Good morning:
The Manhattan Institute announced Wednesday that Paul Singer is stepping down as its Chairman of the Board after a distinguished 21-year tenure as a trustee, including 17 years as Chair. We are also proud to announce that former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was unanimously elected to succeed him as Chair.
We celebrated Mr. Singer’s service and leadership yesterday at MI’s annual Alexander Hamilton Award Dinner, where he received the event’s eponymous award among many of MI’s friends and allies.
Today, MI’s research team published a new report from fellow Robert VerBruggen on American antidiscrimination law. The paper dives into the history and current state of play of laws prohibiting racial discrimination in employment, contracting, housing, and elite college admissions, and argues that the current backlash against “wokeness” and DEI offers the country the opportunity to pursue genuine colorblindness in American antidiscrimination law.
In City Journal, senior fellow Nicole Stelle Garnett and legal policy fellow Tim Rosenberger weighed in on a Utah judge’s outrageous decision invalidating a state Education Savings Account program. The judge’s argument about Utah’s constitutional provisions regarding public schools gets it exactly backward, and this wrong should be righted by the Utah Supreme Court as quickly as possible.
Senior fellow Chris Pope highlights another wrong in a column for City Journal. Poorly structured payments for Medicare Advantage are being used for non-medical perks like golf clubs. There is bipartisan support for cutting these overpayments. Republicans should capture these savings before Democrats use them to fund other social welfare programs.
President Clinton signed welfare reform into law nearly 30 years ago, which cut the rolls significantly. But today, the number of welfare recipients in New York City is swelling, senior fellow Stephen Eide writes for National Review Online. Since Mayor Eric Adams took office, the city has been backsliding in its commitment to move people from welfare to work, making the city seem increasingly adrift.
In UnHerd, fellow Carolyn D. Gorman takes on May’s unnecessary, and even harmful, designation as “Mental Health Awareness Month.” Psychiatric disorders range in their severity, but few are truly debilitating. Nevertheless, all the attention common emotions, like anxiety, receive make Americans feel more psychologically damaged than they really are.
Lastly, check out a new Manhattan Institute video featuring senior fellow Rob Henderson on why wisdom still comes with age.
Continue reading for all these insights and more.
Kelsey Bloom
Editorial Director
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Fight Bias and Legalize Meritocracy: A Unifying Vision for Antidiscrimination Law
By Robert VerBruggen | Manhattan Institute
In a new Manhattan Institute report, Robert VerBruggen examines how American antidiscrimination law came to tolerate—and in many cases encourage—racial preferences in housing, education, and employment.
These laws—originally motivated by the need to stamp out antiblack discrimination—were written in broad, colorblind language. But over time, courts and agencies carved out exceptions to that principle. Courts, for example, adopted “disparate impact” theory, which treats even neutral policies as suspect if they yield unequal outcomes.
Yet as VerBruggen shows, the empirical case for these policies has weakened. Discrimination still exists, but most racial disparities today stem from differences in education, cognitive skills, and family structure—not bias alone.
Recent developments—such as the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action in college admissions and executive actions under the Trump administration—have begun to curtail the excesses of modern antidiscrimination law. VerBruggen proposes a more stable grand compromise: a return to colorblindness— a neutral standard that doesn’t penalize meritocratic, data-driven policies—but paired with rigorous enforcement against real bias, using tools like audit testing to identify bad actors.
The colorblind approach—broadly popular among Americans of all races—offers a foundation for a civil rights regime that is both effective and unifying.
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By Stephen Eide | National Review Online
“Once a welfare reform stalwart, New York under Mayor Eric Adams has been backsliding in its commitment to move people from the dole to work. Since Adams took office in January 2022, the number of cash welfare recipients has grown by about 200,000, or 50 percent. …
“Together, the surges in welfare and homelessness benefits have reinforced the impression of a city administration adrift. The welfare case is more glaring, though, since a mayor obviously has more control over work requirements than the border.”
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Mental Health Awareness Month Is a Progressive Vanity Project
By Carolyn D. Gorman | UnHerd
“May is “Mental Health Awareness Month”. In a crowded contest for the most pointless of all profession-peddled observances, this might be the winner. Mental Health Awareness Month is actually worse than pointless, though. …
“Awareness has us thinking that we are sick. Members of Generation Z, who have grown up ‘aware,’ are the most treated and most open to discussing mental health, but the least likely to say their mental health is good. Older generations, who weren’t constantly encouraged to focus on their feelings, are happier on average. Paying less attention to mental health, it seems, reduces overmedicalisation and protects against actually feeling bad.”
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Manhattan Institute Heads to Sun Valley, Idaho
In collaboration with the Sun Valley Policy Forum (SVPF), several luminaries from the Manhattan Institute will speak at this year’s SVPF Summer Institute, on July 1st and 2nd. This two-day conference retreat will be held in the premier mountain town of Sun Valley, Idaho. Reihan Salam, Manhattan Institute President, Heather Mac Donald, Thomas W. Smith Fellow and Contributing Editor of City Journal, and Senior Fellows Jason Riley and Abigail Shrier, will be featured in the programming, along with other notable thought leaders.
As a benefit to MI Weekly readers, Reserve ticket bundle registrations will be upgraded to the Bronze pass level, which includes access to a private cocktail party. For more information on the program go here, to register with MI benefits go here.
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An Outrageous Decision on School Choice in Utah
By Nicole Stelle Garnett and Tim Rosenberger | City Journal
“On April 18, a state trial judge invalidated Utah Fits All, an education-savings-account program that gives students up to $8,000 to spend on a range of K-12 educational expenses, including private school tuition. …
“(The judge) got it exactly backward. State constitutional provisions requiring public schools impose a floor, not a ceiling, on the educational options that states can make available for kids. Judges should not enable teachers’ unions to wield these provisions to prevent states from embracing educational pluralism and empowering parents to choose the schools, public or private, that best serve their children. The Utah Supreme Court should act quickly to right this wrong—and other state courts should follow suit.”
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Should Medicare Cover Golf Fees?
By Chris Pope | City Journal
“Medicare is supposed to fund health-care services for elderly and disabled Americans. But poorly structured payments for Medicare Advantage—a program that pays private insurers to manage seniors’ health coverage—have led to taxpayer dollars increasingly being used for non-medical perks like golf equipment, ski passes, and pet supplies.
“Medicare Advantage was intended to be a cost-saving alternative to traditional Medicare. But overpayments to plans have left taxpayers on the hook for an additional $1 trillion over the next decade. If Republicans want to make a real dent in the budget deficit—and head off Democratic plans to redirect the savings into expanding other social programs—they should move to rein in payments and use the savings to ease the burden on taxpayers.”
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For more information and media requests, please contact
communications@manhattan.institute.
Are you interested in supporting the Manhattan Institute’s public-interest research and journalism? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and its scholars’ work are fully tax-deductible as provided by law.
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Photo Credits: adamkaz/E+/Getty Images; Noah Berger/AP Photo; Anadolu/Getty Images; Wong Yu Liang/Getty Images; Catherine McQueen/Getty Images; Probal Rashid/LightRocket/Getty Images
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