A year after the Trump administration began the dismantlement of USAID, it is initiating a new round of significant cuts to foreign assistance. This time, programs that survived the initial purge precisely because they were judged to be lifesaving are slated for cancellation.

I.  
Step where I step,
he said, quick,
quiet over oak root.
The hushed path rose
to meet him.
By footfall and rifle glint,
rustle of hoof
and pulp of blood,
he led me deep
where the gut-shot buck
had made its briary bed.
Even from the shining
back of his scalp,
I knew his face,
shame-shadowed
at his own poor aim,
at the animal’s pain
grown shadow-long
with the fall of dusk.
Three times we neared
the deer, and each
it heard our ragged breath
and stood and lumbered
beyond sight.

Hector Vivas / Getty
A digital composite image of the women’s snowboard halfpipe final, combining many runs made on Day 6 of the 2026 Winter Olympic games at Livigno Snow Park on February 12, 2026.Ryan Pierse / Getty
An infrared camera, combined with an in-camera filter, was used to create this image of Yuanmeng Chu of Team China during the women’s 15km individual at Anterselva Biathlon Arena on February 11, 2026, in Antholz-Anterselva, Italy.

In the week before Christmas, while the U.S. Department of Justice was getting ready to release a trove of documents relating to the Jeffrey Epstein case, some of the nation’s most important public servants gathered for a meeting at the DOJ headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue. Two Cabinet secretaries were there, along with the attorney general. They had an important matter to discuss. The important matter was puppies.
A soft black puppy, for one. A baby yellow lab.

Before he became a filmmaker, Frederick Wiseman was a professor who was in over his head. Wiseman had gone to Yale Law School partly to avoid the Korean War draft (though he ended up drafted anyway), but also, by his own admission, because he lacked a better idea of how to spend his time.