May 14, 2026

Photo: Joseph Spiteri Photography

In his speech last week accepting the Manhattan Institute’s 2026 Hamilton Award, former Senator Ben Sasse offered an expansive vision of an America facing daunting challenges but blessed with remarkable opportunities. In the years ahead, he suggested, the nation’s biggest divide won’t be between Left and Right; nor will it be based in differences of race or class.

“The biggest divide in America,” Sasse maintained, “will be between the people who figure out how to harness these tools of technology and AI, amazing though they are, versus those who outsource their affections and their habits to the tools and the algorithms. For the first group, the future is thrilling. Life will be miserable for the second. It is our job to help steer more people into group one. . . . We must master these tools rather than be mastered by them.”

Read the speech here.

New York’s electricity rates are rising faster than the national average, and neither party in Albany has serious ideas about how to keep them from climbing even higher, argues Ken Girardin.

Democratic proposals have focused blame on utility companies and the Iran war. Republicans, meantime, are “too quick to reach for gimmicks,” writes Girardin. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle don’t seem to understand “the quarter-century of decisions that led to today’s pain,” including the 2019 Climate Act.

Read here to learn about Girardin’s proposals for lowering New Yorkers’ electricity bills.

Hoping to transform his state’s prison system into a Nordic-style rehabilitation program, California Governor Gavin Newsom approved a $189 million contract to provide digital tablets to all inmates, in hopes that they would use the technology to keep in touch with their families or pursue self-education.

“In reality, taxpayer-funded tablets have also been used for more lurid endeavors,” write Christopher Rufo and Haley Strack. Inmates have used the tablets to watch pornography, have explicit sexual conversations, and even groom minors, according to a former California correctional officer.

“In the words of one inmate, California’s death row is populated with desperately ‘horny’ criminals who see the tablets as a way to satisfy their basest fantasies and desires—all thanks to the California taxpayer,” write Rufo and Strack.

Read their latest City Journal investigation here.

“I’ve been called every name you can think of, on every platform, from X to TikTok—even once on IMDb,” writes Yael Bar Tur in our Spring 2026 issue. As an Israeli and a former director of social media for NYPD—a profile that forms “a Venn diagram of hatred that often resembles a full circle”—Bar Tur has seen the best and worst that social media platforms have to offer.

But social media isn’t reality, Bar Tur reminds us. Consider how, in 2020, the Defund the Police movement seemed triumphant, as politicians, celebrities, and influencers urged us to “reimagine police budgets.” Yet, at the same time, polls showed 73 percent of Americans thought those budgets were fine as they were or should even be increased.

Read her column here.