Through genetic testing, millions of Americans are estimated to have discovered that their parents aren’t who they thought. The news has upended relationships and created a community looking for answers. Plus:

• How Alcaraz and Sinner became tennis’s Big Two
• The Holocaust historian defending Israel
• The lure of the Labubu

Jennifer Wilson 
A staff writer covering books and culture.

During the pandemic, Hunter (not his real name) went so stir-crazy from the isolation of lockdown that he bought an online DNA test, just to have something to do. Then his results came back indicating significant Ashkenazi heritage. That was odd: neither of his parents were Jewish—or so he thought. He called his mother, who confessed to having had an affair with a man Hunter had known, all his life, as a family friend, who would occasionally drop off hand-me-downs, clothes his sons had outgrown.

I met with Hunter earlier this summer for my story, published in this week’s issue, about people who find out from direct-to-consumer DNA tests that their parents aren’t who they thought. Research suggests that an estimated two million Americans who have taken tests from companies like 23andMe and Ancestry could fall into that category. They’ve begun calling themselves N.P.E.s, for “not parent expected,” and have built a support network that includes podcasts, retreats, N.P.E.-trauma-recovery coaches, a national conference called Untangling Our Roots, and myriad Facebook groups.

Hunter told me that he had joined N.P.E. Facebook groups, but had to leave. “It was too much,” he explained. I quickly saw what he meant. These spaces are often rife with N.P.E.s’ frustration toward the mothers who kept them in the dark and a sense that they were cheated out of a different, perhaps better, life with another family. Some N.P.E.s look back on their childhoods and—cataloguing every slight, every time they felt different—wonder, Was that why? Others are processing their feelings through political action. An N.P.E.-founded lobbying organization called Right to Know has called for a national registry of sperm donors and recipients. It’s rattled some legal advocates who are concerned about privacy and L.G.B.T.Q. rights. “This just sounds like a list of lesbians and single women,” Douglas NeJaime, a professor of legal ethics and family law at Yale, told me.

While some N.P.E.s have become politically galvanized, others are still reckoning with the emotional fallout. As Hunter and I sat by a window in the Condé Nast cafeteria, he showed me the Instagram profile of one of his brothers on his phone. He promised his biological father that he wouldn’t reach out to his half siblings, and that he’d keep everything a secret. But Hunter also told me about a trip he went on in law school, during which a professor came up to him and asked him if he had a brother at another university. “Yes,” he replied, to his own surprise. “He went, ‘I knew it. Something in the way you sit,’ ” Hunter recalled, looking at his reflection. “ ‘Something in the way you sit . . .’ ” he trailed off.

Read or listen to the story »

Donald Trump announced on Truth Social this week that he wants to get rid of mail-in ballots, which nearly a third of Americans use to vote, before next year’s midterm elections. The President said that he will begin pursuing this policy by signing an executive order that would “bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.”

Can he do that? “The Constitution gives the President no power over how elections are run,” Michael Waldman, the president and C.E.O. of the Brennan Center for Justice, at N.Y.U. School of Law, told us. That authority lies with the states and with Congress—meaning Trump’s plan would be unconstitutional.

More broadly, “these threats are really bad—not so much because they will happen, but because of what they signal about the fights ahead,” Waldman argued. They are “part of an effort to sow distrust and spur conspiracy theories to make it harder to have free and fair elections.” Still, he said, “American elections are secure and safe and accurate, and all the screaming claims of misconduct don’t pan out.”

Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, the tennis champions who met as talented teen-agers on the Challenger circuit, are expected to face off in the final of this year’s U.S. Open. Hua Hsu reviews a new book about their budding rivalry. Read the story »

Read: Set in a small village in the Bavarian Alps, Sally Carson’s “Crooked Cross,” originally published in the nineteen-thirties, has reëmerged as a surprise hit.

Watch: Oasis kicks off the North American leg of their reunion tour on Sunday. Bone up on the Manchester band’s mid-nineties ascent by watching the “gripping” documentary “Oasis: Supersonic.”

Listen: Chance the Rapper’s new album, “Star Line,” which arrives after several tumultuous years for the performer, finds him “sturdier and wiser,” and prepared to question everything.

P.S. Trump criticized the Smithsonian yesterday, claiming on social media that the institution is “OUT OF CONTROL” and too focussed on, among other things, “how bad Slavery was.” Last year, during a decidedly different moment, Julian Lucas interviewed the head of the Smithsonian, Lonnie G. Bunch III, about his forward-looking plans for the organization.

Erin Neil and Ian Crouch contributed to today’s edition.