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Awarding superlatives in the Donald Trump era is risky. Knowing when one of his moves is the biggest or worst or most aggressive is challenging—not only because Trump himself always opts for the most over-the-top description, but because each new peak or trough prepares the way for the next.

A furry fiend with rabbit ears and a maniacal grin has recently been spotted twerking next to the singer Lizzo, baring its teeth on the former soccer star David Beckham’s Instagram, and flopping against a woman’s Chanel bag while wearing its own Tic Tac–size Chanel bag. The creature in question is Labubu—a soft-bellied plushie that the Chinese company Pop Mart began distributing in 2019, and that has, in the past year, gained hordes of admirers.

When Hamas bulldozed its way across the Gaza fence on October 7, 2023, it hoped to eventually provoke the opprobrium that’s now flowing in Israel’s direction. Launching its carnival of murder, rape, and kidnapping, the group wagered that it could bait its enemy into moral blunders that would discredit it in the eyes of the world.
That vision is now unfolding as mass hunger engulfs the Gaza Strip, and images of starving children crumble American support for Israel.

Jim Henson’s Creature Shop has sat, for the past 16 years, on the fourth floor of an office building in Long Island City, New York, behind a metal door that looks like any other. When I opened it one gray morning after the holidays, I was greeted by a plastic Christmas tree hung with fake fish skeletons and desiccated banana peels, Oscar leering nearby from his can, and a brown, fuzzy blob sitting on a table.

Last month, a group of seven U.S. generals and admirals—including the top admiral in charge of U.S. military operations in the Asia-Pacific region—prepared to travel to the Aspen Security Forum, in Colorado. Security officials had spoken at the annual conference for years, including during Donald Trump’s first term, and were set to discuss topics such as the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the future of AI, and threats from China.

When he learned one night this summer that the United States had bombed Iran, the content creator Aaron Parnas responded right away, showing what’s bad and what’s good about using TikTok for news. Shortly after 7:46 p.m. ET on June 21, he saw Donald Trump’s Truth Social post announcing the air strikes.