New Orleans • The Sugar Bowl was a little more than 24 hours away, and sixth-year Washington quarterback Michael Penix Jr. called a players-only meeting as their moment drew near. He walked to the front of the room on two surgically repaired knees along with edge rusher Edefuan Ulofoshio and delivered a message. The new year was five hours away. Bourbon Street was a short walk away. Families flooded into town. Texas fans, much to Washington’s chagrin, were all over the Huskies’ team hotel, too. This was their time to lock in and focus. They needed to block out distractions, though the midnight fireworks downtown made it hard to get to sleep early. He reminded them they’d been working their whole lives for an opportunity like the one they’d earned. They’d won their past nine games by 10 or fewer points and needed second-half comebacks to win three of them. All of it had carried them to this moment. He told them to be ready. No one was more ready than Penix himself, who connect...
Bashing New York City has long been a popular pastime on the right. Conservatives routinely portray the Big Apple as a dystopian wasteland. And the bashing has reached a fever pitch since Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, announced multiple charges against Donald Trump. How dare Bragg pursue these cases, Republicans ask, when crime is running out of control on his home turf? But New York crime isn’t really out of control. As in many places, crime jumped during the pandemic, but it seems to be subsiding; although Republicans won’t believe it, crime in America’s safest big city remains much lower than crime in, say, Miami or Columbus, Ohio. Still, even before the pandemic there was a steady if not huge flow of people out of New York. Why were they leaving? It probably wasn’t crime, although perceptions can be at odds with reality. It probably also wasn’t taxes; I’ll get there in a minute. The biggest factor, almost surely, was and is the cost of housing. About perceptions:...
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