Critic throw-down: MAGA lawmaker’s book reads like an 'alternate reality'

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York) at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland on February 22, 2025 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

When Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York) first entered the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2015, she had a reputation as a traditional "business conservative" along the lines of 2012 GOP presidential nominee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. And Stefanik was openly critical of Donald Trump during his 2016 campaign, making it clear that she considered him harmful to her party's image.

But Stefanik gave herself a far-right MAGA makeover during Trump's first presidency, emphasizing culture-war subjects and becoming much more strident and performative. CNN's S.E. Cupp, a Never Trump conservative, attacked Stefanik as a "craven" and "shameless" flip-flopper who put ambition over principle.

Stefanik, now 41 and still representing the 21st Congressional District in Upstate New York, is promoting a new book, "Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America's Elite Universities" — which attacks a favorite MAGA target: liberals and progressives on college campuses. According to Slate's Rebecca Onion, the book omits some important details on the college protests that followed the Hamas terrorist attacks of October 7, 2023 and Israel's subsequent launch of a military operation in Gaza.

"In taking on this book project," Onion explains in an article published on April 15, "Stefanik clearly wanted to cement her moment of political stardom — that one time, in late 2023, that she asked the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn a yes-or-no question at a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, and those presidents answered disastrously…. Instead of trying to see Stefanik's future in this book, you can read 'Poisoned Ivies' as an alternate reality: a narrative of what happened on campuses after October 7 that manages to avoid description of any aspect of what was occurring in Gaza, to characterize Jewish campus response without mentioning that there were many Jewish students and faculty members who publicly declared themselves to be non-supporters of the war, and — in one vivid and illustrative example — to describe the occupation of Hamilton Hall at Columbia without telling the story of Hind Rajab, whose name the occupiers used to rename the hall."

On October 7, 2023, Israel was the target of widespread terrorist attacks by Hamas — and the Israeli government responded with a military operation in Gaza that is still going on in 2026.

"There are plenty of real instances of rhetorical excess from pro-Palestinian campus groups to cite, and Stefanik certainly latches onto those but doesn't stop there, mixing these examples with uncritical reproduction of certain stories of campus antisemitism that will be very memorable to anyone who was online during that time, but that look somewhat less verifiable in hindsight," Onion explains. "Eyal Yakoby, a Penn student who, Stefanik writes, 'has bravely confronted and chronicled antisemitism on Penn's campus since October 7,' had his lawsuit against Penn dismissed by a federal judge last year."

Onion continues, "The former Columbia professor Shai Davidai, who was investigated by Columbia for allegedly harassing and doxing student activists and Columbia faculty, is, Stefanik writes, a 'liberal' who favors a two-state solution and denies any wrongdoing. But that investigation was dropped after Davidai left Columbia in the Summer of 2025 and no longer had the status of employee. Stefanik describes how Sahar Tartak, a Yale undergrad, said she was 'jabbed in the face' with a Palestinian flag at a protest — 'thankfully, she did not suffer any long-term damage to her eyesight,' Stefanik writes. But if you watch the video of this 'jabbing,' it's far from clear that's what happened."

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