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    New Cost of Trump’s Bill, Canada Backs Down in Trade Dispute, Gen Z’s Retirement Plan

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    Listen to and follow “The Headlines”Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube | iHeartRadioOn Today’s Episode:Senate Bill Would Add at Least $3.3 Trillion to Debt, Budget Office Says, by Andrew DuehrenTillis Announces He Won’t Run Again as Trump Threatens Him With a Primary, by Annie KarniA Triumphant Supreme Court Term for Trump, Fueled by Emergency Rulings, by Adam Liptak and Abbie VanSickleCourts Will Have to Grapple With New Limits on Their Power, by Mattathias SchwartzCanada Will Scrap Tax That Prompted Trump to Suspend Trade Talks, by Matina Stevis-GridneffGen Z, It Turns Out, Is Great at Saving for Retirement, by Lisa Rabasca RoepeJell-O With Natural Dyes? It’s Not Easy Becoming Green, by Julie CreswellJohn Thune, the Senate majority leader, with reporters. Republicans delayed a rapid-fire series of votes on President Trump’s signature policy legislation until Monday morning as they grasped for support.Tierney L. Cross/The New York TimesTune in, and tell us what you think at theheadlines@nytimes.com. For corrections, email nytnews@nytimes.com.For more audio journalism and storytelling, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. More

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      What Is a ‘Fridge Cigarette’? A New Term for Diet Coke Gains Traction.

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      The click of the can, the sound of the bubbles: The internet is reframing the humble soda as an indulgent escape.Two Sundays ago, Rachel Reno relaxed in a park in New York with a sandwich, a bag of chips and a fridge cigarette.While lounging, she posted a video of herself, with the caption: “overheard someone call Diet Coke a ‘fridge cigarette’ and nothing’s been more true to me since.”She cracked open the can and took a sip.“I feel like it’s one of those things that doesn’t need a lot of explanation,” Ms. Reno, a freelance creator in New York, said in an interview. She first heard the alternative name for a can of diet soda from a co-worker at her previous job at an advertising agency. Those who get it know that “the crack of the can is like the spark of a lighter,” she said. Then comes the sparkly sound of fizzing bubbles and the mouthfeel of that first hit, and suddenly “all the worries and cares in the world go away.”Crucially, having a soda is the equivalent of stepping outside for a few minutes for a smoke break. It’s an excuse to “take a moment,” Ms. Reno said.

      @reallyrachelreno time for a crispy ciggy in the summer @Diet Coke #fyp #dietcoke ♬ Cruel Summer – Taylor Swift Ms. Reno’s video in the park has been viewed more than three million times and received almost 300,000 likes, with many people commenting on how accurate that term is. It has inspired others to use the expression, capturing not just a shift in perception of soda and cigarettes but also a collective search for a breather, as Casey Lewis, founder and writer of the internet-culture newsletter After School, described it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Are Millennials ‘Childless’ or ‘Child Free’?

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      More from our inbox:America, a Beacon No More? Dadu ShinTo the Editor:“Why Do Millennials Dread Having Babies?,” by Michal Leibowitz (Opinion guest essay, June 1), left me sad, impatient and energetically questioning her conclusion.Sad to read that she and others in their 20s and 30s are so fearful of having children. Impatient with her portrait of a mental health culture that seems to her to encourage people to live in a world limited by parental abuse and inadequacy. And energetically questioning her conclusion that such a culture is causing childlessness.Young people I know are indeed hesitant about having children, but almost exclusively for the reasons Ms. Leibowitz touches on in the beginning of her piece, but does not return to in her analysis. Some worry about their ability to support children financially, and many are deeply concerned about our country’s appetite for authoritarianism and the kind of future that climate change will bring.It is critical to the psychotherapeutic enterprise to recognize the influences — especially the traumas — that have shaped our feelings and behavior. But responsible therapists also do everything possible to help patients and clients loosen the hold of damaging childhood experience, and wrest from its pain the strength and wisdom to live mindfully and hopefully in the present.Most of the people I’ve worked with on this issue over 50 years — including women who as children suffered horrendous physical abuse — have said that their therapeutic experience made them far more comfortable with having children. Friends who have worked with other therapists say the same. Some do worry whether they will do a better job than their parents, but just about all welcome the opportunity and the challenge.James S. GordonWashingtonThe writer is a psychiatrist and the author of “Transforming Trauma: The Path to Hope and Healing.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gen Z: How Will You Remake the American Dream?

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      Americans of all ages are increasingly skeptical of the American dream. As a new crop of shiny young people graduate from high school, college and professional schools this month, we wanted to ask: What might a new vision for the future look like?The old version of the dream seems increasingly irrelevant for people in their teens and 20s. Sociologists call it the success sequence: graduate from college, get a job, get married, have children, in that order. Buying a house for those kids to run around in is supposed to be the capstone.But with untenable costs locking many out of the housing market and parts of the country becoming uninsurable because of potential climate damage, homeownership is no longer a top goal for everyone.Because finding the right job can prove difficult and many entry-level jobs could be vulnerable to artificial intelligence, some Americans in their 20s and 30s sought the solace of steady, unglamorous government work … until this year, when the so-called Department of Government Efficiency took a wrecking ball to federal jobs. It’s not just the federal work force that’s in disarray; our entire democracy seems more precarious than it’s been in a long time.More people are questioning the value of higher education than in recent memory, with only a quarter of Americans saying that college is extremely or very important. Nearly 50 percent of Americans “say it’s less important today than it was in the past for someone to have a four-year degree in order to get a well-paying job,” according to Pew Research.“Gen Z on Marriage: In This Economy?” read a headline in The Wall Street Journal last year, and it could also act as a mission statement for people in their 20s, who are either putting off or forgoing marriage and babies entirely.Tell us about about your American dream.Readers 18 to 30, what does the American dream look like for you, regardless of what the phrase means in popular culture? More

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      Meet Ballerina Cappuccina and the Italian Brain Rot Crew

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      Meet Ballerina Cappuccina and the Italian brain rot crew, an absurd group of A.I.-generated characters that are flooding TikTok.The first thing you need to know about Italian brain rot is that it isn’t strictly Italian.The second thing you need to know is that any discussion of what it means will most likely make you seem very uncool (you’re just supposed to get it) and will probably involve a lot of head scratching.You have been warned.A little etymology, to start. Last year, the Oxford University Press designated “brain rot” the word of the year. The phrase refers to the deteriorating effect of scrolling through swathes of “trivial or unchallenging” content online. It can also be used to describe the content itself; in other words, the term refers to both the cause and the effect of intellectual deterioration.The Italian brain rot subgenre emerged in January, when absurd characters generated by artificial intelligence started to show up in TikTok feeds. The characters melded animals or humans with inanimate objects, and many were tagged with the hashtag #italianbrainrot, which now has over 3 billion views. The memes have some vague Italian-ness to them — either their names sound Italian or they touch on stereotypical (or reductive, depending on who you ask) Italian cultural markers, like coffee, and are often accompanied by A.I.-generated audio of what sounds like a heavily accented Italian man’s narration but, when translated, is often nonsensical.That the memes are tagged brain rot is a cheeky acknowledgment that the content is “ridiculous” and “mumbo jumbo,” said Yotam Ophir, an associate professor of communication at the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences. It is also, he added, a recognition of the ridiculous universe being created by and for those who would be considered extremely online, with a nod to the broader proliferation of “A.I. junk” or slop.First, there was a shark with feet wearing Nike sneakers, called Tralalero Tralala (the TikTok account associated with the first iteration of that character has been deleted). Then came Bombardiro Crocodillo, a military bomber plane with a crocodile head. Among the most recent, and most popular, entries into the cast of characters is Ballerina Cappuccina — a ballerina with a cappuccino cup head, created in March by Susanu Sava-Tudor, a 24-year-old in Romania. The entire trend, Mr. Sava-Tudor said in an email, is a “form of absurd humor” that is “less about real Italy and more about the cinematic myth of Italy.” So far, the original Ballerina Cappuccina video, in which Mr. Sava-Tudor spelled the character’s name Balerinna Cappucinna, has racked up more than 45 million views on TikTok and 3.8 million likes.The lyrics to the Italian soundtrack attached to the video, when translated, are as follows:Cappucina dancer, mi mi miIs the wife of the Cappucino Assasino,And she loves music, la la la

      @mr_lindsay_sped Replying to @Itsdannykantu Everyone wanted to know about #ballerinacappuccina so here she is! Stick around to the end to see me strut my stuff to the sound. 😅 #italianbrainrot #ballerinacappuccina #genalpha #genalphaslangs #teachersoftiktok ♬ оригинальный звук – WXRMANE We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trend Overload

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      We cover a surprising form of Gen Z burnout. Consider yourself lucky if you have never heard of the “coastal grandmother aesthetic.”Or “blueberry milk nails,” or the “mob wife aesthetic” or a hundred other blink-and-you’ll-miss-them crazes that cycle online with the ferocity of a centrifuge. These microtrends, as they’re known, tend to be associated with Gen Z. But members of that generation say they are exhausted by the onslaught of faddish clothes and new phrases they encounter every time they pick up their phones.I’ve spent the last few months asking young people about the fashion and social media trends that are actually registering in their offline lives. More than any one trend, the teenagers and twentysomethings I spoke with wanted to talk about just how many trends there were, and how overwhelming it all felt.Every generation feels pressure to keep up with trends, especially in its youth. But many members of Gen Z seem to be under particular stress: The fire hose of social media offers endless opportunities to feel left out. Others say they just can’t afford — mentally or financially — to try to keep up.For a new story in The Times’s Style section, I talked to young people about the frenzied trend ecosystem — and what some of them were doing to escape it.Keeping upShort-form video platforms like TikTok are fertile territory for microtrends. They get a heavy assist from fast fashion companies like Temu and Shein that sell inexpensive but poorly made clothes and accessories, available in just a few clicks on the apps.On the first day of sixth grade, Neena Atkins noticed that several girls at her middle school wore scrunchies on their wrists. She searched for scrunchies on TikTok, and in the days that followed she was served dozens more videos in which the hair ties were being worn as bracelets.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As ‘Sex and the City’ Ages, Some Find the Cosmo Glass Half-Empty

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      As the show became more widely available on Netflix, younger viewers have watched it with a critical eye. But its longtime millennial and Gen X fans can’t quit.Most weeks, hundreds of people board a “Sex and the City” themed bus in Manhattan that takes them to the show’s most recognizable sites: Carrie Bradshaw’s apartment, her favorite brunch spot, a sex shop in the West Village. The tour usually ends with — what else? — a Cosmopolitan.“It never gets old,” said Georgette Blau, the owner of On Location Tours. It’s a three-and-a-half-hour entry into an aspirational world many of the riders had been watching for decades, she said.Twenty years since the series finale of “Sex and the City” aired, a new generation of television watchers has grown into adulthood. After all of the episodes were released on Netflix this month, media watchers wondered how the show — and Carrie’s behavior — might hold up for Gen Z.Would they be able to handle the occasional raunchiness of the show, the sometimes toxic relationships? Were the references outdated? “Can Gen Z Even Handle Sex and the City?” Vanity Fair asked. (For its part, Gen Z seems to vacillate between being uninterested and lightly appalled about what they consider to be a period piece.)The show had a very different effect on its longtime fans, many of them a generation or two older. When it aired, “Sex and the City” changed the conversation around how women dated, developed friendships and moved about the world in their 30s and 40s.Even if some of the show’s character arcs aged poorly, many of its original fans still relate to Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda, no matter how unrealistic it may have been to live on the Upper East Side with a walk-in closet full of Manolo Blahniks on the salary of a weekly newspaper columnist.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Millennials Flock to Instagram to Share Pictures of Themselves at 21

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      The generation that rose with smartphones and social media had a chance to look back this week.Most of the photos are slightly faded. The hairlines fuller. Some feature braces. Old friends. Sorority squats and college sweethearts. Caps and gowns. Laments about skinny jeans and other long lost trends.This week, Instagram stories the world over have been awash with nostalgic snapshots of youthful idealism — there have been at least 3.6 million shares, according a representative for Meta — as people post photos of themselves based on the prompt: “Everyone tap in. Let’s see you at 21.”The first post came from Damian Ruff, a 43-year-old Whole Foods employee based out of Mesa, Ariz. On Jan. 23, Mr. Ruff shared an image from a family trip to Mexico, wearing a tiny sombrero and drinking a Dos Equis. His mother sent him the photo, Mr. Ruff said in an interview. It was the first time they shared a beer together after he turned 21.“Not much has changed other than my gray hair. I see that person and go, ‘Ugh, you are such a child and have no idea,’” he said.Mr. Ruff created the shareable story template with the picture — a feature that Instagram introduced in 2021 but expanded in December — and watched it take off.“The amount of people that have been messaging me and adding me on Instagram out of nowhere, like people from around the world, has been crazy,” Mr. Ruff said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Looking to Watch Movies and Make Friends? Join the Club.

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      Around New York City, there’s a robust circle of film enthusiasts showing offbeat movies in bars and shops, where lingering afterward is welcomed.At Heart of Gold, a cozy bar in Queens, a mad scientist recently brought to life a corpse that went on a blood-drenched rampage. But the people nursing their beers there didn’t call the authorities. They cheered.That’s because the undead were marauding on a screen, set up at the front of the bar, that was illuminated by “Re-Animator,” Stuart Gordon’s 1985 horror-science fiction splatterfest. The occasion was a Monday night gathering of the Astoria Horror Club, which meets regularly to watch scary movies over hot dogs, mulled wine and other anything-but-popcorn concessions.Before the film, Tom Herrmann and Madeleine Koestner, the club’s co-founders, introduced “Re-Animator” with a trigger warning about a sexual assault scene and a reminder to generously tip the staff. About 35 people watched the movie seated, but others stood, complimenting the onscreen mayhem with shrieking, gasping and, as a decapitated head got tossed around, an explosion of applause.The Astoria Horror Club is just one of many film clubs that, while not new in concept, are quietly thriving in and around New York City. At many of these events, movies are shown not in traditional theaters but in bars, shops and other makeshift spaces, for small groups of people, many of whom arrive early for good seats and stay afterward to gush and vent.The screenings are open to the public, but mostly it’s Gen Zers and millennials who are joining strangers to watch movies that, in many cases, are for niche tastes and were made before streaming was a thing.These kinds of films are programmed regularly at the city’s revival houses, like Film Forum and Metrograph. But what these film clubs offer is ample space and time, where debate and friendships can blossom without leaving your seat. For cheap, too: At chain theaters, tickets can be more than $20 apiece, not including food and drinks. Many of these film clubs are free to attend, although patrons are asked to pony up for beer or bites.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More