In today’s edition, we take a look at where the billionaire tax campaign in California stands and what it signals about the Democratic Party’s direction.
Page F2From§Eachthe supper edition — 30 September 2026
Griffin's $3 billion and Thiel's $130 million house cleared this week; the billionaire tax cannot clear a majority.
As it ran on the front
Three billion dollars, and you will want to know what it buys at a university. Carnegie put up one million in 1900 and western Pennsylvanians got a school for practical skills. Ken Griffin put up three billion on Wednesday, and Pittsburgh gets a strengthened campus, Miami a new one. The largest gift in American higher education, ever. Sixfold the five hundred million he gave Harvard before he stopped.
August, this year, was slower. On the twenty-fifth, committees including Californians Against Wasteful Spending and Higher Taxes opened advertising against Proposition 40 — a one-time five percent tax on California's richest residents — backed in reporting by Peter Thiel and Sergey Brin. It still polls short of the majority it needs in November.…
…(cont) Thiel also closed on the most expensive house in Los Angeles. A hundred and thirty million, the conveyance recorded ... more than the tax can say.
The tax needs a vote.
Through the gap the fox went. The fence goes up at dawn.
“Three billion for a new campus in Miami, a hundred and thirty million for one house in LA, and we're supposed to believe a one-time five percent tax on the richest Californians is impossible. The money is there — it just goes where they point it, and right now it's pointed at ads telling you your own tax is wasteful spending. You vote in November. They already closed.”
“A gift is a gift — Pittsburgh's campus gets strengthened, and now generosity is the scandal? Did I say generosity? I said philanthropy, that's different. And Proposition 40 polls badly because Californians read it, not because anybody spent money telling them what to think, which is legal, incidentally, which is why it was spent.”
Earlier in this story
- Billionaires clear $3 billion, then $130 million, faster than a tax clears a ballot. By Ruth · the matinee edition, 30 September 2026
- Ken Griffin gives Carnegie Mellon $3 billion; California's billionaire tax still can't clear a majority. By Ruth · the coffee break edition, 30 September 2026
- Billionaires' ad blitz enters sixth week; their tax polls 52, then 45, then 48 percent By Ruth · the breakfast edition, 30 September 2026
The receipts
It’s the largest-ever donation to an American higher education institution, and a snub to Harvard University over its weak handling of antisemitism – sixfold the $500 million Griffin gave to his alma mater over the years before ending his donations.
PITTSBURGH — Andrew Carnegie’s $1 million gift in 1900 helped create Carnegie Tech, a school where western Pennsylvanians could learn practical skills for an industrial age. On Wednesday, Carnegie Mellon University announced a $3 billion commitment from Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin to strengthen its Pittsburgh campus and establish…
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.