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| By Bari Weiss |
It’s been seven days since President Trump signed his massive, sweeping, and extremely expensive “Big Beautiful Bill,” which our Tyler Cowen called “one of the most radical experiments in fiscal policy in my lifetime.”
Tyler was one of many contributors to our symposium on the BBB, featuring analysis and critiques from across the political spectrum. In case you missed it:
But perhaps the BBB already feels like a vague and distant memory. There’s been an astounding amount of news over the past seven days—and no story more tragic than a horrifying natural disaster in Texas.
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A preventable tragedy?
More than 120 people are now known to have died in the massive flooding along the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country. It’s a heartbreaking tragedy, which of course hasn’t prevented politicians from trying to capitalize on it. This one blames DOGE, this one blames Joe Biden—you get the picture.
But as Roger Pielke Jr. argued this week, the whole tragedy was both predictable and preventable. For one thing, it occurred in an area of Texas dubbed “Flash Flood Alley.” And the Guadalupe River has done this kind of thing before. Yet there were no apparent warning systems in place. Pielke makes a strong case for why public officials should have been more prepared and must now make sure that this never happens again.
As Congressman Dan Crenshaw wrote in our pages, the nightmare flood brought out the best in Texans. One example: Emma Foltz. A rising senior at Louisiana Tech who was working as a counselor at Camp Mystic, the famed Christian summer camp for girls that was devastated by the flood, Foltz protected the lives of more than a dozen campers when she guided them to higher ground.
She is one of many Texans who risked—and in some cases lost—their lives trying to save others. Among them was Julian Ryan, who died getting his young family out of harm’s way. And then there’s Coast Guard petty officer Scott Ruskan, who personally rescued 165 people. Read about their stories in Dan’s moving piece.
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Is this the end of consulting?
When I was in college, consulting was the hot career. It seemed like everyone dreamed of a career at McKinsey or Bain or Deloitte. These firms—and the people who worked there—made big money, even if what they did all day was never clear to many of us.
But Joe Nocera says those days are over thanks to two things: the Trump administration’s crackdown on government waste and the rise of AI.
If you want to understand how transformative technology and federal belt tightening is reshaping one of America’s most lucrative industries—and transforming our economy in the process—this is a must-read:
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Is Mayor Mamdani inevitable?
The 33-year-old socialist is now the Democratic nominee for mayor, which means he’s very much on track to run America’s greatest city. But he’s also facing some unusual headwinds, as Olivia Reingold reported for us this week, such as endlessly embarrassing social media feeds. Mamdani is the kind of guy who deploys shopworn progressive phrases like “culture is not a costume,” which makes his decision to tweet out videos of South Asian men pretending to be Jews during Hanukkah look a little hypocritical.
Oh, and he also identified as both “Asian” and “Black or African American” when applying to Columbia University, where his father was and is a radical professor. Mamdani is not black. He’s also not apologizing. Read Olivia’s report here.
But most observers believe that for Mamdani to lose, his opponents must coalesce behind one candidate. In an interview with Coleman Hughes this week, Mayor Eric Adams—who was elected as a Democrat in 2021 but is now running as an independent—made the case for why he should be that candidate.