Governor Kathy Hochul Should Veto New York’s Assisted-Suicide Bill

In the early twentieth century, New York law declared suicide a “grave public wrong.” But the State Senate recently passed a bill that would allow people diagnosed with a terminal illness to request a prescription for lethal drugs.

City Journal associate editor John Hirschauer argues that the new assisted-suicide bill—which shares its name with Canada’s notorious euthanasia program—would enshrine in law a mistaken view of autonomy and signal the Empire State’s abandonment of suffering people.

We’ve seen several recent examples of “lone-wolf terrorism” in the U.S. The murder of the couple at the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. and the assassination of a state legislator in Minnesota were both ideologically motivated violent acts carried out by an individual. These incidents are extremely difficult to predict and prevent.

Still, it can be done. Retired FBI agent Jim Fitzgerald and former federal prosecutor Tom Hogan offer some ideas for law enforcement on how to strengthen their ability to foil lone-wolf attacks.

In collaboration with the Sun Valley Policy Forum (SVPF), several luminaries from the Manhattan Institute will speak at this year’s SVPF Summer Institute, on July 1st and 2nd. This two-day conference retreat will be held in the premier mountain town of Sun Valley, Idaho. Reihan Salam (Manhattan Institute President), Jesse Arm (Manhattan Institute Executive Director of External Affairs & Chief of Staff), Heather Mac Donald (Thomas W. Smith Fellow and Contributing Editor of City Journal), and Senior Fellows Jason Riley and Abigail Shrier will be featured in the programming, along with other notable thought leaders. As a benefit to City Journal readers, Reserve ticket bundle registrations will be upgraded to the Bronze pass level, which includes access to a private cocktail party. For more information on the program, go here; to register with MI benefits, go here.

A group of House Republicans has threatened to let key provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) expire unless Congress agrees to increase the amount of state and local tax (SALT) that filers can deduct from their income. The maximum is currently $10,000; the so-called SALT caucus wants its constituents to be able to deduct $40,000, which would significantly lower their final tax bill.

But, as Ken Girardin points out, “the purported ‘damage’ from the SALT cap has been grossly overstated.” The TCJA slashed rates, doubled the standard deduction, expanded the Child Tax Credit, and rolled back the Alternative Minimum Tax, meaning most filers still came out ahead even with the cap in place.

Read Girardin’s take on why objections to the SALT cap ring hollow.

Jess Dannhauser, commissioner of the New York City Administration for Children’s Services, has won the praise of some within Gotham’s child-welfare system. But according to Sarah Font and Naomi Schaefer Riley, the city’s vulnerable children may not be as safe as Dannhauser’s boosters suggest.

“Dannhauser and his allies want the public to believe ACS has achieved a win-win: fewer child fatalities and fewer children in foster care,” Font and Schaefer Riley argue. “But the numbers they’ve released raise more questions than they answer.”

Last month, a study claimed that Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion saved thousands of lives. But a recent assessment states that those findings should be viewed as preliminary.

The debate should encourage Republicans to think carefully about how to reform the federal program, Robert VerBruggen argues. “The strongest case for Medicaid reform isn’t that the program serves no purpose,” he writes. “It’s that the current funding system is dysfunctional, unfair, and excessively costly, with many states gaming the rules to maximize their share at others’ expense.”

On the afternoon of June 7, while rioters were setting fires in L.A., assaulting law enforcement, and vandalizing buildings, Gavin Newsom was attending a swanky wine-tasting party in Napa Valley.

Christopher F. Rufo and Ryan Thorpe report that California’s governor attended “Vineyard Vibes,” a fundraiser for the PlumpJack Foundation, founded by his sister Hilary Newsom.

The episode called to mind Newsom’s November 2020 appearance at the Michelin-starred French Laundry restaurant for a family gathering—at a time when he had told Californians not to gather with friends and family for Thanksgiving due to the ongoing Covid pandemic.

Apparently, nothing pairs with civil unrest like a bold Cabernet.

Two important books published in recent years offer competing views on the debate over free trade, globalization, and neoliberalism. Matthew Klein and Michael Pettis’s Trade Wars Are Class Wars (2020) offers a pointed critique of the free market, while Phil Gramm and Donald Boudreaux’s The Triumph of Economic Freedom (2025) mounts a spirited defense.

The answer to our economic troubles, writes Sean Speer, may lie in synthesizing these two perspectives into a Neoliberalism 2.0—“an effort to reconnect economic freedom with democratic consent, markets with citizenship, and growth with the experience of those whom it’s meant to serve.”

“Like millions of others, I learned about Rosa Parks long before the term ‘white privilege’ was invented. Of course there’s no need to invoke that debunked construct when discussing historical racism in the USA.

I hope McMahon’s approach bears fruit.”

Photo credits: NDZ/Star Max / Contributor / GC Images via Getty Images