Sucker
My year as a degenerate gambler
April 2026
In This Issue
A year as a degenerate gambler, Signalgate, a mixed-status family self-deports, AI's insatiable data centers, lightning-strike survivors, and the forgotten female pilots of WWII. Plus Coetzee's Cape Town, the GOP's Nazi problem, the costs of being uninsured, Robyn's Sexistential, a poem by Robert Pinsky, and more.
Cover Story
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What 100 Million Volts Do to the Body and Mind
The odds of being struck by lightning in America in a given year are one in 1.2 million. How does the experience reorient a person’s sense of chance, of fate?
‘America Doesn’t Want My Children or Grandchildren’
The Cruz family spent years building a life in New York. Then the risks of staying became too great.
The Pete Hegseth Exception
Nearly a year after a national-security scandal erupted on my iPhone, no one in the Trump administration has faced consequences.
The Forgotten Female Pilots of World War II
The WASPs risked their lives flying for the Army. But for decades, the U.S. government refused to recognize their military service.
Inside the Dirty, Dystopian World of AI Data Centers
The race to power AI is already remaking the physical world.
The City Where Coetzee Is God
Searching for the Nobel laureate in Cape Town, the city he left behind
Dispatches
Illustration by Ben Hickey The Impossible Predicament of the Uninsured
My aunt couldn’t afford to go to the hospital. She ended up there anyway.
Illustration by Sean Dong My Tesla Was Driving Itself Perfectly—Until It Crashed
The danger of almost-perfect tech
Illustration by Paul Spella / The Atlantic. Source: Shutterstock. The Republican Party Has a Nazi Problem
How did the GOP become a haven for slogans and ideas straight out of the Third Reich?
Culture & Critics
Illustration by Paul Spella. Source: Marili Andre, courtesy of Young Recordings. The Midlife Crisis Comes for Millennial Pop
On her first album in eight years, Robyn reckons with motherhood and midlife desire.
Illustration by E S Kibele Yarman. Sources: Roger Viollet / Getty; Eloi_Omella. The Last Days of Franco
Montserrat Roig’s classic novel captures Barcelona on the cusp of unimaginable change.
Illustration by Kristina Tzekova A Novel About a Secret No One Wants to Know
The wildly popular Norwegian novelist Vigdis Hjorth returns to a dark past.
Illustration by Álvaro Bernis The College-Educated Working Class
Can a generation of graduates frustrated by their economic prospects change American labor politics?
Departments
The Atlantic I Remember a World Without Vaccines
Readers respond to our January 2026 cover story.
The Atlantic Caleb's Inferno: April 2026
A devilish crossword puzzle
Poetry
Illustration by Liz Hart. Source: Lebrecht Music & Arts. Misrule Music
A poem
