A hundred thousand people were killed by the atomic bomb. Survivors wonder why they lived when so many others died.Photograph from Rolls Press / Popperfoto / Getty I—A Noiseless FlashAt exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East

Trump, Netanyahu, and a Day of Dangerous Fictions at the New U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem Palestinian protesters hurl stones at Israeli security forces on the border between Israel and Gaza on Monday. Dozens of Palestinians were killed.Photograph Wissam Nassar / picture-alliance / dpa / AP On Sunday, the national-security adviser, John Bolton, told ABC’s “This Week” that the U.S. move of its Embassy

The Carnage and Chaos of Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” In the new Childish Gambino music video, “This Is America,” Donald Glover forces us to relive public traumas and barely gives us a second to breathe before he forces us to dance.Photograph from Donald Glover / YouTube I happened to listen to “This Is America,” the new single by Childish Gambino, a.k.a. Donald Glover, before I saw the el

As Eric Schneiderman used the authority of his office to assume a major role in the #MeToo movement, the distress of four women with whom he has had romantic relationships or encounters grew.Illustration by Oliver Munday; Photograph: Drew Angerer/Getty (man) Update: Three hours after the publication of this story, Schneiderman resigned from his position. “While these allegations are unrelated to m

Atwood is a buoyant doomsayer. Like a skilled doctor, she takes evident satisfaction in providing an accurate diagnosis.Photograph by Pari Dukovic for The New Yorker When Margaret Atwood was in her twenties, an aunt shared with her a family legend about a possible seventeenth-century forebear: Mary Webster, whose neighbors, in the Puritan town of Hadley, Massachusetts, had accused her of witchcraf

McMaster realized that, during briefings, Trump “wasn’t absorbing a fucking thing he said,” a friend reported.Illustration by David Plunkert When Donald Trump had a phone conversation with Vladimir Putin on the morning of March 20th, the two were at an excruciatingly delicate juncture. American intelligence officials had concluded that Russia had interfered in the 2016 Presidential election, with

Insulting people is one of the few things for which Trump possesses a genuine talent. But in this case he is facing a mighty challenge.Photograph byAndrew Harrer / Bloomberg / Getty It’s come to this: James Comey, the former head of the F.B.I., says that the President of the United States operates like a mob boss—lying, scheming, and demanding loyalty oaths from his subalterns, with no regard for

Andrew Kolodny, the co-director of the Opioid Policy Research Collaborative, at Brandeis University, has worked with hundreds of patients addicted to opioids. He told me that, though many fatal overdoses have resulted from opioids other than OxyContin, the crisis was initially precipitated by a shift in the culture of prescribing—a shift carefully engineered by Purdue. “If you look at the prescrib

John Bolton, in 2016, speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference.Photograph by Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg / Getty Hawks are closing in on the White House. John Bolton, arguably the most abrasive American diplomat of the twenty-first century, will soon assume the top foreign-policy job at the National Security Council. As is his wont, President Trump announced yet another shakeup of hi

Every sentence is a lie. Every sentence violates norms established by Presidents of both parties. Every sentence displays the pettiness and the vindictiveness of a man unsuited to the job he holds. The President has crusaded for months against McCabe, who is a crucial corroborating witness to Trump’s attempts to stymie the F.B.I.’s investigation of his campaign’s ties to Russia. McCabe had first e

For decades, the actress Annabella Sciorra was silent about her alleged rape by Harvey Weinstein.Photograph by Isabel Magowan for The New Yorker In March, Annabella Sciorra, who received an Emmy nomination for her role in “The Sopranos,” agreed to talk with me for a story I was reporting about Harvey Weinstein. Speaking by phone, I explained that two sources had told me that she had a serious alle

Impeachment, a liberal pipe dream a year ago, would almost certainly become the Judiciary Committee’s top priority if Democrats take back the House.Photograph by Doug Mills / NYT / Redux A political generation ago, Congressman Jerry Nadler was a backbencher from the Upper West Side. A liberal Democrat with a law degree and a debater’s temperament, he was seen in New York as “a garrulously intellig

The Powerful Calls to Action by the Teen-Age Survivors of the Parkland School Shooting Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students Kelsey Friend and David Hogg speak to reporters on Thursday, the day after a gunman killed seventeen people at their school.Photograph by Mark Wilson / Getty This morning, on CNN, live from Parkland, Florida, with a backdrop of squad cars parked behind a yellow slash

Donald Trump, a Playboy Model, and a System for Concealing Infidelity One woman’s account of clandestine meetings, financial transactions, and legal pacts designed to hide an extramarital affair. At right, from the top, David Pecker, the chairman of American Media, Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer; Karen McDougal, a former Playmate of the Year; Donald Trump; and Dylan Howard, A.M.I.’s

Under Ryan Zinke, the Secretary of the Interior, it’s a sell-off from sea to shining sea. On his first day as Secretary of the Interior, last March, Ryan Zinke rode through downtown Washington, D.C., on a roan named Tonto. When the Secretary is working at the department’s main office, on C Street, a staff member climbs up to the roof of the building and hoists a special flag, which comes down when