Dear Readers:

In March 2024 when I announced the move of FutureOfCapitalism.com and Smartertimes.com to a Substack-based site, The Editors, I said, “I’m excited to share some changes that will accelerate the spread of our vision and increase our impact.”

That turned out, fortunately, to be accurate; our audience and revenues have quadrupled since then. We’ve attracted a distinguished, influential, and sophisticated group of readers—market participants, policy types, editors and owners of other news organizations, present and former government officials, billionaires, philanthropists, college professors, managers of many hundreds of billions of dollars of capital. When people ask me how The Editors is going, I tell them, “good.” And I mean it, with gratitude to readers, sources, partners, God, my family, and to America and its opportunity and freedoms—free enterprise, freedom of the press.

Today I’m again delighted to share a change that will even further accelerate the spread of our vision and increase our impact. The Editors and its editor have been acquired by Washington Free Beacon LLC. A formal announcement of the deal is here.

As an existing reader, you should not expect to notice much difference. I plan to continue writing and reporting here at the same pace on many of the same topics I have been focused on for years—free enterprise, religion, freedom in the world, education and higher education, the rest of the press and how it frequently does a poor job of covering those topics. And yes, Harvard, Mayor Mamdani, the Middle East, the Federal Reserve. The goals remain surfacing surprising new information, identifying trends and patterns, piercing though nonsense, accurately framing issues, providing context, and delivering trustworthy information and analysis to defend and expand freedom and prosperity.

The new ownership will allow The Editors to reach a bigger audience. In addition, as the plural title of the publication suggests, this was never intended to be a one-person show. Even editors need editors, and one of the many attractions of this deal for me is the chance to work with a shrewd one at the Washington Free Beacon, Eliana Johnson. If you are unfamiliar with the Washington Free Beacon I encourage you to check it out and subscribe. It has a sparklingly good weekend section with a lot of star bylines you may recognize —Reuel Marc Gerecht, Richard Norton Smith, Joseph Epstein, Meir Soloveichik, Tunku Varadarajan, Dominic Green, Andrew Roberts, Allen Guelzo. In May 2022, it published “The Letter the Harvard Crimson Won’t Publish.” It does reporting and gets scoops. It published the video of the Heritage Foundation Town Hall. It has no ideological litmus tests beyond, as Johnson put it, “we are strident Zionists.” Also, as that comment suggests, in contrast to the self-important pomposity that afflicts much of the rest of the press, the Free Beacon has a sense of humor, including about itself. That may be the most difficult thing for me to adjust to under the new management.

Rosy talk about acquisition-related synergies and accretions I have seen enough of in my career to be cautious about contributing to the genre. It may be, though, that the tide in the media business is turning from unbundling to bundling. Whatever the capital structure or the business plan, the mission here is to help readers separate truth from rubbish and to have some fun along the way. If you have scoops, be in touch please at ira@theeditors.com. For paid subscribers, special thanks are in order for your support in making this possible. The Beacon’s acquisition means all of my work, like all of theirs, will be free, and in the coming weeks, you will receive a pro-rated refund for the remainder of your annual subscription. Thank you all for being readers of The Editors. And if you are new here and are not yet a regular reader, please sign up—we are pro-growth and aim to keep growing in the days and years ahead.

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A reminder of why it frequently makes sense to rely on more than just a single source of news comes in today’s coverage of bank earnings.

The lead news article in the print Wall Street Journal emphasizes the positive news. The article begins, “Wall Street is rolling into the new year firing on all cylinders, after the nation’s biggest banks had one of the strongest years on record in 2025. … Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley both posted record annual revenues in their investment banking and trading divisions Thursday, wrapping up a strong week of performances from the country’s largest banks….the six biggest banks brought in some $593 billion in revenue in 2025, up 6% and better than any prior year.” The print headline is “Deals Power a Record Year for Big Banks.”

The New York Times offers an almost 180-degree opposite take. The print headline is “Biggest Banks’ Earnings Expose Hints of Trouble,” and the online headline is “Cracks Begin to Appear at the Nation’s Biggest Banks.” The story says, “This week, the nation’s largest banks reported a broadly disappointing set of quarterly earnings…Results at Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo all fell short of expectations, and their shares fell.” Whose “expectations”? The editors at the New York Times? The Times buries its good news at the way, way bottom of its article: “The sky is not falling. There are reasons for optimism on Wall Street….Investment bank traders took advantage of strong financial markets to bolster profits. A rise in mergers and acquisitions, exemplified by the $100 billion bidding war between Netflix and Paramount for Warner Bros. Discovery, is also a boon to Wall Street dealmakers. And for all of this week’s angst, large bank stocks are up strongly over the past 12 months, even after the recent stumble.”

The Journal’s view of it is probably closer to the overall truth, though I’m not a bank stock analyst and don’t pretend to be one. While the Journal article and subheadline acknowledge some potential risks ahead and the Times article acknowledges reasons for optimism, the main thrusts of the two articles are completely different, even though they are based on the same earnings announcements and calls. The Times emphasizes “trouble,” while the Journal emphasizes “record year.”

One approach is to read both papers and use the additional perspective to reinforce your own informed skepticism. Another is to skip them with the knowledge that what the papers are really supplying is their own interpretive frameworks, not the underlying facts, which you can get from the SEC filings or the earnings calls or the stock prices, if you are interested. A third approach is to realize and remember that if the papers are this opinionated and full of spin when it comes to something seemingly straightforward like a bank earnings story, imagine the level of judgment and choice and, potentially, bias and inaccuracy that can creep into articles about topics such as immigration enforcement or the Arab-Israeli conflict or U.S. electoral politics.

And it applies to more than just newspapers. Television news is structured so that you can only watch one program at a time (unless your television has a split screen function, but even then the sound gets complicated). Plenty of classrooms have only a single instructor, and religious institutions a single preacher. If you find yourself in a one-newspaper situation, even of the non-newspaper variety, it can be useful to recognize it and seek out a different perspective to help understand how the single perspective might be wrong or missing something. At least with newspapers you can hold them up side by side and compare them, and file them away with a note to remember to check in on the banks in a year and see who had a better read of the situation, the Times or the Journal.

Memes and social media posts all over the Internet are pointing out that Ivy League campuses are empty and quiet instead of filled with protesters denouncing the massacre of Iranians protesting against their terror-sponsoring, human-rights-abusing, nuclear-arms-aspiring corrupt theocracy.

The emptiness may have something to do with winter break, but the point stands about the Gaza protests being driven by anti-Israel or anti-Jewish sentiments rather than by principled humanitarian concern.

There’s another point, too, that’s been lost, though, which is that there are some Western campuses where students and even some teachers have indeed rallied in support of freedom and human rights and rule of law in Iran. Those protests get ignored. The press pays attention mainly to Columbia, because it’s in the press capital of New York City and has a journalism school, and to Harvard, because it generates traffic and some of the editors went to college there, too. Other schools get ignored.

At Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, on January 13, more than 130 people attended a protest by the Iranian Students Association, supported by Students Supporting Israel at ASU. A dispatch about the event in the student newspaper, The State Press, quotes the president of the Iranian Students Association, AmirDanial Azimi, saying, “It’s just sad to see that this government, this Islamic republic, doesn’t have the interest of its own people, and the only interest it has is murder.” Students waved American flags and the pre-Islamic-revolution Iranian flag featuring the lion. An ASU professor, Amin Mojiri, spoke at the protest, according to the dispatch: “We call on the international community and the free media. Break your silence. Break your silence. Don’t let the truth be buried.” It’s worth the click to look at the pictures, which are quite stirring and inspiring, as is fact that Iranian and pro-Israel students were able to collaborate on the event with faculty participation.

At UCLA, a “Freedom for Iran” rally was set for noon on January 14, according to a social media post by the UCLA Iranian student group. Social media images show them marching across the Westwood campus with pre-Islamic-revolution Iranian flag featuring the lion (thanks to for the sharp eye).

At Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, which is an underappreciated institution, video footage I saw showed a professor of Arabic and Islamic history in the Department of Middle East Studies, Ze’ev Maghen, who also is affiliated with Shalem College in Jerusalem, Israel, energetically leading Israeli students in the same chants being used by the Iran protesters. That footage is also pretty inspiring.

At UMass Boston, in 2023, Kaveh Afrasiabi, an Iranian with permanent resident status in the U.S. who was a consultant to the Iranian U.N. mission and won a pardon from President Biden, organized a day of solidarity with Iranian women.

At the moment, there is plenty to protest. One Iranian whose had a relative killed says the slain protesters’ parents were asked to pay the Iranian regime 1 billion tomans (approximately $10,000, though because of hyperinflation the value is constantly changing) to reimburse cost of the bullets that killed him. In other cases, families of slain protesters are even further humiliated; in addition to the bullet fee, they are forced to bring sweets and offer congratulations for the killing of their loved one before the body is handed over. Students and shopkeepers—“bazaaris”—have been some of the key anti-regime activists in Iran, though it’s difficult to know what is happening there because the regime has largely shut down the Internet and is even jamming the Elon Musk Starlink system that had provided a partial workaround.

I have mixed feelings about campuses as sites for public protest or vigils rather than research, teaching, and learning. The best service American universities can probably provide at the moment is less as marching sites for students to wave signs and flags and chant chants, more as research sites for students to learn the real history of Iran (not phony blame-America-for-everything) and of American efforts to successfully assist popular uprisings against cruel dictatorships. My personal favorite is the story of Solidarity in Poland (see, “To Advance Freedom, Remember Religion, Labor, and Technology”). But given all the anti-Israel Gaza activism over the past few years, some public attention to Iran on the campuses would not be inappropriate. It is good to see it happening in some places.

Some highlights:

On the power of ideas: “The founder of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Father Emmanuel d’Alzon, when he founded the order, one of his most important priorities was to found a university. And he wrote in a letter that you must never forget that the world, even in a decadent state, is governed by ideas.”

On the strengths of today’s students: “I think 18-year-olds have a lot more to teach folks our age than the other way around about this—who are also deeply moved by the relationships in their lives, by things like goodness and beauty and awe and curiosity… these young people are extraordinary. They are curious, they are motivated at Assumption, they are un-entitled, and they are gritty.”

On Worcester: “Even in the brief time since my family moved here in 2011, in that 15 years or thereabouts, there has been a real renaissance in Worcester economically with healthcare and biotech. Culturally, the restaurant scene is great here. We have the AAA affiliate of the Red Sox, of whom Assumption is proud to be a founding partner. There’s a lot going on here. And I think some of those impressions of Worcester as post-industrial or whatever else are really outdated. This is a very vibrant community.”

On higher education: “You mentioned at the beginning of the conversation that polling indicates we’ve lost a lot of public trust. We have to be able to ask ourselves why that is and not simply point fingers or deny that it’s a problem.”

There’s lot’s more interesting stuff in the conversation, about Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (about whom Weiner has written a book, “American Burke: The Uncommon Liberalism of Daniel Patrick Moynihan”); about the difference between New Deal Liberalism and the Great Society; about Assumption bringing on board a former U.N. official, Alice Nderitu, who objected to the U.N.’s obsession about Gaza at the expense of other actual genocides; on Moynihan’s view that “social science is good at evaluating policy, but not at crafting it.”

Thanks to those readers who tuned in for the live conversation. If you missed it, you can watch or listen by clicking above. There’s also a computer-generated transcript that I cleaned up a bit but not entirely.

President Trump is such a fan of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that he has portraits of FDR up in both the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room. “A four-termer,” Trump has called him, with some admiration and perhaps even just a touch of envy, “an amazing man.” (If William Leuchtenburg, who died in January 2025 at age 102, were alive, he’d doubtless be updating his classic “In the Shadow of FDR” book with some additional pages for a new edition interpreting Trump in the light of FDR, as he did for so many previous presidents).

Trump’s dramatic public clash with the Federal Reserve—whose chairman, Jerome “Too Slow” Powell, accused Trump in a Sunday night video of “threats,” “intimidation,” and “political pressure”—has certain parallels to Roosevelt’s court-packing scheme.

The Federal Judicial Center has a concise summary of that plan for those who don’t recall the details from civics or U.S. history: “After winning the 1936 presidential election in a landslide, Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a bill to expand the membership of the Supreme Court. The law would have added one justice to the Court for each justice over the age of 70, with a maximum of six additional justices. Roosevelt’s motive was clear – to shape the ideological balance of the Court so that it would cease striking down his New Deal legislation. As a result, the plan was widely and vehemently criticized. The law was never enacted by Congress, and Roosevelt lost a great deal of political support for having proposed it. Shortly after the president made the plan public, however, the Court upheld several government regulations of the type it had formerly found unconstitutional. In National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation, for example, the Court upheld the right of the federal government to regulate labor-management relations pursuant to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Many have attributed this and similar decisions to a politically motivated change of heart on the part of Justice Owen Roberts, often referred to as ‘the switch in time that saved nine.’ Some legal scholars have rejected this narrative, however, asserting that Roberts’ 1937 decisions were not motivated by Roosevelt’s proposal and can instead be reconciled with his prior jurisprudence.”

FDR versus the Supreme Court is not precisely the same as Trump versus Powell and the Fed. The Supreme Court is in the text of the Constitution, while the Federal Reserve is not. Roosevelt, in my view, wanted to push the court in the wrong direction of greater executive branch and federal power, while Trump wants to push the Fed in, in my view, the right direction of lower interest rates and better overall management, including restoring the intellectual diversity and vitality that once characterized the regional Fed banks.

But in the sense of a president seeking to use political power to overcome an unelected obstacle that seemed unaccountable, obstinate, and oppositional, the parallel is there.

There’s also a parallel in the sense of Congress—the branch in Article I of the Constitution—looking askance at unbridled executive power. In FDR’s case, the Senate rejected the court-packing plan by a 70-20 vote. In Trump’s case, the Republican chair of the House Financial Services Committee, French Hill, is choosing to side with Powell against Trump, as did Senator Tillis of North Carolina, a Republican who is a member of the Banking Committee.

Trump has exercised remarkable restraint for months by not simply firing Powell, a restraint encouraged by the ultimate bridle on unbridled executive power, the market, which reacted negatively when Trump first floated the possibility.

Going after Powell with a criminal investigation for possibly lying to Congress in testimony about the Fed building’s renovation reminded me of Justice Ginsburg’s warning, in a concurring opinion in the 1996 Supreme Court case Brogan v. United States, “The prospect remains that an overzealous prosecutor or investigator — aware that a person has committed some suspicious acts, but unable to make a criminal case — will create a crime by surprising the suspect, asking about those acts, and receiving a false denial.” (See the New York Sun editorial, “Martha Stewart and the Law,” May 23, 2008.) It’s an example of the criminalization of policy differences, used against Republicans in Iran-Contra, against Trump in the various criminal investigations against him after his first term over everything from storage of files at Mar-a-Lago to the January 6 riot to his supposed attempts to influence the 2020 election results in Georgia, against Bill Clinton in Whitewater and the Monica Lewinsky investigations.

U.S. Attorney Pirro notes that “The United States Attorney’s Office contacted the Federal Reserve on multiple occasions to discuss cost overruns and the chairman’s congressional testimony, but were ignored, necessitating the use of legal process—which is not a threat.” The best accountability mechanism would be Congress retaking control of monetary policy from the Fed, just like it should retake the tariff policy that it has delegated to the executive branch. In the absence of that, other feedback mechanisms will have to suffice.

Perhaps the most promising way that the Trump-Fed standoff resembles the FDR-Supreme Court standoff is the possibility that the Fed will, “switch in time saves nine” style, do what Trump wants even in the absence of a structural overhaul. On the merits and the empirical data, Trump has been right about inflation and rate cuts, while Powell has been wrong.

Even in the midst of the fight, new data turned up to support Trump’s side of the argument. Since the Liberation Day of tariff announcements on April 2, 2025, part of Powell’s argument has been that he needs to wait and see data about how tariffs will be passed along to consumers in the form of price increases. The 12 month consumer price index data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics this morning shows prices up 2.7 percent on an not-seasonally-adjusted basis, which is a good reading given the dire predictions from economists about how Trump tariffs will fuel inflation.

Non-government data (gold excepted) tells an even more encouraging story on inflation, suggesting the bigger risks to the economy may be on the deflationary side, not the inflationary side.

For example, on energy, the official government data has unleaded regular gasoline down 3.8 percent year over year. But the American Automobile Association, which also tracks gas prices closely, says regular gas is now averaging $2.82 a gallon, down from $3.065 a year ago. That is an eight percent decline, or more than double what the government reports. And the current prices don’t fully account for the possibility of future additional supply coming online eventually owing to developments in Venezuela or Iran. Trump said today at the Detroit Economic Club that gas in some places is below $2 a gallon. “It’s coming down much faster than anyone can even believe,” Trump said.

On rent, the government CPI data reports rent of primary residence up 2.9 percent year over year, a calculation that also influences something called “owners’ equivalent rent of residences,” which is in CPI. Yet YardiMatrix, a commercial data provider that tracks multifamily rents, reports, “The average U.S. advertised rent fell $5 to $1,737 in December, with year-over-year growth dropping 20 basis points to 0.0%.” The Apartment List National Rent Report says, “Rent prices nationally are down 1.3% compared to one year ago. Year-over-year rent growth has been slightly negative for more than two full years, and the national median rent has now fallen from its 2022 peak by a total of 5.9%.”

Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman was saying some of this publicly back in January 2024, telling Barron’s, “Inflation is pretty much at the 2% level already.” As the Barron’s story put it:

While the latest CPI report showed the cost of shelter, mainly tracked by rents and an equivalent measure for homeowners, rose 6.2% year over year, Schwarzman sees a different story. Rather, the increase in rents is currently between zero and 1%, he told Serwer. If true, that would have a meaningful bearing on the overall picture of inflation, since shelter makes up some 30% of how price growth is measured.

“The numbers that the Fed are using are overstated,” Schwarzman said. “[Inflation numbers] are off somewhere around 1.5 to 1.7 [percentage points],” he said.

Truflation, another commercial data provider, says the realtime CPI inflation as of January 12, 2025 was 1.87 percent and realtime PCE inflation was 2.04%. Estimating inflation independently is tricky because there are two distinct steps; figuring out inflation, and figuring out what the government is going to say the inflation number is, using its sometimes less accurate reporting methods. The government number can be what drives some market participants, while others may look to additional sources. As Truflation puts it, “Truflation’s real-time US index is already at 1.74% YoY (down from 1.87%), driven by the Housing sector cooling faster than the BLS surveys can capture…”

And while the Fed sets short-term interest rates nationally, there are also plenty of regional variations. The Wall Street Journal reports that in Phoenix, landlords are so desperate for tenants they are providing incentives: “Amazon gift cards, discounted sports tickets and free moving trucks.” Says the Journal, “Landlords struggling to fill their empty apartments use concessions as a way to draw more tenants without having to cut their baseline prices. Though renters effectively end up paying lower rent, landlords prefer the upfront discount because it is a more temporary hit and allows them to maintain the advertised value of their properties for their lenders and investors.” The term “advertised value” made me wince and chuckle at the same time. Those “lenders and investors” include some of the banks the Federal Reserve is supposed to be among the regulators of. Powell may be gone from the Fed chairmanship by the time those values are more accurately marked, but there may be some bumps along the way there.

Powell has seemed reluctant to give Trump in 2025 and 2026 the rate cuts that he wishes he had given Biden and Harris in 2024. The next Fed chair, like FDR’s Supreme Court, may be less resistant—not in a surrender of Fed independence, but in an acknowledgment of the reality, both empirical and political. The areas ripe for reform go well beyond rates or even a single individual (see “Groupthink Sets in at Powell’s Federal Reserve” and “The Fed Beyond Bessent.”). “Too late” Powell may figure that he’s not going to get any eventual obituary headlines for getting interest rates right, so he might as well hope for some glory as a defender of central bank independence. Open Market Committee meetings in early 2026 are scheduled for January 27-28, March 17-18, and April 28-29. Powell’s term as chair expires in May 2026 (“That jerk will be gone soon,” is the way Trump put it this afternoon at the Detroit Economic Club), but Powell could stick around as a governor through January 2028. It’s not easy to shake a Trump-imposed nickname but it can happen—ask “Liddle Marco,” now the president’s righthand man on national security and foreign policy matters. Maybe it’s not yet too late for Powell to shake the “too late” moniker. And if not him, at least the rest of the Fed may take heed. Remember the switch in time that saved nine.

A professor who is director of undergraduate studies at Columbia’s Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies says the Iran protests are an Israeli plot to distract from what he calls the “genocide” in Gaza.

Hamid Dabashi, who is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and who since 2020 has been director of undergraduate studies in Columbia’s Middle East Studies Department, is also a past chair of the department and past director of graduate studies.

Dabashi has a long history of anti-Israel activism. In a September 11, 2008, article for the New York Sun, Bari Weiss listed Dabashi among five professors in the department who signed a 2004 letter supporting an academic boycott against Israel. In an October 15, 2007 article for the New York Sun, Annie Karni reported that Dabashi had written an article for a government owned Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram, faulting the then-president of Columbia, Lee Bollinger, for offering a critical introduction to a speaking appearance by the then-president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Dabashi said Bollinger’s introduction included, “the most ridiculous clichés of the neocon propaganda machinery, wrapped in the missionary position of a white racist supremacist carrying the heavy burden of civilizing the world.” In a November 22, 2004 article for the New York Sun, Jacob Gershman reported on another Dabashi Al-Ahram article in which Dabashi wrote, “What they call ‘Israel’ is no mere military state. A subsumed militarism, a systemic mendacity with an ingrained violence constitutional to the very fusion of its fabric, has penetrated the deepest corners of what these people have to call their ‘soul.’” When an Israeli graduate student complained, Dabashi asked that Columbia officials notify security: “Given the military record of this person, I also feel physically threatened,” Dabashi wrote at the time.

That two decades later Dabashi is making new headlines with new outrageously provocative and unsubstantiated claims against Israel is a sign of how resistant to change Columbia is, notwithstanding years of donor and alumni pressure, congressional and executive branch investigations, and a July 2025, $221 million settlement with the U.S. Government.

A December 2025 report from the Columbia University Task Force on Antisemitism—cochaired by Ester Fuchs, Nicholas Lemann, and David Schizer— found, “We heard from many students that an academic perspective that treats Zionism as legitimate is underrepresented in Columbia’s course offerings, compared to a perspective that treats it as illegitimate. The University should work quickly to add more intellectual diversity to these offerings. Columbia would benefit from full-time tenure line faculty expertise in Middle East history, politics, political economy and policy that is not explicitly anti-Zionist. We recommend the University address this imbalance through the establishment of new chairs at a senior level in Middle East history, politics, political economy and policy.” Later on, the report says that Zionism isn’t just “underrepresented,” it’s absent: “Columbia lacks full-time tenure line faculty expertise in Middle East history, politics, political economy, and policy that is not explicitly anti-Zionist. This is an important gap in the University’s academic capacity, which should be addressed through the establishment of new chairs at a senior level in Middle East history, politics, political economy and policy. Columbia is missing an opportunity for leadership here; correcting that should be an urgent priority.”

That report was met with an opinion piece in the student newspaper by Mahmoud Mamdani, a Columbia professor who is the father of Mayor Zohran Mamdani: “I think the sort of policing of the classroom began with the Middle East and antisemitism. But antisemitism has become a code word. It’s got nothing to do with antisemitism. It’s a code word, like anti-communism was a code word in the 1950s. Antisemitism is about disciplining us, getting us to do what we are expected to do.”

Dabashi’s latest comments were disseminated by Al Jazeera, which is owned and controlled by the government of Qatar. In the clip, he says, “What we are seeing today is Israel-instigated revolt, because there are Mossad agents in the streets of Tehran, hiding among Iranian demonstrators.”

“Over the last few days we have seen Israeli flags in Iran among the protesters,” Dabashi claims, asking, “What is Israeli flag doing in Iran?”

He speaks of “Illegitimate Israeli-instigated protests for their own nefarious reasons.”

“Why is Israel interested in Iran? It’s very simple, To distract attention from the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the continuing theft of Palestinian territories in West Bank,” the professor says.

In the clip, he acknowledges that some Iranians may be genuinely upset about currency devaluation, but doesn’t acknowledge the many other reasons they would be fed up with the theocracy, such as its oppressive brutality and foreign military adventurism.

The Columbia professor’s comments were too much for a former paid consultant to the Iranian U.N. mission to the U.N., Kaveh Afrasiabi. Afrasiabi posted to Facebook, “I call on Columbia University to expel Hamid Dabashi for his reactionary stance against the brave Iranian people fighting for freedom.” Afrasiabi added, “What Dabashi and others miss is that no matter how hard outside forces try to infiltrate or influence the popular uprising, the movement remains authentic, home grown and legitimate. Bankrupt pseudo intellectuals like Amirahmadi, a khamenei worshipper, Boroujerdi and Dabashi are incapable of understanding the autonomy of this uprising all around Iran.”

Ironically, one thing the Iranian people are angry about is that their government has squandered so much money on supporting anti-Israel terrorism by Hamas and Hezbollah instead of using it to improve the lives of ordinary Iranians. Iran has also fueled anti-Israel protests of the sort that occupied and disrupted the Columbia campus. In July 2024 the director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, said the U.S. intelligence community has “observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”

“In recent weeks, Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza,” Haines said. “Americans who are being targeted by this Iranian campaign may not be aware that they are interacting with or receiving support from a foreign government.”

Thank you: The Editors is a reader-supported publication that relies on paying customers to sustain its editorial independence. Unlike Al Jazeera or Al Ahram, we are not government controlled. If you know someone who would enjoy or benefit from reading The Editors, please help us grow, and help your friends, family members, and associates understand the world around them, by forwarding this email along with a suggestion that they subscribe today. Or send a gift subscription. If it doesn’t work on mobile, try desktop. Or vice versa. Or ask a tech-savvy youngster to help. Thank you to those of who who have done this recently and thanks in advance to the rest of you.

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America is in the middle of a Muslim moment and a Christian revival—at the same time.

Bible sales were up 12 percent in 2025 over 2024, the New York Times reports ( in print the news was buried beneath the soporific headline, “Book Sales Steady In Shifting Market.”) Television personality Rachel Maddow has publicly returned to Catholicism, and historian Niall Ferguson has left atheism for Anglican Christianity. Vice President Vance said in a December 2025 speech that “The only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been, and by the grace of God, we always will be, a Christian nation….I’m not saying you have to be a Christian to be an American. I’m saying something simpler and truer. Christianity is America’s creed.”

Meanwhile, the “Halal Guys” chain is up to 400 locations, and describes itself as “one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains in America.” Lululemon is selling hijabs. And Mayor Mamdani of New York, after being sworn in on a Koran, said in his inaugural address, “I stand alongside construction workers in steel-toed boots and halal cart vendors whose knees ache from working all day.” If the halal cart vendors’ knees ache, it may not be from working, but from taking regular quick breaks to kneel on the hard ground to pray with only a piece of cardboard as padding. On January 2, 2026, the Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, directed that 16 landmarks—including One World Trade Center, Niagara Falls, Moynihan Train Hall, and the Kosciuszko Bridge—be illuminated green in honor of Muslim American Heritage Month.

This could go in at least two possible different directions.

It could set up a clash, as an ascendant Islam tries to get Christians to cede power and control, or as an ascendent Christianity tries to define Islam out of the American mainstream.

Or it could set up an alliance, as the two religions work together against the common enemy of secularism.

It leaves American Jews triangulating. One approach might be an alliance with Christians and Muslims against secularism—defending kosher slaughter and halal butchering against critics who would ban them, advocating for school vouchers or tax credits to support Muslim and Jewish private schools. Another approach might be a Judeo-Christian alliance with Christians against Muslims. And another approach might be a “minority religions” alliance—Jews and Muslims against Christians.

One determining factor will be what variety of Islam dominates in the U.S. Vance tweeted today about the news that the U.A.E. is cutting back spending on sending students to British universities, concerned that the Emirati students would be radicalized by campus Islamists. As Vance put it, “Some of our best Muslim allies in the Gulf think the Islamist indoctrination in certain parts of the west is too dangerous.” Will the American Muslims be more like the ones in Abraham Accords member United Arab Emirates, whose Etihad Airways is running six flights a day from Abu Dhabi to Tel Aviv? Or more like the Jew-hating, America-hating Islamic extremists in British universities and, increasingly, in the House of Commons?

Another determining factor will be what variety of Christianity dominates the U.S. Will it be the Christianity of the Crusades or of the Spanish Inquisition? Or will it be the Christianity of American history, whose strength has derived in part from its voluntary, nonestablished nature?

In general religion brings community, gratitude, humility, purpose, and meaning. Sometimes it can also fuel violent conflict. So simultaneous Christian and Muslim religious revivals in the U.S. hold promise and also possible risks.

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The Atlanta Fed’s GDP Now estimate, which correctly called the 3rd quarter 2025 growth that came in at 4.3 percent, now has the 4th quarter 2025 real GDP number at a blistering 5.4 percent. Separately, but somewhat relatedly, the Bureau of Labor statistics released data showing that in the third quarter “Productivity, or nonfarm employee output per hour, soared at a 4.9% annualized rate,” as Bloomberg put it.

At the risk of The Editors becoming known for obsessing over an obscure outlying statistical indicator the way the late New York Post Washington bureau chief, Deborah Orin, used to talk about the Zogby Poll, the Atlanta Fed figure is worth keeping an eye on. The press has a negativity bias that emphasizes bad news, so the estimate probably won’t get much attention, and if the actual growth number does come in that strong, the newspapers will use words like “unexpectedly” and “surprise.”

Worries that the strong growth will fuel inflation are probably misplaced, as inflation is headed lower on the basis of sagging shelter and energy prices. The strong growth would bring a dramatically improved federal budget picture; ironically, just as the Atlanta Fed updated its estimate for the 4th Quarter of 2025 to 5.4 percent, the Congressional Budget Office, which estimates the cost of tax and spending legislation, issued its own revised projections with 4th quarter 2025 real GDP growth at an anemic 1.2 percent. Either the Atlanta Fed Nowcast is going to be way off or the CBO is going to be way off, because there is a lot of distance between 5.4 percent growth and 1.2 percent growth. (The New York Fed’s Staff Nowcast sits at 2.07 percent for Q4 2004 and 2.17 percent for Q1 2025.)

We wrote here December 23, 2025: “Complex systems are hard to predict, but if Bessent is correct and 2025 was setting the table and 2026 is the feast or the banquet, we would not be surprised here to see some quarterly or even annual growth numbers starting with 5 or 6, not 2, 3, or 4. People have forgotten what is possible on the upside.”

Treasury Secretary Bessent spoke to the Economic Club of Minnesota today in his first speech of 2026. In his prepared remarks he said in part, “With capital flowing, productivity surging, and prices easing, the stage is set for robust, non-inflationary growth in 2026.” He also said, “President Trump led a 12-month transformation of our economy, which delivered roughly 4% GDP growth in his first two full quarters in office and nearly 3% GDP growth in the fourth quarter, even amid a Democrat-led government shutdown. This growth is just a harbinger of what’s to come.”

This is the case even though the Trump economic policy and messaging is not 100 percent optimal. For example, yesterday Trump targeted a defense contractor, Raytheon: “if Raytheon wants further business with the United States Government, under no circumstances will they be allowed to do any additional Stock Buybacks, where they have spent Tens of Billions of Dollars, until they are able to get their act together.” Trump is proposing such a large increase in defense spending that Raytheon is going to do pretty well even without stock buybacks, but the precedent of a president dictating how a private company, even a federal contractor, can allocate capital is concerning. Trump also said:

All United State Defense Contractors, and the Defense Industry as a whole, BEWARE: While we make the best Military Equipment in the World (No other Country is even close!), Defense Contractors are currently issuing massive Dividends to their Shareholders and massive Stock Buybacks, at the expense and detriment of investing in Plants and Equipment. This situation will no longer be allowed or tolerated! Also, Executive Pay Packages in the Defense Industry are exorbitant and unjustifiable given how slowly these Companies are delivering vital Equipment to our Military, and our Allies. Salaries, Stock Options, and every other form of Compensation are far too high for these Executives. Defense Companies are not producing our Great Military Equipment rapidly enough and, once produced, not maintaining it properly or quickly. From this moment forward, these Executives must build NEW and MODERN Production Plants, both for delivering and maintaining this important Equipment, and for building the latest Models of future Military Equipment. Until they do so, no Executive should be allowed to make in excess of $5 Million Dollars which, as high as it sounds, is a mere fraction of what they are making now. Additionally, the maintenance and repair of Equipment, once sold, is far too slow, and must be immediately enhanced. As President, I am demanding that maintenance be “spot on, on time.” Therefore, I will not permit Dividends or Stock Buybacks for Defense Companies until such time as these problems are rectified — Likewise, for Salaries and Executive Compensation. MILITARY EQUIPMENT IS NOT BEING MADE FAST ENOUGH! It must be built now with the Dividends, Stock Buybacks, and Over Compensation of Executives, rather than borrowing from Financial Institutions, or getting the money from your Government. Longer term, this is good for both Executives and Shareholders, because it will be GREAT for our Country! Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! DONALD J. TRUMP PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Trump has also been talking negatively about “the big fat cats in the insurance companies” and announced, “I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it. People live in homes, not corporations.” The Committee to Unleash Prosperity described that as an “almost comical blunder” and noted, “one unintended consequence of banning institutional investment in housing is this will surely reduce the incentive to build new homes.”

With Trump targeting real estate investors, military contractors, and insurance companies and with Vice President Vance out today denouncing the “corporate media” in the style of the socialist Senator Sanders, you start to wonder what parts of the economy are safe.

Truth is, some of the growth is about Trump and some of it has to do with artificial intelligence, big data, and other technology related trends. I was in Children’s Hospital in Boston earlier this week and there was a George Howell coffee “robo cafe” with a Jaka robotic arm making the drinks. George Howell is a sort of famous figure in coffee circles, probably best known as the inventor of the Frappuccino.

You can read about the Starbucks Workers Union or about increases to minimum wage, but when all you need is a worker to come by once a day to refill the “robo cafe” rather than three workers to take orders, accept payments, and make the coffee drinks by hand—well, that’s the productivity growth that fuels economic growth.

That’s not to be dismissive of what Trump and Bessent and Republicans in Congress are doing on taxes and regulation and energy, a lot of which has been helpful, just to say that some of the trends may go beyond politics. Also, there’s a whole industry (including a recent half-million dollar conference at Harvard’s David Rubenstein Treehouse) now devoted to the idea that GDP growth is not the only measure that should matter. I don’t totally disagree with that, either, but I also wrote a book, “JFK, Conservative,” partly about how Kennedy won the presidency in 1960 by targeting 5 percent growth.

Trump tells people of Iran: “Feel strongly about freedom. There’s nothing like freedom.” This is encouraging: President Trump went on the Hugh Hewitt show. Hewitt asked him if he had a message for the people of Iran. Trump said, “Feel strongly about freedom. There’s nothing like freedom.” It made my heart leap to hear it.

It’s also a contrast with Vice President Vance’s remarks at a press appearance today. Asked about Iran, Vance replied by saying that what was true two months ago is true today, that the Iranian leadership should engage in “a real negotiation with the U.S.” It’s possible this is a clever, intentional attempt to misdirect the Iranian regime about efforts to give Ayatollah Khamenei the Maduro treatment, but if Vance was sincere, he was contradicting existing messaging from Trump that the Iranian regime had a chance to negotiate and missed the opportunity that had once existed but no longer does. The only thing left for Iran regime to negotiate at this stage is surrender, exit, and safe passage, perhaps amnesty for their many crimes. But the idea of a new nuclear deal involving sanctions relief just is a lifeline for the ayatollahs. It risks discouraging the protesters and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Also worth a look on the Iran story today, which is fast moving, is a recent post on X by The Editors contributor David Wurmser. He writes:

I think the momentum is now toward regime collapse. They have deadly options as they go down, and it may be a violent week, including against Israel. But the regime is dying and such a “Samson option” will not save them. I will not interfere in internal opposition Iran politics and judge who should rule afterwards. Only Iranians should. I can only reflect analytical observations. But clearly the MEK was caught off guard by events and are struggling to show relevance. They are currently using considerable effort to darken Western views of other oppositionists, especially the Shah. But their claim to be the only effective structure on the ground has proven inflated vastly. The slogans the MEK says are being said, “no to dictatorship of any kind including Monarchy” might be said somewhere, but I have watched dozens of hours and I have not seen that slogan. I have seen Javed Shah (Long Live the Shah) all over, and several other slogans. Clearly the Shah has at least symbolic currency, which reflects a total failure of Western intelligence agencies since assessing that the Shah was universally as hated and rejected as his father was in 1979 seemed to be the only solid thing they all agreed upon in full consensus, and that appears to be flat out wrong. That said, the real operational leadership that is emerging is within Iran, not outside. The nation needs a symbol, but a symbol must stay above factions and the rough and tumble of ruling. The U.S. and Israeli statements supporting the Iranian people, combined with the immense damage Israel did to the regime’s command structure and image of omnipotent effective brutality last summer as well as the sobering shock to the regime by Maduro’s seizure by the U.S. so flawlessly a week ago, all have converged to become game changers and given the Iranian people a tailwind and a confidence unseen before. The threat of force by President Trump strongly reinforced that. It is a game changer on top of a game changer. But I worry about a U.S. intervention — Not because of the “rally the flag” issue, which I think is total BS. Indeed, it would cause a “rally around the U.S./Trump” phenomenon that puts us in a good position theoretically. But because it would then put the steering wheel fully in our hands, and we do not have an end game concept for Iran. And we are lousy imperial overlords, nor do our government structures understand Iranian society. Nor should we even if we could do it effectively. It has to be left to the Iranian people. But the temptation to fall prey to “we broke it; we must fix it” is too great, and we would be drawn into things it is best we not be drawn into. In contrast, if Israel acted, they would have far more limited aims and are too small to be tempted by grand planning. So, if an intervention is to be, and I think quite probably it might be and certainly would be if Iran exercised the “Samson option,” it would be best were it to be by our regional ally and not by us.

The “Samson option” by Iran could include, God forbid, some kind of barrage of missiles aimed at Israel. Some estimates say Iran still has half the missile arsenal it had before the 12-day war of June 2025, and also that it retains the capacity to manufacture missiles at a rate of 2,000 or 3,000 a year. Let’s hope it doesn’t get a chance to use them.

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Mayor Mamdani’s inaugural address was so full of deceitful language that even in New York, the media capital of the world, the press hasn’t noticed or called out all the lies. The Editors are based in Boston, but given that the New York City press corps seem overmatched by Mamdani, we will try our best to pitch in.

From the fourth paragraph of Mamdani’s inauguration speech: “I stand alongside countless more New Yorkers watching from cramped kitchens in Flushing and barbershops in East New York, from cell phones propped against the dashboards of parked taxi cabs at LaGuardia, from hospitals in Mott Haven and libraries in El Barrio that have too long known only neglect.”

What in the world is Mamdani talking about when he says “hospitals in Mott Haven and libraries in El Barrio that have too long known only neglect”?

Here’s the reality. The main hospital in Mott Haven, which is a neighborhood of the Bronx, is Lincoln Hospital, whose current building was built in 1976 for $220 million. When it opened, the New York Times said “the new Lincoln is bright with one‐bed and two‐bed rooms, large picture windows and the latest in medical equipment.” In 2010 the hospital won a $5.5 million state grant “to almost double psychiatric inpatient capacity.” Also in 2010 it “spent $600,000 updating the Breast Imaging Center, which now offers the newest technologies in breast cancer treatment and detection and provides a one-stop place where a patient can have a mammogram, ultra-sound and biopsies done without having to leave the protective environment.” In 2014 it opened a $24 million “state of the art” emergency department. In 2020 it won a grant of $884,000 for “state-of-the-art digital X-ray rooms.” In 2023 it won $3 million in federal funds “for improvements to critical care units, including 200 new beds in its Intensive Care Unit.” In May 2025 the city approved a new $12 million substance abuse treatment center there. In July 2025 it announced the completion of a $37 million energy retrofit “focused on upgrading the hospital’s infrastructure with extensive enhancements to the lighting, heating, cooling, ventilation and related control systems.” In August 2025 it completed renovations of its employee lounge, including renovated bathrooms with additional stalls. In November 2025 it completed the renovation of its pathology grossing room. How does $80 million in spending on renovations to a $220 million 50-year-old facility count as “only neglect,” especially when many patients in New York prefer to avoid public hospitals and travel a bit farther to flagship facilities of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, of NYU Langone, Mount Sinai Hospital, or other academic medical centers?

“Libraries in El Barrio” seems to be a reference to East Harlem, the neighborhood in Manhattan “from East 96th street to East 125th street, from Fifth Avenue to the East River.” Public libraries there include the 125th St. Library, the Aguilar Library, and the 96th Street Library. Recent projects to improve those sites include a $34.4 million renovation, completed in October 2024, of the 125th St. Library and a $15 million renovation of the Aguilar Library, which is underway. When the 125th St. Library reopened, Harlem World magazine wrote, “The third floor’s transformation is nothing short of miraculous. A former custodian’s apartment, long abandoned, now houses a state-of-the-art teen center complete with 3D printers and cozy reading nooks.” How do $50 million in recent renovations qualify as “only neglect”?

There are entire architectural firms, subcontractors, and construction project managers putting their kids through college on the basis of New York City hospital and library capital projects. It seems like you can’t pick up the New York Times arts section without reading some glowingly positive review of some elaborate renovation of some previously obscure branch library, which is somewhat ironic, because book circulation has declined and people now use the libraries for heat and air conditioning, bathrooms, and wi-fi access. You start to wonder whether Mamdani actually is in touch with New York City or if he is just parroting the Soviet-era propaganda about class divisions and entrenched poverty. The New York Times has an entire reporter, Linda Qiu, “who fact-checks statements made by politicians and public figures.” She writes story after story about Trump’s “misleading statements,” while Mamdani gets a free ride.

New York Times in public fight with transgender former editor: The New York Times is moving to distance itself from a former editor, Billie Jean Sweeney, who is faulting the paper for what Sweeney calls an “anti-trans propaganda campaign.”

A January 1, 2026 interview with Sweeney posted on Trans News Network says Sweeney “worked at The New York Times for over a decade, until her retirement in mid-2024, eventually becoming the day assignment editor at the international desk. There, as one of the Times’ few trans staffers, she witnessed the highest echelons of the paper’s management increasingly push anti-trans bigotry and disinformation.” It quotes Sweeney: “I was there about 11 years in total, almost all of it on the international desk. I was the day assignment editor at the time. I’d been the night editor prior to that. The day assignment editor does what you might imagine: to respond to breaking news, to make sure we’re covering things properly, to make sure the stories say what we think they’re going to say, we’re matching up the right reporters with the right editors, etc.”

Sweeney says Times publisher A.G. Suzberger was a driving force in the coverage. “I wrote to Sulzberger directly, because he was the one who animated this, and I still believe that. I think he saw this as a political project, that he could take a stance that the hard right would like, that the Trump campaign might like. Whether it was an explicit agreement [with the Trump campaign], probably not, but this was coverage he knew the right wing would like. And he pursued that, because he thought it was a position — spreading anti-trans discrimination, spreading anti-trans disinformation — was something he could push and most readers would say ‘well I don’t know much about it.’”

“It’s one thing for Bari Weiss, when she was just running the Free Press or whatever, to report this. It’s another thing for The New York Times to report this. I think they put a stamp of legitimacy on medical falsehoods. They also legitimized anti-trans hate, really,” Sweeney says in the interview. “Maybe just reading the Times and subscribing to the Times isn’t really the best investment of your money or your time.”

The Times issued a response headlined “Fact-Checking False Claims About Our Gender Identity Coverage.” (Maybe this is why the Times fact-checkers had no time for Mamdani’s inaugural speech, they were too busy fact-checking the former editor?)

“A recent post from Trans News Network included numerous falsehoods about New York Times stories on gender identity and maligned some of the journalists involved in the work,” the Times response says.

“Our journalists are dedicated toward one aim: fair-minded, fact-based reporting,” the Times statement says. “The post from TNN featured an interview with a former editor on the International desk at The Times who was not involved in these coverage decisions. Despite numerous inaccurate statements, the author conducting the interview did not seek comment or check facts with The Times before publication and has refused to make substantive corrections or include a statement that The Times provided about the interview. Though presented as news, it did not meet the most basic journalistic standards of fairness or accuracy.”

“Here is a small sampling of inaccuracies, which range from easily disprovable facts to wholly invented conspiracy theories: The post claims multiple times without evidence, including in the headline, that upper leadership at The Times issued directives to attack trans people. This is false. It also claims these stories were done to please the Trump administration. This, too, is false,” the Times statement says.

It’s not an obscure issue; President Trump, speaking to Republican members of congress today, listed issues he hoped Republicans would emphasize going into the midterm elections. He talked about “most favored nation” medicine pricing, voter identification, borders, energy, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, tax-deductible auto loan interest, and “fertilization,” or IVF, which Trump backs. He encouraged Republicans to take the health care issue away from Democrats, who are “all owned by the insurance companies,” and to “let the money go directly to the people, not to the big fat cats in the insurance companies.” Trump also talked about opposing men in women’s sports and opposing what Trump called “transgender for everyone.” Said Trump, mockingly, “We’re gonna change the sex of your child…they don’t tell the parents.” Trump said he’d prefer to save the men-in-women’s sports issue for the last two weeks of the campaign so that the Democrats and the “fake news” don’t have time “to correct themselves.”

Trump seemed more annoyed at the Wall Street Journal— the “so far off the Wall Street Journal,” he called it, “They’ve lost their way. This is not the Wall Street Journal of old”—than at the New York Times. Trump joked with New York Times photographer Doug Mills—“three Pulitzer prizes…make me look thin for a change, Doug.”

Trump told the Republicans he was particularly keen to break the historical pattern of the party that wins the White House loses control of the House of Representatives in the next election. If Democrats win the House, “They’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached,” Trump predicted.

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Freedom is on the march in Venezuela and Iran, but in retreat in New York City.

President Trump’s decision to use military force to capture the mustachioed, Iran-allied, Venezuelan dictator, Nicolas Maduro, is buoying hopes for a restoration there of freedom, democracy, and rule of law. It’s also raising expectations for the possibility of an end to the terror-sponsoring, human-rights abusing theocracy in Iran and of the communist dictatorship in Cuba, which is heavily reliant on support from Venezuela. Trump was pictured smiling aboard Air Force One alongside Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, and holding a “Make Iran Great Again” baseball cap.

Yet even as central planners and anti-Israel political leaders come under pressure or are ousted around the world, one is taking power in New York City. The Zohran Mamdani mayoralty might perhaps have gone in a better-than-expected direction, given the positive recent meeting between Mamdani and President Trump, given Mamdani’s decision to retain Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and her decision to continue to serve, and given Mamdani’s decision to cut loose a top aide after her antisemitic tweets surfaced. Instead, the new mayor of New York, in his first week on the job, is shaping up as even more radical than feared—a Maduro of Manhattan.

Among the events and decisions fueling concerns:

Mamdani on January 1 named Cea Weaver as director of the “Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.” A 2018 tweet from Weaver said, “Impoverish the white middle class. Homeownership is racist/failed public policy.” What is described as a “resurfaced video” has her saying, “I think the reality is that for centuries, we’ve really treated property as an individualized good and not a collective good. And we are gonna... and transitioning to treating it as a collective good and towards a model of shared equity will require that we think about it differently. And it will mean that families, especially white families, but some POC families who are homeowners as well, are gonna have a different relationship to property than the one that we currently have.” In a 2020 video she advised even tenants who had funds available to cease paying rent, and she talked about, “The short term transitional demands that we have to get out of this trap of private property.”

Weaver quite publicly and recently talks about her goal of having tenants basically take over buildings from landlords by forcing a sale. Here she is in a Winter 2025 interview with Dissent: “you could form a tenant union, organize for better living conditions, demand that your landlord fix things, take them to court and sue them. Then the landlord could say, ‘I’m fed up with this building that is full of organized renters,’ sell the housing to the SHDA, and you could become a tenant of the public-sector housing authority.”

Weaver is part-time faculty at NYU, which is a reminder of how many of the worst ideas have burrowed into the universities. Mamdani himself is the son of a Columbia faculty member, raising the question of whether the right nickname for him is the Maduro of Manhattan, or the Maduro of Morningside Heights.

The assistant attorney general for Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon, commented on Weaver’s video: “I don’t think so … we have federal housing laws that trump any collective Marxist fantasies.”

The idea of eliminating private homeownership is somewhat in keeping with Mamdani’s inaugural address, which said, “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”

What “warmth of collectivism” was Mamdani talking about? The Wall Street Journal editorial board recommended “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, observing, “It was a very cold day in Siberia.” A good place to start. For further reading, my recommendations include Menachem Begin’s “White Nights.” Also good is Ida Nudel’s memoir, “A Hand in the Darkness,” which talks about temperatures in her Siberian prison room reaching 60 degrees below zero.

Truth is, you don’t have to be a socialist like Mamdani to believe modern America could use a modest adjustment in the direction of community, away from loneliness. David Brooks writes a version of that column frequently. Even, of all things, the new Koren Sacks Humash, according to a new review at Lehrhaus, includes the late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks criticizing the “hyper-individualism of our late capitalist society” and a culture that glorifies “I” and not “we.” If Mamdani had been smart, he’d have used the line from Lord Sacks, boggling everyone’s mind. The Koren Sacks Humash is also known as the Magerman edition, after David Magerman, who made a fortune at the Renaissance Technologies hedge fund. If Mamdani had really wanted to boggle everyone’s mind, he could have attributed the line to the Magerman edition of the Koren Sacks Humash.

Yet Mamdani’s personnel choices and policies signal less the warmth of voluntary community and more the frigidity of a coerced collectivism. The word choices are not accidental. Perhaps some of it can be traced to Mamdani’s experience as a student at Bowdoin a decade ago. While Mamdani was a student there the Bowdoin Orient quoted a government professor talking about “New England rugged individualism.” The Bowdoin psychology department was also working on research along the lines of “East-west, collectivist-individualist: A cross-cultural examination of temperament in toddlers from Chile, Poland, South Korea, and the U.S.”

Despite New York Times coverage inaccurately portraying divisions and despite Mamdani’s cynical use of figures such as Bernie Sanders and Mandy Patinkin, the Jewish community in New York is remarkably united—a joint statement January 2 from the UJA-Federation of New York, American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, Orthodox Union, Agudath Israel of America, New York Board of Rabbis, and Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, faulted Mamdani’s moves to reverse two “significant protections against antisemitism.” “Singling out Israel for sanctions is not the way to make Jewish New Yorkers feel included and safe,” they said. If New York’s capital and business community and real estate community show similar unity against Mamdani, perhaps the worst damage can be averted. It’ll be a real disaster for America if its largest city becomes like revolutionary Iran or Venezuela, places where property rights were imperiled and Israel was seen as the enemy.

Thank you: The Editors is a reader-supported publication that relies on paying customers to sustain its editorial independence. If you know someone who would enjoy or benefit from reading The Editors, please help us grow, and help your friends, family members, and associates understand the world around them, by forwarding this email along with a suggestion that they subscribe today. Or send a gift subscription. If it doesn’t work on mobile, try desktop. Or vice versa. Or ask a tech-savvy youngster to help. Thank you to those of who who have done this recently and thanks in advance to the rest of you.

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Kaveh Afrasiabi, who was pardoned by President Biden as part of a 2023 prisoner exchange deal with Iran after being charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Iran, now says the Iranian government is “corrupt to the core,” “ossified,” and “faces a serious crisis of legitimacy.”

Afrasiabi made the comments from Concord, Massachusetts, in a Friday, January 2, phone interview with The Editors.

Afrasiabi, an Iranian citizen who is a U.S. permanent resident, pleaded not guilty in February 2021 after prosecutors said he was paid approximately $265,000 by the Iranian U.N. mission since 2007 and also received health insurance benefits. He was a frequent contributor to the New York Times, which did not disclose to its readers that Afrasiabi was being paid by the Iranian U.N mission while writing articles for the Times about U.S. policy toward Iran.

Afrasiabi has been posting to social media about the protests sweeping Iran.

“I stand by the heroic Iranian people and their just struggle for freedom against this oppressive and corrupt regime. I devoted so many years of my life to peaceful reform only to be disappointed and learn that this regime is incapable of genuine reform,” he posted earlier today, a post that prompted me to get him on the phone.

“The mullahs have ruled Iran for half a century making a mess of it. It is time for a republic of Iran and strict separation of religion and politics,” he posted. On December 31, he posted, “Half a century of suffocating theocracy in Iran is coming to an end. The demand for freedom is inescapable.”

I asked Afrasiabi what had changed. He said that while he took part in the Iranian revolution as a 17-year-old, he had become disillusioned, at first pursuing reform through dialogue between the regime and the United States. “This is completely consistent with my lifelong efforts,” he said.

Yet he also said, “we have now entered a new stage,” with “a decaying leadership” in Iran and “pent-up frustrations” of the Iranian people “that have exploded into the open.”

He called for “free and democractic elections” and “separation of religion and politics.” He said the latest reports indicate that protests have spread to include 70 or 80 cities and towns in Iran, with some burning symbols of the regime. He said that toppling the regime is “not an easy undertaking,” but that there is a “fairly good possibility” that the “disorganized and spontaneous” protests would gain momentum and become more troublesome for the regime.

Asked what should come after the Islamic republic, he said he hoped that laws would be changed and that Iran’s foreign policy would be modified to stop wasting resources on “foreign adventurism” and to end the “obsession with Israel.”

Asked what the U.S. or other countries can do to help, he said foreign capitals should issue statements of solidarity supporting the protesters but tread carefully before taking military action for fear of triggering a counterproductive nationalistic response.

Afrasiabi’s statement is the latest in a series indicating that the Iranian protests are getting traction and may perhaps pose a serious threat to the terror-sponsoring, human-rights-abusing, theocratic regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

President Trump posted a statement to social media that said, “If Iran fires on peaceful protesters and violently murders them, which is their usual practice, the United States of America will come to their aid. We are fully prepared and armed and ready for action. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

An ambassador to Israel for President Obama who also served in the Biden administration, Daniel Shapiro, posted, “My advice to Democrats: Express support now for the Iranian people in their struggle against the brutal regime. This should be a bipartisan issue. Press Trump to do more than issue threats: support protesters with internet access and prepare now to advise/assist in a transition.”

Shapiro also posted:

Trump’s message of support for Iranian protesters has the potential to be a tipping point moment, especially if it constrains the regime from using force to crush them. It also imposes an obligation on the U.S. to follow through if needed, with both the risk of deeper U.S. military involvement, and the moral hazard of failing to back up the threat.

The Iranian people may have an opportunity to bring the tyranny of the mullahs that has ruined their country to an end. They deserve support. Their success can mean a brighter future for Iran and the entire region.

There should also be active planning in the Administration now for the transition that may unfold. The U.S. must be prepared to provide humanitarian assistance, expertise in institution building and reconstruction, carefully implemented sanctions relief, and coordination among regional partners to assist Iranians in steering toward a transition to a peaceful, stable (and hopefully democratic) outcome.

Reflecting on his experience, Afrasiabi said, “I had a limited international affairs consulting role and used my rapport for release of several US hostages and hoping for a nuclear deal that could pave the way to Iran’s democratization. In retrospect I realize I was naive and underestimated the theocracy’s wherewithal.”

The mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, rolled out his choice for schools chancellor over the New Year’s break. Maybe he was hoping that the selection, Kamar Samuels, would avoid scrutiny. Lots of education types are on vacation. Whatever remains of the press corps is focused on Mamdani’s inauguration rather than on personnel decisions, even when those are significant choices such as a leader of the largest school district in the United States, with about 900,000 students.

Mamdani said Samuels will “ensure we deliver educational excellence for every student.”

The record so far is that Samuels has been a failure. Immediately before being named chancellor he was superintendent of District 3, which includes Manhattan’s Upper West Side. There, Samuels did not actually deliver “educational excellence for every student.” The most recent proficiency rates for District Three show vast racial discrepancies:

8th grade math proficiency rates:

White: 86%

Black: 34%

Latino: 49%

8th grade English language arts proficiency:

White 88%

Black: 47%

Latino: 57%

Before arriving in District 3, Samuels was deputy superintendent of District 13, in Brooklyn. The proficiency rates for that district in 2022, the year he left, were a disaster for everyone:

8th grade math proficiency:

White: 9%

Black: 8%

Latino: 13%

8th grade English language arts proficiency:

White: 67%

Black: 45%

Latino: 45%

Before going into district administration, Samuels was the principal of a middle school called Bronx Writing Academy. When he left there, around 2019, the proficiency rates were:

27% of students were proficient in English language arts (compared to 45% in New York State)

18% of students were proficient in math (compared to 47% in New York State).

And these are at New York City public schools that are spending more per student—one estimate put it at $42,168—than almost anywhere else in the U.S.

I used to help edit an education policy journal, so I am familiar with, and even sympathetic to, all the responses that people make to data like these: The math and reading scores are too narrow a measure to judge the success of a school, people say. We can’t count on schools alone to eliminate inequalities that pervade other aspects of American society on dimensions like health, family structure, income, and parental socio-economic status, people say. If the student is living in a homeless shelter or his father is in prison or his mother is addicted to drugs, the student may have a hard time paying attention in class, people say. Yet the fact remains that there are some high-performing public charter school networks and even inner-city Catholic schools that have done a tremendous job of taking poor children and not only getting them to pass state math and reading tests but also to enroll in college and participate in civics and science and arts and physical education and otherwise flourish. Those schools, and their leaders, have achieved better results than has Kamar Samuels, who has been a failure.

When Samuels was asked about the state test scores in an interview with the West Side Rag, he was basically dismissive of them. Asked, “what do you see as the importance of test scores compared to other markers of learning when it comes to evaluating a student’s work? Does it all come down to what a student gets on a statewide test?” Samuels replied that he emphasized in-class tests rather than the statewide evaluations. “In terms of usefulness, I gear toward our assessments and day-to-day tasks,” he said.

At least the West Side Rag asked about test scores. Other outlets just give Mamdani’s choice a free ride based on vibes. The New York Times ran a news article reporting that Samuels “is regarded by supporters as a leader with a focus on equity and improving outcomes for students who have traditionally been underserved.”

Matt Gonzales, a former member of a school diversity advisory panel under Mr. de Blasio who has advocated for integration measures, said that Mr. Samuels was “ready for the role.”

“His record particularly on educational equity and school integration are things that bring me a lot of excitement and create a sense of hopefulness,” Mr. Gonzales said.

…

Micah Lasher, a state lawmaker in the Manhattan district that Mr. Samuels leads, called him an “absolutely superb educator and leader — incredibly thoughtful about how to make schools work for all our kids, and effective in implementing his vision.”

The Times also quoted Mark Levine, the city comptroller, who said that Samuels “has consistently managed to lead with principle and nuance.”

For the politicians and the Times to describe it as “superb” is simply detached from empirical reality. It’s as post-truth as Mamdani’s claims of a Gaza “genocide.”

Mamdani made “affordability” his campaign theme, with a promise of “free” childcare. But if when the “free” childcare ends the city’s public-school options are so limited that the choices become paying for private school, moving to the suburbs, or entering a charter school lottery and praying, “affordability” becomes as much as a mirage as was educational “equity” under Kamar Samuels.

By the time New York figures all this out, Samuels will probably be off to some new job at the Ford Foundation, Columbia University, or the Ocasio-Cortez presidential administration. The city’s public school students that he failed to educate will, unfortunately, face a more challenging future.

All the principle and nuance and thoughtfulness and excitement don’t add up to much if at the end of the day the students can’t do math, read, or write. In that sense the bigger danger about Samuels is that he is a stand in for what New Yorkers can expect from Mayor Mamdani: lots of excitement and fancy talk about “equity,” but terrible results.

What is motivating the protests on the streets of Iran, and what, if anything, will quell them?

To read at least some of the press coverage, it’s a dispute over, of all things, monetary policy.

The Associated Press reports from Tehran:

Iran on Wednesday appointed a new governor to the central bank after the former one resigned following a record currency fall against the U.S. dollar that sparked large protests.

The plummeting of the rial, Iran’s currency, sparked the largest protests in the country in three years, with rallies that began Sunday and continued until Tuesday.

A report by the official IRNA news agency said President Masoud Pezeshkian’s Cabinet appointed Abdolnasser Hemmati, a former economics minister, as new governor of the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He replaces Mohammad Reza Farzin, who resigned on Monday.

Experts say a 40% inflation rate led to public discontent. The U.S. dollar traded at 1.38 million rials on Wednesday, compared to 430,000 when Farzin took office in 2022. Many traders and shopkeepers closed their businesses and took to the streets of Tehran and other cities to protest.

An Iranian-American who writes a newsletter about Iran, Alireza Talakoubnejad, says that the rapid depreciation of the Iranian currency against the dollar is “the primary reason there has been an outbreak of protests.”

Yet this is more than simply an economic story, some say. Middle East analyst and Editors contributor David Wurmser writes that economic pressure leads to regime collapse “when their reigning elites lose ideological faith and thus signal confusion or lack of resolve.” He adds, “If Iran collapses, it is not because of economic collapse, which has been endemic for years, but because the street feels flailing will and failing regime ideological confidence, at which a scramble ensues among critical nodes of the regime to turn coat and survive.” Wurmser notes that “what happened last summer when Israel humiliated the Ayatollahs has a lot to do with the current circumstance. …The other key factor here is President Trump. …in his statements during the Netanyahu summit this week, in contrast to last summer, he made it clear policy now shifted and that this has become the first American administration that stands with the Iranian people rather than prefer to sell them out.”

A U.S. government social media account in Farsi said, “Iranians across the country have united in the course of peaceful protests and are demanding respect, access to services, and the right to self-determination. Their resolve demonstrates the power of people who refuse to remain silent. The United States stands in solidarity with the people of Iran in their pursuit of their fundamental rights.” Another post says, “We are deeply concerned by reports and videos showing that peaceful protesters in Iran are facing intimidation, violence, and arrest. Demanding basic rights is not a crime. The Islamic Republic regime must respect the rights of the Iranian people and end the crackdown.”

And the policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran, Jason Brodsky, notes that crowds in Kermanshah are chanting “death to the dictator” and that students at Tehran University were chanting “freedom.” “As has been the case in previous cycles, these protests have quickly morphed from economic into political,” Brodsky said.

The view here at The Editors is that the economic and political are closely related. A weak currency signals not only hardship for consumers that goes by the name “inflation” or “affordability crisis,” it signals a lack of confidence by world capital markets and by the domestic public in the government whose reputation backs the currency.

The United States government under President Trump, Secretary of State Rubio, and Secretary of Treasury Bessent have increased pressure on Iran’s “shadow fleet,” imposing sanctions on more than 180 vessels responsible for shipping Iranian petroleum products. Iran lost a key ally when Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria was toppled. Iran’s proxy militias of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon have been dramatically weakened by Israel in the war that followed October 7, 2023. What Iran needs isn’t only a new central banker, but a new regime, one not dedicated to using Iranian tax dollars and petroleum revenues to fund terrorism, internal oppression, regional wars, or nuclear proliferation.

The students and shopkeepers who have been most active in the current wave of protests have displayed great courage against a government that uses against its opponents and critics not only water cannon and tear gas but also torture and live ammunition and the hangman’s noose. One woman’s rights activist, Zahra Tabari, was sentenced to death earlier this year “after a trial via video link that lasted less than 10 minutes,” the BBC reported. An Iranian human rights lawyer, Khosrow Alikordi, was found dead in his office on December 5, 2025. Another Iranian, Omid Sarlak, “was found dead after he posted a video on social media of himself setting an image of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on fire,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported earlier this year. If the U.S. press, such as NPR and the New York Times, devoted half the effort they devote to the West Bank and Gaza to stories like those of Zahra Tabari, Khosrow Alikordi, and Omid Sarlak, Americans might be better informed about what’s really happening in the Middle East.

Experience has shown that Iranians will have to take the lead in any regime change effort; it can’t be imposed from outside, though the U.S. and other regional players can and should certainly provide support if it is requested. And most crucially of all, we should not undercut the courageous protesters by offering the theocratic, terror-sponsoring regime a lifeline in the form of a “deal.” Richard Perle’s article here at The Editors from October 2024, “Tell the World the Truth About Iran, Says Richard Perle,” holds up today: “abandon the foolish conceit that diplomatic engagement with the mullahs in Tehran can advance our interests or the democratic cause. It hasn’t and it won’t….We have pulled our punches in the hope of moderating the regime. It is at last clear we have nothing to lose by helping those who wish to bring the regime down.”

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The articles that get the most traffic aren’t necessarily the best articles. I’m not a full-blown populist. Yet I am a believer in the wisdom of crowds and in trying to pay some attention to what readers—the customers—want. So at year-end, here is a list of the articles published here in 2025 that got the most traffic.

The articles that get the most views are not necessarily the same as the articles that sell the most paid subscriptions, but there is some overlap.

If there’s a common theme among the articles that made the list, it is probably the effort here to be an independent, skeptical watchdog to large, old, rich, and sometimes arrogant and complacent institutions that consider themselves elite—Harvard, the New York Times, the Federal Reserve.

In a year when the news often seemed dominated by President Trump, the word “Trump” appears, strangely enough, in not a single one of these headlines.

Nine of the ten pieces were written by me, but as with the Top Ten Editors Articles of 2024, one of these pieces was by David Wurmser, a perceptive analyst of the Middle East and of America. I’m grateful to him. I’m also appreciative of all Editors readers, especially the paying ones. Your collective judgment helped shape this list.

Another observation that went with last year’s list also applies: The most successful articles are scoops, those that surprise readers by being the first to deliver new information or analysis that is not readily available elsewhere. “Information is surprise,” as George Gilder says.

May the year ahead be full of surprises on the upside.

Here is the list:

Nine Reasons The New York Times’s Big Attack on Netanyahu Is Totally Bogus

Harvard’s New Hire Says She’s Boycotting Israel and Avoids Synagogues. She’ll Be Teaching Judaism.

Harvard Gives Honorary Degree to Berkeley Boycott-Israel Advocate

Why Apple Can’t Make iPhones in U.S.: “Small Hands” of Chinese Workers, New York Times Claims

Has the Palestine Solidarity Committee Taken Over The Harvard Crimson?

Harvard Makes Exceptions to Hiring Freeze to Add Jewish Studies Professors

The Fed Beyond Bessent

New York Times Race-Polices Zohran Mamdani Using Stolen Property

Are Egypt and Israel Stumbling Toward War? By David Wurmser

Calls Mount in Congress for Fed Chairman’s Ouster

The “civil without being boring” phrase made me smile. Whether this video meets the definition in either dimension I leave to viewers to decide, but it is certainly a standard to aspire to.

Earlier this year the New York Times offered this wise advice in an editorial:

Americans have lost their patience with the status quo and their faith in the ability of many institutions — including public health agencies, financial and business institutions, the Democratic Party, the courts, elite universities and, yes, the news media — to improve their lives and communities. In playing their unique roles in our democracy, institutions should also be wary of falling into a reflexive resistance posture, in which everything Mr. Trump proposes is implicitly wrong or dangerous or in which any tactics to oppose him are implicitly right and virtuous.

In at least a couple of recent instances, the Times own news pages have ignored the reasonable advice of the editorial. Instead the newspaper has been “falling into a reflexive resistance posture,” eroding trust.

The first example has to do with Christmas. A Times news article by Ashley Ahn, a 2022 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, reported that “The Trump administration celebrated Christmas on Thursday by posting a series of religious messages from official government accounts, using language that drew criticism from those who pointed to the country’s separation of church and state.”

The Times treats this as a dramatic change, claiming, inaccurately, that “Government officials have traditionally steered clear of such overtly religious language, as the Constitution bans an official state religion.”

Yet during the Biden administration, President Biden regularly issued an Easter message. Here’s the one from March 31, 2024: “Easter reminds us of the power of hope and the promise of Christ’s Resurrection. As we gather with loved ones, we remember Jesus’ sacrifice.” Here’s the one from Biden for Orthodox Easter, May 5, 2024: “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ reminds us of God’s abundant love for us and the power of light over darkness.” Here was Biden’s December 22, 2022, Christmas address to the nation: “we look to the sky, to a lone star, shining brighter than all the rest, guiding us to the birth of a child — a child Christians believe to be the son of God; miraculously now, here among us on Earth, bringing hope, love and peace and joy to the world….From the silence of space, on a silent night on a Christmas Eve, they read the story of Christmas — Creation from the King James Bible. It went: ‘In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.’ That light is still with us, illuminating our way forward as Americans and as citizens of the world. A light that burned in the beginning and at Bethlehem.”

Here was a Christmas message from President Obama on December 23, 2016: “Tomorrow, for the final time as the First Family, we will join our fellow Christians around the world to rejoice in the birth of our Savior. And as we retell His story from that Holy Night, we’ll also remember His eternal message, one of boundless love, compassion and hope.”

The Times let all that slide without any news articles rounding up condemnations from “Americans United for Separation of Church and State” or from the Cato Institute or fretting that it violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Imagine how the New York Times would have covered Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, with its overtly religious language:

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered ~ that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come but which having continued through His appointed time He now wills to remove and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him. Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’

“With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Imagine how the Times would have covered Kennedy’s inaugural, with its overtly religious language: “the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God….let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

The Times should run a correction, pointing out that the alarmist article about Trump and Christmas misled readers by failing to acknowledge that Presidents Biden and Obama also used Christian religious language in their holiday messages. If there was a meaningful difference between what Trump did and what Biden and Obama did, the Times doesn’t explain or define it.

The Times made the same error—failing to acknowledge a Biden-era precedent—in its news coverage of Trump’s use of the word garbage. Here’s how the Times news article—not an opinion piece, but a news article—put it:

President Trump unleashed a xenophobic tirade against Somali immigrants on Tuesday, calling them “garbage” he does not want in the United States in an outburst that captured the raw nativism that has animated his approach to immigration.

Even for Mr. Trump — who has a long history of insulting Black people, particularly those from African countries — his outburst was shocking in its unapologetic bigotry….

Robert Pape, a professor at University of Chicago who has studied political violence for 30 years, said such language from the Trump administration was dangerous.

“They’re not just like nasty metaphors — they’re especially dehumanizing metaphors,” Mr. Pape said. “‘Garbage.’ You’re not thinking of something that is human, you’re thinking of it as something that can be easily thrown away, so that is exactly the kind of metaphor we have just found for really decades is likely to increase support for violence.”

The Times news article failed to mention that President Biden had used the term “garbage” in 2024 to refer to President Trump’s supporters, a statement that prompted Trump to get in a garbage truck while wearing a sanitation worker vest for a campaign photo opportunity.

The same Times reporter, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, who wrote the story about Trump’s “xenophobic tirade” covered the Biden “garbage” remarks in 2024 and soft-pedaled them. When Biden used the “garbage” term, there was no hauling out of political scientists to predict that the dehumanization would lead to violence. “Republicans seized on the seeming gaffe,” the Times wrote then, under a headline that said, “Biden Appears to Insult Trump Supporters as ‘Garbage,’ but Quickly Tries to Clarify.” If there was a meaningful difference between Trump and Biden’s usage of the term garbage, the Times doesn’t try to explain to readers what that difference was.

What’s garbage here is the Times trying to harvest clicks from its audience of Trump-hating readers, while eroding what remains of its reputation for accuracy and evenhandedness.

Some of this is about Trump. Some of it is just blatant anti-Republican partisanship. For example, an alarmist front-page Times news article about the University of Texas complained, “The campus is no longer led by an academic, but a Republican lawyer who worked for the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton.” The Times failed to mention that the president of the University of Massachusetts is a Democratic lawyer, Marty Meehan, who is a former member of Congress. A previous U. Mass president was William Bulger, a Democratic lawyer who had been president of the Massachusetts state senate.

A front-page Times news article Saturday paraphrased “Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an organization that monitors harmful content online,” to the effect that “there was little consequence for being wrong. On the contrary, the business model of social media rewards those whose content spreads widely, encouraging more sensational or provocative content.”

The Times intended that as an attack on the X platform and on Bill Ackman and Shaun Maguire. Yet with New York Times company stock above $70 a share for the first time in a decade, and up 34 percent year to date, it might also be read as an unusually self-aware description of the Times company’s own business model. My own view is that the paper had a better approach in the editorial warning against joining the resistance, but my sense is that I am not the typical Times customer.

Thank you: The Editors is a reader-supported publication that relies on paying customers to sustain its editorial independence. If you know someone who would enjoy or benefit from reading The Editors, please help us grow, and help your friends, family members, and associates understand the world around them, by forwarding this email along with a suggestion that they subscribe today. Or send a gift subscription. If it doesn’t work on mobile, try desktop. Or vice versa. Or ask a tech-savvy youngster to help. Thank you to those of who who have done this recently and thanks in advance to the rest of you.

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Bari Weiss is successful enough that she doesn’t need a defense from me. Yet so nasty, intense, and unwarranted are the attacks on her for merely exercising some mild control as editor in chief of CBS News that it’s become a newsworthy situation. The attacks say more about Weiss’s enemies than they do about her. The severity of the reaction shows how deeply invested so many are in the status quo, that is, a mainstream media with a left-wing bias. In that environment, demanding that all sides of the story be told is somehow an unpardonable sin.

Think I’m exaggerating?

“The Warning With Steve Schmidt,” a Substack-based publication that bills itself as “a place of respectful and civil debate,” ran a piece headlined “Bari Weiss killed CBS News in 76 Days.” It likened Weiss to Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl and described her, inaccurately, as “a cynical, corrupt and deeply unserious character who is partisan, frivolous and incompetent.” The article described her as “an abysmal leader and a worse journalist, with the judgement of Donald Trump Jr. on an all-you-can-sniff night at the Cartagena Trump Hotel and Casino,” “a sinister force in America, who serves two sinister families. One is named Ellison, and the other is named Trump.” Writing about a prison in El Salvador that is the topic of the “60 Minutes” piece that Weiss wanted held for more reporting and balance, Schmidt says of Weiss, “she believes that the brown people sent there deserve it, just like the Nazis said of the Jews. What does that make her exactly?” Schmidt writes, “a 40-year-old woman named Bari with an Ivy League pedigree, who maintains a constant spotlight on her identity as a Jewish lesbian snuffed out a story about a concentration camp on CBS News 80 years after Edward R. Murrow’s broadcast from Buchenwald.” That same piece basically calling Bari Weiss a Nazi was also published on Substack by J. Bradford Delong, a professor of economics at U.C. Berkeley.

Margaret Sullivan, a former public editor of the New York Times who is now the Executive Director for the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security at Columbia Journalism School, declared, “A broadcast-news neophyte, Weiss has no business in that exalted role.” No one was bothered when Walter Isaacson went from Time to running CNN or when Mark Whitaker went from Newsweek to NBC News, but when Bari Weiss, who had a booming events and podcast business at The Free Press, takes over CBS News, it’s suddenly unacceptable? Maybe what some people are objecting to isn’t the experience but the ideology, or, to be more precise, the lack of the doctrinaire left-wing ideology that is so common in the rest of the media. In a column for the Guardian, Sullivan described Weiss’s decision to hold the piece as “a clear case of censorship-by-editor to protect the interests of powerful, rich and influential people.” Sullivan urged Weiss, “try to start acting like an editor – not like a cog in the machine of authoritarian politics and oligarchy.” In other words, the critics don’t want a news organization or an editor, they want a cog in the cheerleading machine for the anti-Trump resistance.

In the Nation, Elizabeth Spiers declared “CBS News editor in chief Bari Weiss is simply another in a long line of feckless water carriers for the 1 percent.” Spiers goes on to accuse Weiss of spreading “Islamophobic urban legends” and of “producing a line of propaganda masquerading as news coverage that serves the interest of her patrons—in this case, David Ellison, whose interests are served by protecting Donald Trump.” Spiers writes, “Good journalists punch up; Weiss punches down. There is no vulnerable population she does not blame for their immiseration, and when she talks about ‘open inquiry,’ her list of verboten viewpoints includes the affirmation of the humanity of Palestinians and the denunciation of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, any opposition to a free market (though she doesn’t seem to have a material problem with tariffs and other anti-market policies if they’re coming from the Trump administration), together with any suggestion that women and minorities face systemic discrimination, or that religion is not an unalloyed good.” (Quite a feat to accuse Weiss simultaneously of spreading Islamophobia and the idea that religion is an unalloyed good, but for someone going on about “the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” clearly factual accuracy and logic are no obstacles.) The Nation doesn’t mind the one-percenters when they are Katrina vanden Heuvel, who is an heir to the Stein MCA fortune and who is the editor and publisher of the Nation. What they mind is one-percenters without reflexively left-wing politics.

As Weiss herself has pointed out and as we noted in a December 4 post here (“White House Launches ‘Media Bias Offender Tipline’”), surveys show public trust in the press has plummeted. Episodes like this help to explain why. It’s not as if David Ellison and Bari Weiss have turned CBS into anything close to Breitbart or Newsmax or Fox News or the Right Side Broadcasting Network or the Jewish News Syndicate, or that they even appear to have ambitions to. Her highest profile hires or promotions so far include Matt Gutman of ABC News and Tony Dokoupil, who was already at CBS News. Also reportedly playing a role at CBS is Ken Weinstein of the Hudson Institute, a former chairman of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, who was decorated as a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des arts et des lettres by the French Ministry of Culture and who has a Ph.D. in government from Harvard. Plenty of negative news about Trump remains at CBS, not all of it warranted; before this whole episode it might not have been crazy to write a piece headlined “CBS News Is Still Terribly Afflicted With Left-Wing Bias, Even With Bari Weiss Running It.”

The media ethics mob won’t be completely satisfied until CBS is stripped from private commercial ownership and put safely in the hands of some left-wing nonprofit they can control. Until then, it’s worth remembering that no one is being forced to watch any of this stuff. As important as the First Amendment restriction on Congress is the choice and competition that characterize the media landscape at the moment. That applies not only to consumers but to producers. If the “60 Minutes” staff don’t like the new management, let them do what Weiss did herself when she found herself unhappy at the New York Times—quit and start a Substack.

At The Free Press, Weiss managed to generate something of value, in part because what she did was different from the predictable partisanship widely available elsewhere, in part because she has standards of quality and excellence that sometimes involve sending a piece back when it needs more work before publication. No wonder her enemies in the press and beyond see her as such a threat.

Pope Leo XIV highlighted Gaza in his Christmas messages, as Mayor-Elect Mamdani of New York announced an inaugural host committee full of anti-Israel activists.

The Vatican released two Christmas Day messages from the pope. One, a homily at mass during the day, said, “The Word has pitched his fragile tent among us. How, then, can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold; and of those of so many other refugees and displaced persons on every continent; or of the makeshift shelters of thousands of homeless people in our own cities? Fragile is the flesh of defenseless populations, tried by so many wars, ongoing or concluded, leaving behind rubble and open wounds. Fragile are the minds and lives of young people forced to take up arms, who on the front lines feel the senselessness of what is asked of them and the falsehoods that fill the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths.”

Gaza was the only place in the world whose current events Leo mentioned specifically in that speech.

The second message, an “Urbi et Orbi” message, included a longer list of sites. “From God let us ask for justice, peace and stability for Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and Syria, trusting in these divine words: ‘The effect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust for ever’ (Is 32:17).”

That message also mentioned “the tormented people of Ukraine,” “our brothers and sisters in Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso and the Democratic Republic of Congo,” “the beloved people of Haiti” as well as “Myanmar,” and “Thailand and Cambodia.”

It went on, “In becoming man, Jesus took upon himself our fragility, identifying with each one of us: with those who have nothing left and have lost everything, like the inhabitants of Gaza; with those who are prey to hunger and poverty, like the Yemeni people; with those who are fleeing their homeland to seek a future elsewhere, like the many refugees and migrants who cross the Mediterranean or traverse the American continent; with those who have lost their jobs and those who are looking for work, like so many young people who struggle to find employment; with those who are exploited, like many underpaid workers; with those in prison, who often live in inhumane conditions.”

The Pope concluded in part by quoting an Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, identifying him only as “one poet”:

The invocation of peace that rises from every land reaches God’s heart, as one poet wrote:

“Not the peace of a cease-fire,
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness…

Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.”

A Christmas Day story from the official Vatican News also focused on suffering in Gaza. “Food insecurity is acute…the scale of destruction is staggering,” the article says. Like the pope’s remarks, it is devoid of any context about the Hamas terrorist attack and hostage-taking that prompted Israel’s war of self-defense.

Meanwhile, in New York City, Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani announced an inaugural committee stacked with extreme anti-Israel figures, including Palestine Children’s Relief Fund ambassador “Ms. Rachel” and Beth Miller of “Jewish Voice for Peace.” Mamdani takes office January 1.

I share the hope for peace expressed by the pope and by Yehuda Amichai. Yet it seems to me that silence or denial about the nature of the Islamist terrorist threat to the West, or the hostility to Israel on display from Mamdani and his allies, only makes the chances of that peace more remote. The pope did not name who he meant by “the pompous speeches of those who send them to their deaths.” Maybe he was talking about the Iranians or the Hamasniks, but it was vague enough that it was unclear. As for the young people on the front lines, the Israelis and the Ukrainians are defending Western civilization. The Pope can say whatever he wants, but from my point of view, those young Israelis and Ukrainians deserve our thanks, not any statement subject to an interpretation that they’ve somehow been duped by falsehood.

Thank you: Merry Christmas to those celebrating the holiday. The Editors is a reader-supported publication that relies on paying customers to sustain its editorial independence. If you know someone who would enjoy or benefit from reading The Editors, please help us grow, and help your friends, family members, and associates understand the world around them, by forwarding this email along with a suggestion that they subscribe today. Or send a gift subscription. If it doesn’t work on mobile, try desktop. Or vice versa. Or ask a tech-savvy youngster to help. Thank you to those of who who have done this recently and thanks in advance to the rest of you.

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Surveys showing some erosion of support for Israel, particularly among younger Americans, have fueled a boomlet of recent efforts to identify the benefits to the United States of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

In an interview with Elliot Kaufman of the Wall Street Journal, Israel’s ambassador to America, Yechiel Leiter, made a case for Israel based on geostrategy and military technology. Israel can be the leading force in the Middle East while the U.S focuses on China, and it can work with the U.S. on developing and producing missile defense that protects both Israel and the U.S. (In the same interview, Leiter tells Kaufman about Vice President Vance, “where it matters, I’ve only seen good and positive stuff. JD believes in America first, and I think he believes that part of America first is having a strong ally like Israel.”)

William McGurn followed up with a Wall Street Journal column praising Israel for offering an example of population growth fueling prosperity. “The Israelis have solved the problem of below-replacement fertility rates. In the Middle East and the wider world, Israel stands out for its healthy birthrate,” McGurn wrote.

The Hudson Institute’s Michael Doran published a column (“Tucker Carlson Claims Israel Is a Burden on the US. It Reveals Profound Strategic Ignorance”) offering some concrete examples of the benefits of U.S. security cooperation with Israel, describing it as “one of the engines of the American military’s strategic advantage in the 21st century.” He wrote about Israel’s use and modifications of the F-35 aircraft, of the Trophy system protecting tanks and armored personnel carriers, of the Lightening navigation pod, of a laser-based air-defense system, of an emergency bandage used by combat medics.

These are all worthy points, and I am glad they are being made. Yet on Christmas Eve and as Prime Minister Netanyahu prepares for another in-person meeting with President Trump, there is something to be said about Israel not only as a military, economic, and technological power, but as a society grounded in religious and spiritual and cultural identity.

Vance spoke about that, in relation to America, in a recent interview with Sohrab Ahmari at Unherd:

“When I talk about America having some common culture,” Vance says, “I think Christianity is very much at the heart of that. With the exception of Jefferson and a couple of others, most of our Founding Fathers were devout Christians. . . . There’s a lot about Christianity that is very useful, even if you’re not a Christian. I think Christianity gives us a common moral language. You saw that in the Civil Rights Era, you saw that during the Civil War. It was one of the ways that we were able to actually come together as a nation, post-Civil War: that shared Christian identity.”

Judaism’s function in Israel and Christianity’s function in America are different. Israel’s Declaration of Independence describes it as a Jewish State, while the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. Yet there are nonetheless some parallels and common themes and shared history and culture and texts.

Look at Israel’s Declaration of Independence. It talks about how “The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.” It talks about how the State of Israel “will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel” and how it “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions.”

Popes have talked about how Judaism and Christianity are in some ways sibling religions. Pope John Paul II, in April 1986, visited the Great Synagogue of Rome and said, “You are our dearly beloved brothers and, in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.” When John Paul II visited Jerusalem in 2000, he left a note of prayer in the Western Wall: “we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant.” Pope Francis, visiting the Rome synagogue in January 2016, used the word “brothers” seven times in a brief address. “You are our elder brothers and sisters,” Francis said.

It’s a controversial metaphor—Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, in his 1964 essay “Confrontation,” rejected it: “Nor are we related to any other faith community as ‘brethren.’” Soloveitchik, though, paradoxically concludes that “Confrontation” essay by turning to, all of things, a sibling metaphor: “Our representatives who meet with the spokesmen of the community of the many should be given instructions similar to those enunciated by our patriarch Jacob when he sent his agents to meet his brother Esau.”

As the mention of Jacob and Esau suggests, the sibling metaphor is not without complications. Neither Francis, nor John Paul II, nor Joseph B. Soloveitchik was an only child. They all had siblings. They must have been aware that “brotherhood” is a condition that involves not only love but also rivalry. Brothers and sisters compete for finite resources and parental affection. Even if these religious leaders hadn’t been familiar with that from personal experience, they’d be aware of it from literature, history, and the Bible. René Girard, a professor of French literature who taught at, among other places, Stanford and at Johns Hopkins, has written about what he calls “the basic mythical theme of enemy brothers.” Girard quotes Jeremiah 9:3: “Trust not even a brother, for every brother takes advantage.” And Girard also paraphrases the Harvard anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn to the effect that “the most common of all mythical conflicts is the struggle between brothers, which generally ends in fratricide.”

A 2006 book by a professor at Hebrew University, Israel Jacob Yuval, “Two Nations in Your Womb : Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” formulates it this way: “The greater the consanguinity, the more intense the quarrel.” Yuval notes that Christians and Jews can’t even agree about which one is Jacob and which one is Esau. Jews see ourselves as blessed descendants of Jacob, while for Christians, “Esau was the archetype of the Jew, the elder brother who loses his birthright to the younger brother, the church.”

Jonathan Sacks, who was chief rabbi of Great Britain from 1991 to 2013, has a chapter about sibling rivalry in his 2015 book Not in God’s Name. “The first murder is a fratricide: Cain killing Abel,” Sacks writes. “The story of Hamlet begins with a fratricide.” Sacks goes on to mention that the founding myth of Rome is the story of Romulus killing his brother Remus. Sacks quotes a letter of Sigmund Freud: “The elder brother is the natural rival; the younger one feels for him an elemental, unfathomably deep hostility for which in later life the expressions ‘death wish’ and ‘murderous intent’ may be found appropriate.” Sacks then offers a plausible reading of Genesis supporting his contention that “Brothers need not conflict. Sibling rivalry is not fate but tragic error.”

Some of the hostility to Israel currently on display in parts of the Christian right seems animated by a focus on Jewish-Christian difference: the since-ousted Harvard Salient editor who privately proposed replacing Israel with a Palestinian state under “Christian custodianship”; the person who showed up at an October 29 Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi and asked Vance, “I’m a Christian man and I’m just confused why that there’s this notion that we might owe Israel something or that they’re our greatest ally or that we have to support this multi hundred billion dollar foreign aid package to Israel to cover this to quote Charlie Kirk ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Gaza. I’m just confused why this idea has come around considering the fact that not only does their religion not agree with ours but also openly supports the prosecution [sic] of ours.”

My own view is that the biggest threat to Christianity in the U.S. today isn’t Judaism, it’s secularism. Israel offers an alternative.

One could say that Saudi Arabia or Iran or Turkey also offer examples of religious states. Some see Islam as part of a trio with Judaism and Christianity of Abrahamic or monotheistic faiths. Yet what Israel offers that Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey do not is a society that, however imperfectly, tries to combine individual freedom and autonomy and rule of law and democracy together with serious respect for and participation in vibrant religious tradition. It’s certainly not without a lot of tensions and frustrations and heated debate around everything from marriage officiation to public transportation on the Sabbath to whether fervently Orthodox yeshiva students should serve in the Army. I don’t want to make the error of overly romanticizing it or glossing over the imperfections. And there are certainly plenty of secular Israelis who contribute to the society in significant ways. Yet at best Israel’s Jewish keel, “the eternal Book of Books,” and the people that study and live it, have provided a sense of community, purpose, meaning, morality, and gratitude that have also characterized America at its best and that could today stand some additional strengthening.

Thank you: Merry Christmas to those celebrating the holiday. The Editors is a reader-supported publication that relies on paying customers to sustain its editorial independence. If you know someone who would enjoy or benefit from reading The Editors, please help us grow, and help your friends, family members, and associates understand the world around them, by forwarding this email along with a suggestion that they subscribe today. Or send a gift subscription. If it doesn’t work on mobile, try desktop. Or vice versa. Or ask a tech-savvy youngster to help. Thank you to those of who who have done this recently and thanks in advance to the rest of you.

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In today’s newsletter: A piece on economic growth and Treasury Secretary Bessent, a piece about Ben Sasse, a link to recent work, a billionaire’s exit from Britain, a correction.

Call it the juxtaposition of the day: the dueling Bloomberg headlines, one “U.S. Economy Grows at Fastest Pace in Years With 4.3% GDP Gain,” another, “US Consumer Confidence Drops for Fifth Straight Month.”

It nicely captures the paradox of hard economic data showing strong growth, and soft survey data showing weaker vibes. Some of this is partisan—Democrats in the surveys don’t like or trust Trump or congressional Republicans, and that colors what they tell pollsters about the economy.

Readers may recall our headline from November 19, 2025, “U.S. Economy Growing at 4.2 Percent, a Federal Reserve Estimate Says,” and the accompanying article noting “That’s a significantly higher reading than most forecasters expect,” and that it was useful for “illuminating negativity bias in the press.” (The press was largely ignoring it).

The remarkable thing, though, is that even President Trump himself and his top economic policy advisers, like Treasury Secretary Bessent, acknowledge that Main Street isn’t deluded when it feels strain or affordability concerns. “We understand that the American people are hurting,” Bessent said in an appearance on the December 22 “All In” video podcast. “People are seething over the high price level.”

Bessent made a lot of news in that appearance, which struck me overall as thoughtful and realistic. Some of the key points include:

2026 may be even better than 2025. “2025 was setting the table. And, especially on the economy, I think the the feast and the banquet’s going to be in 2026,” Bessent said. “I think 2026 is going to be a very good year for the American people, for Main Street…2025 was a capex [capital expenditure] boom.” He made the point that working Americans will get a bump in early 2026 in the form of tax refunds and lower withholding reflecting no tax on tips, no tax on overtime. “I also have the honor of being the IRS commissioner, and I can see that we’re going to have a gigantic refund year in the first quarter because no one changed their— working Americans did not change their—withholding. So I think households could see depending on the number of workers, $1,000, $2,000 refunds. They will change their withholding schedule at the beginning of the year and they will get an automatic increase in the real wages.”

On the tariff case at the Supreme Court: “I think the framing thus far has been very poor because it’s viewed as 0 - 1. It’s up - down. My guess is, it will be more nuanced.” He sort of dodged the question of why Trump did not go to Congress in the first place to ask for the tariffs. (At the recent After Neoliberalism conference at Harvard’s David Rubenstein Treehouse, Harvard’s Learned Hand professor of law, Jack Goldsmith, predicted the Supreme Court will rule against Trump in the tariff case).

On China: “We are in an economic war.”

On the Fed: Bessent talked about interviewing candidates for chairman of the Federal Reserve: “each one of them has talked about moving back toward the more traditional Fed role…just getting the Fed back into the background. You know, it wasn’t meant that the market and the economy and the American people were supposed to hinge on every word. It was supposed to be a predictable process…they’ve talked about what should we do with the regional banks. No one’s talking about getting rid of them or the regional bank presidents, but should each one of the regional banks have a specialty, go back to a center of excellence?”

On rents: “rents are down and we are now seeing the effects of what 10 to 20 million undocumented people coming into the country did for rents.” Lower rents and lower gas prices mean that the inflation reality on the ground may be even better than the “surprise” consumer price index number.”with rent, with energy that those are very large components that have turned down substantially that actually recorded a gain for that measurement period” in the CPI report.

Bessent did not mention it, but I noticed recently that Bank of America has rent data based on people paying their rent using Bank of America accounts.

The Bank of America data show rent expenses going down more sharply than the CPI reports. I’ve been writing about rent so much here it sounds like a real estate trade publication, but between rent and owner-equivalent rent or “imputed” rent of owner-occupied housing, it’s a significant chunk—about a third—of the inflation data that helps to drive Federal Reserve interest rate decisionmaking.

On Trump accounts: “When we look back in 50 years, I think this administration will have saved or created the idea that everyone is an equity owner, that everyone has a stake in the market. Right now, about 38% of Americans do not own equities either directly or through some kind of a 401k or something. … we will close the gap over time. We’ll go from 38% not owning equities that if this continues hopefully that can be zero and everybody gets a stake in American prosperity, that American innovation .. Look at sort of the the polling for young people in terms of their view of socialism, their their view of capitalism…I think this is going to make the everyman and woman a market participant. And I think it’s fantastic.”

On markets in general: “The markets are biology. They’re not math. They’re not physics. They’re nonlinearities. They’re very complex systems.”

Complex systems are hard to predict, but if Bessent is correct and 2025 was setting the table and 2026 is the feast or the banquet, we would not be surprised here to see some quarterly or even annual growth numbers starting with 5 or 6, not 2, 3, or 4. People have forgotten what is possible on the upside. If the Supreme Court does strike down the tariffs and Trump wants them enacted by Congress, you could also see them paired with some sort of payroll tax cut so that the combined effect is neutral or a cut, not a tax increase. That could goose growth, and help on the “affordability” issue, even more.

Ben Sasse: The former president of the University of Florida and former U.S. senator from Nebraska, Ben Sasse, a member of the Harvard Class of 1994, announced today, “Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.”

That is really terrible news, and I am praying for some sort of miracle cure. I am an admirer of Sasse and have written about his post-October 7, 2023 statement. In my Education Next article about college presidents, I wrote, “While serving in the Senate, Sasse wrote a whole book about the idea of ‘community, friendships, and relationships’ as the antidote to the crisis of loneliness and deaths of despair.” (The book was “Them: Why We Hate Each Other--and How to Heal.”)

Here was Senator Sasse in March 2018 about Trump’s tariffs: “Let’s be clear: The president is proposing a massive tax increase on American families…You’d expect a policy this bad from a leftist administration, not a supposedly Republican one.”

In a December 2023 New York Sun column, I mentioned Sasse on a list of those who could help fix Harvard: “He got the response to October 7 right in a way that won national attention and that contrasted with how Harvard bungled it. As an undergraduate at Harvard, he was on the wrestling team. He’s written for the Atlantic about higher education.”

In a November 12, 2025 post at The Editors, “What Zohran Mamdani’s Strategist Gets Wrong About the ‘Working Class,’” I mentioned that Sasse had worked a summer job detasseling corn, a reminder that class divisions and occupations are more fluid and less permanent than some analysts claim.

He had just been announced as a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal’s “Free Expression” opinion project and I was looking forward to reading his work there.

One of my former New York Sun colleagues, Mike Saucier, died in 2017 at age 46 of pancreatic cancer, 30 days after being diagnosed. It’s a terrible disease.

Perhaps among Sasse’s many substantial contributions to America and higher education will be adding some additional urgency to the effort to cure pancreatic cancer through some combination of profit motives of pharmaceutical companies, government funding of science and health research, and philanthropic support.

Recent work: “1619 Project’s Nikole Hannah-Jones Mourns Cop-Killer Who Escaped to Cuba” is the headline over a story I wrote for the Washington Free Beacon. You can check it out there if you wish by clicking the headline.

Billionaire exit: Alan Howard, cofounder of Brevan Howard Asset Management, has left the UK for Switzerland, according to Bloomberg, which estimates Howard’s fortune at $4.3 billion. “Howard’s departure signals growing unease among Britain’s home-grown talent as they grapple with higher taxes on everything from private equity investments to inheritances to capital gains under Keir Starmer’s Labour government,” Bloomberg says, noting that other wealthy Brits who have left recently include Ian and Richard Livingstone, who went to Monaco, and Jeremy Coller, who went to Switzerland.

It reminds me of that New York Times news article, “Some studies dispute the claim that wealthy individuals flee high-tax states.” Or the classic New York Times headline from 2013 (with a “common sense” column label, no less) “The Myth of the Rich Who Flee From Taxes.” Some myth. The only thing more mythical is credibility of the New York Times on the topic of taxes and mobility.

Correction: I-278 is the designation of the interstate highway that runs beneath the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. The Cuomo Bridge carries I-87 and I-287. The numbers were inaccurate and conflated in the initial version of a December 16 post here. The post has since been updated and now also includes a statement from a New York Times spokesman defending the Times article about the stretch of highway.

Thank you: The Editors is a reader-supported publication that relies on paying customers to sustain its editorial independence. If you know someone who would enjoy or benefit from reading The Editors, please help us grow, and help your friends, family members, and associates understand the world around them, by forwarding this email along with a suggestion that they subscribe today. Or send a gift subscription. If it doesn’t work on mobile, try desktop. Or vice versa. Or ask a tech-savvy youngster to help. Thank you to those of who who have done this recently and thanks in advance to the rest of you.

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