Abstract We show that strongly compact cardinals and MM are sensitive to λ-closed forcings for arbitrarily large λ. This is done by adding ‘regressive’ λ-Kurepa trees in either case. We argue that the destruction of regressive Kurepa trees requires a non-standard application of MM. As a corollary, we find a consistent example of an ω2-closed poset that is not forcing equivalent to any ω2-directed-closed poset.

Abstract Various theorems for the preservation of set-theoretic axioms under forcing are proved, regarding both forcing axioms and axioms true in the Lévy collapse. These show in particular that certain applications of forcing axioms require to add generic countable sequences high up in the set-theoretic hierarchy even before collapsing everything down to ℵ1. Later we give applications, among them the consistency of MM with ℵω not being Jónsson which answers a question raised in the set theory meeting at Oberwolfach in 2005.