Megan Garber

Washington, D.C.

Staff Writer at The Atlantic

Atlantic writer. 2025 New America fellow.

Articles

I Can’t Stop Talking About The Traitors

1 month ago | theatlantic.com | Megan Garber

The show turns reality stars against one another for TV that is part camp, part satire, and pure genius. Some TV shows catch on because they are great art. Others catch on because they offer soothing distractions from a hectic world.
This Is What Happens When Reality TV Comes for Democracy

1 month ago | theatlantic.com | Megan Garber

Few White House events have earned the kind of instant infamy that greeted Friday’s disastrous meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. And few lines have been as revealing as the one Trump uttered as a benediction, of sorts, to the spectacle: “This is going to be great television.”The boast was, as the line goes, shocking but not surprising.
Trump Is Breaking the Fourth Wall

1 month ago | flipboard.com | Megan Garber

8 hours agoUS 'destroying' world order, Ukraine's ambassador to UK saysThe US is "destroying" the established world order, Ukraine's ambassador to the UK has claimed. Valerii Zaluzhnyi said the White House had "questioned the unity of the Western world" and was "taking more and more steps towards" Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The …13 hours agoTrump puts new limits on Elon MuskThe president convened his secretaries, with Musk, to clarify power.
Deletion Is Propaganda

1 month ago | theatlantic.com | Megan Garber

The totalitarian regime of 1984 brings innovation to the erasure of history. While other dystopias have their bonfires—cinematic conflagrations that turn censorship into spectacle—the Party, in George Orwell’s vision, relies on memory holes. The devices are incinerators, in the end; they burn books (and news and letters and art and all other evidence of the non-Party past) as effectively as bonfires do. But their flames are neatly hidden from view.
You Are Cordially Invited to Discuss Your Allegation of Sexual Assault

Dec 18, 2024 | theatlantic.com | Megan Garber

How could any woman resist Senator Lindsey Graham’s generous summons to speak publicly about her claim?
No, That Wasn’t an Onion Headline

Nov 15, 2024 | theatlantic.com | Megan Garber

This week, Americans learned that a Fox News personality could become the civilian head of the nation’s armed forces. They heard about a new government-adjacent agency that will be co-headed by Elon Musk and named the Department of Government Efficiency (or … DOGE). The headlines, occasioned by Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House, were new reasons to ask an old question inspired by a classic satirical website: The Onion or real?
Trump Is the Most Dominant Figure of the 21st Century

Nov 9, 2024 | theatlantic.com | Megan Garber

In early 2017, just after Donald Trump took residency in the White House, the New York Times technology columnist Farhad Manjoo engaged in an experiment. He spent a week doing all he could to ignore the new president. He failed. Whether Manjoo was scrolling through social media or news sites, watching sitcoms or sports—even shopping on Amazon—Trump was there, somehow, in his vision.
The Shadow Over Kamala Harris’s Campaign

Nov 4, 2024 | msn.com | Megan Garber

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The ‘First Woman President’ Buzzkill

Nov 4, 2024 | msn.com | Megan Garber

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The ‘First Woman President’ Buzzkill

Nov 4, 2024 | theatlantic.com | Megan Garber

On August 18, 2020, Americans marked the 100-year anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment and of women’s right to vote. The next day, Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for her current role, vice president of the United States. The consonance punctuated an already historic candidacy: Harris was the first woman of color to seek that office on a major-party ticket.