Josh Barro

2 weeks ago | joshbarro.com | Josh Barro

Dear readers,Four years ago, New York City Democrats held a ranked-choice primary for the election to succeed Mayor Bill de Blasio, and everyone knows the winner was Eric Adams, a moderate with no real administrative experience and a casual attitude about compliance with the law. What a lot ofpeople have forgotten about that primary is that Adams won very narrowly. In the last round of ranked choice calculations, he won 50.4% of votes to 49.6% for former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia.

2 weeks ago | joshbarro.com | Josh Barro

Dear readers,My friend Megan McArdle warns in a column that the social media platform Bluesky is a harmful bubble for liberals. By decamping together for Bluesky, she writes, liberals have cloistered themselves in a place where their views won’t be challenged. And because the conversational norms on Bluesky are so hostile and obnoxious — do you ever use AI?

3 weeks ago | joshbarro.com | Josh Barro

Dear readers,Yesterday, I interviewed Rep. Ritchie Torres at WelcomeFest, an annual conference for centrist Democrats in Washington, D.C.Midway through our conversation, we were interrupted by protesters from Climate Defiance, who have apparently moved on to Gaza as their cause of the day. One of the protesters kept screaming that Rep. Torres should be sent to The Hague for his pro-Israel politics. But I wasn’t there to talk with Torres about Israel.

1 month ago | joshbarro.com | Josh Barro

Dear readers,Donald Trump’s approval ratings deteriorated steadily during his first three months in office, with their decline accelerating after April 2 — so-called “Liberation Day” — when the president announced shockingly large global tariffs and financial markets puked in response.

1 month ago | joshbarro.com | Josh Barro

Dear readers,It’s been fun watching Ezra Klein patiently ask leftists how, if they hate his ideas so much, they would instead propose to make housing production cheaper. This exchange with Sam Seder is instructive — Seder is all argle-bargle about housing being expensive because it is excessively “commodified,” and yet he has no answer for why Texas builds homes more cheaply than California. Is it because Texas has smashed capitalism and turned housing into a non-market good?