2024-2026 things changed dramatically across our society: elite cultural institutions, publishing houses, politics, social media, NYC, academia, and as I discuss here, The Met. Thank you for having me @cbsla

This news is very upsetting to me. Galliano did not just make antisemitic comments. He IS an antisemite. A crazy talented designer but a VILE human who does not deserve forgiveness. In 2019 I witnessed one of his rants. This time, at the Henri Chenot spa in Merano where there is no alcohol to blame…no drugs…not even sugar or caffeine. Galliano was sober and this was 8 years after his despicable rant that got him fired from Dior. My friend was on the phone with her daughter speaking English. Then she switched languages and started speaking Hebrew. The minute Galliano heard Hebrew he started screaming “Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas…”. Over and Over. On repeat until my friend hung up the phone. It was July. When my friend asked him if he had a problem with Hebrew he promptly and very unapologetically responded that he did. She then told him that she had a lot of his clothes and when she got back to her home in Israel she would dispose of them. He told her to please do…..

This man does not deserve honor, forgiveness or acceptance. He is a racist and a Hitler-loving antisemite both drunk and sober. And as we have seen, his hatred and bigotry is also not limited to Jews.

I know antisemitism is en Vogue in New York (and virtually everywhere now) but this is surprising nonetheless. Shame on you Anna Wintour!

[…] the decision to honor Galliano has left many furious. Philippe Virgitti, whom Galliano raged at in a Parisian bar, calling him a “f–king Asian bastard” and his girlfriend a “f–king ugly Jewish bitch,” and “dirty Jew face,” dubbed him “a pig” in a new book, adding, “He’s garbage, he caused a great deal of harm.” (x)

In 2024, honoring a man convicted of antisemitic abuse carried a cost the Met was unwilling to pay. In 2026, the board ran the numbers again and found the cost had fallen to roughly zero. That is a market read on how much anyone cares when Jews object, delivered by the people best positioned to know.

Outcries over the 2026 Met Gala being sponsored by Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos didn’t stop it from raking in more than $42 million for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute—a record fundraising haul.

The 2027 gala will be headlined by John Galliano, the designer who has been re-embraced by the fashion industry in the years since he was convicted in 2011 for making antisemitic remarks in Paris, where public insults based on religion, race and ethnicity are a crime.

The Galliano gala and corresponding museum exhibition come at a time when institutions have been willing to revisit characters once considered irredeemable. In announcing his involvement, the Met didn’t name any sponsors of the event, which since 1995 has been chaired by Anna Wintour, the global editorial director at Vogue and a longtime Galliano supporter. Past years’ gala announcements have named sponsors; a representative for the Met said that sponsors for 2027 would be revealed at a later date.

Amy Odell, author of “Anna: The Biography,” characterized the choice of Galliano as perplexing from a fund-raising standpoint. “Are sponsors going to be OK with that?” she asked.

Since 2023, the Met Gala has raised over $120 million for the Costume Institute, with support from companies including Louis Vuitton, TikTok, Instagram and Condé Nast, which owns Vogue.

Requests for comment from Louis Vuitton, TikTok, Instagram and other past sponsors including Apple and Gucci weren’t immediately returned. A Condé Nast representative, in response to questions including whether the company intends to sponsor next year’s Met Gala, cited a statement that Wintour made last week.

“There is no one more deserving of an exhibition of this scale than John Galliano,” read the statement, which noted the designer’s professional highs and lows. “The show will take in the full arc of his career and grapple with all of it.”

In a separate emailed statement, Jonathan Newhouse, Condé Nast’s board chairman, referenced his longtime backing of Galliano. “I was proud to support him during a difficult period,” Newhouse said. “I hope he continues to create for years to come.”

The blockbuster fundraiser may become less essential, however. In May, the New York Times reported that the Costume Institute is potentially on track to becoming financially self-sufficient by 2030, and possibly 2028.

Galliano made his antisemitic remarks while serving as creative director at Dior, where he was promptly fired. He also lost his role at his namesake John Galliano brand. Galliano has said that he was drunk and struggling with substance abuse at the time. He has since gone to rehab, gotten sober and sought counsel from Jewish leaders.

As plans for the 2027 Met Gala came together, Galliano, Wintour and Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton met with representatives from the Anti-Defamation League and Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan, among others.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism in North America, attended two meetings, including one with Galliano. He initially had concerns about how the public might react, he said. But his worries were soothed by what he characterized as a sincere desire among Galliano and gala organizers to use the event to demonstrate how people can atone for mistakes.

The Jewish leaders pushed for the gala’s corresponding exhibition to prominently acknowledge Galliano’s past behavior. Titled “John Galliano: Horizons,” the exhibit will span his work from 1984 to 2024 and begin with material addressing his antisemitic comments.

“Until I met John, until I had those conversations, I wasn’t 100% sure what I would find,” Jacobs said. But he did not believe he was being used as a shield for criticism. “If I didn’t feel that John had done the hard work of earning back his good name and making amends for his horrifying rant, I would have pushed back and not lent my support.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that his organization accepted Galliano’s apology long ago. “It’s on the Met and partners to meet the moment, not with token gestures around one exhibit,” he added.

Part of the issue, said Hen Mazzig, a Jewish writer and Israel advocate with more than 700,000 followers across Instagram and X, is that the public was not privy to the meetings. Even if the exhibit takes a nuanced approach, Mazzig added, that care may not translate to the gala itself—a party that derives its power from glamour and a star-studded red carpet where A-listers dress theatrically in outfits that pay homage to the affair’s theme.

“There is no footnote on a party,” said Mazzig.

Buzz about a possible Galliano exhibit at the Met had been percolating in the fashion world for years, said Dana Thomas, author of the 2015 biography “Gods and Kings: The Rise and Fall of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano.” Thomas said she didn’t believe the exhibit had widespread public support yet, “and that is what they are going to have to deal with for the next nine months.”

Galliano’s Dior designs have recently found a new audience, as younger generations have increasingly sought out Y2K-era vintage fashion. In March, the designer announced a two-year partnership with Zara, the fast-fashion giant owned by the Spanish company Inditex. A representative for Inditex did not respond to requests for comment.

Galliano had previously spent a decade as the creative director at Maison Margiela, starting in 2014. His final show for the brand in 2024 received widespread glowing reviews. Throughout Galliano’s comeback, Wintour has continued to appear by his side.

The year he started at Margiela, Galliano presented a British Fashion Award to Wintour, who accepted it wearing one of his designs for the brand. In January, the two sat next to each other in the front row at a Dior fashion show in Paris. In a 2023 documentary about Galliano, Wintour said she didn’t worry about how their friendship might affect her reputation. “I just wanted to help him,” Wintour says in the film.

Odell, the Wintour biographer, said the announcement of Galliano’s Met retrospective reminded her of something that André Leon Talley, Vogue’s longtime editor at large who died in 2022, told the author when she asked him what Wintour’s greatest strength was.

“Talley said, ‘She can turn a no into a yes,’ ” Odell said

I started a blanket 10 years ago and put it down shortly after starting. It was on 30” circulars and I just kept casting on until I couldn’t fit anymore stitches. I was new to the hobby so I figured it would just be “blanket sized.”

I picked it back up about 6 months ago determined to finally finish this thing. I transferred it to 60” circulars to give myself more working space, and during that transfer I counted 450ish stitches, but that would just be a big king sized blanket right? So I kept going. But after about 9 balls of yarn and only 2 feet in length finished, I gave up and decided I would just crochet the blanket instead.

Halfway through my crocheted version, I ran out of yarn and made the sad decision to frog the knitted project for salvage yarn. After removing the circular needles, I thought it’d be interesting to see how wide the blanket actually was.

After straightening it all out I stared at my work, utterly dumbfounded, that I had been working on a 35 foot wide blanket this whole time. I am SO GLAD I did not finish this project as I would’ve cried at the monster I had brought into the world.

tl;dr - You should really pay attention to the size reference chart on your yarn and count the stitches when free-handing as a newbie.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Monday declined to halt enforcement of a $655.5 million judgment against the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in a lawsuit brought on behalf of Americans killed or injured in terrorist attacks in Jerusalem in the early 2000s.

The case centers on attacks by various Palestinian groups and individuals between 2002 and 2004 that killed several people and wounded dozens during the Second Intifada. The plaintiffs sued the PA and PLO under the Anti-Terrorism Act, alleging responsibility for the attacks.

Attorneys for the PA and PLO filed an application to stay the judgment with the Supreme Court in late July, arguing that the judgment became a “nullity” and “absolutely void” after earlier court proceedings years ago.

Sotomayor denied the request on Monday without referring it to the full court or providing an explanation.

The legal setback comes as the PA faces mounting financial pressure amid the fallout from Hamas' October 7, 2023, attack on Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza. Palestinian officials have warned that the suspension of tax revenues collected by Israel on the authority's behalf, coupled with worsening fiscal deficits and economic disruption, have deepened a financial crisis that is straining the PA's ability to fund government services in the West Bank.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs declined to comment. Newsweek has reached out to the defendants' legal representatives for comment via email on Tuesday.

The legal battle dates back more than a decade and stems from a series of shootings and bombings in and around Jerusalem between 2002 and 2004 during the Second Intifada. American victims and the families of those killed sued the PLO and PA.

The PLO was founded in 1964 with the backing of the Arab League and is internationally recognized as the representative of the Palestinian people. It is an umbrella organization composed of several Palestinian political factions and is responsible for conducting diplomacy and representing Palestinians in international affairs. The PLO signed the Oslo Accords with Israel in 1993.

The PA is a governing body established in 1994 under the Oslo Accords to administer parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Today, it exercises limited self-rule in parts of the West Bank and is responsible for functions such as education, healthcare, sanitation and civil administration while also coordinating on some security matters with Israel.

Following a seven-week trial in 2015, a federal court in New York issued a roughly $655.5 million judgment against the PA and PLO.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the verdict in 2016, ruling that U.S. courts lacked jurisdiction over the Palestinian entities. Two years later, the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.

In 2019, Congress passed the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act (PSJVTA), a law designed to make it easier for American victims of terrorism to sue the PA and PLO in U.S. courts.

The legal landscape shifted again in 2025 when the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the PSJVTA in a separate case, Fuld v. Palestine Liberation Organization. Following that ruling, the 2nd Circuit reinstated the original $655.5 million judgment, in March 2026, concluding that the new law provided a valid basis for jurisdiction and allowed the previously vacated judgment to be revived.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs said then that the families welcomed the decision, saying it would allow “justice to be done," according to The Times of Israel.

The latest dispute reached Sotomayor in late July after the PA and PLO asked the justices to temporarily block enforcement of the judgment while they pursue appeals. In court documents reviewed by Newsweek, the attorneys argue that the appeals court decision to reinstate the judgment after the case was dismissed “was the first time an American court has ever held that a money judgment made without jurisdiction may be resurrected years after all appeals were exhausted.”

The Palestinian entities argue that the judgment should not have been resurrected years after it was overturned, while the plaintiffs contend that they are finally receiving justice after decades of litigation. The defendants note in the application for stay that “immediate enforcement of such a large judgment will destabilize critical government services Petitioners provide in the West Bank, injure innocent citizens, and jeopardize regional security.”

In court filings, the Palestinian organizations said: “The security, sanitation, and school services provided by Petitioners in the West Bank are hanging by a thread,” and warned that enforcing the judgment would further strain those services. A World Bank report described the PA as being in “deep fiscal crisis” and that prior to this ruling, “the total deficit [before grants] amounted to US$605 million in the first nine months of 2025.”

The appeal filing stated: “Respondents plan to enforce the judgment against clearance revenues collected by Israel, which is the PA’s primary source of income under the Oslo Accords.” Israeli clearance revenues, taxes and customs duties collected by Israel on behalf of the PA, are a main source of funding for the Palestinian government. The suspension of those transfers since 2025 has worsened the PA's financial crisis.

Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor and executive director of George Mason University’s Center for the Middle East and International Law, told Newsweek in an email Tuesday: “The next step would be enforcing the judgment, which would be difficult to do in the United States because the PLO maintains very limited assets here, specifically to avoid having them seized to satisfy judgments by terror victims.”

However, he said that “a judgment in the United States can be taken abroad, including to Israel and enforced there.”

The Second Intifada, or Al-Aqsa Intifada, was a period of Palestinian uprising and intensified Israeli-Palestinian violence that started in September 2000 and continued for years.

The uprising followed years of failed peace negotiations and growing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. Many consider it to have been triggered by a September 2000 visit by Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon, accompanied by hundreds of armed officers to the compound housing holy Islamic and Judaic sites. The visit was viewed by many Palestinians as a provocation, while Sharon and his supporters said it affirmed Israel's right of access to the site.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque and the surrounding Haram al-Sharif are among Islam's holiest sites, while Jews revere the same area as the Temple Mount, the location of the First and Second Holy Temples.

The period initially included protests, clashes and civil unrest, and then further evolved into a prolonged conflict marked by frequent violence on both sides. Israeli civilians were targeted in suicide bombings, shootings and other attacks carried out by Palestinian militant groups. Israeli military forces launched extensive operations in the West Bank and Gaza that Israel said were intended to combat terrorism and restore security.

More than 1,000 Israelis and 3,000 Palestinians were killed during the Second Intifada. It had lasting political and humanitarian consequences throughout the region. The 2005 Sharm el-Sheikh Summit produced a ceasefire agreement that is widely regarded as marking the end of the Second Intifada, although violence continued intermittently afterward.

Five Americans were killed in a 2002 bombing at Hebrew University in Jerusalem during the Second Intifada. Other attacks during the conflict, including suicide bombings and shootings, also killed and injured Americans.

When a party loses in a federal appeals court but wants to prevent the ruling from taking effect immediately, it can file an emergency application asking the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay, which temporarily freezes the decision while additional appeals move forward.

Such applications are initially directed to the justice responsible for the federal appeals court that heard the case. In this situation, as the case arose from the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the request was assigned to Sotomayor, who handles emergency matters from that circuit.

Sotomayor's order addressed only the request to temporarily block enforcement of the judgment. It did not resolve the underlying legal dispute or indicate how the Supreme Court might rule if the justices later agree to hear the case.