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Since becoming chair of the Federal Trade Commission three years ago, Lina Khan has sought doggedly to politicize antitrust law. For decades, regulators and judges have adhered to the consumer-welfare standard, under which antitrust ensures merely that firms pursue low prices, high product quality, and innovation. Khan, by contrast, sees …

Sex and politics are clickbait material, so it’s little surprise that The Economist’s early March article “Why Young Men and Women Are Drifting Apart” went viral. In this case, the attention was warranted. The article adds to our understanding of the long-standing gender gap in politics to include the often-puzzling …

President Joe Biden pitched the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to get America building again. But one of its provisions, known as Build America, Buy America (BABA), is sabotaging projects nationwide. Veterans in Idaho and elsewhere are seeing the costs firsthand. Older Buy America requirements forced federal-aid-receiving states to use American iron, …

Government Project, by Edward C. Banfield (AEI Press, 248 pp., $14.95) Socialists often say their preferred economic system has never really been tried. In their eyes, the horrific results of the Soviet Union and Communist China’s collective farms don’t undermine socialists’ vision of collective ownership. While many remember Communist countries’ …

Steven Malanga joins Brian C. Anderson to discuss states’ varying birth rates. Audio Transcript Brian Anderson: Welcome back to the 10 Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal. Joining me on the show today is Steven Malanga. Steve’s been on the show a number of …

Ted Hudacko’s fate was sealed when his son’s court-appointed counsel, Daniel Harkins, wrote in his notes, “[t]hese parents have a choice, they can either continue to believe that they should be in total control of their child’s life or they can come to an understanding that those days are past …

Two hundred years ago, Sir Robert Peel laid out a set of principles that became the foundation of modern, professional policing. Central to these was the truth “that the police are the public and that the public are the police.” Cops are citizens hired to focus full-time on duties “incumbent …

Bernie Sanders and his New York acolyte, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are urging a return to one of American progressivism’s signal failures: public housing. In an article for MSNBC, the two wrap their support for this dead-end idea in the fashionable cause of climate change. They propose a “Green New Deal …

Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women, by Batya Ungar-Sargon (Encounter Books, 232 pp., $29.99) The gap between the economic and social fortunes of the working class and those with college degrees has become a major point of contention in American policy circles, and it is …

The City of Seattle has long been a laboratory for the radical Left. Activists experiment with concepts, language, techniques, and policies that eventually appear in other cities. For this reason, Seattle law enforcement often gets early insight into the evolving tactics of left-wing street protesters. The city’s officers have had …

In recent years, legislators and advocates have repeatedly sought to make people with criminal records more employable, including by wiping out the records themselves. A new academic working paper, written by Rutgers economist Amanda Y. Agan and several coauthors and released through the National Bureau of Economic Research, analyzes several …

The Federal Trade Commission has shifted focus in recent months away from its traditional goal of protecting consumers and toward one of protecting workers instead. Most recently, the agency issued a rule that would ban essentially all noncompete agreements in employment contracts. The rule would forbid new noncompetes, and in …

For the last two years, many potential American homebuyers have found themselves priced out of the market. Soaring interest rates and prices for construction materials, along with a sharp decline in supply from a decade-long building slowdown, have inflated the cost of buying housing far more than family incomes have …

Campus unrest and a threatened mass protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago are summoning flashbacks to 1968, touching off the irresistible urge to predict a rerun of that year’s Democratic disaster this November. Cooler heads, like Willis Sparks at Gzero Media, note several distinctions between our moment and …

Most judges recognize that the judiciary is not a legislature. That hasn’t stopped activist plaintiffs from bringing “public nuisance” suits, seeking to implement environmental regulations that voters and their elected representatives have repeatedly rebuffed. While federal judges have rejected many of these suits, the Hawaii Supreme Court in October let …

Baltimore’s May 14 Democratic mayoral primary election will be the city’s moment of truth. The leading candidates are the incumbent, Brandon Scott, and former mayor Shelia Dixon. Their differences in vision and approach are significant. Given the city’s overwhelmingly Democratic voters, the winner of the primary will almost certainly be …

The anti-Israel protests roiling Columbia University and other elite institutions have eroded trust and fellow feeling among students, faculty, and administrators. Many Jewish students have naturally interpreted slogans like “Globalize the Intifada” as expressions of genocidal intent. This and the broader fallout from Hamas’s October 7 attack have prompted calls …

The female voices rose high-pitched and shrill above the crowd: “Five, six, seven, eight, Israel is a terrorist state.” “We don’t want no Zionists here, say it loud, say it clear.” “Resistance is justified when people are occupied.” The voices that answered them were also overwhelmingly female, emanating from hundreds …

Three years into his tenure, Houston Police Department chief Troy Finner has resigned following a scandal that left more than 260,000 incident reports, dating back eight years, uninvestigated, due to a system management code that, he said, “never should have been used.” The scandal traces its roots to 2016, when Houston …

As former president Donald Trump’s trial continues in a Manhattan criminal court, many anticipate that it will be both historic and salacious—and it seems to be delivering on both counts. For New York City, though, it will also prove costly and time-consuming. One of the greatest costs involves security. While …

On Wednesday, the Dartmouth Political Union hosted a debate on sex and gender between MIT philosopher Alex Byrne, University of California at San Francisco psychiatrist Jack Turban, and Aston University emerita neuroscientist Gina Rippon. An interesting moment came when Byrne asked Turban what he thought of the recently published Cass …

Combating anti-Semitism is not a universal priority among Americans. Many are understandably more concerned about the southern border, elevated crime rates, or the continued degradation of civic culture. For many Americans, hatred against a tiny minority found mainly in cities is remote from their everyday lives. But guarding against attacks …

“Greedflation.” “Shrinkflation.” “Junk fees.” “Price gouging.” “Monopoly power.” Barely a week goes by without President Biden or some other politician slamming companies for the prices they charge. It’s not surprising. We’ve just experienced the first major burst of inflation since the early 1980s. American families are angry that grocery prices …

Now that the tents have been cleared from Columbia University’s campus, now that the NYPD has liberated Hamilton Hall, now that arrests have been made and outside agitators named, it’s time to begin making sense of the Tentifada. Mysteries abound: Who paid for all that matching, high-end camping gear? How …

The University of Kentucky is in trouble. Though a conservative state legislature has been in power for more than a decade, university administrators have created a sprawling DEI bureaucracy that encourages racial discrimination in hiring and scholarships, attempts to control students’ “unconscious thoughts and behaviors” through mandatory diversity training, and even requires …

Since October 7, New York City has seen nearly 2,000 protests—about 12 protests per day, averaging 135 people each, though bridge-blocking actions can number up to 10,000 protesters. Indeed, unruly anti-Israel demonstrators in New York City have blocked the Brooklyn Bridge, Holland Tunnel, Columbus Circle, United Nations, John F. Kennedy …

In February, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, a case that concerned a change in admissions policy at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) in Alexandria, Virginia. After the new policy took effect, the share of Asian students …

The encrypted-messaging service Signal is the application of choice for dissenters around the world. The app has been downloaded by more than 100 million users and boasts high-profile endorsements from NSA leaker Edward Snowden and serial entrepreneur Elon Musk. Signal has created the perception that its users, including political dissidents, …

Last week, a disruptive “Free Palestine” protest broke out on my campus, the University of Southern California. As a philosophy major, I’m often curious to talk with people and ask them why they believe the things they do. So, I spoke with one of the protesters. He was outfitted in …

A new study of migrants to Sweden found something that will surprise no one: immigrants from some countries end up making significantly more money, on average, than immigrants from others. Country of origin matters a lot, and it matters at least into the second generation. Andreas Ek, a young professor …

Michael Shermer got his first clue that things were changing at Scientific American in late 2018. The author had been writing his “Skeptic” column for the magazine since 2001. His monthly essays, aimed at an audience of both scientists and laymen, championed the scientific method, defended the need for evidence-based …

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of CompStat, the technology-enabled innovation that turned the gritty New York City Police Department into a modern, transparent, and strategically intelligent public safety force. Every week, commanders from the city’s roughly 100 precincts come in front of top chiefs for a grilling on what’s happening …

Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis, by James Davison Hunter (Yale University Press, 504 pp., $40) In a 2021 TED Talk, Katherine Maher said that “we all have different truths” and dismissed “our reverence for the truth.” When this clip resurfaced recently, more than a …

It has become clear to many Jews after October 7 that traditional institutions cannot guarantee their physical safety. A huge spike in demand for private gun ownership among Jews, both in the United States and Israel, has resulted. But New York and other states have tried to prevent gun possession …

Northwestern University, where I teach, has reached an agreement with Gaza-protesting students to end their encampment. The university agreed to the terms under duress, as the students were breaking Northwestern’s rules and threatening further disorder; their capitulation will incentivize more rule-breaking in the future. The agreement’s substance will further entrench …

Before dawn on Thursday, April 25, anti-Israel protesters set up a camp in the main quad of UCLA, where I am a professor of sociology. This was no surprise, as similar tactics had been used at Columbia and other campuses nationwide. It especially wasn’t a surprise to me, as one …

Pope Francis is an outspoken critic of gender ideology, recently calling it the “ugliest danger of our times.” Cardinal Victor Fernandez, Pope Francis’s head of doctrinal orthodoxy, just put that condemnation in writing, stating in the newly released Vatican document, Dignitas Infinita (On Human Dignity), “Desiring a personal self-determination, as …

All houses of worship strive to be warm and welcoming, but they must also keep everyone safe. Today’s heightened anti-Semitism makes the balancing act more challenging for synagogues. What steps should Jewish leaders take to protect their congregations? First, secure buildings. In 2019, after anti-Semitic attacks in Pennsylvania, California, New …

A large medical-information platform that reaches hundreds of thousands of American physicians and millions more worldwide, Medscape is popular for its broad array of quality educational videos. The company allows doctors at no cost to obtain credits toward renewing their medical licenses by viewing modules and passing a corresponding test. …

A new campaign season has predictably brought a new round of partisan Social Security wars. Even as the system’s trust fund moves within a decade of insolvency—which would trigger an automatic 23 percent reduction in benefits—both Democrats and Republicans are fighting over the title of strongest protector of Social Security …

On Tuesday night, hundreds of New York City Police Department officers from specialized units rolled with quiet orderliness onto the campuses of Columbia University and City College. Within a few hours, they had arrested hundreds of students who had taken over campus property, barricaded buildings, destroyed furniture and windows, and …

The dean of the Case Western Reserve Medical School recently urged the medical profession to embrace “inclusive scholarship.” Dean Stan Gerson’s arguments for doing so epitomize the falsehoods that govern academic life today. After a nod to the alleged virtues of “teaching indigenous knowledge alongside science” (a definitive takedown of …

After months of uncertainty, the Drug Enforcement Agency on Tuesday waved forward the Biden administration’s efforts to change the legal status of marijuana—a long-sought goal for pot advocates. The proposal, not yet finalized, would see marijuana “rescheduled” on the list of controlled substances from Schedule I (denoting high risk of …

Ryan Bourne joins Jordan McGillis to discuss his book The War on Prices: How Popular Misconceptions about Inflation, Prices, and Value Create Bad Policy.  Audio Transcript Jordan McGillis: Hi, I’m Jordan McGillis, economics editor of City Journal. Welcome to 10 Blocks. Joining me on the show today is Ryan Bourne. …

Americans are worried about crime on their streets, but President Biden and the mainstream press corps don’t think that they should be. ABC News claims that “violent crime is dramatically falling.” NBC News asserts that “the drop in crime does not appear to be well understood by large majorities of …

Anti-Semitism is spreading in K–12 school districts. Even in primary and secondary education, Jews are often viewed as privileged whites and oppressors, with Israel branded as an egregious example of “settler colonialism” and oppression of “indigenous people.” “Liberated ethnic studies” curricula, like the one mandated by California, have created a …

The increasing politicization of American life has profound implications not only for social harmony but also for markets and the workplace. Polarization is changing office dynamics, as workers find it increasingly difficult to navigate religious and political issues on the job. My recent article in the Journal of Economics, Management …

Earlier this month, the Department of Education released its long-anticipated revision of the regulations governing Title IX, the federal law that revolutionized women’s educational opportunities, particularly in sports. That 1972 law is so short that I can quote it in its entirety: “No person in the United States shall, on …

Stanford University, its campus lined with redwoods and eucalyptus trees, has long been known as a hub for innovation and entrepreneurship. But in recent years, another ideological force has taken root: “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” a euphemism for left-wing racialism. DEI, in fact, has conquered Stanford. I have obtained exclusive …

After the October 7 attacks, thousands took to American streets to celebrate. Some explicitly praised the heinous acts of rape, beheading, and kidnapping of civilians. Among these demonstrators were many noncitizens, including those on student visas. Universities such as MIT refrained from suspending students who neglected their classes in order …

“Diversity is critical to our national security.” We heard this popular refrain again recently, when the State Department explained why it hired Zakiya Carr Johnson, a left-wing ideologue, to serve as its second Diversity and Inclusion chief, with a salary of $180,000. It’s a claim often repeated, so some evidence …

It can happen to anyone. A bad tweet, viral video, or something you say (or text, post, e-mail, or Slack) gets blown out of proportion. Then comes a public pile-on or an official investigation, followed by punishment or ostracism. Cancel culture—the mob-like desire to punish politically incorrect speech—has made modern …

Digital Future in the Rearview Mirror: Jaspers’ Axial Age and Logan’s Alphabet Effect, by Andrey Mir (Popular Media Ecology, 330 pp., $25) For a brief period after the near-simultaneous birth of the smartphone and social media, euphoria prevailed. Instant web-enabled communications networks, it was widely believed, were delivering into the …

The National Conservative Conference (“NatCon”) in Brussels received heavy media attention across Europe. The controversial summit gathered the European right-wing elite, from politicians and journalists to academics and clergy. Days before it began, the conference was stoking anticipation with the expected presence of France’s Eric Zemmour, Britain’s Nigel Farage and …

Unable to deny the obvious, President Biden acknowledged in his State of the Union address that housing prices have hit a crisis point for too many Americans. Yet, almost all his proposed solutions to the problem—most of which amount to throwing taxpayer money at it—will only make it worse.   Buried …

Earlier this month, the U.K.’s National Health Service released the Cass Review, a report that urged Great Britain to pump the breaks on the experimental, sterilizing treatments marketed as “gender affirming care.” By contrast, earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Education issued its new Title IX regulations, which require …

Created in 1975, the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve was originally intended as an emergency national security tool to manage oil-supply disruptions. Emergency drawdowns from the reserve have been historically limited to actual crises that threaten the nation’s energy access, such as the one that Hurricane Katrina caused in 2005. The …

In January, the New York Times interviewed several high school seniors, asking them about the college-application process since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action last June. All but one of the students told the Times that under the advice of their high school counselors, they had, following the …

The relentless decline in global fertility accelerated during Covid-19, pushing humanity closer to failing to achieve a replacement-level birthrate—the point below which a new generation is smaller than the previous one. Though the U.S. for decades had defied a trend that saw several prosperous industrial nations fall short of that …

Jay Donde joins Jordan McGillis to discuss politics and public safety in the City by the Bay. Audio Transcript Jordan McGillis: Welcome back to the 10 Blocks podcast. I’m Jordan McGillis, economics editor of City Journal. Joining me on the show today is Jay Donde. In addition to a …

Big Intel: How the CIA and FBI Went from Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villains, by J. Michael Waller (Regnery Publishers, 379 pp., $22.99) Every American concerned about the dismal state of the nation’s intelligence agencies should read J. Michael Waller’s riveting book, Big Intel. A fine writer with …

In March, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the most cited inflation metric, rose more than forecasters expected for the third month in a row. Though the Federal Reserve prefers a different measure—the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index—the string of hot CPI reports has called into question whether annual inflation …

Late last week, the Biden administration released its highly anticipated updated rules for the 1972 Title IX amendments to the Civil Rights Act, which protects people from sex-based discrimination in education. Arguably the most consequential and, judging from social media, most controversial of the updated rules was that sex discrimination …

The heart of anti-Semitism in America lies among the nation’s most educated. Elite university campuses hosted calls for the annihilation of Israel even before the IDF entered Gaza last October. As investor Bill Ackman observed the day that Harvard president Claudine Gay resigned, anti-Semitism is the “canary in the coal …

The Color Revolution is restless. Beginning in the former Soviet republics in the early 2000s, it moved along the coast of North Africa with the so-called Arab Spring in the 2010s, and, into the current decade, has spread further. The ostensible purpose of Color Revolutions—named after the Rose Revolution, Orange …

In “Embrace Pluralism over Racialism,” Manhattan Institute president Reihan Salam rightly observes that “we are living through a disturbing rise in anti-Semitic violence.” From the nation’s first days, he reminds us, “America has welcomed the Jewish people,” who, in turn, “have helped make America the most dynamic, productive, and creative …

Last week, Columbia University’s president, Minouche Shafik, was called to testify before Congress and explain how Alexander Hamilton’s alma mater had become a hotbed of anti-Semitic vitriol. She delivered the Ivy League equivalent of the Bart Simpson defense: I didn’t do it, nobody saw me do it, you can’t prove …

How do people working in the child-welfare system determine what is in a child’s best interests? Meeting the child in question might seem a good first step. A new report from the California legal advocacy group AdvoKids, however, found that the lawyers representing foster children in court often fail to …

The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare on How Leaders Rise, Rule, and Fall, by Eliot Cohen (Basic, 288 pp., $30) Kings, presidents, and corporate titans may not undergo Shakespeare’s seven parts in their careers. But all rise to power, exercise it, and fall from it. That basic and perennial fact about leaders …

Combating the anti-Semitism radiating from U.S. college campuses will require work on many fronts. Some of the drivers could take enormous effort to uproot—for example, the DEI culture that has reshaped K–12 and postsecondary institutions. A less frequently discussed factor is easier to address: U.S. universities should stop letting foreign …