Keith Humphreys, a friend of the pod, is widely recognized as the country’s leading expert on drug and addiction policy. The Esther Ting Memorial Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, Keith served as a senior advisor on drug policy in the Obama White House and on the White House Advisory Commission on Drug Free Communities under President George W. Bush.

We had Keith on BCB last March for an insightful conversation about why the drug reform and decriminalization efforts that swept West Coast blue cities circa 2020 failed so spectacularly. So now, a year later, we invited Keith back on to share his insights about nascent moves by some prominent blue city mayors to turn away from a progressive-libertarian model of dealing with addiction, and instead embrace a more proactive, interventionist approach to street addiction that mixes therapeutic carrots with coercive sticks.

Over the last year, Keith has been meeting with and advising mayors like Philadelphia's Cherelle Parker, the city’s first African American female mayor, who herself grew up in a crack-ravaged neighborhood, has made a concerted effort to clean up Kensington, one of the country’s most notorious drug neighborhoods. Keith explains how Parker has set up a wellness court where arrested addicts are given the opportunity for rapid diversion as well as a Wellness Village where recovery housing is available to people exiting in-patient treatment.

In San Francisco, Mayor Daniel Lurie has also been moving to reimagine addiction policy, adopting a “recovery first” approach that prioritizes not just reducing harm but prodding the addicted towards recovery. Most recently, Lurie has launched a bold experiment with a RESET Center where arrested street addicts are detained until they sober up, with outreach workers attempting to engage them with services in the interim. And in San Jose, Mayor Matt Mahan, a previous BCB guest now running for California governor, has pushed to establish new interventions to engage people suffering on the streets including threatening arrest for those who repeatedly refuse offers of shelter.

“So if you have a failed War on Drugs followed by a failed libertarian policy, what’s going to be the next act?” Humphreys says. ”What I see the brightest, most creative blue city mayors doing is finding a new way… a city should aspire to more than just reducing overdoses, as important as that is, but should aspire to get people into recovery and back into work and back connected to their families, and some pressure is justified with addiction.”

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

OUTSIDE SOURCES:

Keith Humphreys. "Blue Cities Are Finally Showing Sanity on Drugs and Crime," City Journal, March 30, 2026.

Keith Humphreys, "Forced Drug Treatment Isn't Horrific. It's a Relief," New York Times, Sept. 2, 2025.

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In late February, Nicholas Bagley and Robert Gordon, who have both had extensive careers in Democratic governance – Nicholas was Chief Legal Counsel for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer until 2022, Robert most recently served as a Deputy Assistant to the President on the Domestic Policy Council of the Biden White House – went where few left-of-center commentators have been willing to go: they directly called out what they see as the excessive influence of public sector unions.

Those deep-pocketed unions are, of course, one of the major power centers within the Democratic Party, which may explain why even reform-minded commentators on the left, like the Abundance faction, have been noticeably reluctant to scrutinize their influence over governance in blue jurisdictions. But in a much discussed New York Times op ed titled, “Mamdani Will Need to Change How he Governs,” Bagley and Gordon broke ranks.

“If blue-state governors and mayors want to get serious about delivering excellent public services, they will need to do more than battle billionaire elites or embrace abundant housing and energy,” they wrote. “They will have to push back against a core constituency within the Democratic Party that often makes government deliver less and cost more: unions representing teachers, police officers and transit workers.”

So we invited Nicholas, currently a law professor at the University of Michigan, and Robert, now a visiting fellow at Harvard, to delve into why they think public sector unions have too often become an impediment to effective Democratic governance, particularly in big blue cities like New York or Seattle. Over the course of our conversation, they argue that while public sector unions play a crucial role in advocating for their members, they can also hinder progress by prioritizing generous pay, pensions and seniority over efficiency, accountability, and results.

They cite examples like Chicago's severe fiscal strain due to unaffordably generous pension benefits doled out to public sector workers, and we also get into the impact of police and teachers unions on efforts to reform policing and public education. We discuss the outsized role these unions play in electing Democratic politicians, and Bagley and Gordon emphasize the need for Democratic leaders to push back against unions in instances where they stand as an impediment to delivering better public services and governance.

“We wrote this piece because we think it’s important. If we want blue cities to achieve their promise, and if we want to have a viable and effective alternative to what the Trump administration is giving us, this is a conversation we need to have,” Bagley told us.

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

OUTSIDE SOURCES:

Nicholas Bagley and Robert Gordon, “Mamdani Will Need to Change How He Governs,” New York Times, Feb. 23, 2026.

Seattle Nice podcast: “Mayor Elect Katie Wilson says Seattle Nice is ‘Special,’” Nov. 20, 2025.

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Eboo Patel, an Ismaili Muslim, is the founder and president of Interfaith America, a Chicago-based non-profit that works to promote pluralism and foster cooperation across differences of religion. He is a fierce advocate for diversity - "America is a diversity project," he contends - and for the importance of identity to our conception of self. And yet he is also a sharp critic of DEI regimes as they are typically practiced on college campuses or within other culturally progressive institutions.

For our latest episode, at the invite of Seattle University President Eduardo Peñalver and as part of his excellent Presidential Speaker Series, we spoke with Eboo Patel live on the Seattle U campus. In the conversation, we asked Eboo to explain why he believes a conception of diversity rooted in pluralism will serve Americans better than one rooted in identitarian and anti-racist precepts.

"I dislike anti-racism as a paradigm. I detest it as a regime. I find it interesting as a critique," Patel told us. "But any point of view that insists on separating people into two categories - racist and anti-racist - is going to get itself into trouble very fast." Instead, he argues that pluralism, which he defines as five interconnected beliefs -- 1. Diversity is a treasure. 2. Identity is a source of pride, not a status of victimization. 3. Faith is a bridge, 4. Cooperation is better than division and 5. Everybody is a contributor - is a better foundation on which to understand the importance of American diversity. And the idea of pluralism, particularly religious pluralism, he adds. goes back to the founding fathers and the beginnings of the American republic.

As we get deeper into the conversation, we also talk to Eboo about why he sees American as a "potluck" and not a "melting plot," and why he doesn't think colorblindness works as a goal finding common ground across identity divides.

Our editor is Quinn Waller and this episode was produced by Jennie Cecil Moore.

OUTSIDE REFERENCES:

Eboo Patel, Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice and the Promise of America, Beacon Press (2012).

Eboo Patel, "Teach Pluralism, Not Anti-Racism," Persuasion, April 6, 2025.

Eboo Patel, "A Pedagogy of the Empowered," Persuasion, May 26, 2025.

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