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Good morning,
Today, we’re looking at disturbing programs within a federally funded nonprofit, President Trump’s tariffs, RFK Jr.’s thoughts on chronic disease (and what he gets wrong), Graydon Carter’s new memoir, and the work and legacy of novelist Gustave Flaubert.
Don’t forget to write to us at editors@city-journal.org with questions or comments.
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The Center for Innovative Public Health Research, a nonprofit, claims to create “health education programs” that “promote positive human development.”
Sounds harmless enough—until you take a look at the programs. Manhattan Institute investigative reporter Hannah Grossman did just that, and her findings are concerning.
For instance, one initiative, Girl2Girl, calls itself a sex-ed program for teen girls who are attracted to other girls. “According to the program’s website, Girl2Girl texts minors about ‘lube and sex toys,’ ‘the different types of sex and ways to increase pleasure,’ and ‘what it’s like growing up as [a] teen girl who is into girls,’” Grossman writes. And it “explicitly advises them not to tell their parents if they’d prefer not to.”
Read more about the nonprofit, and the CEO spearheading these perverted projects, here.
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In enacting tariffs, President Trump has made clear that he wants security commitments from other nations, lower barriers to U.S. exports, and more manufacturing jobs. But it’s possible to expand trade and still accomplish these goals, writes Adam A. Millsap, a lecturer for Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Economics Program. Read his take on how freer trade can strengthen the U.S. economy and national security.
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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, argues that poor diets and environmental toxins are to blame for increased chronic disease in the U.S.
But Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Chris Pope argues that higher disease rates are really due to people living longer. Life expectancy today is 78.8 years—compared with just 47.3 years in 1900.
“The longer medical progress helps people live into old age, the more drawn out the period of bodily decline will be, with intractable and hard-to-cure conditions figuring more prominently,” Pope explains. Read more on why he thinks RFK’s assessment isn’t quite right.
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In his new memoir, When the Going Was Good, Graydon Carter, former editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair, writes, “You never know when you’re in a golden age. You only realize it was a golden age when it’s gone.”
Indeed, glossy magazines’ heyday, when advertisers would spend upward of six figures for one page, has come and gone, but Carter’s charming look back gives readers a glimpse of that vanished world. Read Charles F. McElwee’s review.
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French novelist Gustave Flaubert was obsessed with getting the details in his work just right, spending days on one paragraph and weeks on just a handful of pages. Perhaps this pursuit of perfection is what allowed him to make such a lasting impact on literature. “Flaubert slips almost imperceptibly between distanced, ‘objective’ narration and the inner lives of his characters,” writes essayist Brian Patrick Eha. “This is his central innovation, crucial to modern novelists.”
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“Yet it’s the same universities and institutions with speech codes, microaggression awareness and mandatory diversity training that shield and support the pro-Hamas rabble.”
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Photo credits: Anna Moneymaker / Staff / Getty Images News via Getty Images
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A quarterly magazine of urban affairs, published by the Manhattan Institute, edited by Brian C. Anderson.
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Copyright © 2025 Manhattan Institute, All rights reserved.
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