February 3, 2026

Now, on to the news…

Minneapolis is a powder keg. Two demonstrators against ICE’s enforcement of immigration laws have been shot and killed. Local groups are coordinating to disrupt enforcement activity, and ICE agents are on edge.

Manhattan Institute reporter Christina Buttons went undercover and embedded herself in “Defend the 612,” a local “ICE Watch” group that has instigated some of the chaos in the city. She discovered that the group has encouraged members to impede law enforcement and helped mobilize a protest that turned violent. “The group’s growth,” she argues, “threatens to stoke the city’s already-raging fire.”

App-based grocery delivery service Instacart is suing New York City over its minimum-wage law for delivery drivers. As Jarrett Dieterle and Santiago Vidal Calvo argue, the company has a good case on both the legal and economic merits.

Earlier this year, New York extended its minimum wage for app-based restaurant delivery drivers ($21.44 per hour) to grocery delivery drivers. In response, Instacart filed a lawsuit making several claims under state law and the U.S. Constitution. Instacart’s best argument, Dieterle and Vidal Calvo maintain, may be that the law violates provisions of the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act that preempt state laws related to “motor carriers.”

The law has also proved an economic drag on New Yorkers. “A successful legal challenge . . . would benefit not only firms like Instacart but also workers, through more orders and higher tax-free tips, and consumers, through lower prices,” they write.

Read here for more details.

What makes a city successful? Clustering highly talented people together in one place tends to spur productivity, but the most livable cities also manage the downsides that come with density, such as pollution, crime, and congestion.

New York has historically done this well. But the election of Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani signals a shift away from the city’s growth-oriented mindset. “The trouble is that the new mayor’s platform offers little to manage the downsides of density—for example, by allowing private capital to build more housing to ease the city’s chronic shortage,” John Ketcham writes. “Mamdani’s economic thinking assumes that enough of the superrich will always be around to tax and that redistribution can substitute for growth. These ideas reflect a deeper misunderstanding of how dense cities generate prosperity.”

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.

Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s outgoing governor, pursued an expansive higher education agenda. He aimed to reduce costs, encourage innovation, and address mental health, and he did so by meeting with college presidents and helping schools set goals and track progress.

Now Abigail Spanberger, his successor, seems determined to reverse these reform efforts. Read Andy Smarick’s take on what her strategy could mean for higher ed policy in the state.

“We have spent three generations teaching women that they should behave just like men while simultaneously teaching them that they should never have to bear the consequences a man would have to bear.

This is the result.”

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Washington Nearsider, commenting on women endorsing political violence

Photo credit: Brandon Bell / Staff / Getty Images News via Getty Images