Focus, No Distractions, and Grind

Plus: Trump the Jacksonian, a big day for SCOTUS decisions, and more...

Is Eric Adams actually a good orator? "This is a city not of socialism," said New York City Mayor Eric Adams in a speech yesterday, referring to his challenger Zohran Mamdani's recent win in the Democratic primary. "I've been to socialist countries. This is a city where you can come as a dishwasher and you can own a chain of restaurants. This is a city where you can be a cab driver and then become a doctor. This is a city where you can go from homelessness to building houses."

"This is not a city where you use idealism to state you're giving everything to everyone for free," he continued. "There's no dignity in someone giving you everything for free. There's dignity in giving you a job so you can provide for your family and opportunities that you deserve. This is not a city of handouts, this is a city of hands up."

Mayor Eric Adams: We utilize the letter F for Faith, our opponents use the letter F for Profanity
pic.twitter.com/KGu8UgwQYP

— Eric Adams War Room (@AdamsWarRoom) June 26, 2025

"We utilize the letter F for faith, our opponents use the letter F for profanity," he added, before leading the crowd in a chant: "Focus, no distractions, and grind." Seemingly he means to focus on winning, but I kind of like it as a general mantra.

He's kind of…insane, and hilarious, but also, the message of that speech is just gloriously American. Handouts are not dignified; you don't need the state to provide everything for you. Choose your own destiny. It's kind of Arthur Brooksy, and evocative of 15 years ago in American politics when "work hard and pull yourself up by your bootstraps" was still the dominant mode.

His social media messaging on diversity feels similarly retrograde, in a way that's rather refreshing:

One of these campaigns looks like New York.
The other… doesn't.
We're the campaign of working people, real neighborhoods, and real progress.

Receipts below: pic.twitter.com/NHXU3k36zO

— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) June 27, 2025

Meanwhile, a pressure campaign on Curtis Sliwa—the Republican nominee who champions both your right to carry a gun and your right to don a sick red beret at all times—has mounted for him to drop out and…possibly give Adams his spot. But Republican county chairs reportedly told Adams this week that they will not support his bid to replace Sliwa, and it's not clear the legal mechanism by which a replacement could happen. He would need backing from three out of five Republican county chairs in New York City, but a late-in-the-game replacement would be undemocratic, subverting the wishes of the voters who elected Sliwa. "I'm the only one capable of beating Zohran Mamdani and I'm going to do it," Sliwa insisted to The New York Post. 

Instead, Adams will trudge onward with his plans to run as an independent.

All of the party mechanics aside, it's not clear why this matters so much given that we have ranked-choice voting in the state. Seemingly, party affiliation matters a bit less now than it used to. And Adams, as current mayor (and headline-grabbing Turkish Airlines appreciator), has plenty of name recognition, so it's not like the average voter will be especially confused when they gaze upon their ballot.

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Scenes from New York: YOU'VE HAD ENOUGH FOR THIS WEEK. LET'S NOT OVERDOSE!

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QUICK HITS

• President Donald Trump is not a man without ideology; he's a Jacksonian, argues Reason's Matt Welch.
• Yahdon Israel, an editor at Simon & Schuster in his mid-thirties, started a book club for straight men. "For the second meeting, he assigned a story collection by Jamel Brinkley, 'A Lucky Man,' which examines contemporary masculinity," reports The New York Times in "Why Did the Novel-Reading Man Disappear?" by Joseph Bernstein. "For two hours, the men discussed the book, and the theme. The next day, Mr. Israel had a panic attack. Two days later, he said, he was diagnosed with depression." If this is supposed to make more straight men read novels, I'm not sure the panic-attack angle is gonna work. That seems like a personal problem.
• The University of Virginia is being pressured by the Justice Department to get rid of its president.
• "China said it has further confirmed details of a trade framework with Washington, echoing US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick's earlier comments about a US-China agreement that stabilized ties," reports Bloomberg. "'In recent days, after approval, both sides have further confirmed details on the framework,' the person said. 'The Chinese side will review and approve eligible applications for export of controlled items in accordance with the law. The US side will correspondingly cancel a series of restrictive measures taken against China.'"
• New Supreme Court decisions likely to be released this morning. I'm following Mahmoud v. Taylor rather closely.

SCOTUS will issue its remaining 6 opinions tomorrow morning at 10 am.
-- Level of scrutiny applied to online age verification
-- LA redistricting
-- nondelegation
-- appointments clause
-- parental opt outs
-- universal injunctions (on birthright citizenship)

Buckle up!

— Casey Mattox (@CaseyMattox_) June 27, 2025

• I don't think enough people are attempting to tally up the cost of the programs Zohran Mamdani is proposing if elected mayor of New York:

He wants parity btwn daycare worker pay and public schoolteacher pay––so daycare worker salaries would need to roughly double. Then we're talking 1 caregiver for every 3 children––that's the state-mandated ratio for babies. This is an incredibly expensive program! https://t.co/qzJ7ic1Jri

— Liz Wolfe (@LizWolfeReason) June 26, 2025

• Good point:

It would actually be interesting to have city-run grocery stores that operate along the lines of state-run liquor stores, i.e. monopolize a high-margin product with negative externalities, and bake those externalities into the price.

— Byrne Hobart (@ByrneHobart) June 26, 2025