A Dose of Fiscal Reality

Robert F. Wagner Jr., New York City’s 102nd mayor, was a big spender. By 1965, three years into his third and final term, the Democrat had increased city outlays by 30 percent. For the 1966 fiscal year, he proposed another 15 percent spending hike—and effectively insisted that he would not allow Gotham’s dire financial state to restrain his ambitions. Ten years later, the house of cards collapsed, and New York fell into virtual bankruptcy.

Wagner, a New Deal liberal, may not be the most natural comparison for Zohran Mamdani, a committed democratic socialist. But as E. J. McMahon notes, Wagner and Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller learned lessons from the city’s financial crisis that Mamdani and Governor Kathy Hochul would do well to study—to avoid having to learn the hard way.

Read McMahon’s analysis here.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in Little v. Hecox  and West Virginia v. B.P.J. In each case, a biological male who identifies as female is challenging a state law that restricts girls’ sports to biological females.

“The Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause doesn’t block commonsense distinctions that reflect inherent male advantage in sports,” Ilya Shapiro explains. “Nor can Title IX, which was enacted to give girls and women the same educational opportunities as boys and men, be read to require inclusion of biological males in female sports categories (and may well require their exclusion).”

Read his take on the arguments. 

Last week, President Trump announced that his administration would seek to prevent “large institutional investors” like Blackstone or Cerberus from buying up single-family homes. The goal—to increase American homeownership and improve housing affordability—is noble. Curtailing institutional ownership is also broadly popular. The only problem? It won’t work, argues Brad Hargreaves.

“Banning or severely restricting institutional ownership will harm renters, do little to increase homeownership, and risk reviving exclusionary patterns in American housing,” writes Hargreaves. Read here to learn why.

The Manhattan Institute is proud to serve as the Principal Institutional Partner for the Sun Valley Policy Forum’s 2026 Winter Summit in the iconic resort town of Sun Valley, Idaho on February 11, 2026.

We are thrilled to join Joe Lonsdale and MI senior fellow Christopher F. Rufo for an evening on principled leadership and the future of American institutions in an AI-driven era. Please click here to learn more about the Sun Valley Policy Forum and our partnership and to purchase tickets at a discounted rate for friends of the Manhattan Institute.

Last month, the Delaware Supreme Court restored to Elon Musk the $56 billion in Tesla stock options he earned by increasing the value of the company. “That’s good news—not only for Musk but also for everyone interested in seeing Delaware continue as the world’s preeminent corporate-law jurisdiction,” Robert T. Miller writes. But the good news ends there, he argues, warning that “everything else about the court’s decision bodes ill for Delaware.”

Read his analysis of where the Court went wrong, and why it will need to earn back the market’s trust.

In this episode of our “Who We Are” series, Ilya Shapiro, James Copland, and Rafael Mangual discuss the work of the Manhattan Institute and City Journal in the context of conservative legal thought and jurisprudence. They examine the rise and influence of the conservative legal movement—tracing its roots, chronicling some of its internal debates, and examining how it has reshaped American law, courts, and legal education. They also examine how the Federalist Society transformed legal education and elite institutions, and why significant challenges remain for conservatives seeking to achieve lasting legal change.

“And it is the DNC and its ilk that is protecting this anti-U.S. fraud in too many states.”

Photo credit: Andres Kudacki / Stringer / Getty Images News via Getty Images