Immigration stories always feel particularly apt for Christmas, so I wanted to share one by Maryam Saleh on a Georgia community that has been a haven to refugees for decades, but has been reeling since ICE swept through in the spring of 2017. The story is built around one Georgia man and his family; ICE tried to deport him to Somalia, flew most of the way there, then, due to mechanical difficulties, flew him back.

NSA whistleblower Reality Winner will be spending this Christmas in prison, for attempting to warn the public of Russian meddling in our election system. Her mother, Billie Winner-Davis, has written a piece for us about this injustice.

If you were so inclined, one way you could make her time in prison less burdensome is by sending her a note, either electronically or through the mail. Details on how you can do that are here. Her sentence is wildly out of proportion with what she did, and if there's a Democratic president elected in 2020, pardoning her or commuting her sentence ought to be one of the first things they do.

And with Clio Chang, I wrote a piece about the complicated politics of war and peace on the left, as the Senate managed to pass a resolution that would end U.S. support for the Yemen war, even as major liberal groups in Washington sat on the sidelines.

Longtime readers of this email may recall that for years it was pockmarked by distracting typos and the occasional — or not so occasional — winding, confusing sentence. Unable to tolerate it any longer, my great aunt Mimi Hook volunteered to copy edit it, and she still does so to this day. Luckily for me, she's a night owl, so I text her a link to the Google doc where I'm writing, she gets the alert on her Apple watch, and she jumps in. She saves me from embarrassment on a regular basis.

So I've set up a little Christmas tip jar for her here (and yes, don't worry, I'm going to give too). She doesn't know I'm doing this, so this email wasn't copy edited, but hopefully I caught most of the typos. Have a wonderful holiday, and I'll leave you with a recent pic of Aunt Mimi, plus one that was taken 80+ years ago.