December 11, 2025

Now, on to the news…

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has made clear that he opposes state-mandated expansion of charter schools in New York City. But charter schools are helping their students achieve superior educational outcomes. “A Stanford University Center for Research on Educational Outcomes study found that the city’s charter students effectively ‘gained’ an additional 80 days of learning in math and 42 days in reading compared with students in local school districts,” Danyela Souza Egorov writes.

And the schools are growing. Today, they enroll more than 150,000 students—15 percent of students in New York City. Several cater to disabled students, and nearly 83 percent of the city’s charter school students are economically disadvantaged.

“A Democrats for Education Reform survey found that 64 percent of New York parents would like to see more charter schools—a critical mass of New Yorkers whose support the mayor-elect should want,” Egorov points out.

Last summer, then-University of Virginia president Jim Ryan resigned amid a DOJ investigation into possible civil-rights violations by the university. Now, he is accusing the school’s board of conspiring to push him out.

“It’s amusing that Ryan would try to turn his DOJ ouster into a whodunit,” John Sailer writes. Last week, Paul Manning, a board member and donor, said that he had told Ryan that not resigning could cost the university federal funding, but that it would ultimately be his decision.

“Rather than take responsibility for the fact that his institution had drawn a federal investigation,” Sailer writes of Ryan, “he conjures a shadowy cabal plotting his ouster. But the only cabal at work was the DEI apparatus that Ryan failed to dismantle.”

Read more about the saga.

This past spring, Illinois lawmakers pushed through a budget that included, among other tax-and-spend measures, a raise for themselves. State officials, including Governor J. B. Pritzker, claimed that the pay hikes were important for attracting and retaining talent in government. Progressive advocates argue, moreover, that well-remunerated, full-time legislators are more responsive to public opinion.

“In practice,” writes Steven Malanga, “states with full-time, high-paid legislators often fare poorly in independent studies measuring government effectiveness, while states that retain part-time legislatures include some of the best-managed.” This may be in part because part-time “citizen legislators,” who have to earn a living outside government, are more in touch with the concerns of ordinary working Americans.

“Continually boosting pay for legislators means more career politicians—but not better government,” Malanga maintains. Read his essay from our Autumn 2025 issue.

Internet pornography has been unregulated since 2000—and the harm it has brought to our society has been undeniable. It ruins relationships, hurts mental health, and has made people less loving and less energetic. “The social science is clear: frequent porn use pushes people to view extreme content, undermines public morality, harms users’ health, and ends marriages,” Scott Yenor writes. “Any solution to our culture’s relationship woes must address these problems—and their source.”

“I wonder if the day will come when the conservatives actually dare to be conservative. We will defeat the left not through liberal, airy-fairy notions of free speech, but by enforcing our moral code, which is correct. Then we can allow a little tolerance for tender consciences.

We cannot tolerate left-wing idiocy. We have seen where such tolerance has led.”

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Toryhere, commenting on the University of Iowa’s new Center for Intellectual Freedom

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