Covering Donald Trump’s National Assault

Reflecting on a grim milestone in the second Trump Administration. Plus:

Dear Reader,

This week marks a hundred days since Donald Trump assumed the office of the Presidency, for the second time. At this point in his first term, in the pages of The New Yorker, we observed that Trump had “set fire to the integrity of his office.” We now know that was merely a rehearsal for what was to come.

This time around, as I write in this week’s issue, “the record of failure after a hundred days is, at once, astonishing and predictable.” For no clear purposes, Trump has destabilized the global economy, alienated allies, laid waste to vital government agencies, deported hundreds of people (nearly all of whom have no criminal record) to a Salvadoran gulag, and waged a war of intimidation against dozens of scholarly, commercial, and legal institutions. This is not primarily a matter of competence or a clash over policy, but a coördinated assault on the country’s first principles.

We’re taking stock of these past few months, as well as looking toward our nation’s future. In this week’s issue, Andrew Marantz reports from Hungary on how democracies can slide into autocracies bit by bit, “on little cat feet.” He explores whether that’s where we’re heading—or where we already are. Jill Lepore considers the toll of this regime on the psyche, sharing the wisdom and solace she has found in the collection of Penguin Little Black Classics, which she reached for after Trump’s terrifying Inaugural Address.

We’re also publishing a story online each day this week that looks at the lives upended by the Administration’s chaotic decisions. For this series, Dhruv Khullar reports on the effects of the cancellation of a life-changing diabetes trial; Grace Byron writes about the bureaucratic nightmare of being trans in this moment; Charles Bethea covers the potential impacts of tariffs on the whiskey industry; and there’s more to come.

In the midst of all this, we are commemorating our own hundredth anniversary. In these pages, week after week, our writers have sought to report honestly and deeply the stories of their times. From Janet Flanner to John Hersey to Hannah Arendt, from James Baldwin to Joan Didion to Janet Malcolm—and countless others—The New Yorker’s writers, each in their own way, have sought to write fearlessly. We are living in an age of chaos and bewildering velocity. It is, at times, a hard moment to be alive and try to understand fully where we are going. Whatever comes next, with the support of your subscription, The New Yorker will continue to be here to witness, document, and, best we can, make sense of it all. We are committed to describing power, not bending to its demands. We’re committed, above all, to chronicling reality, and to honest, fair, and rigorous work. We are committed to you, our readers.

Thank you, as ever.

David Remnick
Editor, The New Yorker

Editor’s Pick

Photo illustration by Ricardo Tomás; Source photographs from Getty

Will the Trump Tariffs Devastate the Whiskey Industry?

American Spirit Whiskey, a craft distiller in Georgia, was hoping to start selling its product outside the U.S.—particularly in countries such as China, where American whiskey is popular. Then Donald Trump announced his tariff plans. How did one of the distillery’s founders feel? “Shitty,” he explains to Charles Bethea, in a new report. “Everything is on hold. The outlook since then is almost changing week by week.” Big producers like Jack Daniel’s are also feeling the stress, but the biggest challenges are hitting the little guys. Read the story »

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Daily Cartoon

“I worry about my mom’s screen time, but it’s the only thing that seems to soothe her.”

Cartoon by Tadhg Ferry

More Fun & Games

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P.S. Could a hundred men win a fight against a gorilla? This hypothetical has gone viral again on social media, but there are better things to do than fight. In 2018, following the death of the beloved gorilla Koko, Sarah Larson recalled growing up during the ape craze of the nineteen-seventies, when “pop culture and the scientific community popularized earnest, loving representations of primates of many kinds, many of which seemed to be verging on consciousness-expansion.” 🦍

Ian Crouch contributed to this edition.