Donald Trump Wants You to Forget This Happened
January 6, five years later
February 2026
In This Issue
Donald Trump wants you to forget January 6, an act of cosmic sabotage, the purging of the U.S. civil service, and who decides who gets to be Indian. Plus Alexandra Petri tries being the federal government, Dante's Paradiso, Bad Bunny, Julian Barnes, the history of fighting slavery, and more.
Cover Story
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The Purged
Donald Trump’s destruction of the civil service is a tragedy not just for the roughly 300,000 workers who have been discarded, but for an entire nation.
An Act of Cosmic Sabotage
How Donald Trump tried to ground NASA’s science missions
I Tried to Be the Government. It Did Not Go Well.
My five-month quest to monitor the weather, track inflation, and inspect milk for harmful microorganisms
Who Gets to Be Indian—And Who Decides?
The very American story of Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance
Dispatches
United States District Court for the District of Columbia MAGA’s Foundational Lie
The movement claims to stand with the police. Trump’s decision to pardon the cop-beaters of January 6 exposed his movement for what it is.
Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani. Source: Pieter Ferreira. ‘You Are Now a King, Under a Different Name’
America went to extraordinary lengths to throw off the rituals and titles of monarchy. Why would we fall for royal trappings today?
Illustration by Colin Hunter. Source: Patrick McMullan / Getty.
Culture & Critics
Illustration by Colin Hunter. Sources: John Nacion / Getty; Perry Knotts / Getty. How Bad Bunny Did It
The Super Bowl headliner doesn’t care if you understand his lyrics.
Karen Robinson / Camera Press / Redux Julian Barnes Says Goodbye to the Novel
His fiction has found meaning in life’s gaps and love’s absence.
Illustration by Jorge González The New History of Fighting Slavery
What we learn by tracing rebellions from Africa to the Americas
Bridgeman / Getty What Dante Is Trying to Tell Us
A colloquial translation of Paradiso might make people actually read it.
Departments
The Atlantic The Commons: How to Wake the Constitution’s Sleeping Giant
Readers respond to our October 2025 cover story and more.
The Atlantic Caleb's Inferno: February 2026
A devilish crossword puzzle
Poetry
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Photology1971 / Alamy. First Memory
A poem
