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August 14, 2023
There are plenty of movies that start in the middle of the story. But typically the director will eventually go back and tell you what happened at the beginning. This is not true of “Earth Mama,” a recently released film by first-time director Savanah Leaf. The story is about a pregnant woman, Gia, whose two…
August 14, 2023
Utah lands at the top of many rankings of state performance across America. But the Beehive State is perhaps best known for its top rankings on the economic front. Utah’s economy is widely seen as the best in the nation. The “Utah economic miracle”—marked by exceptional economic growth, a favorable business climate, and high rates…
August 13, 2023
What is a public school? Is it an institution that is paid for by the public? One staffed by government employees? One that teaches a publicly approved curriculum? One that educates a broad swath of the public’s children? In the view of Cara Fitzpatrick, the author of “The Death of Public School,” it possesses all…
August 13, 2023
We knew Big Apple public housing is in dangerously bad shape—but it turns out it’s twice as bad as we thought. New York City Housing Authority officials just revealed the $40 billion estimated in 2017 for the new roofs, pipes and boilers the aging projects need has ballooned to $78 billion. Yet a state plan billed…
August 12, 2023
A viral TikTok video doesn’t pull any punches in depicting the so-called negatives of marriage and motherhood for young women. The video, that has been racking up millions of views, shows a Generation Z woman seeming to accept a marriage proposal before switching to a series of shorts showing the same woman toiling away in domestic drudgery…
August 12, 2023
Can you imagine if the New York Police Department invited Defund the Police activists to train their officers? That’s what the New York State Family Court and the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) are doing. In a June webinar for almost 400 ACS workers, parents, child attorneys and family court judges, advocates who want to…
August 11, 2023
The New York drug policy philosophy — what might be called making drug use safe, legal and everywhere — has hit some serious snags. On Monday, US Attorney Damien Williams warned that he may shut down the city’s “safe injection sites,” where illegal hard drugs are used under medical supervision. That same day, a state Supreme Court judge…
August 10, 2023
More than a decade ago, the Pew Research Center released a path-breaking study on people without religion: “Nones” on the Rise. At the time, I was in graduate school studying political science and working full-time as a pollster. Partly inspired by this work, I wrote my dissertation exploring why people leave religion: “And Then There Were Nones:…
August 7, 2023
The most revealing thing about Friday’s Union Square pop-up riot is that as police dispersed the mob, members started chanting, “Black Lives Matter.” Make no mistake: This was not a protest on the part of teenagers drawn to 14th Street by Kai Cenat, an online “influencer” with millions of followers, including thousands eager for free PlayStations he used…
August 7, 2023
The kabuki theater of Washington budgeting has again featured the lightning-rod issue of public broadcasting. Last month, a House Commerce subcommittee voted to zero-out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), whose funds go to NPR and PBS; just six days later, its Senate counterpart voted to maintain the funding. Both critics and defenders of the system will…