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My wife made this video to celebrate our engagement a few months ago and it's my favorite thing: youtube.com/watch?v=HWkE3g0w…
Reihan Salam retweeted
Republicans redrew maps last year to favor them in a neutral environment. But that aggressive effort left their maps vulnerable to a Democratic wave, helping Democrats win so many seats as those gerrymanders unraveled.
From @PolicyEngineer and @JKetcham91:
.@JKetcham91 and I sift through the wreckage of the NYGOP, which has "conspicuously avoided any serious introspective or after-action analysis following recent election defeats."
city-journal.org/article/new…
Reihan Salam retweeted
When the LIRR strike stranded hundreds of thousands of people, @NassauExec attacked Hochul, who by all accounts was standing up for riders and taxpayers by driving a hard bargain. A huge missed chance to show leadership. nypost.com/2026/05/16/us-new…
Reihan Salam retweeted
As I warned earlier this year, NY Republicans weren't offering a credible answer to NY's exploding electricity rates (in parts of upstate, they more than doubled between 2019 and 2025!). A huge missed opportunity to speak to affordability concerns.
city-journal.org/article/new…
Reihan Salam retweeted
.@JKetcham91 and I sift through the wreckage of the NYGOP, which has "conspicuously avoided any serious introspective or after-action analysis following recent election defeats."
city-journal.org/article/new…
Reihan Salam retweeted
At the very least people who told you that serious democratic contestation was going to disappear (because of mass immigration or left-elite cultural power or Trumpist authoritarianism or the undemocratic Constitution) have been consistently mistaken.
teapawt.org/patrickc/status/211808…
It seems to me that democracy has on the whole worked very well in America over the last decade, and perhaps better than in any other major country in the West. National outcomes have repeatedly been responsive to underlying voter preferences on meaningful questions, and significant changes in policy have ensued. I’ve been reading Democracy in America this past week, and it’s striking how much it still rhymes nearly two centuries later.
Reihan Salam retweeted
3 - Harvard. Early last year, Harvard looked ready to settle & make some policy changes & move on. Then the admin made over-the-top demands & forced an adversarial standoff. Harvard’s strategy has been to wait it out. It surely feels pretty good about that strategy now.
Reihan Salam retweeted
Regardless of the partisan messaging, DEI is likely on its way back. Left-leaning policy professionals are still committed to race-conscious practices. They’re already putting together model legislation to “rebuild” DEI. For them, this is the easy higher ed agenda item.
Reihan Salam retweeted
Some Democrats thinking about 2028 might still spurn identity politics and opt for a race-neutral message. Others (Ro Hanna) are already announcing that “DEI is back!”
Reihan Salam retweeted
2- DEI. The term “DEI” lost the PR battle two years ago. It seemed plausible that universities would substantively curtail their diversity infrastructure. Now its clear that some will go right back to what they were doing.
Reihan Salam retweeted
One advantage the civics schools have is that they’re a positive policy initiative. Leaders of these schools should think about how to make the bipartisan case for civic and liberal education.
Reihan Salam retweeted
This doesn’t spell immediate doom. The key actors are the legislature and university boards. In both states, board members have to be approved by the senate, which Republicans held. Buckle up for some crazy appointment shenanigans.
Reihan Salam retweeted
1 - Civics centers. Texas and Ohio are hugely important for the civics school movement. These schools are the creation of state lawmakers—and they require the support of friendly board appointees—so the governors matter.
Reihan Salam retweeted
A few takes:
The actual ideological content of the non-Democratic coalition is genuinely up for grabs in a way that hasn’t been true in a decade.
The whole damn country is purple. Anyone can win anywhere. Democrats can win statewide in the reddest parts of the country: Mississippi, Kansas, Texas, South Carolina, you name it. And Republicans can win in the bluest parts—including Vermont and New Hampshire—even amidst a generational blue tsunami if they embrace a little heterodoxy.
It would be unwise to make inflationary populism the future of the right.
Demographics are not destiny. Illegal immigration is bad. The border should remain closed and aggressively policed. But you cannot deport your way out of every problem.
Hyper-online, right-coded slop mongering is just as politically toxic as wokeness—perhaps even more so.
At least we can take comfort in the fact that many GOP campaign consultants have made insane amounts of money.
Should I add pronouns to my bio? I really don’t want to go to the gulag.
Reihan Salam retweeted
Despite last night's blue wave, California voters appear poised to reject Proposition 40, a ballot initiative that would have imposed the nation’s first-ever statewide wealth tax.
The billionaire tax is on its way to defeat—but California will still pay the price.
@Shawn_Regan's latest: city-journal.org/article/cal…
Reihan Salam retweeted
California voters elected Democrat Xavier Becerra as governor, but appear poised to reject the billionaire wealth tax.
North Carolina voters sent Roy Cooper to the Senate by nearly 20 points, but approved voter ID, a limit on property-tax increases, and a cut to the top income-tax rate on the same ballot.
Then the five Sanders-backed Senate candidates underperformed.
Last night, voters punished Republicans. That doesn’t mean they endorsed the far Left.
@Jesse_Leg & @mattrshor on the midterm mandate mirage: city-journal.org/article/mid…
Reihan Salam retweeted
Apropos of nothing, read my three-part series from earlier today about why the changes in Texas are likely to stick, at least to some extent.
pollvault.substack.com/p/no-…
pollvault.substack.com/p/no-…
pollvault.substack.com/p/no-…
Reihan Salam retweeted
Having won an election because people hated inflation, I simply would not have imposed tariffs, badgered the Fed for rate cuts, run enormous budget deficits and thrown in a Middle Eastern war. But I appreciate there are different schools of thought.
