MAGA Is Making the World Safe for Corruption
Far-right ideologues have transformed American foreign policy into a tool of private gain and antidemocratic reaction.
October 2026
In This Issue
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Cover Story
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Jackie Collins Wrote Her Own Revolution
The novelist imagined women enjoying equality in the bedroom and the boardroom. Are we any closer to living in that world?
Will Taiwan Just Give Up?
The Taiwanese don’t trust Trump, and they don’t believe America will come to their defense. A deal with China is starting to look inevitable.
The Wrong Kind of American
The Trump White House needed me—until the fact that I am trans became public.
Mothers for Sale
Most of Europe bans commercial surrogacy. The United Nations likens it to slavery. But in the United States, business is booming.
The Election Deniers’ Long Game
Right-wing activists have slowly taken control of a significant part of America’s local election apparatus. The country isn’t prepared for what they might do.
Sons and Mothers
My mother devoted her life to teaching writers. Becoming one meant escaping the story she had written for me.
Dispatches
Concept by Oliver Munday; Illustration by The Atlantic How the Right Could Actually End Birthright Citizenship
The conservative legal movement doesn’t consider the Supreme Court’s recent ruling to be the final word on the Fourteenth Amendment. And it already has a playbook for overturning it.
Illustration by Colin Hunter. Sources: Courtesy of Leo Baeck Institute; Print Collector / Getty. The Jews Who Voted for Hitler
What happened when members of a minority community cast its lot with a political leader who despised them
Illustration by Cecilia Reeve The Missing Ingredient of Modern Life
Why we need wonder
Culture & Critics
Illustration by Colin Hunter* George Lucas’s Next Great Epic Is an Art Museum
Inside the Star Wars creator’s temple to storytelling
Grace J. Kim What Comes After America
Emily St. John Mandel’s latest work of science fiction considers the tenuousness of any possible future.
Kurt Markus / Trunk Archive Cormac McCarthy’s Midlife Crisis
Heading west at 40 transformed his writing—and American literature.
Illustration by Cristiana Couceiro* Roy Cohn Did It First
The debasement of American politics didn’t start with Donald Trump.
Departments
The Atlantic The Commons: ‘Feminism Is the Consequence of the “Man Problem,” Not Its Cause’
Readers respond to our June 2026 cover story and more.
© 2026 The Estate of Edward Steichen / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Look Closer: Edward Steichen’s Sunflower
Before the photographer left painting behind forever, he attempted to refocus it on nature.
Poetry
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Science & Society Picture Library / Getty. Abstract
A poem
Illustration by Lucy Murray-Willis Facing the Music
A poem
