I've been an editor for more than three decades. Of the thousands of pieces I've worked on during that time, this one is among the most astonishing. Please read. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

An excerpt from the forthcoming novel by George Packer, our American Orwell. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

I've been an editor for more than three decades. Of the thousands of pieces I've worked on during that time, this one is among the most astonishing. Please read. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

"A curtain of darkness is settling over our nation. And it’s getting ever harder to avoid connecting the authoritarian dots." www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

"For the right, now in power, the abandonment of the American idea is license to build an authoritarian regime. The left, having spent decades proving that the idea is a sham, can hardly protest its dismantling." www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

"The only way to be a patriot is to work together with those fools, your fellow Americans, to stop this growing tyranny so that we have a chance to redeem ourselves." www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

"To be a patriot in Donald Trump’s America is like sitting through a loved one’s trial for some gruesome crime." www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

"Perhaps expecting Americans to live up to the extraordinary ideals that they proclaimed in the 18th century was always unreasonable, but that language nevertheless shaped the way we thought about ourselves." www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

"If you think Trumpism will simply end in three years, you are naive. This could be the rest of our lives, and our children’s, too. So why are we doing so little? Are we just going to stand in passive witness to the degradation of our democracy?" www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

"Trump offers people an identity, status, self-respect, and a comprehensive political ethic. Populists are not trying to pass this or that law; they are altering the climate of the age. And Democrats think they can fight that by offering some tax credits?" www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

"He never left the house without a book. He never left the house without a gun. Both were equally unthinkable.” www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture...

"It’s no longer an interesting question as to why Trump is an almost perfect inversion of the moral teachings of Jesus...What is an interesting question is why those who claim that the greatest desire of their life is to follow Jesus revere such a man?" www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"The Justice Department should never have brought such an astoundingly shoddy case. The decision to do so, under intense pressure from the president to harass his old enemy, is an indication of how thoroughly Trump has been able to corrupt the department." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"One by one, American leaders supposedly committed to principles of free speech, due process, democracy, and equality have abandoned those ideals when menaced by the Trump administration." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"We are living in an authoritarian state.... It sometimes seems as if the only check on Trump’s power is his own attention span." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Most Fed experts “have never contemplated what could happen if an institution with so much unchecked power came under the control of one man,” Rogé Karma writes. “Perhaps it’s time to start imagining.”

"Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, served 19 months in prison for his crimes during Watergate. If Trump’s hold on power loosens, Pam Bondi could share Mitchell’s fate." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"The idea that the Democrats can take back the Senate in 2026 without fielding candidates who are willing to publicly renounce some left-wing orthodoxies is delusional." www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

50 percent lower risk of reincarnation! (Autocorrect strikes again)

"Goldberg suggested in his interview with David Letterman that Jimmy Fallon was a less 'sharp-tongued' critic of Trump than other late-night hosts. Letterman shot back, 'Why do you think that is? Has something to do with IQ, is that what you’re saying?'” www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...

Robert McNamara "was a war proponent in the Johnson administration and a war opponent in private, at once driven by a lust to succeed in the president’s eyes and horrified by the human toll of what he came to see as an unwinnable war." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"What happened to Jimmy Kimmel is not about one comedian who said something he should not have said. The Trump administration and its enforcers want to control your speech, your behavior, even your public expressions of mourning." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"Seeing a real left-wing American killer, motivated by ideology, is like seeing a passenger pigeon or a saber-toothed tiger. The rarity of left-wing political violence is well established." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

After Utah Governor Spencer Cox pleaded for calm in his address to the nation yesterday, Donald Trump called him with a warning. McKay Coppins spoke with the Utah governor: https://theatln.tc/hPTN16Aw

“You know, the type of person who would do something like that to Charlie Kirk would love to do it to us,” Cox says Trump told him. Trump went on to recite statistics suggesting that the presidency was “one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet.” www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

"Christopher Rufo took six months to contradict his own advice." For the right, cancel culture is in now. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"Fuentes has said that Hitler was 'really fucking cool' and posited that 'we need to go back to burning women alive.'" Nick Fuentes, who makes Laura Loomer look like a model of restraint, has 730k followers on X, acolytes at DHS, and has dined with Donald Trump www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Kamala Harris on whether Dems should have let Joe Biden stay in the 2024 race so long: "I think it was recklessness. The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition." www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

"The big secret of intellectual right-wing authoritarianism is that it’s just not very intellectual." www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

"The overall effect is like Judy Blume filtered through David Lynch or William S. Burroughs: **Are You There, God? It’s Me, Nicholas, Having a Panic Attack While My Friends Trip on Acid.**" -From my review of Michael Clune's **Pan** www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

How to reduce your anxiety by reframing it as a "Kierkegaardian Adventure." (A name I should trademark for an existential amusement park.) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

The Bad Guys are Winning, from 2021 www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Boy, I wish I could travel with a private toilet. nypost.com/2025/09/03/w...

I can

"Fuentes has said that Hitler was 'really fucking cool' and posited that 'we need to go back to burning women alive.'" Nick Fuentes, who makes Laura Loomer look like a model of restraint, has 730k followers on X, acolytes at DHS, and has dined with Donald Trump www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

"Trump is offering proof that a government can be both socialist and reactionary." www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

"Trump’s life and career are based on discrediting the distinction between right and wrong, and on convincing himself and others that the only reality is who screws whom. As of right now, he’s winning that messaging debate." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"A Danish study from 2018 found that tennis players lived nearly a decade longer than their sedentary peers—and also longer than swimmers, cyclers, and joggers. No other sport in the analysis was correlated with such a large boost to life expectancy." www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...

"'Purge' doesn’t adequately capture what national-security experts see happening here. 'Chilling effect' is too mild..." www.theatlantic.com/national-sec...

"It is about breaking people and breaking institutions by sowing fear and mistrust throughout our government. It is about paralyzing public servants...It is about deterring anyone from daring to speak truth to power." www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

"It was humiliating to watch an American president act like a happy puppy upon encountering the dictator of a much poorer, much less important state, treating him as a superior." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

"The most obvious reason for skepticism about Trump’s desire to fight crime is that he is the most pro-criminal president in American history." www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

"Habitual sarcasm toward fools who can’t see why you’re right is usually a sign of political weakness, suggesting that you have no hope or intention of convincing the unpersuaded of anything. Contempt is a style of proud and perpetual defeat." www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...

"Americans already understood Trump to be corrupt, and proved themselves willing to tolerate that. But now they are coming to believe that he is **inept.** In American politics, that is an unforgivable sin." www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

"When you become less polite, the alteration in your conduct can make you less happy, more depressed, and angrier about life.... Being impolite is more like scratching at your poison-ivy rash. Giving in to the urge makes things worse." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Donald Trump Doesn’t Want You to Read This Article www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

"Mike, the claustrophobic retiree, told me that on a recent attempt to fly, he took an Ambien and drank a few shots of whiskey, yet he remained too terrified to board. Tired and tipsy, he had to call his daughter for a ride home." www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

“Consider the case of SecDef Pete Hegseth, who was admitted to and graduated from prestigious degree programs at top universities but resigned from the Army National Guard at the lowly rank of major. The Army, unlike Princeton and Harvard, knew a petulant, insecure mediocrity when it saw one.”

“'The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.'” www.theatlantic.com/national-sec...

"This wasn’t merely the sound of artillery, but the sound of nihilism and anarchy, of lives disrupted, businesses ruined, universities closed, futures curtailed." Wrenching, magisterial article by @anneapplebaum.bsky.social, photos by @lynseyaddario.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...