Donald Trump’s reëlection made many Americans reconsider whether they wanted to continue living here. But what does it actually take to leave? Plus:
- Will quitting social media make you a better reader?
- Trump’s assault on the environment
- The Supreme Court takes on birthright citizenship
Illustration by Brian Rea
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian A writer covering citizenship and immigration.
Every election cycle, Americans, from both parties, proclaim that they will leave the country if their preferred …
Donald Trump’s reëlection made many Americans reconsider whether they wanted to continue living here. But what does it actually take to leave? Plus:
- Will quitting social media make you a better reader?
- Trump’s assault on the environment
- The Supreme Court takes on birthright citizenship
Illustration by Brian Rea
Atossa Araxia Abrahamian A writer covering citizenship and immigration.
Every election cycle, Americans, from both parties, proclaim that they will leave the country if their preferred candidate doesn’t win. Few follow through. Anyone who’s ever moved knows that it’s hard enough to change apartments, let alone settle in a new country.
Late last year, after Donald Trump claimed victory again, I started hearing from lawyers and immigration consultants whom I’d met while reporting my 2015 book on the global market for citizenship. Back then, the people who went out of their way to obtain a second passport were mainly millionaires from Russia, China, and the Middle East who couldn’t travel or transact as freely as they’d have liked with their original citizenship. Now, my sources told me, American clients outnumbered the others by orders of magnitude.
The Americans’ motivations varied, but it nearly always had something to do with Trump. And that wasn’t all. They were not just getting a “Plan B passport” in case they decided to go abroad. Some were packing up and moving for good.
It’s hard to quantify this trend because not all countries publish thorough data. Even the U.S. State Department admits that its count of American expats (at least six million) is fuzzy. Still, there’s evidence that interest in expatriation is on the rise.
Ireland received applications for Irish passports from more than twenty-six thousand American citizens in the first eight months of 2025, and the country recently announced that the number of Americans who had actually moved there had nearly doubled from 2024 to 2025. A record number of Americans applied for British citizenship from January to March. And thousands have been claiming German and Austrian citizenship thanks to a rule granting the designation to the descendants of Jews who were persecuted by the Nazis.
What interested me in the story, which I write about for this week’s issue, was the fact that this new expat class did not seem to be composed entirely of the super-rich. Middle-class people I spoke to said that they were leaving for the same reasons their ancestors moved to America in the first place: opportunity, stability, and freedom.
I interviewed retirees who did the math and realized that their quality of life on a fixed income would be vastly improved in, say, Portugal or Panama. I talked to young people who were certainly repelled by Trump, in addition to feeling that their economic prospects in the U.S. were precarious. New parents could not bear to live in a country where their preschoolers were made to do active-shooter drills; queer and trans people were leaving because of their newly diminished civil rights. Not one person failed to bring up guns.
One of the most savvy people I heard from during this time was Jana Sanchez, a former Texan living in the Netherlands who founded the company G.T.F.O. Tours, alongside her business partner, Bethany Quinn. Sanchez told me that they offered group visits for Americans who wanted to discover the Netherlands—one of the easiest countries for U.S. citizens to emigrate to. It felt like a distinctly American approach to the logistical problem of leaving the country: tourism meets shopping, with a side of defiance. In September, I tagged along on one of their tours to learn what exactly it takes to leave the U.S.A.
Editor’s Pick
Illustration by Mark Harris
If You Quit Social Media, Will You Read More Books?
When Jay Caspian Kang deleted his social-media apps this year, he was hoping to free up more time for reading. “And yet, the chief effect, I found,” he writes, “was that I simply didn’t know what was happening in the world.” Books, Kang realized, are inefficient, and the internet is training us to expect optimized experiences all the time. Read the column »
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How Bad Is It?
Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner wore matching bright-orange outfits to the L.A. première of the new film “Marty Supreme.”
How bad is it?
“I don’t necessarily think this is bad. The color—which, to be fair, is the color associated with the film and its promotional materials—is a little Velveeta Shells & Cheese. They’re both wearing Chrome Hearts, a brand that began in the nineteen-eighties as a leather-goods purveyor and that has grown to be a cult label among celebrities. I actually think that the cut of the suit and the dress are both pretty interesting—and matching outfits are a time-tested attention-grabbing red-carpet tradition.
Chalamet has been releasing savvy marketing materials for this film for a month now, creating a kind of hypebeast quality around this movie (the ‘Marty Supreme’ windbreaker is the clothing item of the season for a certain type of Gen Z culture hound).That’s just what marketing demands these days, especially when it comes to theatrical promotion. Anything that gets people out to an actual theatre and excited about a movie is, to my mind, a net positive.”
—Rachel Syme, a staff writer, has covered Hollywood and fashion, and contributes to the On and Off the Avenue column.
Our Culture Picks
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Read: “Cursed Daughters,” by Oyinkan Braithwaite, is a moody, engrossing novel following the lives of three women who believe they are ill-fated.
Watch: Inkoo Kang has named “The Pitt” this year’s best show. Catch up before Season 2 comes out, next month.
Listen: Geese’s third album, “Getting Killed,” has heralded the band as the redeemer of a kind of noisy, lawless rock and roll.
Daily Cartoon
“I need to check your bag to make sure you bought some seasonal items you didn’t need.”
Cartoon by Brendan Loper
Puzzles & Games
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Today’s Crossword Puzzle: University in the documentary “Deaf President Now!”—nine letters.
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Shuffalo: Can you make a longer word with each new letter?
P.S. The Golden Globe nominations were announced yesterday, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” received the most movie nods. Justin Chang and Richard Brody agreed: it was one of the best films of the year. 🕶️
Erin Neil contributed to today’s edition.