Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and a New York Times bestselling author. She is a recipient of the 2005 Bradley Prize.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is turning to Chicago for lessons in how to combat Gotham’s rising gun violence—Chicago, where black teens kill each other at four times the rate as they do in New York.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio last week announced his choice to head the city’s massive welfare agency: Steve Banks, attorney in chief of the Legal Aid Society. It was hard not to be awed by the sheer brazenness of the appointment. Banks and Legal Aid have spent the last three decades fighting to expand public assistance and housing entitlements in the city and to slow down the pioneering welfare reforms initiated by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1995.