E159: The Bestie Awards! Recapping the best and worst of 2023

Donald Trump did in fact “run away with” the 2024 Republican presidential nomination: in the GOP primaries from January 15 to June 4, 2024, he won 2,320 of 2,429 delegates, carried 54 contests, and took about 76% of the popular vote, becoming the presumptive nominee in March and being formally nominated at the RNC on July 15, 2024. (en.wikipedia.org)

The Colorado Supreme Court’s December 19, 2023 decision temporarily disqualifying Trump from that state’s primary ballot under the 14th Amendment was later unanimously reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court on March 4, 2024, keeping him on the ballot. (apnews.com) Nonetheless, contemporaneous strategists and commentators across the spectrum argued that the Colorado disqualification and similar legal actions helped Trump in the GOP primary by reinforcing a “victim” narrative and rallying Republican voters around him, consistent with Chamath’s claim that the move would politically “seal the deal,” even though the precise causal impact can’t be quantified. (foxnews.com)

Multiple indicators since late 2023 support Friedberg’s prediction that the DEI movement would be heavily questioned and lose support among prior institutional backers.

1. Legal and institutional rollback. Since 2023, a growing number of U.S. states have passed laws restricting or banning DEI programs in public institutions (e.g., Alabama’s SB129 in 2024; later measures in states like Utah, Wyoming, Texas, and Ohio that limit or prohibit DEI offices, hiring and programming in schools and universities).(theguardian.com) Major universities that had previously promoted DEI, such as the University of Florida and the University of Michigan, have shut down central DEI offices or programs in response to these laws and federal pressure, a clear sign of institutional retreat.(nypost.com)

2. Corporate pullback and reassessment. Following intense political and legal scrutiny, many large U.S. companies (e.g., Meta, Target, Disney, Amazon, McDonald’s, Pepsi, Boeing, Walmart, Lowe’s, Harley‑Davidson, Salesforce and others) have scaled back or rebranded DEI initiatives—dropping diversity targets, disbanding DEI teams, ending supplier‑diversity goals, or scrubbing DEI language from public filings and websites.(time.com) This is consistent with DEI “taking a big hit” in major institutions that had been among its strongest adopters after 2020.

3. Donors and prior supporters questioning DEI. Prominent donors to elite universities have publicly cut or paused funding while explicitly blaming DEI agendas: a major Cornell donor announced he would stop general contributions unless the university abandons DEI; billionaire Ken Griffin, after giving Harvard roughly $300 million, said he is “not interested” in further funding and criticized the university’s DEI direction; other wealthy alumni and figures like Elon Musk have similarly targeted university DEI structures.(breitbart.com) There are also federal partnership and funding threats tied specifically to DEI hiring and policies at universities, further pressuring institutions that once embraced these frameworks.(theguardian.com)

4. Public opinion: more questioning, not total collapse. Polling is mixed: some surveys show majorities still regarding corporate DEI efforts as a “good thing,” while others find large shares of Americans favor eliminating DEI programs in government and schools or closing federal DEI offices.(washingtonpost.com) At the same time, some philanthropic efforts explicitly grounded in racial equity and DEI‑adjacent goals (e.g., the Black Freedom Fund’s new endowment) continue to attract committed donors, indicating the movement retains pockets of strong support even amid backlash.(apnews.com)

Overall, by late 2025 DEI has not disappeared, but it has clearly been heavily questioned and materially scaled back in laws, universities, corporations, and among some major donors and former institutional champions. That pattern matches Friedberg’s qualitative prediction, so the best judgment is that it was right.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ultimately suspended his independent campaign in August 2024 and endorsed Donald Trump, but he remained on the ballot in many states and received about 756–757k votes nationwide, amounting to roughly 0.48–0.49% of the national popular vote; his best statewide share was 1.96% in Montana.(en.wikipedia.org)(en.wikipedia.org) This is nowhere near Ross Perot’s performance in 1992, when Perot won about 18.9% of the national popular vote as an independent candidate.(en.wikipedia.org)(presidency.ucsb.edu) Because RFK Jr. did not come close to matching—let alone exceeding—the Perot-era “ceiling” for a major third‑party/independent candidacy and did not garner an unusually large overall vote share, Chamath’s prediction did not come true.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did run as an independent candidate in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Certified national results show he received about 0.48–0.5% of the popular vote (roughly 750,000 votes), while Ross Perot won about 18.9% of the popular vote in 1992. (en.wikipedia.org) Because RFK Jr.’s share was far below Perot’s, the prediction that he would exceed Perot’s 19% third‑party result was incorrect.

Official 2024 results show Robert F. Kennedy Jr. received about 756,000 votes, roughly 0.48–0.49% of the national popular vote.(en.wikipedia.org) In contrast, Ross Perot in 1992 won about 19.7 million votes, or 18.9% of the popular vote.(presidency.ucsb.edu) Since Kennedy’s share was far below Perot’s 18.9%, he did not come close to surpassing Perot’s performance, so the prediction that he would exceed Perot’s 19% popular-vote level is clearly falsified.

Joe Biden ultimately withdrew from the 2024 race and Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, so there was never an actual Biden–vs.–Trump general election with RFK Jr. on the ballot, meaning the precise scenario Chamath described did not occur. (arxiv.org)

Empirical evidence about where Kennedy’s support came from is mixed and time‑dependent:

• Spring 2024 polling summarized by Brookings (drawing on Quinnipiac and NBC data) found RFK Jr. pulling a larger share of Trump than Biden voters in a three‑way test (e.g., 12% of Trump supporters vs. 7% of Biden supporters in one Quinnipiac poll), implying at that point he hurt Trump more. (brookings.edu)
• By July 2024, a Pew survey showed that among Kennedy supporters, 47% said they would choose Biden and 44% Trump in a two‑way race, suggesting that if Kennedy were removed from the ballot, slightly more of his then‑supporters would flow to Biden than to Trump—which in turn implies that his candidacy at that moment was marginally more damaging to Biden. (pewresearch.org)
• After Biden withdrew and Harris replaced him, Pew’s follow‑up found that Kennedy’s July supporters who switched candidates broke 39% for Harris versus 20% for Trump, indicating many of his earlier backers were at least somewhat inclined toward the Democratic ticket. (pewresearch.org)

At the same time, Kennedy suspended his campaign in August 2024 and endorsed Trump, but remained on the ballot in some states. (pewresearch.org) In the final results he received about 0.49% of the national popular vote, and Trump’s winning margins in closely watched states like Wisconsin and Michigan exceeded Kennedy’s vote totals there, making it difficult to show that his lingering candidacy clearly hurt one side more in the actual outcome. (en.wikipedia.org)

Analysts also disagreed ex ante: Democratic‑aligned Third Way argued Kennedy was disproportionately attracting disaffected 2020 Biden voters and key Biden‑leaning groups (young voters, moderates, independents), warning he could be a spoiler against Biden, while the Brookings review of multi‑candidate polling concluded the combined third‑party effect on a Biden–Trump race was near zero because Kennedy’s pull from Trump was offset by Stein/West drawing more from Biden. (thirdway.org)

Because (1) the specific Biden–vs.–Trump general election never actually happened, (2) high‑quality surveys at different times point in different directions about whether Kennedy drew more from Biden’s or Trump’s potential voters, and (3) his truncated, small‑vote candidacy in November makes his realized electoral impact hard to quantify, there is no clear, settled empirical answer that his independent run definitively hurt Biden more than Trump. The available evidence allows arguments both ways, so the prediction cannot be confidently scored as right or wrong and is best labeled ambiguous.

Jason expected the No Labels third‑party effort to announce Joe Manchin as its presidential candidate in early 2024, saying they’d name him “any day now.”(podscripts.co) In reality, on February 16, 2024 Manchin publicly announced he would not run for president or mount a third‑party bid, ending speculation about a No Labels candidacy.(cnbc.com)(en.wikipedia.org) Subsequently, No Labels announced on April 4, 2024 that it was abandoning its 2024 presidential “unity ticket” effort after failing to recruit a viable candidate, explicitly noting that figures including Manchin had declined to run.(en.wikipedia.org)(apnews.com)(reuters.com) Because Manchin never became the No Labels presidential or leading candidate and the effort was shut down instead, the prediction was wrong.

As of November 30, 2025, there is still no clearly viable (i.e., nationally competitive) third party that has emerged and rapidly solidified in a way that would test Friedberg’s claim.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. created “We the People” party organizations in several states in January 2024 mainly as ballot‑access vehicles for his 2024 presidential bid, not as a fully structured, lasting national third party with defined governance and platform; Kennedy subsequently dropped out of the 2024 race in August 2024, and the effort did not mature into a stable large‑scale party. (en.wikipedia.org) No Labels pursued a centrist 2024 presidential “unity ticket,” gained ballot access in many states, but then abandoned the presidential effort in April 2024 and later refocused on state‑level activity in Arizona (eventually rebranding its Arizona arm as the Arizona Independent Party for 2026), again indicating something still in flux rather than a fully coalesced national third party. (en.wikipedia.org)

Friedberg’s prediction is explicitly about what happens over a number of years once a viable third party emerges. Less than two years have passed since the prediction (December 29, 2023 → November 30, 2025), and no clearly viable national third party has yet formed and fully stabilized, so there is not enough elapsed time or clear empirical case to determine whether his multi‑year coalescence forecast is correct or incorrect. Hence, the prediction is inconclusive (too early to tell).

Evidence suggests the first half of Chamath’s call (a strong run‑up before the first cut) broadly fit what happened, but the key second half (significant sell‑off after that cut) did not.

• The Fed made its first rate cut of this cycle in September 2024, lowering the federal funds target for the first time since 2020. (en.wikipedia.org)
• U.S. equities did experience a strong advance into that period: the S&P 500 gained about 23% and the Nasdaq nearly 30% in 2024, widely characterized as a powerful bull run driven by AI‑linked mega‑caps and easing inflation. (statista.com) Monthly S&P 500 data show mostly positive returns through September 2024, consistent with a “melt‑up until the first cut.” (statmuse.com)
• However, there was no immediate “real selling” after the September cut. The S&P 500 was up in September, flat‑to‑slightly down in October, then surged 5.4% in November, ending 2024 near record highs. (statmuse.com) That is the opposite of a sharp post‑cut sell‑off.
• A more notable drawdown didn’t arrive until early 2025, when the S&P 500 dropped roughly 5–6% in both February and March and saw very large daily declines in early April. (officialdata.org) By then, the market had already pushed well above its level at the time of the first 2024 cut.

Because Chamath specifically tied a sharp sell‑off to the timing of the first Fed cut, and instead the market continued higher for months after that cut before meaningfully correcting, the overall prediction did not play out as stated, even though the pre‑cut strength was broadly accurate.

Sacks predicted that the FTX collapse plus the failed OpenAI board coup against Sam Altman would “put the nail in the coffin of the EA movement”—i.e., effectively end effective altruism as a significant, credible force in tech and philanthropy.

Those events clearly did serious reputational damage. Coverage after FTX described EA’s reputation as badly tarnished and scrutinized its leaders for ignoring warnings about Sam Bankman‑Fried, and commentary around the OpenAI board fight explicitly framed it as a potential “final nail in the coffin” for EA‑style governance in tech. Some prominent EA‑adjacent institutions have also contracted or closed (e.g., Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute), and critics have published strong takedowns of the movement.(en.wikipedia.org) So the reputational hit part of his intuition was directionally right.

But the stronger part of the claim—that EA would cease to be a significant, credible force—has clearly not come true by late 2025:

• Major EA‑aligned philanthropy is still large and growing. Open Philanthropy (now rebranded as Coefficient Giving) is described as one of the world’s most influential philanthropies, has allocated over $4 billion since 2014, and is actively expanding via multi‑donor funds while keeping its cost‑effectiveness/“efficient giving” orientation that grew out of EA.(vox.com)
• Big tech/VC‑aligned funders are still writing very large EA‑motivated checks. Good Ventures (backed by Facebook co‑founder Dustin Moskovitz) continues to follow EA principles and, even after FTX and the OpenAI saga, recommended over $23 million in 2024–25 for the Centre for Effective Altruism and additional support for EA Funds’ operations.(goodventures.org) Open Philanthropy/​Coefficient Giving also launched a new three‑year, $120 million “Abundance and Growth Fund” in 2025 for housing and infrastructure policy, explicitly framed as part of the effective‑altruist “abundance” agenda and backed by donors like Stripe CEO Patrick Collison—hardly consistent with a dead or non‑credible movement.(bloomberg.com)
• The EA community and donor base remain large. As of April 2024, around 1,900 entrepreneurs had pledged roughly $10 billion through EA‑aligned pledge organizations, with about $1.1 billion already donated.(en.wikipedia.org) Giving What We Can, a flagship EA pledge nonprofit, reported nearly 9,000 members in 2024.(en.wikipedia.org) New EA‑style giving platforms such as Giving Multiplier continue to grow, facilitating thousands of donations and millions of dollars by 2025.(en.wikipedia.org)
• EA remains influential in tech‑adjacent domains, especially AI safety and long‑term risk. Open Philanthropy/​Coefficient Giving and Good Ventures are still funding AI‑safety fellowships, training programs, and research (e.g., Alignment Research Engineer Accelerator, ML4Good bootcamps, MATS scholars) well into 2025, and universities are publicizing new AI‑safety research grants from Open Philanthropy.(openphilanthropy.org) These are exactly the kinds of tech‑and‑philanthropy interfaces Sacks was talking about.

In short, EA has been dent­ed—funding from FTX vanished, some institutions closed or retrenched, and its brand is more controversial in parts of the tech world—but the core prediction that these episodes would effectively end its role as a significant, credible force in tech and philanthropy is not borne out by the continued scale of EA‑aligned money, organizations, and initiatives through 2025.

Given the strength of the original “nail in the coffin” framing and the available evidence by now, the prediction is wrong.

As of late 2025, parts of Chamath’s forecast clearly happened, while others were only partially or briefly true, so the overall bundle is mixed rather than cleanly right or wrong.

1. Applications

• Harvard’s applications fell 5% for the Class of 2028 (54,008 vs. 56,937), after a 17% drop in early-action apps, and then dropped another ~11% for the Class of 2029 (47,893 vs. 54,008). (harvardmagazine.com)
• Brown’s pool dipped ~5% for the Class of 2028 (48,881 apps) and then, along with Dartmouth and Yale, saw roughly 10–12.5% application declines for the Class of 2029, largely after reintroducing test requirements. (browndailyherald.com)
• But other Ivies saw record or near‑record demand: Yale’s Class of 2028 application pool was the largest in its history (~57,500), Penn received its largest-ever pools (about 65,000 for 2028 and 72,000 for 2029), and Princeton’s Class of 2029 pool (42,303) was its biggest ever; Columbia’s applications hovered near historic highs around 60,000. (yalecollege.yale.edu)
  Net effect: several Ivies (notably Harvard, Brown, Dartmouth, Yale) did see material declines from recent peaks, but others hit records; there is no uniform across‑the‑board collapse in Ivy applications.

2. Private contributions/donations

• At Harvard, total philanthropic contributions fell by about $151 million (≈14%) in FY 2024 vs. 2023 amid donor backlash over campus controversies, even as current-use gifts rose modestly; some other schools like Columbia and Penn also saw notable drops in specific giving streams (e.g., Columbia Giving Day down 29%, Penn Fund down 21%). (thecrimson.com)
• However, by FY 2025 Harvard reported record current-use giving ($629 million, up 19% year‑over‑year) and overall gifts rising from $1.17 billion to about $1.3 billion, the highest in its history, despite political headwinds. (thecrimson.com)
  So there was a pronounced but short‑lived downturn in donations at some Ivies in 2024, followed by at least one very strong rebound; available data do not show a clear, continuing downward trajectory in Ivy philanthropy “from 2024 onward.”

3. Government funding

• This part of the forecast clearly materialized. Beginning in 2025, the Trump administration froze or slashed large amounts of federal funding to several Ivy League universities, especially targeting research grants (e.g., more than $2.2 billion in federal funding frozen at Harvard, with later additional cuts bringing total threatened or cut grants into the multi‑billion‑dollar range; Columbia hit with roughly $400 million in research cuts and a $221 million settlement; Brown facing a freeze on about $510 million in NIH grants). (washingtonpost.com)
• NIH-wide grant terminations and caps on indirect cost reimbursement also reduced federal research support at many institutions, with Ivy League schools singled out rhetorically and substantively for especially broad cuts. (harvardmagazine.com)
  This is a substantial “ratcheting down” of government spending on these schools, consistent with his prediction.

4. Attempts to remove nonprofit / tax-exempt status

• In 2025, President Trump repeatedly vowed publicly to take away Harvard’s tax‑exempt status and his administration formally asked the IRS to revoke it—moves that legal experts and Harvard officials criticized as likely unlawful but which nonetheless represent an organized political attempt to challenge its nonprofit status. (washingtonpost.com)
  No Ivy has actually lost 501(c)(3) status, but the prediction only required that “some folks” try, which clearly occurred.

Overall:

• The government funding and nonprofit‑status attack components have clearly come true in a significant way.
• The applications and donations components show partial, selective, and in some cases temporary declines rather than a uniform, sustained downturn “across the Ivies.”

Because major parts of the prediction are accurate while others are contradicted by the data (and we are no longer in a too-early window), the combined forecast is best characterized as mixed rather than simply right or wrong, hence marked here as ambiguous.

Available records show no large, appeal-driven reduction of Rudy Giuliani’s defamation judgment to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, and the judgment was ultimately treated as effectively satisfied at or near its original amount.

Key facts:

1. Size of the original judgment and only minor reduction:

   • In December 2023, a D.C. jury awarded Freeman and Moss $148,169,000 in compensatory and punitive damages against Giuliani.
   • The parties later stipulated to a small setoff related to a prior settlement with another defendant (OAN), and the final judgment entered on December 18, 2023 reduced the award to $145,969,000—about a 1.5% decrease, not a “massive percentage.” (caselaw.findlaw.com)

2. No successful appeal reducing the judgment:

   • Giuliani noticed an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (Case No. 24‑7021) in 2024, but district‑court materials from October 22, 2024 explicitly note that this appeal was still pending at that time, with the full judgment amount registered and being enforced in other courts. (dockets.justia.com)
   • Separately, Judge Beryl Howell rejected Giuliani’s effort to overturn or reduce the nearly $146 million in penalties, expressly upholding the verdict and leaving the damages total at $145,969,000. (newsweek.com)
   • There is no reported appellate decision from the D.C. Circuit or any other court cutting the damages by a large percentage.

3. Enforcement and settlement, not a large judicial haircut:

   • Through 2024 and early 2025, the focus of litigation shifted to enforcement of the judgment (contempt findings, attempts to reach his assets), not to reducing its size. (reuters.com)
   • In January 2025, Giuliani reached a settlement with Freeman and Moss resolving the enforcement battle; AP reported that the women had previously obtained a $148 million judgment and that the settlement’s actual payment terms were undisclosed, while allowing Giuliani to retain certain assets. (apnews.com)
   • Reuters subsequently reported that Giuliani had “fully satisfied” the $148 million judgment pursuant to that settlement, indicating that, at least as characterized publicly and in court, the judgment was treated as satisfied rather than judicially slashed. (reuters.com)

Putting this together: the only formal reduction was a small, stipulated setoff from about $148.17M to $145.97M, far from the “massive percentage” decrease Jason predicted. No appellate ruling significantly lowered the award in the “near future” after December 2023; instead, the judgment was enforced and then resolved via a settlement described as fully satisfying the original judgment. On the public record, the prediction that the judgment would “come down … by some massive percentage” on appeal is therefore wrong.