Solving a Fiscal Crisis With AI

American cities are facing major financial headwinds. Most ran deficits last year, and new municipal debt issuance hit a record $513 billion. Blame the pandemic, which wrecked budgets as remote work soared and commercial rents and travel collapsed.

“The outlook remains grim,” Danny Crichton writes, as “rising pension obligations, growing debt service, and escalating public works costs loom ahead.” Cities have responded by hiking taxes and cutting services, but even those steps fall short of addressing the deeper structural crisis.

Where can cities turn for solutions? Artificial intelligence. “Off-the-shelf tools can improve student learning, enhance public safety, and boost government efficiency,” Crichton writes. “With careful but swift adoption, AI can expand and improve service delivery, reduce costs, and help close chronic budget deficits afflicting major cities.”

Read more about how AI can improve life for urban residents.

Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign is focused on big plans—public grocery stores, a four-year rent freeze, and other major spending proposals. But when it comes to mayoral agendas, New York often has plans of its own.

“The tenure of former mayor and fellow arch-progressive Bill de Blasio in City Hall shows how quickly big plans like these can collide with structural limits, flawed policy design, and unplanned events,” writes Liena Zagare.

If he wins in November, Mamdani may also face strong headwinds—including “a hostile White House, budget gaps, a wary business sector, and a public concerned about disorder,” Zagare observes.

Read her analysis here.

Last year, a federal prosecutor in St. Louis indicted two real-estate developers on wire-fraud charges. They allegedly misrepresented their eligibility for the Minority Business Enterprise and Women Owned Business Enterprise (M/WBE) program.

Administered by the St. Louis Development Corporation (SLDC), the program, which has since been suspended, set participation targets for women and racial minorities in development projects in exchange for eligibility for tax abatements. But these race- and sex-based preferences are unconstitutional, as Ilya Shapiro points out.

“Even if SLDC had determined that [they] satisfied the program’s requirements, it could not have lawfully awarded them tax abatements on that basis,” he writes. “Thus, the misleading statements that the brothers allegedly made could not have made it easier for them to get the abatements and so cannot be material under federal law.”

The Trump administration has intervened and is reversing course on the prosecutions. “Nonetheless, the prosecution is an illustration of how far Trump still has to go in shutting down the broader DEI phenomenon in government,” Shapiro observes.

The panel unpacks President Trump’s latest executive orders on cash bail, National Guard enforcement, and flag burning—are they strong reforms or constitutional overreach? The panel also examines the uproar over Chinese student visas and considers how the U.S. should weigh talent acquisition against national security. Plus: Will the Travis Kelce–Taylor Swift engagement spark a marriage and baby boom?

“I am of two minds here. On the one hand, this would be a mostly popular amendment, and I am not at all sure of the necessity to free speech of allowing flag burning.

On the other hand, the Cross is almost as abused in ‘speech-action’ as the flag. Other religious symbols are, on fewer occasions, similarly abused.

Will this not spur calls for legislative action against desecration (in some way) of the Cross? Who will define ‘desecration?’ In an extreme case, used only for illustration here, will Catholics accuse Protestants of desecrating Crucifixes by removing Christ from them?”

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