Good morning:
This week, City Journal’s economics editor Jordan McGillis writes in the New York Post that the New York subways were arguably once safe enough for parents to let their children ride the trains alone—and the city’s leaders could make them safe again by following the example of the recent past and embracing “broken windows” policing, by which disorder and low-level crime was targeted to maintain peace and confidence in public spaces.
Subways are not the only spaces that were once safer for children and more reassuring for parents. In a new video, Paulson policy analyst Carolyn Gorman highlights how President Trump’s recent executive order, “Reinstate Commonsense School Discipline Policies,” revokes Obama- and Biden-era guidance that forced schools to ignore disorder in the classroom because of an assumption that appropriate punishments like suspension, expulsion, and arrest were racially discriminatory. The era of relaxed school discipline coincided with increasing rates of school violence, bullying, and teacher attrition. Trump’s EO should be the beginning of the end for failed school-discipline reforms.
Too many public schools also undermine the relationship between parents and children, MI’s director of constitutional studies, Ilya Shapiro, writes in City Journal. He discusses the case of a Florida school facilitating the so-called “gender transition” of students without the knowledge or consent of parents. One couple is fighting back for the sake of their 13-year-old daughter and their constitutional rights as parents.
At the university level, some researchers and academics are willing to blow the whistle at their own institutions. Senior fellow Christopher F. Rufo and CJ investigative reporter Ryan Thorpe interviewed Omar Sultan Haque, a 23-year veteran of Harvard University, on how DEI initiatives have affected day-to-day life at the elite institution, including how Harvard engages in discriminatory admissions and hiring.
MI senior fellow Chris Pope published a new issue brief today on how a regulatory tweak to health insurance could lower costs, improve flexibility, and expand access to insurance coverage. Most working Americans are covered through their employers. But companies are prohibited from simultaneously (1) offering group insurance and (2) facilitating employees’ selection of their own insurance plans. Companies should be allowed to do both. It’s a common-sense reform that would have far-reaching benefits.
Speaking of common-sense ideas, MI fellow Charles Fain Lehman and MI’s Nick Ohnell Fellow, Rafael A. Mangual, will argue in favor of safer cities and against drug legalization in a debate next month with two Reason magazine contributors. Both Lehman and Mangual have written extensively on the merits of the drug war, and it is sure to be a friendly but informative debate. Check out the full details of the debate below and cheer them on in Washington, D.C., in June.
Finally, in the New York Times, senior fellow Nicole Gelinas warns New Jersey policymakers not to be intimidated by the recent “political terror of transit strikes” conducted by the state’s train engineers, who walked off the job late last week. Public sector unions watch how lawmakers respond to these situations. There may be a tentative agreement now, but lawmakers need to make sure any deal they sign does not hold them hostage to similar stunts in the future.
There is much more included in this week’s MI Weekly. Continue reading for all these insights mentioned above and more.
Kelsey Bloom
Editorial Director
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Let Workers Choose: A Better Approach to Workplace Health Insurance
By Chris Pope | Manhattan Institute
Most working Americans get health insurance through their jobs—but that coverage is chosen by employers, not employees. The result: expensive, one-size-fits-all plans that don’t meet individual needs.
In a new Manhattan Institute issue brief, senior fellow Chris Pope argues for expanding the use of Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements (ICHRAs)—a policy introduced in 2020 that allows firms to give workers tax-exempt funds to purchase their own health insurance plan.
ICHRAs are typically cheaper than traditional group coverage and offer more flexibility. But adoption has been slow. To prevent firms from “dumping” sicker workers onto the individual market, current regulations force an all-or-nothing choice: employers can’t offer ICHRAs to some workers without withdrawing group coverage from others.
Pope proposes a fix: the Worker’s Choice ICHRA, which would let firms offer both options—ICHRA funds or group coverage—so long as both meet ACA standards. This regulatory tweak could lower costs, expand access, and make coverage more portable in an era of remote work and frequent job changes.
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By Nicole Gelinas | The New York Times
“The political terror of transit strikes levies long-term costs. For decades, elected officials have allowed various unions to use the threat of a strike to protect pay and work practices that perennially push up the cost of providing transit. …
“There is no reason New Jersey should offer identical railroad pay to what New York does and lock itself into New York-level tax increases to support commuter rail. Governor Hochul has just signed into law a $1.4 billion payroll-tax increase on downstate businesses to attempt to keep up with the M.T.A.’s ever-growing deficits, a tax on jobs, even as the city has had a slow post-Covid recovery compared to the nation.”
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By City Journal
In a recent episode of the City Journal Podcast, Charles Fain Lehman, Ilya Shapiro, John Ketcham, and Nicole Gelinas discuss the NJ Transit strike, the Palm Springs car bombing, and the New York Knicks.
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Why the Time Has Come for New Yorkers to Trust the Subway Again
By Jordan McGillis | New York Post
“The subway, in theory, is the ultimate liberator for kids and parents alike. I’m raising my kids in the suburbs, and the biggest pullback to city life isn’t the arts or the restaurants — it’s the chance for my kids to grow in confidence and be exposed to the world without my hand-holding. City life for kids, though, requires trust in public order. …
“As the Manhattan Institute’s Rafael Mangual told me … ‘disorder that doesn’t make it into official stats is still what riders experience every day.’ And parents like me can still feel that. If New York is going to be a place for kids to range free again, … we need a full return to the public safety principles that made it possible.”
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Courts Must Stop Schools from Transitioning Kids Without Parental Consent
By Ilya Shapiro | City Journal
“The social contagion of gender confusion among American teenagers has been worsened considerably by educators. In many cases, school officials, most notably at public schools, have socially transitioned children, while deliberately concealing this information from parents….
“Administrators met secretly with January and Jeffrey Littlejohn’s 13-year-old daughter in the fall of 2020 to develop a ‘gender support plan’ that allowed the child unilaterally to decide which name and pronouns to use, which restroom to visit, and with which sex she would lodge on overnight trips. The document also indicated that school staff would use a new name and ‘they/them’ when referring to the child at school but would use the child’s given name and ‘she/her’ when talking to her parents.”
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Harvard Researcher: the University Is “Totally Corrupted”
By Christopher F. Rufo and Ryan Thorpe | City Journal
“Outside of fields where people use equations, Harvard is a non-sectarian university only in name. It has been captured and subverted: from syllabi to exams, from admissions to graduation, from hiring to promotion. Harvard remains in denial of its own radicalism. It sneers and looks down on most of America and on American values like color-blind equality, meritocracy, free speech, hard work, and individual responsibility.
“Today, Harvard resembles an aging billionaire secluded in his mansion, consumed by narrow moral obsessions, clutching his treasures, disconnected from a world he scorns. He fades into sanctimonious irrelevance, even as the world moves on to create alternative, courageous, and truly American educational institutions—better ones—unapologetically committed to the pursuit of truth, wherever it leads.”
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The Reason Debates: Legalize All Drugs
Join us live on Tuesday, June 24, at the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C., for a debate on the case for and against drug legalization.
The event is hosted by Reason magazine, whose panelists will argue in the affirmative. City Journal senior editor Charles Fain Lehman and MI’s Nick Ohnell Fellow, Rafael A. Mangual, will argue against drug legalization in favor of policies that actually have a positive impact on our communities.
Both Lehman and Mangual have written extensively for City Journal and other publications about drug policy, and the connection between drugs and crime and disorder.
We are looking forward to this respectful-yet-substantive debate. How would legalization actually work? What are the alternatives to legalization? How have recent experiments in drug decriminalization played out? Our scholars will discuss all this and more in front of a live audience.
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“Instead of addressing individual cases of civil rights violations, (Obama-era) federal school discipline reforms were more interested in aggregate statistics that pushed an ideological social justice agenda. … The Trump administration’s new Executive Order reminds states and schools that disciplinary decisions should be made based on behavior, not on race.”
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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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