another ‘assassination attempt,’ and he’s going to declare that the elections are off,” she said, making quotation marks with her fingers as she said “assassination attempt.”   Rosie feverishly believes Trump wasn’t really shot in 2024. She was referring to the 2028 elections, so that wild-eyed theory isn’t disproven yet.   This is where people should roll their eyes when the Left complains about all the “misinformation” and evidence-free conspiracy theories creeping all over the conservative media.  Every conspiracy theorist who suggested the midterms were going to get canceled should … get canceled. Democracy is still alive. It’s not dying in darkness. But the Left pretends there is no Democracy unless they win. Well, now they won. But nobody should expect them to stop the crazy talk. It’s a business model.   COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM  We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal. 

Summary Athenians built the Parthenon through persuasion, debate, and a democratic vote. It celebrated ordinary citizens with a dignity once reserved for the divine. Today, it reminds Americans to fiercely guard their own inherited liberty. For 30 years after the Persians burned Athens in 480 B.C., the rubble sat untouched atop the city’s great stone Acropolis. The Greeks had sworn to leave it there as a reminder of what they had lost and what might come again. The great statesman Pericles, however, finally persuaded his fellow citizens that the ruins had served their purpose. What rose in their place, the Parthenon, has stood for nearly 25 centuries. As Americans mark the 250th anniversary of our own experiment in self-government, it is worth remembering why. The Parthenon is usually admired as an architectural masterpiece, which it is. But it was also the first great monument built by a democracy, paid for by a vote, and designed to memorialize the national identity of a free citizenry. Pericles was Athens’ most powerful politician, but he was no king. He had no executive authority to spend public money; he could only persuade the Ecclesia, the assembly of citizens that met on the Pnyx below the Acropolis, to adopt his policies—in this case, building the Parthenon with the Delian Treasury, which was the collective wealth of the Greek city-states led by Athens. When the building costs ballooned into a scandal, his opponents pounced. Plutarch records that they accused him of decking out Athens like a vain woman in jewels and temples, using money the city’s allies had contributed for their common defense. Pericles responded by offering to pay for it himself, and to put his own name on the temple. The assembly, suddenly picturing a monument to one rich man who might start thinking like a monarch, decided the city should pay after all. It is a thoroughly democratic story: messy, contentious, a little cynical, and ultimately decided by the people. The result was a temple that belonged to Athens rather than to Pericles. The building’s sculpture drove the point home. The west pediment, the first thing visitors saw as they climbed the hill, showed the city’s founding myth: Athena and Poseidon competing for the Acropolis, with the choice left to the people who lived there. Poseidon offered a salt spring; Athena the olive tree. The Athenians chose the useful gift over the impressive one. In their own telling, Athenians had not passively received the patronage of the goddess. They had voted for her. High inside the temple’s colonnade, a frieze depicted not gods or legendary heroes but Athenians themselves: the horsemen, maidens, and citizens of the Panathenaic procession, the city’s great civic festival. The legendary sculptor Phidias gave these mortals an idealized dignity once reserved for the divine, and gave the gods a new naturalism. This was the birth of the classical style that depicted man not as he was, but as he might aspire to be. Pericles made the connection explicit. In the winter of 431 B.C., as Thucydides records, he delivered his funeral oration for the first Athenians killed in the war with Sparta. Athens, Pericles said, was a pattern to others rather than an imitator; its government favored the many instead of the few; advancement came from merit, not class. And Athenians regarded debate not as an obstacle to action but as “an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all.” The newly completed Parthenon looming over the city behind him was the visual proof of the city’s exceptionalism. Pericles had created the paradigmatic classical temple that has come to embody democratic ideals, an achievement all the more remarkable when we consider the challenges he faced both personally and professionally. His ambitions sparked a disastrous war with Sparta. Athenian democracy excluded women, rested on slavery, and could turn vicious; about 40 years after the Parthenon was completed, the city would condemn the great philosopher Socrates to death for impiety. Pericles’ successors exploited democratic procedures for their own ends, and within a generation Athens had lost its war and, eventually, its freedom. Socrates’ student Plato concluded with some cause that democracy was among the worst forms of government. But even these failings cannot obscure the fact that the Athenians were the first to attempt what had never been tried: to govern themselves by persuasion rather than force, establishing the democratic model that would be continuously repeated in different forms for millennia in the West, from Rome to Venice to Florence to Holland to France to England and eventually to the United States. America’s founders, who were well aware of this lineage, borrowed Greek columns for our public buildings not as mere decoration but as a visual claim of descent from the first free people, beginning with Nicholas Biddle’s Second Bank in Philadelphia—a commercial building designed as a Greek temple. The Parthenon reminds us that liberty is not a natural condition. It was won by citizens who rose above their very human weaknesses to fight the Persians, sustained by those who argued in the assembly, and carved in marble so later generations would see what self-government could inspire. Twenty-five centuries later, the building still stands as a reminder to fiercely guard our own liberty and prove ourselves worthy of what we have inherited.

Summary Republican state Rep. Brian Harrison is urging Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special session to rein in Texas governors’ emergency powers before Democrat Gina Hinojosa takes office. Harrison wants lawmakers to revive reforms similar to House Bill 911, which would restrict a governor’s ability to suspend or modify laws, require legislative approval for emergency orders lasting beyond 30 days, and allow judicial review. Harrison argues that no governor, Republican or Democrat, should have such broad emergency authority and is encouraging Texans to sign a petition urging Abbott to convene a special session before Hinojosa is sworn in. Republican state Rep. Brian Harrison is calling on Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special session to rein in executive emergency powers before Democrat Gina Hinojosa is sworn in.  Harrison’s call came after Hinojosa was elected the next governor of Texas on Nov. 3.  In Texas, the governor has broad authority to declare a state of disaster under the Texas Disaster Act of 1975. That includes the ability to issue executive orders with the force of law and suspend regulations during declared disasters. The Office of the Governor can also veto legislation, command the state military, and grant pardons or commute sentences.  In 2022, Harrison filed a bill that would have reined in the governor’s powers by keeping the governor from suspending or modifying statutes, sunsetting emergency orders in 30 days if the Legislature did not ratify the order, and subjecting emergency orders to judicial review; however, it died without receiving a committee hearing.  With only 10 weeks left until Democrats take office, Harrison is urging Abbott to “protect Texas from near total Democrat rule,” warning that Hinojosa will “inherit the powers of a dictator.”  “Governor Abbott must take immediate action on the most imminent threat to our liberty in light of the election results: unchecked executive emergency powers. If these are not revoked, Gina Hinojosa will assume not just the powers our state constitution bestows upon a Governor, but will, in effect, inherit nearly all the powers of a dictator,” Harrison told the Daily Signal. “Due to Texas’s absurd and almost certainly unconstitutional emergency powers laws, Gov. Hinojosa will literally inherit the power to modify laws, ignore laws, or create and enforce laws—including criminal laws—on a whim.”  Harrison is encouraging every Republican in Texas to demand that Abbott call a special session to pass legislation, like House Bill 911, so that no governor, regardless of party, has these broad emergency powers.   “I have demanded we fix this problem since 2022, and it’s still a problem now,” he told the Daily Signal. Hinojosa has already promised to use these executive powers as soon as she takes office. No governor, Republican or Democrat, should have these broad emergency powers. Republicans still have power for 10 more weeks. It’s time for Republicans to act like Republicans and get this done.” In addition to the letter to Abbott, Harrison has also started a petition for residents to sign to urge Abbott to call a special session.  Hinojosa will be sworn in as governor on Jan. 19, 2027, and will serve for four years. 

Virginia is proud to host the largest Navy base in the world. Naval Station Norfolk is home to 149,000 military-related personnel. There are 75 ships and 134 aircraft based there. Many of those sailors and pilots have been or may soon be deployed to the Persian Gulf region to take part in ongoing military actions against Iran. That war registered with voters. In the final Gallup poll before the election, 47% of voters nationwide said Iran was “extremely important” to their vote, making it the No. 3 issue in the survey. Gas prices, which the conflict drove from $2.77 per gallon before the war to $4.13 per gallon last month in Virginia, came in fifth in this poll, with 42% of voters saying the issue is “extremely important.” However, Virginia voters—even those paying close attention to the midterm elections—didn’t hear much about Iran from Republicans on the campaign trail this year. In the month before the midterms, the Daily Signal attended or watched rallies held by three Republican incumbents: Reps. Rob Wittman in the 1st District, Jen Kiggans in the 2nd District, and John McGuire in the 5th District. Former Gov. Glenn Youngkin spoke at all of these rallies, and House Speaker Mike Johnson spoke at two of them. The Daily Signal also spoke one-on-one with Wittman, McGuire, former Rep. Tom Perriello, who lost to McGuire in the 5th District, and author Beth Macy, the Democrat who lost to Rep. Ben Cline in the 6th Congressional District. None of the Republican candidates or the surrogates who were campaigning with them used the word “Iran” during their October rallies. Republicans used the word “war,” but only to refer to conflicts such as the Revolution, World War II, or the Cold War, not the ongoing conflict in the Persian Gulf. McGuire came closest to discussing Iran. In his remarks to a crowd in Charlottesville on Oct. 24, the congressman said, “When you have hurricanes, gas prices go up. When you have conflict in the Middle East, gas prices go up.” However, he indicated that he thinks the real problem is that companies have closed too many refineries in the U.S. “I did the math with our secretary of interior. He said that if those 250 refineries were open today, even with hurricanes, even with what’s going on in the Middle East, we would still have energy abundance.” During a rally for Wittman on Nov. 2, Johnson, the outgoing speaker, said that the incumbent is “the leading, senior figure on the House Armed Services committee. People look to him to defend our nation in dangerous times.” But the rest of Johnson’s speech focused on domestic achievements and promises to fight communism at home, rather than mentioning the war abroad. “We see what’s happening there in Iran,” Wittman told the Daily Signal in an exclusive interview on Oct. 17. He called for lawmakers to pass a supplemental defense bill in the upcoming lame duck session to fund high-tech weapon systems that can protect American forces from Iranian weapons. However, when Wittman spoke at the Nov. 2 rally, he said only that one of the reasons he is running is “making sure that we modernize our military to make sure we keep up with the threats around the world, that we do even more with the resources that we devote to our brave men and women that serve this nation. We owe it to them.” But, during that appearance, he didn’t provide any details about the fighting in Iran, or the weapons upgrades, or what Americans owe to service members. Democrats, on the other hand, brought up the war frequently. “We’re going to bring costs down by ending this war, by voting to remove the president’s authority on the war,” Perriello told the Daily Signal on Oct. 26. “I think we need to negotiate a peace in that war. I think the war was started as a distraction from the Epstein files, and now we’ve got distractions from the distraction, because the war is going so badly,” Macy told the Daily Signal on Oct. 4. “Probably about 25,000 people from our own community are going to have to deploy in support of this war,” former Rep. Elaine Luria, who toppled Kiggans in a rematch in Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, said during a rally on Oct. 31. Both women are Navy veterans. “Jen Kiggans continues to stand firmly with Trump in support of this war,” Luria said. For her part, Shannon Taylor told reporters in Henrico on Oct. 29: “Unlike Rob Wittman, I would vote to end the war on Day One.” She ended up beating Wittman in the 1st District. Perhaps the Republican candidates were just following the lead of President Donald Trump. “We’re not fighting a war,” he told Fox News on Nov. 2. “When was the last time we fired anything? This isn’t a war; this is a very soft war.” However, that same day, American military forces launched limited military strikes against Iran. If more attacks come after the midterm elections, many Virginians will be involved, but many others may be surprised.

Summary Corporate ESG investments often lack traditional expected-value and return-on-investment scrutiny. Wasteful ESG spending can harm affordability, national security, free enterprise, and social cohesion. Heritage’s American Investor Initiative seeks greater ESG ROI transparency and corporate accountability. Environmental, social, and governance factors, including diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, continue to play a material role in corporate governance, reportedly driving trillions of dollars in investments.  Shareholders and other corporate stakeholders likely assume these investments—such as net-zero commitments and employee resource groups that divide employees on the basis of race and sex—are subject to traditional screens like expected value and return-on-investment calculations.   In fact, fiduciary duties arguably require investments to be vetted via expected value and ROI unless a good reason exists not to. Yet corporate ESG and sustainability reports rarely, if ever, even mention expected value or return on investment, leading to serious questions about how shareholders’ money is being spent on what are often ideologically driven agendas.  While it may come as a surprise, when corporations waste money on ESG, the subsequent loss of shareholder value implicates (1) affordability, (2) the growing national security threat of China, (3) the rise of socialism, and even (4) the Islamification of the United States.  First, if corporations “go woke, go broke” by wasting money on ESG investments, necessities become harder to afford for retirees relying on the stock performance of those companies. Likewise, when ESG investments take the form of DEI initiatives that discriminate on the basis of race and sex in the name of racist “equity,” the individuals left unemployed or underemployed because of such initiatives face similar affordability challenges.     Second, ESG investments that undermine the energy independence of the United States via utopian “green” initiatives are notorious for strengthening China. For example, as I put it in September, “while net-zero commitments undermine U.S. energy independence, prosperity, and national security, China is not similarly limited,” which means U.S. corporate net-zero commitments may give China a leg up in its competition with the U.S. Relatedly, corporate DEI initiatives that divide employees on the basis of race and sex can undermine social cohesion in the U.S. in ways that China can take advantage of.  Third, wasteful spending in the name of ESG may be deemed a form of crony capitalism, but when the consequent costs are mistakenly or purposefully improperly attributed to free market capitalism, the destructive specter of socialism grows.  Finally, when ESG investments promote a nihilistic multiculturalism and a war on Western civilization and Christianity in the name of “inclusion,” the threat of Islamification of the United States similarly grows.  The foregoing are just some of the costs arguably imposed on Americans via corporate ESG investments untethered from the market discipline of traditional expected value calculations or ROI. They help explain why one of the areas of focus for The Heritage Foundation’s American Investor Initiative is ESG ROI. Among other things, the initiative files shareholder proposals requesting ESG ROI transparency and negotiates related improvements in corporate disclosures.   Even a seemingly open-ended statement that a corporation “may” consider expected value and ROI in making ESG investments can materially improve corporate disclosure and market accountability, if for no other reason than what such a statement does not say.   For example, a corporation making such a statement could have said that calculating ESG ROI is impossible or that ESG ROI is irrelevant because all ESG investments are compliance cost centers. In fact, in a recent post on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, my colleague Allen Mendenhall and I noted that “when we have offered to withdraw shareholder proposals if a company would state publicly that its sustainability commitments are legally required, companies have generally declined to do so.”   Incremental disclosure improvements that take such objections to ESG ROI off the table—at least as across-the-board excuses—set the stage for further transparency and accountability.  In the end, improving corporate accountability for ESG ROI benefits corporations, their shareholders, and other stakeholders, as well as free enterprise generally. Accordingly, more work needs to be done to improve corporate ESG ROI disclosures and accountability, and Heritage’s American Investor Initiative will continue to do that work.