{{current_date_full}}

Good morning,

🎶 Friday Listening: Snow Patrol - New York

Happy Friday. It's officially the Dog Days. Nobody is paying attention. I am going to take advantage of that with a throwback column, a diatribe that would never get past an editor on account of it being too navel-gazing — though I promise there's a point to it.  Back in the early days of this newsletter, we used to do this a lot. I would just yammer away about whatever was annoying me that day. Some of you guys will remember. Then we started to get subscribers... lots of subscribers... and I figured I should probably do a better job keeping a lid on this thing. But screw it.

I want to tell you a story about what it's like to be a Democrat who routinely votes against his own interests. Pour some coffee and strap in because we’re going long today.

Back in 2004, Thomas Frank wrote the prescient and influential book What's the Matter With Kansas? Frank's thesis was essentially that working-class voters shifted right, against their own economic interests, because the GOP successfully weaponized grievance politics and culture-war issues to mask their economic policies that favored the wealthy. I would like to propose a sequel to Frank's excellent book, based on the middle-class voters who shifted left, against their own economic interests, because the Democrats successfully weaponized empathy and virtue-signaling politics. I will call it What's the Matter With New York?

My daughter is about to enter kindergarten. At least, that's the hope. School starts in NYC in less than a month, and we still don't have a school for her. She's on half a dozen waitlists for various mediocre-to-above-average public schools in our neighborhood in Brooklyn, though her positions on those waitlists have not moved all summer. This has become a topic of increasing consternation and stress in our household.

As a good journalist, I've been digging into why the city DOE seems to have an inadequate number of seats for the number of rising schoolchildren under its purview. Part of it is that there was a significant baby boomlet during Covid, and all those rugrats are now matriculating into the school system (seems like something that could've been planned for, but what do I know). The other part, transmitted to me from teachers I have spoken to, is that to receive funding from the state, the city schools must keep class size at a certain ratio. And that often means denying spots to local kids in order to remain in good standing with the higher powers who cut the checks in Albany.

Let me back up. My daughter was accepted to one school. She was given a seat in a local elementary school very close to us, which would be a breeze to walk her to every morning. That alone is no small thing for two working parents who have to get a kid up, dressed, fed and out the door in the same hour they're both supposed to be at work. But here's the rub. This school happens to be in the “zone” of a pair of large apartment complexes that NYC turned into transitional housing for migrants during the Biden admin/post-Covid influx of new arrivals. Which means the school now primarily serves the children of those migrants, almost none of whom speak English at home.

I have nothing against these children, obviously. They are entitled to public education in the city where they live, just as my daughter is. But it is not acceptable to me, as a father, that my 5-year-old attends school mostly with children who do not speak the same language as her. Especially at this age when they are still learning how to communicate. When I bring these concerns up with my fellow self-hating Brooklyn lib parents, I immediately feel them start to shift in their seats. Nobody wants to talk about this. "Just think about the cultural enrichment opportunities," they say, before changing the subject, or my favorite: "She'll learn Spanish at least."

Cool. But I need her to learn how to read and write first. I need her to socialize with other children who speak the same language as she does. I need a teacher who isn't overburdened by having to teach kindergarten and ESL at the same time and can give her even a modicum of individualized attention at this rather important moment in her early development. I need her to not be heartbroken when classmates she has befriended vanish one day, Rapture-style, as has happened multiple times during preschool when their family was moved into different temporary housing — or deported altogether. I need her to go to a school where there aren't signs plastered on the walls about what to do if ICE detains your mom and dad.

And frankly, as a taxpayer who is a net revenue generator for my city, state and federal government — somebody who has never taken any handout or so much as borrowed a pencil from those governments — I believe I am entitled to that basic level of service. I'm not asking for the moon here.

Public education is the real Black Pill event for any parent. It's where you realize neither party has any solutions. When was the last time you heard a serious education plan out of the federal government, or a candidate for higher office? Nobody gives a shit about education in America, and the results speak for themselves.

Democrats' solution to failing or overburdened schools is to just plow more taxpayer money into them. OK, fine. Maybe one day that will work. New York spends $32,293 per pupil annually, or 91% above the national average (CBC). Our 4th graders rank 32nd in reading and 46th in math nationally. Where does all that money go?!

To the extent Trump pays any lip service to education policy, it's about shutting down the federal Dept. of Education. OK, fine. Get rid of it, who cares. But then what? The GOP answer is to cut public funding to the bone...and then hand out school vouchers, I guess? As a liberal in good standing, I've never supported vouchers because I don't believe in diverting funds from public schools to subsidize private or religious education. But if offered one of those vouchers right now, would I really refuse it? I would not. And doesn't that just make me a giant hypocrite?

I appreciate that my situation at present is not particularly interesting or unique. This is why people move out of the city when they have kids, specifically to avoid what I am dealing with. But it isn't until you really start interfacing with the thicket of bureaucracy that runs a city like New York when you realize that the system not only doesn't care about your plight... it actually loathes you if you are a taxpaying, contributing member of your community. It hates you.

You call a contact in City Hall to ask for guidance. They tell you they don't get involved in school-placement issues and direct you to your local councilmember, some lady who ran unopposed and who appears to spend most of her time attending marches for Palestine and "Indigenous Rights". When you finally get in touch with her "constituent services" office, they tell you there's nothing they can do either, but give you a phone number to some DOE back office where you can plead your case. When you call that number, the recording tells you the mailbox is full and to send an email. When someone replies to your email a week later, it's to say they can only help if your kid has faced a specific threat of violence at the school they're zoned for. The entire system is designed not to help the very people who pay for it to exist. But if I were a newly arrived migrant from Venezuela, stepping foot into the Big Apple for the first time, would I receive that level of blow-off? No! I would be offered a debit card, a free apartment in a good neighborhood, and access to a convenient public school for my children — by that same system!

The writer Gad Saad coined a term for what I'm describing: Suicidal Empathy. His thesis is basically the mirror image of Frank's: Modern western liberal societies suffer from an "inverse morality" that prioritizes the feelings or demands of outsiders over the safety and flourishing of their own taxpaying citizens. This is the poison at the heart of contemporary progressive politics (and something Aristotle warned about like 2500 years ago, fwiw): Empathy, and love for your neighbor, is needed for any society to thrive. But infinite tolerance is its own form of self-destruction.

And isn't that what it means to be a Democratic voter in 2020s America? I voted for Joe Biden — with enthusiasm! He came into office promising a more empathetic approach than his predecessor. He then proceeded to let some 10M migrants into the US. Hundreds of thousands of those migrants made their way to NYC, where the brand-new Dem mayor (whom I also voted for) was too corrupt and ill-equipped to handle the crush of new arrivals, and the federal government who allowed them in wouldn’t lift a finger to solve the problem it created. So the city puts these people up in hotels and apartment complexes (with my money) while the White House grants them work permits. Now settled in their new city, their kids now fill the schools that would have previously served the local children who grew up nearby. And if you point out how insane this is, you get dirty looks. In fact, this column would probably get me banned from my local playgroup if any of those parents read it.

I wrote a while back about how living through the Trump era is tantamount to being part of a public humiliation ritual every day. This is true, but maybe the real humiliation ritual is being a card-carrying Democrat in 2026 and voting for politicians who enact policies directly contra to your own wellbeing, but with a heaping dose of pathological empathy and virtue signaling that helps wash it all down.

Maybe my daughter won't learn to read, but at least I can be comforted that I voted for the "good guys."

Sign up for The 1600 in one click here. 🔔

Carlo Versano is Newsweek's Director of Politics and Culture. He has in-depth knowledge and experience covering a range of topics and stories over a 20-year career in the news business. Carlo joined Newsweek in 2024 after a stint at The Messenger. Before that, he was an Emmy-winning producer at NBC News. He is a graduate of the University of Richmond and the New School. You can get in touch with Carlo by emailing [email protected].

Subscribe to the 1600 Podcast 🔔
YouTube
Apple
Spotify
iHeartRadio

By Tom O’Connor

As President Donald Trump attempts to impose new demands for a deal that would put an end to the United States-Israeli war against Iran, the Islamic Republic continues to maintain a defiant stance, seeking concessions that would have profound ramifications for the region.

“Iran must be recognized in the world as a normal and powerful actor,” a Tehran-based security analyst told Newsweek.

There are several names floating around as possible replacements for the White House press secretary job that will soon be vacant as Karoline Leavitt leaves to spend more time with her family and new baby.

Among the names are Alina Habba, Kari Lake, Katie Miller, Spencer Pratt and Scott Jennings.

But we all know Trump likes surprises.

Who do you think the president will pick to replace Leavitt?

Watch all the possible replacements here.

There is a certain genius to it, if you squint hard enough. Colombia's week-old, Trump-aligned government gets hit with a 7.4-magnitude earthquake, and rather than simply letting the shovels in, it decides this is the moment to run a background check.

Rescue teams from the United States, Israel, El Salvador and Ecuador make the cut. Mexico's "Topos," the volunteer diggers who learned their trade in the ruins of Mexico City in 1985 and have since worked in 98 countries, are left waiting on a form somewhere. It takes Claudia Sheinbaum herself, the president of Mexico, standing up to say that her country's own military brigade was turned away before anyone believes it happened at all.

Colombian Foreign Minister Omar Bula insisted ideology had nothing to do with it, delivering that line alongside an approved list that happens to contain four right-leaning governments and nobody else, as if the pattern were simply too subtle for anyone to notice.

Somewhere in that logic sits the real absurdity: that a government facing hundreds dead and thousands trapped convinced itself, in some corner of its thinking, that El Salvador was the better-equipped outfit for the job. Not the Mexicans, the ones who practically wrote the manual on digging through concrete by hand. It looks, at the very least, like an effort to please the Trump White House and its ideological push in the region. 

Call it a coincidence if you like. But whatever the White House orbit touches tends to become someone else's headache to manage. Ask FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who had an almost secure path to reelection next year and is now traveling to every country he can, trying to shore up votes after a red card was reversed following a Trump call.   

I bet De la Espriella, who entered her tenure with some goodwill at her back, will now have to face a few uncomfortable questions.

A foreign enemy was “trying his darndest to bring down a coalition aircraft,” said a Pentagon spokesman. He didn’t mean bin Laden.

In this series, Newsweek maps the road to 9/11 as it happened 25 years ago, day by day.

"My first question to those who are on the 'leave behind' decoy plane would be, do you realize the president just isn't that into you?"

—Sen. Chris Coons, after President Trump confirmed reports that he switched aircraft while departing Turkey last month because of security concerns, leaving some reporters and Trump administration officials on the original plane.

Could a little-known House rule become the next political battleground? Jeffrey Toobin joins The 1600 to explain a scenario that has some Democrats on edge ahead of the midterms. Carlo and Jeffery break down election certification, congressional procedure, and what could happen if November’s results are razor-thin.

Watch the latest episode here. ⬅

Newsweek is part of the Trust Project, which focuses on honesty, accuracy and fairness in journalism. Read more about our best practices. To get in touch with our newsroom with suggestions on how to point out possible errors, please contact us at [email protected].