This week we take a close look at the damning decline in the quality of public education in progressive cities where, as Sandeep puts it, the "glaring contradiction" between a fixation on equity and shockingly inequitable results "drives me bat shit crazy." Our guest, Kelsey Piper, formerly at Vox and now a staff writer with The Argument, doesn't pull any punches either, arguing that "illiteracy is a policy choice.”

In a series of cogently argued recent pieces (links below), Piper has provided yeoman service in jump starting a debate, largely dormant during the years of the Great Awokening, among left-of-center commentators about the declining quality of public education in blue jurisdictions. Her work details how Mississippi went from dead last to near the top of the nation in fourth-grade reading scores –demonstrating particular success with poor and minority children – via a combination of mandated phonics-based curriculum, teacher training, and accountability measures, including the controversial rule that holds back third-grade students who fail to demonstrate basic reading proficiency.

Rather than joining her call to follow Mississippi’s lead, some prominent thought leaders on the left have instead worked overtime to try to discredit the success that Mississippi (and several other Southern states) has achieved. But Piper’s defense of the underlying data supporting “the Southern surge” in test scores is convincing.

Beyond the Mississippi Miracle, we go deep with Piper on other misguided pedagogical trends that have emerged out of progressive education circles, like the move away from tracking and the push to eliminate gifted and talented programs, as well as rampant graded inflation and the lowering of standards in the name of equity. And we delve into the history of education reform in recent decades, and why the accountability ideas that were ascendant in the Clinton, Bush and Obama years have fallen into such disrepute on the left.

Drawing on a shocking recent UC San Diego report acknowledging a massive surge in admitted students requiring remedial math instruction despite boasting stellar high school transcripts with A’s in higher level math classes, Piper explains how a cynical focus on credentials over competence — giving kids a passing grade instead of making sure they reach basic competency — is a catastrophic mistake that only delays accountability, putting students at a profound disadvantage in the real world.

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

Outside references:

Kelsey Piper, “Illiteracy Is a Policy Choice: Why Aren’t We Gathering Behind Mississippi's Banner?” The Argument, Sept. 25, 2025

Karen Vaites and Kelsey Piper, “Is Mississippi Cooking the Books? No, the Skeptics Are Wrong. The Southern Surge Is Real,” The Argument, Oct. 7, 2025

Kelsey Piper, “Education Isn’t a Zero-Sum Game: The Strange Equity Crusade Against Algebra,” The Argument, Nov. 3, 2025

Kelsey Piper, “When Grades Stop Meaning Anything: The UC San Diego Math Scandal Is a Warning,” The Argument, Nov. 18, 2025

And ICYMI, previously on BCB: "Whitney Tilson on Why Kids in Blue City School Districts Are Being Left Behind," Oct, 9, 2025

Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to bluecitypodcast@gmail.com

In November 2024, fed up San Francisco voters elected an outsider heir to the Levi Strauss fortune the city's 46th mayor. Daniel Lurie, a moderate Democrat and a newcomer to City Hall politics who largely self-funded his own campaign, ran on the promise of fundamental change, reversing course away from the permissive - and often performative - radical chic progressivism of the peak woke era. For a city reeling spiking crime and street disorder, he won by offering a return to what he calls "common sense" policies that involve getting tougher on encampments, crime, and public drug use, while beefing up policing and speeding construction of new housing.

Now Mayor Lurie is approaching the first anniversary of his tenure in office, and we want to know: how well is he delivering on his promises, and has life in San Francisco improved as a result? For answers we turn to San Francisco Chronicle editorial columnist Emily Hoeven, a relatively recent transplant to the city whose sharply drawn and impactful writing about San Francisco issues - and in particular about the failures and foibles of municipal governance - has quickly established her one as of the most prominent journalistic voices in the city.

Hoeven tells us that there are good reasons for Lurie's broad popularity (recent polling has his approval rating north of 70 percent). The mayor's relentless cheerleading for a San Francisco comeback, particularly through his prolific and much viewed output of Instagram videos that lean in to his "earnest dad vibes," has changed how San Franciscans are feeling about their city, Hoeven tells us. And tangible signs of progress are readily visible: crime has significantly dropped, new businesses are opening and some big new housing developments are coming online. "Overall, I do think the city is in a good place, and hopefully we'll continue heading in that direction," Hoeven says.

But she also emphasizes that significant challenges remain. and as the mayor's honeymoon with the public fades "it's probably only going to get harder" for Lurie to maintain the city's positive momentum. This is San Francisco, after all. Untreated addiction and serious mental illness remain a problem on the streets of the city, city government faces budget and labor challenges, and the city's notoriously fractious politics may be poised for a comeback. "The realities are going to become more real," as Hoeven puts it.

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

Outside references:

Emily Hoeven, "S.F.’s giant naked woman sculpture brought out the worst in our city," San Francisco Chronicle, April 15, 2025

Emily Hoeven, "People are ‘obsessed’ with Daniel Lurie’s Instagram. But will it actually help S.F.?" San Francisco Chronicle, May 28, 2025

Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to bluecitypodcast@gmail.com

Wards of the State: The Long Shadow of American Foster Care was a National Book Award finalist. Author Claudia Rowe exposes the chilling truth: the nation's foster care system is a "major gear" driving mass homelessness and the incarceration crisis in American cities. She shares shocking statistics—including studies that found up to 59% of youth who grew up in foster care have been incarcerated by age 26—and outlines how the system's structural failures lead to such devastating outcomes. Rowe joins us to share the story of this broken system through the eyes of the former foster care kids who lived it, and she argues for a fundamental transformation grounded in modern brain science.

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to bluecitypodcast@gmail.com

This Thanksgiving week, Blue City Blues sits down with former traffic engineer and urban planner Ray Delahanty, better known as “CityNerd” on YouTube. We get into the essential question: “what makes a great city?” Ray also shares his insights on the concept of "affordable urbanism" and gives us his honest assessment of one of modern transportation's most divisive projects, the "Vegas Loop."

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to bluecitypodcast@gmail.com

One of Seattle's most insightful chroniclers, longtime Seattle Times metro columnist Danny Westneat, joins us in this episode to discuss the blues that have settled on one of the country's bluest (and most educated and affluent) cities. For more than a decade now, Westneat wrote in a recent post-election column, both Seattle city hall and the voting public have seemed torn between the agendas of the city's two competing political camps: on any objective scale Seattle's left and center left may not be that far apart ideologically, but subjectively in the city they feel -- and act -- as if they are diametric opposites.

The result, Danny says, has been an extended period of discord and paralysis within Seattle's municipal governance, as voters yo-yo between the two poles, making it close to impossible for elected officials on either side of the divide to fully enact their agenda while briefly in the ascendency. In the elections two years ago, moderates swept out the left at City Hall, but this year the pedulum is swinging hard in the opposite direction. "This failure to choose has become a core part of Seattle’s identity," Westneat writes. "It’s why the city feels sort of 'stuck' much of the time. Directionless."

In out conversation, we discuss the city's struggles to come to grips with rampant street level fentanyl and meth addiction and the terrible toll it is taking on affected neighborhoods, and the equally deep divide over how to address the homeless encampments that have become a seemingly permanent feature of Seattle's streetscape. Danny relates the story of a homeless man in his neighborhood who ended up dying in a bus shelter as the local community could not come to agreement about how best to help him, suggesting that failure is emblematic of the Seattle public's conflicted psychology.

We also delve into the city's sharply contested mayoral race -- the outcome of which, at the time of our taping, hung on a razor's edge -- and discuss our impressions of Katie Wilson, the progressive activist (and self-proclaimed socialist) challenger to incumbent Mayor Bruce Harrell. And we assess whether we think (if she emerges victorious) she might be able to break the political logjam and address the city's seemingly intractable street-level problems, mostly born of what Westneat has termed the "prosperity bomb" that exploded over the city over the last decade

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

Outside references:

Danny Westneat, "Seattle shows it's a fickle city," Seattle Times, Nov. 8, 2025.

Danny Westneat, "After a homeless man;'s death, a Seattle neighborhood confronts the limits of helping," Seattle Times, Nov. 22, 2023.

In New York City, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani routed scandal-tainted Andrew Cuomo, completing his at first unthinkable, then inevitable rise to become the next mayor of New York City. His David vs. Goliath triumph has vaulted Mamdani from backbench obscurity to political superstardom; progressives around the country are swooning, seeing his success as proof that the unapologetic embrace of bold redistributive policies and vastly expanded government interventions into the marketplace represent the pathway forward for a reeling Democratic Party still struggling to come to terms with its failure to vanquish Trump.

Nor is Mamdani a unicorn. Increasingly in blue cities young, energized socialists are mounting grassroots insurgencies against what they decry as a sclerotic establishment too cozy with corporate power and billionaire elites. In Seattle, self-described socialist Katie Wilson is on the cusp of ousting an incumbent mayor once thought to be sailing to reelection. In Minneapolis, the veteran incumbent mayor just survived a spirted challenge from another Mamdani-like young, Muslim, democratic socialist challenger.

So is this the tip of a new political spear? Is socialism the future of governance in blue cities? And anyway, why shouldn't urban America adopt policies that make transit and child care free, freeze rents to increase housing affordability, and open publicly owned groceries, as Mamdani is proposing?

Because those are dumb ideas that ignore basic economic realities and are doomed to fail, contends libertarian Nick Gillespie, an Editor at Large at Reason Magazine and a sharply incisive observer of the American political landscape. After having progressive Dem pollster Celinda Lake onto BCB after Mamdani's initial primary win to make the affirmative case for the young, charismatic socialist, we turn to Gillespie, the author of a recent piece (link below) arguing Mamdani will make NYC a less vibrant and livable city, for the counter argument.

In our conversation, Gillespie argues that Mamdani’s rise is a function of the “symbolic grievances” of educated, relatively well off voters with unrealistic expectations, a rudimentary at best understanding of market economics and no grounding in history. We then turn to a discussion on whether individualism is passé in the US, on both the left and the right, dissect the mounting failings of the Democratic establishment, and then conclude with a look at what “socialism” really means in the context of blue cities.

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

Outside references:

Nick Gillespie, “Mamdani’s Socialist Mayorship Will Make New York a Worse Place to Live and Do Business,”Reason, Nov. 1, 2025.

Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to bluecitypodcast@gmail.com

On July 24, Donald Trump declared war on the homeless. At least that was how his Executive Order, titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets” was received in blue urban America by many homeless advocates and Democratic elected officials.

With billions in federal funding at risk of being pulled from Housing First providers, who operate on the assumption that helping homeless people address their underlying issues like addiction or mental illness is most likely to be successful when those people are first housed, the National Alliance to End Homelessness denounced the EO as “a broadside threat to the nation’s homeless response systems, people experiencing homelessness, and the providers who serve them.”

At first read, the language of the EO certainly seems to take aim at the Housing First and harm reduction policies that hold sway in blue cities. It requires “ending support for ‘housing first’ policies that deprioritize accountability” while calling for expanded use of involuntary commitment to get mentally ill homeless people into institutional care. It even raises the specter of criminal sanctions against providers who “permit the use and distribution of illicit drugs on property under their control.”

But is this Executive Order really a declaration of total war on blue city approaches to homelessness? Or is there, embedded in its carefully worded language, some opportunity for Housing First advocates to find common ground with the Trumpist right?

For answers we turned to one of the main intellectual authors of the Trump EO, Devon Kurtz of the conservative Cicero Institute. In our conversation, Kurtz argues that common ground is not only possible, but is the desired outcome.

He argues that Housing First too often means Housing Only, and that programs that don't make serious efforts to address their clients’ underlying issues cause harm and should have their funding cut. But he contends that more responsible providers in blue cities should see the EO as an opportunity to put more emphasis on needed interventions like addiction treatment and job training for their clients. But Kurtz acknowledges that in our current polarized environment, whether blue cities and conservative advocates of more interventionist approaches to homelessness can reach an accommodation remains an open question.

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

Outside references:

Trump Executive Order: “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” July 24, 2025

Devon Kurtz, “Trump Forces D.C. to Get Real About Homelessness,” Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2025

Paul Webster and Devon Kurtz, “Trump’s Executive Order on Homelessness Is an Opportunity,” City Journal, Sept. 25, 2025

Seattle Nice podcast w (former BCB guest) Lisa Daugaard, "Trump's Homelessness Exec Order: Read the Fine Print Before Freaking Out," July 27, 2025

Like almost everything else in present day America, crime in blue cities has become a deeply partisan and polarized issue. While progressives routinely downplay levels of urban crime and call for a singular focus on “root causes” like poverty and racism, Trump, with the enthusiastic backing of the MAGA law-and-order right, grossly exaggerates the dangers of blue cities. He has ludicrously referred to such cities as “war zone(s)” and "hellhole(s)" as, in a dangerously authoritarian escalation, he’s deployed the National Guard to Washington, D.C., Chicago, and more recently Portland.

So, what’s true and what’s not about crime in blue cites? And what works and what doesn’t in fighting it?

For answers, we turn to one of the country’s most prominent and respected criminologists. David Kennedy is a long-time professor of criminal justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, and the director of the National Network for Safe Communities. Several decades ago, Kennedy famously drew upon insights into urban crime spikes associated with the crack epidemic to devise innovative intervention strategies to interrupt the surging violence that plagued major American cities in that era. Recently, Kennedy authored an incisive New York Times op ed titled “What Both the Left and Right Get Wrong about Crime.”

Kennedy tell us that there’s some truth in the both the left and the right’s characterization of urban crime, but that each sides’ approach, conducted in isolation, is doomed to fail. Rather, he points out that much of the violent crime in blue cities is driven by a very small number of relatively easily identifiable people who are themselves likely to be both the perpetrators and victims of violence. Interrupting those patterns of violent action and reaction requires carefully calibrated, carrot-and-stick interventions targeted directly at those individuals, Kennedy argues.

Kennedy also emphasizes the deep social harms created by urban drug markets, and he strongly rejects progressive claims that targeted enforcement efforts to disrupt such markets just “move the problem around.” Finally, he tells us that while “broken windows” policing originated as a sensitive and effective approach to preventing serious crime, the concept has been fundamentally discredited as it morphed into the blunt and unevenly applied “zero tolerance” approaches in cities like New York.

Our editor is Quinn Waller.

Additional References:

2009 New Yorker profile of David Kennedy: John Seabrook, “Don’t Shoot,” June 15,2009.

David Kennedy op ed, “What Both the Right and Left Get Wrong About Violent Crime,” New York Times, Sept. 10. 2025

Please send your feedback, guest and show ideas to bluecitypodcast@gmail.com