The 1.6.19 Issue

Highlights

Feature
How a Crackdown on MS-13 Caught Up Innocent High School Students
The Trump administration went after gang members — and instead destroyed the American dreams of immigrant teenagers around the country.
By Hannah Dreier
CreditNatalie Keyssar for The New York Times
Feature
What Driving Can Teach Us About Living
How we respond to the rules of the road offers insight into being human.
By Rachel Cusk
CreditPhoto illustration by Idris Khan
Feature
Harry Reid Has a Few Words for Washington
The former Senate majority leader on President Trump and Senator Chuck Schumer, and on why he doesn’t regret ending the filibuster for judicial appointments.
By Mark Leibovich
CreditDan Winters for The New York Times
Ethicist
Was I Wrong to Facebook-Friend My Nephew’s Girlfriend?
The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on intergenerational disaffection on social media and with an estranged father.
By Kwame Anthony Appiah
CreditIllustration by Tomi Um

He Thought He Just Had the Flu at First. Then His Heart Could Barely Pump.
The disease should have dried him out, yet his body was producing liter after liter of excess fluid. Why?
By Lisa Sanders, M.D.
CreditIllustration by Tim Lahan
Diagnosis
I Ate Mall Pizza and Fell in Love With America
When my brother and I still had identification cards with the word “alien” on them, barbecue chicken pizza helped us feel at home.
By Tejal Rao
CreditPaola & Murray for The New York Times.
Eat
What Could Be Wrong With a Little ‘Moral Clarity’?
Americans are rediscovering the appeals of cutting through complexity and acting with zealous, unswerving righteousness. But certainty has its dangers.
By Frank Guan
CreditPhoto Illustration by Derek Brahney. Flag: Daniel Kieslinger/Getty Images. Droplets: Getty Images.
First Words
Letter of Recommendation: Old English
What does a language lose as it changes?
By Josephine Livingstone
CreditIllustration by Sophy Hollington
Letter of Recommendation
Hakeem Jeffries Doesn’t Want to Be Called the Next Obama
The New York congressman on Democratic oversight into the Trump administration and how Brooklyn has changed over the years.
Interview by Dan Amira
CreditGabriella Demczuk for The New York Times
Talk

One of America’s Most Vital Exports, Education, Never Goes Abroad, but It Still Faces Threats
Trade wars, visa restrictions and anti-immigrant sentiments make it harder for the U.S. to school the world.
By Brook Larmer
Creditillustration by Ori Toor
On Money
New Sentences: From Nasser Hussain’s ‘SKY WRI TEI NGS’
An entire book of poems, built from the bureaucratic scraps of three-letter airport codes.
By Sam Anderson
Credit
New Sentences
How to Get Preschoolers to Share
Ask them, while reading picture books, to label the emotions on display. Let them see you be bighearted.
By Malia Wollan
CreditIllustration by Radio
Tip
Poem: One-Way Gate
Selected by Rita Dove.
By Jenny George
CreditIllustration by R. O. Blechman
Poem
Behind the Cover: An American Dream Destroyed
For this issue, a look how innocent high schoolers are caught up in the crackdown on MS-13.

CreditNatalie Keyssar for The New York Times
Issue 1.6.19

Jacqueline Woodson on Africa, America and Slavery’s Fierce Undertow
The African-American novelist journeys to Ghana, once a hub of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, as the nation invites descendants of enslaved Africans to call it their “home.” But can you go home again?
By Jacqueline Woodson