At an Oval Office press conference last month, Donald Trump described present-day South Africa as “the opposite of apartheid”—a phrase so perfectly weird that the man sitting across from him, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, took several seconds to process it, before literally biting his lip and letting the line pass without remark. The opposite…
On May 26, 1967, the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, issued the following statement about a war he planned to start: “The battle will be a general one and our basic objective will be to destroy Israel.” Nasser and other Arab leaders believed that the annihilation of the Jewish state was both certain and imminent….
The comfort in the smell of bacon in the morningis mostly burning fat & salt, but the taste is sweetas the part of the pig that stores the soul.“If you don’t bless it, it might choke you,” Ma likesto say over the plates. My definition of familyincludes the sense kinfolk know & think they knowthings…
Crossing over the water. “The real beauty of the Brooklyn Bridge can only be experienced in motion,” the artist Christoph Niemann said, about his cover for the June 30, 2025, issue. Niemann’s celebration of the structure is a kaleidoscopic composition that plays with its cathedral-like thick towers and its thin mesh of wires. “My recommendation…
Joe Gebbia, a RISD grad and an Airbnb billionaire, may soon lead the federal cost-cutting effort known as DOGE. Could there be clues to his methods in his art-school days? Who will help lead the Department of Government Efficiency now that Elon Musk has left the scene? News reports have mentioned Joe Gebbia, a Tesla…
Whenever Donald Trump has contemplated confrontation with Iran, his decisions have been guided less by the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community than by his own calculation of risk and reward. At times he has pulled the trigger. At times he has backed down. All the while, the U.S. assessment of Iranian nuclear intentions has…
Some dreams do come true. At night, I dream of the rising screech of sirens across Jerusalem, of running to a bomb shelter, of thinking wildly about my grown children elsewhere in Israel dashing through dark streets for safety as missiles whoosh overhead. I dream of distant booms that I hope are interceptions and not…
“Why are the wrong people doing the right thing?” Henry Kissinger is supposed to have once asked, in a moment of statesman-like perplexity. That question recurred as Donald Trump, backed by a visibly perturbed vice president and two uneasy Cabinet secretaries, announced that the United States had just bombed three Iranian nuclear sites. It is…
There is no overestimating the triumphalism in the Israeli Prime Minister’s circle, but the cascading effects of the war being waged on Iran are still unfolding. In the days after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, evaded any public admission of responsibility for the colossal security failure. He mostly…
On Saturday, President Donald Trump brought the United States into Israel’s war against Iran. American planes and submarines struck three sites in Iran, including two nuclear enrichment facilities—at Natanz and Fordow—and a complex near Isfahan that was believed to contain stores of uranium. The Israeli government had been pushing for Trump to strike, in part…
