THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest cover features ‘Pierre-Emmanuel Lyet’s “Christmas Avenue”’ – The celebratory chaos of the season.
The Trump Administration’s Chaos in the Caribbean
Pete Hegseth’s conduct is a case study in how the government’s growing sense of heedlessness and unaccountability is shaping disastrous policy. By Jonathan Blitzer
Oliver Sacks Put Himself Into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost?
The scientist was famous for linking healing with storytelling. Sometimes that meant reshaping patients’ reality. By Rachel Aviv
How to Leave the U.S.A.
In the wake of President Trump’s reëlection, the number of aggrieved Americans seeking a new life abroad appears to be rising. The Netherlands offers one way out. By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE:The 12.7.25 Issue features David Darlington on the dangers of e-bikes; Carlo Rotella on A.I. in the classroom; Lizzy Goodman on the music of Shaboozey; and more.
Watching with horror from London last week as flames ripped through seven adjacent apartment blocks in Hong Kong, it was impossible not to think back to the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017, which exposed major systemic failures around UK social housing and eventually led to law changes around safety and accountability for high-rise buildings.
The comparisons with Hong Kong were not just visually obvious but also because the semi-autonomous city’s worst fire in decades appears to have followed months of complaints from residents about shoddy materials used in building works.
Hong Kong is of course a very different place to London, with politicians facing less public accountability in a political climate that makes it much harder for citizens to express dissent. But, as anger rises, hard questions are nevertheless being asked of authorities amid accusations of negligence and corruption.
Five essential reads in this week’s edition
The big story | Can Europe unite to tame Russia – without the US? Washington’s Putin-appeasing plan for peace in Ukraine has failed, but many heard the death knell sound for European reliance on US protection, writes Patrick Wintour
Spotlight | If Rachel Reeves goes, will Keir Starmer fall with her? British prime ministers rarely sack their chancellors – and when they do it almost inevitably leads to their own downfall. After last week’s budget, Starmer knows the same is true of him and Reeves, says Jessica Elgot
Feature | The dangerous rise of extremist Buddhism Buddhism is still largely viewed as a peaceful philosophy – but across much of south-east Asia, the religion has been weaponised to serve nationalist goals. Sonia Faleiroinvestigates
Opinion | From the West Bank to Syria and Lebanon, Israel’s onslaught continues Broken ceasefires, bombing, ground incursions and mounting deaths: Israeli imperialism is now expanding across the region, says Nesrine Malik
Culture | Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater: two men on the moon As their 11th movie together, Blue Moon, is released, the actor and director tell Xan Brooks about musicals, the legacy of Philip Seymour Hoffman and what being bald and short does to your flirting skills
During the Trump era, political violence has become an increasingly urgent problem. Elected officials from both parties are struggling to respond. By Benjamin Wallace-Wells
The Undermining of the C.D.C.
The Department of Health and Human Services maintains that it is hewing to “gold standard, evidence-based science”—doublespeak that might unsettle Orwell. By Dhruv Khullar
What Makes Goethe So Special?
The German poet’s dauntingly eclectic accomplishments were founded on a tireless interrogation of how a life should be lived. By Merve Emre
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE:The 11.30.25 Issue features Emily Bazelon and Rachel Poser on sixty former staff members of the Justice Department; Dennis Zhou on the novelist Solvej Balle; Linda Kinstler on neural implant technology; and more.
Bitter rows, implacably opposed delegations, threatened walkouts and then, hours after the planned deadline with fear of failure stalking the delegates, a statement towards which recalcitrant countries have been nudged into agreeing is produced. Cop30, which concluded last Saturday in Belém, Brazil, was little different from its recent predecessors, despite the growing urgency of needing to find a solution to our ever hotter planet. For this week’s big story, environment editor Fiona Harvey details how weak consensus was forged between states on the frontline of climate change and the petrostates that sought a rollback from the need to “transition away from fossil” fuels agreed two years ago in Dubai.
Five essential reads in this week’s edition
Spotlight | Is Ukraine edging closer to a peace deal? A whirl of international diplomacy was sparked by a US-Russian authored ‘peace plan’ to end the Ukraine war. Luke Harding and Pjotr Sauer cast a critical eye over the prospects for an agreement.
Spotlight | Trump, Saudi Arabia and shifting Middle Eastern sands Pageantry and trillion-dollar promises reveal how Washington’s regional loyalties may be tilting away from Israel and towards the Gulf, writes Julian Borger
Feature | Is Alex Karp the world’s scariest CEO? His company, Palantir, is potentially creating the ultimate state surveillance tool. Now, Alex Karp’s biographer reveals what makes him tick. BySteve Rose
Opinion | An improbable new adversary for Trump – the Catholic church Inequality, immigration and civil rights are the battlegrounds on which the church – and some other Christian denominations – are fighting the Trump administration, writes Simon Tisdall
Culture | Edmund de Waal’s loose ends The celebrated ceramicist explains to Charlotte Higgins why he turned his decades-long f ixation with Axel Salto – the maker of unsettling stoneware full of tentacle sproutings and knotty growths – into a new show
THE NEW YORKER MAGAZINE: The latest cover features Malika Favre’s and Rea Irvin’s Eustace Tilley – The covers for the fourth and final centenary special issue.
Not only is the department’s behavior not normal; it is also, as is becoming increasingly clear, self-defeating. By Ruth Marcus
Disappeared to a Foreign Prison
The Trump Administration is deporting people to countries they have no ties to, where many are being detained indefinitely or forcibly returned to the places they fled. By Sarah Stillman
The Airport-Lounge Wars
When you’re waiting for a flight, what’s the difference between out there and in here? By Zach Helfand
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE:The 11.23.25 Issue features Daniel Bergner on how antidepressants could be disrupting the sexual development of teenagers; Coralie Kraft on three people who fell in love with A.I. chatbots; Jordan Kisner on the power of screaming and the Greek heroine Electra; Tina Brown in conversation with Lulu Garcia-Navarro; and more.
Sixty former staffers describe an environment of suspicion and intimidation within the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency. By Emily Bazelon and Rachel Poser
Viewers seem baffled by viral videos of homes left to tumble into the ocean. But this is how we approach a growing range of “stranded” assets. By Brooke Jarvis
Research on adults who take S.S.R.I.s shows they tamp down sexual desire. Why aren’t we studying what that could mean for adolescents who take them? By Daniel Bergner
The release last week of a tranche of Jeffrey Epstein’s private emails raised more questions about Donald Trump’s links to the disgraced financier.
The US president had spent much of this year trying to bat away questions about Epstein while rejecting pressure to release the bulk of the files. But in an abrupt reversal on Sunday – widely seen as an admission that he cannot control his Maga base on the issue – Trump urged House Republicans to back the release of the files after all.
That was duly passed this week and if the Senate also votes the same way, the justice department will be compelled to release all unclassified materials on Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
So we may soon find out what Trump has tried for so long to keep buried. As David Smith writes for our big story, last week’s email release pointed less to a grand conspiracy and more to an elite world in which wealthy, powerful and privileged individuals operate above the law.
One thing’s for sure: despite Trump’s wishes, the Epstein scandal isn’t going away just yet.
Spotlight | Can methane cuts avert climate disaster? With temperatures breaching limits set out in the Paris Agreement, designed to mitigate climate change, experts say tackling the powerful gas could buy crucial time as the clean-energy shift stalls. Fiona Harvey reports
Spotlight | The US military’s plans for a divided Gaza A ‘green zone’ will be secured by international and Israeli troops, while almost all Palestinians have been displaced to a ‘red zone’ where no reconstruction is planned, reports Emma Graham-Harrison
Feature | What chance did one boy have to survive on Britain’s streets? When documentary film-maker Pamela Gordon first met Craig in Nottingham, he was 13 and homeless. She still thought his life might turn around, but she was tragically wrong
Opinion | Labour’s asylum plans are cruel, overspun and unachievable There is mounting disquiet among Labour MPs, while the vulnerable refugees at the heart of this story are living with a renewed sense of panic, writes Diane Taylor
Culture | Stranger Things reaches its upside down finale After a decade, the Netflix hit is bowing out. Ahead of its last episodes, the show’s creators and cast talk to Rebecca Nicholson about big 80s hair, recruiting a Terminator killer – and the birds Kate Bush sent them
