The Charlotte Murder Was Horrific—and Avoidable

Late last month, on a light-rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, a man arose from his seat and stabbed a young woman, leaving her slowly to die on the floor. The attack took mere seconds, but Iryna Zarutska, the victim, seemingly remained conscious for nearly a full minute as other passengers looked on in horror. The video, which has gone viral on social media, demolishes the notion that America’s public transit systems are safe.

Public officials have long claimed that transit violence is “low,” but Zarutska’s death reveals that it isn’t nearly low enough. Nicole Gelinas reflects on the attack and insists that Americans should refuse to treat such violence as an inevitable feature of public transportation: “It’s time we stopped accepting random murders on our transit systems as normal.”

New York City public schools have lost nearly 70,000 students since 2020—a decline of about 8 percent. Yet the city’s education budget increased from $34.5 billion to $40 billion over that same period, yielding a per-student spending total of $32,284—highest in the nation.

For this record-breaking spending, the city achieves mediocre results, writes Danyela Souza Egorov: “Over 40 percent of New York City students in third through eighth grade failed to demonstrate proficiency in reading and math.”

Read here to learn more about what the city can do to turn things around.

For more than 40 years, the United States has admitted international students for “duration of status”—an indefinite period during which they are either enrolled in a credentialed institution or performing authorized work. But the Department of Homeland Security recently proposed a rule that would upend that framework and require a fixed, four-year admission period, extendable only by application.

Santiago Vidal Calvo argues that these proposed regulations would impose unnecessary burdens on foreign students and discourage the world’s best and brightest from completing their studies in America. “If Washington signals ‘study here, but don’t work or stay,’” he writes, “the U.S. could cede its status as the world’s academic destination of choice.”

Disability-rights advocates have long insisted that the disabled should be involved in crafting the policies that affect them. In recent years, progressive “harm reduction” activists have applied this concept to drug addicts, claiming that they are disabled, too, and should therefore be empowered to set drug policy. It’s a terrible idea, as Adam Zivo explains.

“Addiction can reasonably be considered a mental and physical disability because illicit drugs hijack users’ brains and bodies,” he writes. “But being disabled doesn’t necessarily mean that one is part of a persecuted group, much less that one should be given control over public policy.” 

Read more here.

Photo credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images