Can Trump Fix Penn Station?

The Trump administration has announced a federal takeover of the effort to fix New York’s notoriously dysfunctional Penn Station. Observers have greeted the news with weary skepticism. As Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Eric Kober explains, the challenges include engineering constraints, astronomical costs, and political complexities that have defeated planners’ best efforts for decades.

Plans to move Madison Square Garden, expand the station footprint, or reconfigure train routes all face serious and costly obstacles. Through-running trains could help, Kober writes, but only if regional railroads get on board—and so far, they haven’t.

“The Trump administration has yet to reveal any innovative ideas it has in mind,” writes Kober. “For the moment, the skeptics have the best arguments.”

When Michael Fragoso interviewed to work for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2021, McConnell told him that they would have one focus: protecting the filibuster. They achieved that goal, but, as Fragoso explains, that doesn’t mean that the filibuster is safe today.  

“Unfortunately, recent efforts by liberal lawyers and judges to block immigration enforcement may undermine the political will to maintain this Senate tradition—unless the Supreme Court intervenes,” Fragoso writes. Read about what’s at stake.

The Muslim faith calls for pursuing justice, contributing to communities, and living with integrity. Yet, many advocacy groups cast Muslims as perpetual victims rather than participants in American life. One such group, the Council for American Islamic Relations, has faced legal and ethical troubles and is failing to advance American interests. “Muslim Americans deserve better,” writes Zainab Zeb Khan, executive director of the Muslim American Leadership Alliance.

Founded in 2019, the Community Service Initiative works with law enforcement to monitor and address anti-Semitic threats in the New York metro area. Last year alone, it flagged 221 threats against Jewish New Yorkers’ lives, Franziska Sittig notes. Read more about the group, and how it can serve as a model for other communities, here.

Charles Fain Lehman, Heather Mac Donald, Judge Glock, and Rafael Mangual discuss the Trump-Harvard fight, the New York City Council’s lawsuit against Mayor Eric Adams, and transit crime.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama has been notably absent from some high-profile events this year, including Jimmy Carter’s funeral and President Trump’s second inauguration. Her decision to skip the ceremonies sparked rumors that she was planning to divorce her husband, former president Barack Obama, who attended both events.

This week, during an episode of her podcast, “IMO With Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson,” she (sort of) explained why she wasn’t at Trump’s inauguration.

She acknowledged the speculation about trouble in her marriage but didn’t point to that as the reason. Nor did she cite a scheduling conflict.

“It started with not having anything to wear,” she said.

Well, we’ve all been there, but surely she could have thrown something together and shown up to support the next administration?

She continued, “So I was like, if I’m not going to do this thing, I got to tell my team, I don’t even want to have a dress ready, right? Because it’s so easy to just say, ‘let me do the right thing.’”

Turns out she just didn’t want to go. “It took everything in my power to not do the thing that was perceived as right, but do the thing that was right for me. That was a hard thing for me to do.”

We’re not sure what’s worse: the self-involvement or the pride taken in skipping ceremonies generally seen as customary for former First Ladies.

Had she gone ahead and attended these events, she explained, she would have been “keeping that crazy bar that our mothers and grandmothers set for us.”

You know, that one about doing the right thing.

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Photo credits: Adam Gray / Stringer / Getty Images News via Getty Images