December 23, 2025	**Forwarded this email? Sign up for free to have it sent directly to your inbox. **

Good morning,

Today, we’re looking at New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act, the limited options Zohran Mamdani has to “freeze the rent,” why schools in the South are outperforming others, a big problem with child-welfare agencies, and a model high school in Brooklyn.

Don’t forget to write to us at editors@city-journal.org with questions or comments.

Now, on to the news…

Governor Kathy Hochul has come to an agreement with New York’s legislature on the Medical Aid in Dying Act, which she has said she will sign into law in January.

The bill is grim. It would allow those who are terminally ill and expected to live less than six months to obtain a prescription to end their lives. “By legalizing physician-assisted suicide, the state would formally concede that suffering can justify ending one’s life—a dangerous and macabre message that life may cease to be worth living once it becomes sufficiently painful,” John Ketcham writes.

Read more about the bill, as well as Hochul’s recent op-ed explaining her reasons for supporting it.

To make good on his promise to “freeze the rent,” Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani may have to remove members of New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board, Jarrett Dieterle explains. The board votes each year on whether to adjust rents on stabilized units, and late last week, Mayor Eric Adams appointed four new members. None is likely to approve Mamdani’s rent freeze.

Their opposition “would delay any potential action through at least the first year of the Mamdani administration,” Dieterle writes.

Read more about the obstacles facing Mamdani’s plan.

Louisiana is the only state in the nation to recover to its 2019 achievement levels in both reading and math. Alabama matched pre-Covid scores in fourth-grade math. And within ten years, Mississippi moved from 49th to seventh in the nation on fourth-grade reading scores.

What explains the southern surge? “The states seeing the greatest gains academically are also the ones doing the most to bring order and stability to their schools,” Neetu Arnold and Daniel Buck write. “A teacher can use the best curriculum, and states can make schools use the best instructional methods, but if classrooms are chaotic, then students will not learn.”

Read more about the states’ discipline methods here.

Child-welfare agencies have long preferred to place children with “kin”—extended family members with whom they likely already have a relationship.

But the agencies “have stretched the definition of kin to the point of absurdity,” Naomi Schafer Riley writes. “I’ve written about how relatives who have had no contact with a child or who live on the other side of the country are taking custody of children over non-relative foster parents who have cared for them for years.”

Read more about the practice and how it can go horribly wrong.

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.

Established in 1955, Beth Rivkah is an all-girls high school in Brooklyn serving the Chabad community. “The school combines academic rigor with a deep commitment to the values and religious beliefs of the community that it serves,” Ray Domanico writes. He argues that other schools should take note—even those serving other communities. “Each week, students spend part of the day assisting someone in need—a new mother requiring help around the house, say, or an elderly person needing help with groceries, or a neighbor looking for a house-sitter.”

Read more about the school, its values, and what Domanico learned from some of his conversations there.

• Into the Mind of the Conspiracy Theorist – Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow James B. Meigs in the Wall Street Journal
• Rescheduling Marijuana Is an Enormous Mistake – City Journal Senior Editor Charles Fain Lehman in The Atlantic
• NYC Schools Are Losing Students and Burning Cash. Mamdani Could Make the Situation Worse. – Manhattan Institute Fellow Danyela Souza Egorov in Reason

/ **Reader Spotlight **

“I find it so amusing how these same Zoomers who claim to have no money always seem to have the latest iPhone, subscriptions to multiple streaming services, and think nothing of dropping $10 on a foamy concoction at Starbucks.

The concept of sacrifice is anathema to them.”

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A quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute, edited by Brian C. Anderson.

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