August 10, 2026

Photo: Dean Majd for New York Magazine

“We’re in a time right now that is inconceivable to a younger version of myself,” says clothing designer Kimia Zakerin in our latest cover story. The culture of Southwest Asia and North Africa, known as SWANA, is ascendant in the city: the restaurants, the comedy, the magazines, the parties. In her essay, novelist Zaina Arafat charts how SWANA life has become a vital piece of the place now known as Mamdanistan, a shift that began, somewhat unexpectedly, with the 2017 Trump travel ban and New Yorkers’ rush to defend their neighbors in its wake. From there, Jasmine Vojdani taps into the “undeniable magic” of the club scene at parties like Disco Tehran. (Its Lot Radio is a must-listen.) And for a city where everything is food, Madeline Leung Coleman explores the rise of haute “Middle Eastern” cuisine — and how October 7 upended the politics of going out to eat.

Photo: Luisa Opalesky for New York Magazine

It can be tricky in magazine-making to get a subject to pose for a silly picture. Publicists are employed to stop stuff like this. Or a famous person has gotten the memo that it’s best not to goof off on-camera. On a shoot once — I was doing a story on Anthony Weiner and Curtis Sliwa’s budding friendship — the photographer tried to get the disgraced congressman to pretend he was fighting the Guardian Angel. Even he knew better than that. 

Despite these barriers, we have gotten some great pictures lately. In this week’s issue, there’s the Countess Luann de Lesseps, the star of Bravo’s upcoming The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip, spitting Champagne in one of her portraits. She was also game to eat a hot dog for the camera and kiss her reflection in a subway car. 

De Lesseps is a “socialite” who got her “title” by marrying a descendant of the guy who built the Suez Canal; she kept the title after they divorced and made it part of her public persona when she got famous on reality TV. It is perhaps unsurprising that she’s a ham. The same goes for the crypto billionaire Justin Sun. After giving the Trumps like $175 million in liquidity, he is now accusing them of fraud at their company World Liberty Financial. For his photo shoot in our last issue, the whistleblower blew an actual whistle. That’s just gold. 

Photo: Ryan Murhy/AFP

Okay, a hard pivot: For a recent column, I looked at how New York Democrats are trying to stop President Trump’s deportation campaign. There are some strong measures — such as laws to block local police from cooperating with ICE as well as the 125 centers set up by the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs to offer free legal assistance. But immigration advocates and attorneys I spoke to said it is a difficult time with ICE already patrolling immigrant neighborhoods. “Unfortunately, there are very few options for relief for people who are navigating this moment,” said Murad Awawdeh, a close ally of the mayor, who runs the New York Immigration Coalition. Just as the mayor and the governor cannot print their own money, they cannot stop the feds from carrying out legal deportations — even on law-abiding undocumented New Yorkers.

It may be seen most clearly in the end of temporary protected status for some 5,400 Haitians in the city. Even those employed by the city suffered the consequences as the mayor announced that they would have to be laid off after their legal status and work papers expired in late July. Meanwhile, Trump’s allies are pressuring him to deport people who lost TPS as fast as possible. And Homeland Security seems ready to oblige. When I reached out to the agency for comment about the end of TPS, it gave a concerningly casual one: “It’s closing time, which means you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

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Photo: Theo Whiteman/HBO

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