New york

Monday

Ben Appel

On the ground at the People’s University for Palestine (formerly Columbia)

New York I’m on Columbia’s campus today. Sorry, I mean, “The People’s University for Palestine.” I graduated from the university in May 2020. My alumni ID allows me access. A couple of days ago, student protesters started occupying the South Lawn, in front of Butler Library. The police force was called in. Some arrests were made. The police were able to clear the eastern half of the lawn, but the western half remains occupied. Students have pitched tents. Hand-painted signs hang from clotheslines that stretch around the lawn. “Welcome to the People’s University for Palestine.” “Free All Palestinian Prisoners. Ceasefire Now.” “While You Read Gaza Bleeds.” “Admitted Students Enroll in Revolution.” Palestine flags and keffiyehs are everywhere.

columbia

Tuesday

Calla Di Pietro

A cultural summer in the city

New York is gilded in beguiling art. It has an excess of riches and though summer is one of the best times to visit, quenching your cultural thirst can be difficult, as the arts patrons decamp to the Hamptons and watering holes ending in -an. From museums to galleries to street art at subway stations or parks, each borough is a canvas, so much so that it is often an afterthought against a landscape of pavement and honking cars. Will you be uptown for the first Monday in May? While the performances on the Met Gala’s red carpet are an art form in themselves, the exhibit the gala underwrites offers plenty to check out uptown as the tulips bloom on Park Avenue.

New York

Friday

Cockburn

Barstool Sports’s Billy Football runs for Santos’s old seat

There’s something in the water in New York’s 3rd district, which continues to pump out interesting candidates for Congress. Of course, we had George Santos. Enough said there. Then after the colorful Santos was expelled from Congress in a historic vote, Republicans nominated Mazi Pilip, an IDF veteran and Ethiopian immigrant, who lost in a special election to Democrat Tom Suozzi, who is... vastly less interesting than his GOP counterparts. But now, Suozzi could face another colorful Republican — Bill Cotter, formerly known as Barstool Sports’s Billy Football, who joined the race a few weeks ago, and has been gathering the requisite number of signatures to appear on the primary ballot in June.

billy football bill cotter barstool sports

Wednesday

Jacqueline Sweet

Trump falsely accuses hush-money judge’s daughter of posting picture of him behind bars

Donald Trump made a claim of so-called bias in his New York hush-money trial on Wednesday: the daughter of Juan Merchan, the judge assigned to the case, appeared to have an X account with a profile picture depicting Trump behind bars.  There’s only one problem: the account’s veracity is dubious at best, with a creation date of April 2023. Analysis of the Twitter ID associated with the account shows that Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter Loren’s known Twitter account, that she has used since 2016, had its name changed and was set private at some point last spring. Loren Merchan’s current.

merchan

Thursday

Ben Domenech

Money, money, money, money: the GOP’s big 2024 problem

Welcome to Thunderdome. The Republican Party has new leadership, with North Carolina GOP chairman Michael Whatley and daughter-in-law of the former president Lara Trump taking over an organization that will, in reality, be run by Chris LaCivita. They’ve already made one controversial but wise decision in demurring on the hiring of Scott Presler, a ballot harvester popular with the MAGA crowd. But they now confront the harsh reality of the RNC’s fundraising woes: they’re well behind the Joe Biden campaign and the DNC. The Democratic president’s campaign account officially reported taking in $21 million in February, according to its report filed with the Federal Election Commission late Wednesday, ending the month with $71 million cash on hand.

lara trump

Saturday

Cockburn

Millionaire Scientologists crowdfund for Trump legal fees

Evangelical voters flocked to Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Now the former president is getting support from a slightly different religious group — or rather, cult. Millionaire Scientologists Grant and Elena Cardone launched a GoFundMe page on Friday to raise the $355 million that Trump has been ordered to pay following his New York civil fraud trial. At the time of writing, the campaign has raised $63,517 from over 1,500 donors. Cockburn wonders whether Tom Cruise or John Travolta are among them.  “This is more than a legal fund; it's a call to all patriots to rally in defense of a man who has never hesitated to stand in defense of us,” Elena wrote on the GoFundMe page. “It's about making a stand.

elena grant cardone scientologists

Thursday

Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

Spring’s hottest theatrical openings on Broadway

Since closing its doors during the pandemic in 2020, Broadway has struggled. The Phantom of the Opera lowered the curtain in April last year after more than thirty-five years. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical, Bad Cinderella, shut in June, less than three months after it opened, and other musicals, such as the tortuously-named Britney Spears-inspired Once Upon a One More Time, have fared little better. Meanwhile, productions are still scrambling to get butts on seats: audience numbers are down 17 percent from their pre-pandemic highs. And yet, for theater aficionados, there is hope.

theater
Ripert
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

Meeting Eric Ripert, chef of America’s best restaurant 

For Eric Ripert, cooking is like jazz. Ad-libbing, balance, motion. “One day the garlic is very pungent, one day it is not pungent. One day the onion is very juicy and sweet, one day it’s less, so you have to adapt all the time,” says the celebrated chef, who is the co-owner of Manhattan’s Le Bernardin, a close friend of the late Anthony Bourdain and a TV personality in his own right. “So, it’s very similar to music — I do not play the same notes all the time, I take a lot of freedom and liberties. Because I can.” Ripert is French but has — like his storied restaurant — become a New York institution. The chef lives on the Upper East Side with his glamorous, dark-haired wife Sandra (a real-estate broker who is Brooklyn born-and-raised, of Puerto Rican descent).

St. Patrick's
Hannah Moore

How to do St. Patrick’s Day like an Irish American

For a country like Ireland, as devoted to its faith as to a good party, the fact that St. Patrick’s Day falls during Lent poses a problem. The saint himself is said to have broken his fast during Lent, eating meat instead of fish, for which he was so apologetic that an angel came to give him comfort. Put your meat into a dish of water, the angel said, and it will turn to fish. This Patrick did and was very pleased to see that the angel was right. The meat had turned to fish, and he could partake of it without guilt. The Irish call this miracle “St. Patrick’s Fish,” and feel no qualms about eating a pork roast to celebrate the day. You can also keep a holy day and drink to excess, if you’re drinking for the right reasons. St.

Wednesday

Cockburn

Woody Allen pens new short story for the New Criterion

Manhattan-based literary magazine the New Criterion has published its first ever piece of fiction in its forty-two-year history. The author may raise an eyebrow: it’s legendary and controversial filmmaker Woody Allen. Allen has penned the short story “Breakfast Special” for the magazine's February 2024 edition. Appropriately enough, for both the magazine and the author, it takes place in Manhattan and stars Murray Tempkin, "a slim, bespectacled thirty-year-old writer, who on a good hair day resembles a scientist or an intellectual but should the weather turn humid looks more like some kind of meshuggener." The tale, which centers on a meetcute gone very, very wrong, bears all of Allen's hallmarks: neuroses, humor, romance, social awkwardness.

woody allen

Wednesday

Josie Cox

New York is a people pleaser’s hell

Oh, New York, New York. So nice they named it twice. It never sleeps. It’s New York or nowhere, they say. And also — start spreading the news — it’s a people pleaser’s hell. I’ve written for this magazine before about the absurd hurdles I’ve encountered as a British-sounding expat trying to come to grips with the salespeople and baristas of the Five Boroughs. I’ve described the well-meaning individuals who can’t — for love nor money — figure out what I want when I order a “water.” “Oooh wah-der!” they’ll eventually exclaim in a voice laced with pity for the poor foreigner, presumably just off the boat. But over the last few months I’ve become painfully aware of an even more inhibiting feature of this city.

New York

Monday

Jacqueline Sweet

GOP favorite for Santos seat settling lawsuits after accusations of not paying workers

A leading Republican candidate hoping to be selected for the special election to fill George Santos’s seat is currently settling a class-action lawsuit in California for unpaid wages — at least the second lawsuit for wage violations brought against his company in recent years. Mike Sapraicone, the owner of international security company Squad Security, was accused by two men of violating wage and other laws, according to a 2022 lawsuit. The lawsuit, not previously reported, is the latest revelation to emerge about Long Island’s Sapraicone, amid national scrutiny over how well candidates will be vetted by the Nassau GOP in the district, on the heels of Santos’s year-long scandal and criminal allegations.

mike sapraicone

Monday

Zack Christenson

Stereophonic is a love letter to creation

A chart-topping album. A drummer that can’t stand up straight without the aid of his giant bag of coke. Bickering bandmates and lovers. A rock band on the verge of break-up. These are some of the things on offer in just the first few minutes of Stereophonic. While I’m far from The Spectator’s resident theater critic, I do see my fair share of plays each year. Sometimes I’m compelled to write about them, but only when I’ve found something truly delightful. So let me start by saying this: Stereophonic is the best play I’ve seen in years.  On its surface the play is the story of a mid-Seventies rock band coming to terms with success while navigating tumultuous internal relationships with each other.

stereophonic

Thursday

Juan P. Villasmil

George Santos spent campaign money on OnlyFans, Botox, makeup and Hermès

The House Ethics Committee released its long-awaited investigative report into New York representative George Santos on Thursday. The document puts forward "substantial evidence,” showing that the congressman engaged in a “complex web” of criminal activity, knowingly breaking campaign finance laws. The committee, under the leadership of Chairman Michael Guest, has voted unanimously to adopt the report. In effect, the “substantial evidence of potential violations of federal criminal law” had been sent to the Department of Justice, which will determine what the next steps in the Santos case look like.

george santos

Monday

Amber Duke

Catholic priest demoted over Sabrina Carpenter music video

The Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn announced that a parish priest has been demoted for allowing pop singer Sabrina Carpenter to film her new music video in the sanctuary of the church. Money provided to the church from Carpenter's production team will also be re-donated to a crisis pregnancy center. Carpenter's music video for her single “Feather”, which was partially filmed at the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Brooklyn, New York, dropped on Halloween last week. In the video, Carpenter is seen dancing provocatively in black underwear in the church sanctuary and in front of the altar, which were decorated with pastel and neon props that featured obscene language.

Sabrina Carpenter in "Feather" Music Video (Screenshot: YouTube)

Friday

Bill Kauffman

The cemeteries of New York State

Prose may be deathless, but authors are not — and some of us honor those who compose with visits to where they decompose. I’m afraid that I am one such pilgrim: heck, my wife left her bridal bouquet at the grave of Jack Kerouac in Edson Cemetery in Lowell, Massachusetts. The epitaph for “Ti Jean” is “He Honored Life”; so, paradoxically, do those who make sepulchral sorties. The noted poet Steve Huff knows his way around a necropolis, and he brings us along for the ride in his new book, Resting Among Us: Authors’ Gravesites in Upstate New York from Syracuse University Press. Huff wants “to help raise Upstate New Yorkers’ awareness of our literary heritage.” New York schools have failed miserably at this task.

gravesites

Thursday

Nick Russo

Mocking murdered leftists is not based

At 1:30 a.m. on Monday, Philadelphia freelance journalist Josh Kruger was shot seven times at the base of his stairs by an intruder. He stumbled, bleeding, into the street and collapsed on the sidewalk before being transported to the hospital, where he soon died. Come 10:00 a.m., news of his death was reported by local outlets, and Philadelphia’s media ecosystem was in a full-fledged state of lamentation. Friends, professional acquaintances and public leaders poured their hearts out for Kruger. But the moving display of mourning didn’t last long.  Before Kruger’s body went cold, prominent figures on the dissident right caught wind of the murder and discovered to their delight that he was a vocal defender of Philly’s progressive District Attorney Larry Krasner.

josh kruger murdered

Saturday

Esther Watson

The Jimmy Fallon hit piece is flimsy

The late-night talk show has been a staple of American television for three quarters of century. It is a tried and tested formula that works beautifully... until it doesn’t — as Jimmy Fallon learned this week when Rolling Stone published the feature “Chaos, Comedy, and ‘Crying Rooms’: Inside Jimmy Fallon’s ‘Tonight Show’.” There are millions of people who would sell their souls to make it Hollywood — and the competitiveness and desperation has been exploited time and time again by those at the top. But unlike many of the abusive tales that have been told over the past decade, the accusations against Fallon are watery at best.  In fact, the piece has bears all the hallmarks of a classic hit job.

jimmy fallon

Thursday

Michael Bachmann

New York discourages migrants from coming

New York mayor Eric Adams is discouraging asylum seekers from coming to the Big Apple by emphasizing the city's expensive cost of living.  The mayor’s office released flyers Wednesday asking asylum seekers to consider cities other than New York when choosing where to settle in the country. The flyers, which will be handed out to migrants at the border, warn that “cost of food, transportation, and other necessities in NYC is the highest in the United States.” They also say there is no guarantee of “shelter and services to new arrivals.”  In addition to the flyers, Adams announced a new mayoral directive Wednesday that requires single, adult migrants to reapply to stay in the city’s shelter system after sixty days if they cannot find alternative housing.

new york eric adams migrants

Monday

John Pietro

Learning from the past to stop the next Jordan Neely moment

Daniel Penny is heading back to a New York courthouse today to face charges for the murder of Jordan Neely. Penny, with the help two other bystanders, held Neely, who had a criminal history and mental health issues, in a chokehold after Neely made repeated threats to other passengers on a subway car. Neely died during the incident — and Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg chose to indict Penny for second-degree murder, despite downgrading over 50 percent of felonies to misdemeanors in 2022. Crime has risen in New York City since 2020, and the city has done precious little to address it, though Mayor Eric Adams has been slightly more proactive than his predecessor, Bill de Blasio. Go back a few decades, however, and you find the Big Apple in an almost unimaginably worse situation.

daniel penny jordan neely gotham