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Good morning,
Today, we’re looking at last week’s shooting in midtown Manhattan (and the rise of “Luigism”), the Section 14(c) program and disabled workers, Columbia University’s student union, and a D.C. restaurant that wants to “culture the Right.” Write to us at editors@city-journal.org with questions or comments. |
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Wesley LePatner was among four people killed in the midtown Manhattan shooting last week. A mother of two, she was CEO of Blackstone’s Real Estate Income Trust—a $53 billion portfolio.
It didn’t take long for social media to erupt in a grotesque celebration of her murder. Users seized on her death as some form of symbolic retribution, portraying her employer as a force for evil.
Such reactions are “part of a broader trend of class rage and Internet nihilism that justifies violence by turning innocent victims into scapegoats for moral fury,” Jesse Arm writes. It’s the same thinking that drives the considerable support for Luigi Mangione, charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year. “If the victim represents wealth, whiteness, pro-Israel Judaism, or institutional power,” Arm writes, “the killing can be framed as justified, or even glamorous.”
Read more about what he calls the rise of Luigism. |
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Section 14(c), a provision of the Federal Labor Standards Act, allows employers to pay disabled employees a subminimum wage. It enables these workers to maintain their dignity and live a normal life.
Even so, for decades, advocates have called for the provision’s repeal, calling the low wages “discriminatory and exploitative.” Last year, the Biden administration proposed a rule that would have phased out the program.
Thankfully, last month, the Trump administration announced that it was withdrawing that proposal. “In doing so,” John Hirschauer writes, “it preserved the jobs of thousands of severely disabled Americans who would have lost one of the staples of a ‘normal’ life.” Read his take on the move. |
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Columbia University’s student union, Student Workers of Columbia (SWC), “has long been a disruptive and dysfunctional force on campus,” Will Sussman writes. The union released a “statement of solidarity with Palestine” after the massacre of Jews on October 7, hosted an event last year with a pro-North Korea group, and saw its president get expelled in March for occupying Hamilton Hall in 2024.
It’s time for Columbia students to decertify SWC, Sussman argues; doing so would help to end the constant conflict on campus. |
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Just off Pennsylvania Avenue SE in Washington, D.C., Butterworth’s has quickly become a restaurant hotspot for political heavyweights. It’s “often described as the Right’s latest social clubhouse,” Isabella Redjai writes, and “it’s cultivating taste, not through aesthetic posturing, but through intentional design, local sourcing, and genuine culinary creativity.” Read her review.
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“People adopt to become parents, not to become caretakers of a ward of the state.”
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Photo credit: Leon Neal / Staff / Getty Images News via Getty Images |
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A quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute, edited by Brian C. Anderson. |
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Copyright © 2025 Manhattan Institute, All rights reserved. |
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