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April 26, 2025
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No. 302
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In This Week’s Issue
THE ART OF THE STEAL

No one has done dodgy presidential crypto with the scale, bravado, and corruption as Trump, but that hasn’t stopped other strongmen from trying, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei among them …

BAD WILL HUNTING

The far right’s latest crusade? Arguing that Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of rape and sexual assault by more than 80 women, is a victim of the “overzealous” #MeToo movement …

A KILLER COURSE LOAD

With the trial of alleged murderer Bryan Kohberger months away, the prosecution could argue that the former criminal-justice student was driven to act to impress his female professor …

HIGH TIDE

Due to an increase in security patrolling the Atlantic Ocean, South American smugglers have lately taken to using submarines—or “ghost ships”—to traffic cocaine, other drugs, and maybe even eggs to Europe and the Middle East …

HEADS IN THE SAND

The Saudi royal family is funding all-expenses-paid Birthright Israel–style trips for students at Harvard, Yale, and Oxford, among others, seemingly in an effort to whitewash the country’s woeful human-rights record …

A COUNTRY APART

From Malibu to Maine, Oklahoma to Ohio, Canadian journalist Stephen Marche remembers an America rife with illusions and false promises, but one that was, above all, fun. Now he says the party’s over …

PLAY IT AS ID LAYS

Following a slew of recent biographies, yet another Joan Didion book has arrived, this time in the form of the writer’s deeply personal recollections from her time in psychoanalysis. James Wolcott puts the book on the couch …

BUT, WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

The pricey guardians to Eton’s Chinese students … a secret tycoon Ely Callaway kept until his death … the Washington, D.C., social club where political rivals rub shoulders … Nabokov, McInerney, and more of Sloane Crosley’s favorite paperbacks … a training school for elephants … Who was this week’s biggest Attention Whore?

But First …
Issue No. 302

The View from Here Donald and Melania Trump’s foray into crypto may be the biggest financial scandal in presidential history—and it’s happening in plain sight

By Jacob Silverman
Read On
Barry Blitt’s Sketchbook
A Good Sport

The Last Renaissance Man Ely Callaway went from running the Burlington textile company to founding ultra-successful wine and golf businesses—all while hiding a lifelong secret

By Mark Seal
Read On
In Cold Blood

The Eyes of a Killer: Part IX More than two years after the murder of four University of Idaho students, prosecutors are ready to offer a motive. An AIR MAIL exclusive

By Howard Blum
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY CHOP CHOPPISH SHOP
Read On
Little Britain

Good-bye, Mr. Xi When rich Chinese families send their children to English boarding schools, they pay for guardians to take care of their offsprings’ logistical—and emotional—needs

By Ashley Baker
Read On
Air Supply

The Mother Lode

AIR SUPPLY has Mother’s Day gifts big and small to make the moms in your life feel great: a silk pillowcase from FluffCo, a vintage Hermès pin, Nécessaire Hand Retinol, and more
Shop
Photo: Today/Shutterstock (Princess Diana with Princes Harry and William)
Guest Edit

Thomas Keller’s Favorite Things The chef who set a new standard of cuisine and hospitality with the French Laundry, in Napa, and Per Se, in New York City, shares his taste for a Fellow electric kettle, Warby Parker progressive lenses, and more

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The Far-Right Stuff

A New Script for Harvey Weinstein Right-wing provocateurs have embraced the disgraced Hollywood producer and see his re-trial as a chance to destroy #MeToo forever

By Liz Dye
Read On
T.G.I.S.

The Attention-Whore Index Kristi Noem gets robbed, J. D. Vance kills the Pope (possibly), and Pete Hegseth stumblebums around the Pentagon

By George Kalogerakis
Read On
Best
READ Theater Kid It’s hard to beat Moss Hart’s Act One for best Broadway memoir, but Jeffrey Seller’s Theater Kid is very much in the running… SHOP Prada There’s no need to leave men languishing in a comfy chair outside the fitting room in Prada’s women’s-wear flagship on… VISIT Van Cleef & Arpels In New York, spring has arrived in full force, especially at Rockefeller Center for Fifth Avenue Blooms, where Van Cleef & Arpels… WATCH Drop Dead City With time, the story of New York’s 1975 fiscal crisis has narrowed into a tale of the Three Wise Men: Felix Rohatyn, the banker;… spritz Habit Rouge If your idea of a men’s scent is more James Bond in black-tie than Lil Baby in chains (as he appeared in an ad for Axe), then… LISTEN Birdly Serenade When Randall Poster—the music supervisor of choice for Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, and, among countless others… READ Theater Kid It’s hard to beat Moss Hart’s Act One for best Broadway memoir, but Jeffrey Seller’s Theater Kid is very much in the running… SHOP Prada There’s no need to leave men languishing in a comfy chair outside the fitting room in Prada’s women’s-wear flagship on… VISIT Van Cleef & Arpels In New York, spring has arrived in full force, especially at Rockefeller Center for Fifth Avenue Blooms, where Van Cleef & Arpels… WATCH Drop Dead City With time, the story of New York’s 1975 fiscal crisis has narrowed into a tale of the Three Wise Men: Felix Rohatyn, the banker;… spritz Habit Rouge If your idea of a men’s scent is more James Bond in black-tie than Lil Baby in chains (as he appeared in an ad for Axe), then… LISTEN Birdly Serenade When Randall Poster—the music supervisor of choice for Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, and, among countless others…
Schools for Scandal

The Potemkin Kingdom Gateway KSA offers students from the world’s top universities all-expenses-paid luxury trips to Saudi Arabia. What’s the catch?

By Sage Lattman
Read On
Lines of Business

20,000 Kilos Under the Sea With Europe’s anti-narcotics agencies watching the waters, drug traffickers have taken to using submarines

By Dana Vachon
Read On
Modern Times

Red, White, and Blues America was once a fun, free, brave, and happy melting pot, but, as one Canadian argues, those days are seemingly over—at least for now

By Stephen Marche
Read On
Swamp Society

Fraternizing with the Enemy At Ned’s Club in Washington, D.C., political rivals rub shoulders without rancor—most of the time

By Alyson Krueger
Read On
Books
James Wolcott On

Notes to John

by Joan Didion
Read On
Second Wind

An Ode to the Humble Paperback From Lady Chatterley’s Lover to Bright Lights, Big City to A Little Life, books that were better the next time around

By Sloane Crosley
Read On
Highlight
A brooch by Cartier London, in amethyst, sapphire, and diamond, 1933.

The Family Jewels

“We don’t make jewels,” my great-grandfather Jacques Cartier explained a century ago. “We create them … one by one for each client.” As head of the jeweler’s London branch for the first half of the 20th century, Jacques lived by the principle that “the guiding force of art, beauty, and originality” infused everything Cartier created. READ ON

Read On
Small Talk
“I voted for him because I liked his impalement policy, but I never thought this would happen.”
“I voted for him because I liked his impalement policy, but I never thought this would happen.”
Listen

The First $100 Million and the First 100 Days On this week’s podcast, Jacob Silverman details Trump’s epic grift

Read On
Open Book

Reality Check From the French Proverbe to the English Experiment, a new coffee-table book surveys the avant-garde journals that paved the way for the 1920s’ Surrealist movement

10
The cover of Minotaure magazine’s first issue, designed by Pablo Picasso, 1933.
The front page of a 1938 issue of the satirical newspaper Il Settebello.
Top, English Landscape, a photograph by Humphrey Jennings in the magazine London Bulletin, 1938; above, a painting by Salvador Dalí printed in Minotaure, 1936.
The inside cover of La Révolution Surréaliste magazine’s first issue, 1924.
A piece by Joan Miró in the literary journal Cahiers d’Art, 1936.
The cover of Proverbe magazine’s fourth issue, circa 1920.
The cover of a 1928 issue of Experiment magazine, by Misha Black.
Top, a detail from Max Ernst’s early Surrealist painting Au Rendez-vous des Amis, 1922; above, a photograph by Man Ray in Experiment, 1929.
A page in La Révolution Surréaliste, with text by André Breton and art by Giorgio de Chirico, 1926.
Que Tous les Petits Génies de l’Enfance, a print by Ernst in Minotaure, 1936.
Read On
Close-up

Mimi Keene The British actress wanted to become a veterinarian. Then roles alongside Gillian Anderson, in Sex Education, and Anjelica Huston, in Towards Zero, came calling

By Paulina Prosnitz
Read On
Inside Story

Elephant Man The secret history of the Asian elephants that Belgium’s Leopold II dispatched to Africa in service of his ruthless colonial vision

By Sophy Roberts
Read On
Small Talk
“He’s going to ask you if clipper ship is the seafood special. Just laugh.”
“He’s going to ask you if clipper ship is the seafood special. Just laugh.”
View With a Room

Picture Perfect Is the art-filled Benesse House, on the island of Naoshima, the most exciting place to stay in Japan? Our expert makes his case

By Pico Iyer
Read On
Highlight

Clarion Top Notes, Plus His Head on a Cake Stand Elza van den Heever, the Met’s new Salome, delivers the whole package

By Matthew Gurewitsch
Read On
The Perfect Ending

Colin Callender

The film, television, and theater producer answers 40 of life’s most pressing questions
Read On
Joe McKendry’s Sketchbook
Rest in peace, Pope Francis. My illustration is based on Giotto’s fresco of St. Francis of Assisi, the 13th-century friar who inspired the late Pope’s name.
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In Memoriam

Peter Bogdanovich Duncan Hannah Douglas McGrath Richard David Story André Leon Talley David Yaffe

Issue No. 302
April 26, 2025
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Issue No. 302
April 26, 2025
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