New York Magazine June 2-15, 2025

1 For New York’s latest cover story, Nick Summers reported on Columbia University’s capitulation to political pressure from the right (“How Trump Defeated Columbia,” May 19–June 1). On Bluesky, podcaster David Roberts called the story “sad & poignant … the kind of thing that will serve as a mile marker when historians write about the loss of US democracy.” Author John Warner added, “I don’t know what to call this, a cautionary tale? An obituary? Columbia appears to have been uniquely vulnerable to the internal dysfunction and outside attacks and in response, they caved. It’s horrible all around.” Also on Bluesky, John Kuhn said, “I have a lot of affection toward the uni, where I got insanely intense and rigorous training as a PhD student in the English department, but…

IN LATE MAY, House Republicans jammed through a reconciliation package that would almost certainly balloon the deficit, imperil America’s credit rating, and redistribute wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest. Under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, millions of families would lose health insurance and food assistance, while the top 0.1 percent of earners would get a $390,000 tax break on average. An endeavor so straightforwardly greedy should present a serious political opportunity for Democrats. But while the GOP engages in class warfare by budget bill, Democrats remain mired in a partywide identity crisis, uncertain who and what to blame for their problems or how to talk to voters. As Bidenism—with its welfare-state expansion and antitrust enforcement—has failed to reverse working-class defection, moderate Dems have made a bid…

IT WAS AGONY AND ECSTASY outside Madison Square Garden on Thursday night before game five in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Indiana Pacers. The Knicks faced elimination, down three games to one, yet the crowd was daring to hope. In 2022, the team had been so bad for so long that after one first-round win against the Atlanta Hawks, fans acted as if they’d taken home the trophy. This season, the Finals have seemed within reach and the mania especially recalls the 1990s, when the Ewing-and-Starks squads enthralled the city. This time, bigger venues had to be found for watch parties, some of which were held in Central Park. A mildly disgusting TikTok-ready trend had fans slugging shots of honey. Timothée Chalamet has been at every game, keeping up…

WHEN NOOR ABDALLA came home from the hospital in April, she put the car seat carrying her newborn on the kitchen floor and burst into tears. “I walked into the house by myself with this beautiful baby, and I think it just kind of hit me,” she says, sitting on a gray sectional in her Morningside Heights apartment. “I have to do this alone.” Her voice cracks, and she reaches for a Kleenex to dab at her eyes. “I think I’m doing so well, until people start to ask me questions.” It’s late May, and her baby, Deen, is napping soundly in the other room. “Sometimes he’ll have the little crying fits where you don’t know what’s wrong,” says Abdalla. “I’ve changed his diaper, I’ve burped him, I’ve fed him—what’s…

ON AN OTHERWISE forgettable Tuesday in early December, I opened the washing machine and was hit with the overwhelming smell of fish. I pulled out a pair of pajama pants, and the pocket was greasy with two ruptured softgels of cod-liver oil I’d forgotten to remove. The whole load reeked like a cast-iron skillet of seared salmon. I was furious I could be so stupid and careless. I’d taken my lisdexamfetamine dimesylate, the generic version of Vyvanse, that morning, just as I had almost every day since I was diagnosed with ADHD a month earlier at age 35. The first time I swallowed the yellow capsule, I proceeded to paint my home office in two coats of White Dove, the result of a euphoric burst of energy that felt entirely…

NOT LONG AGO, ROB LOWE WAS IN ATLANTA, shooting a small movie he won’t tell me the name of, when he ran into a problem. “Our camera department was having a hard time getting certain shots because the dolly grip wasn’t hitting his marks,” he says. A Marvel project was filming nearby, along with three or four other large-budget movies, and by the time Lowe and his team arrived, the city’s most experienced crew members were booked elsewhere. “It turned out that our dolly grip had never been on a set before,” Lowe says. “He’d applied for the job because he’d worked a dolly at Costco.” For 25 years, Lowe has starred on one hit network-TV show after another, including The West Wing, Brothers & Sisters, Parks and Recreation, Code…