the Web Editors

While accepting a Golden Globe last night, actress Regina King made “a vow” to hire “50 percent women” on every project she produces in the next two years.

1. The Border Wall Fight at the Center of the Government Shutdown, Explained

Steel slats, concrete, walls and fences: here’s what Trump actually wants to build, and what Congress might be willing to pay for.

2. Fashioning a New Congress: What This Freshman Class Wears to Work Matters More Than Ever

“They are unafraid to wear their identities on their sleeves, helping to mark a striking shift in how politicians—and specifically, women in politics—have traditionally been expected to present.”

4. ‘This Is Not a Crisis. This Is a Long-Term Disaster’

This year saw many of the president’s immigration-related campaign threats come to fruition. That came to a head in the late spring and early summer of 2018 as the administration implemented a policy of separating children from their parents at the border as they arrived to claim asylum. But, as Sojourners notes here, this crisis point was just one of many ongoing eruptions at our Southern border.

5. A Shared Theology of Sanctuary

Amid such horrors in immigration policy, churches throughout the country stepped up in a resurgence of the 1980s-era Sanctuary Movement. In addition to accompanying immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement appointments, training for interaction with ICE agents, and other active support measures, many churches — and synagogues and other houses of worship — are opening their sanctuaries to house people at risk of deportation.

“Justice” was on people’s hearts, minds, and search histories this year. The word was named Merriam-Webster’s "Word of the Year" for 2018 after being consulted by users 74 percent more than in 2017.

The group, called Shut Tornillo Down Coalition, says that the center adds to the abuse of vulnerable children by imprisoning them and separating them from their families and causes them deep harm by compounding on already existent trauma. 

The United Religions Initiative, The Charter of Compassion, and The Parliament of the World’s Religions released a joint statement yesterday calling for “an immediate cease-fire in the civil war between the Yemen government and the Houthis rebels.”

The letter states that aid workers from religious and humanitarian organizations have been restricted from administering food, water, shelter, and healthcare to 14 million people enduring a deadly famine.

1. How to Have a Conversation with Your Angry Uncle Over Thanksgiving

Get some practice, via the Angry Uncle Bot, courtesy of New York Times.

2. This Is the Face of the Reconquista

“They are too young to have heard how the words Mexican and American have used against one another. In their lives, they have been combined into one. The contours of their lives cross boundaries. The hard lines of difference and the borders of the past have not formed walls of divisions for them.”

1. A List Of Firsts For Women In This Year's Midterm Elections

The next Congress will include the first Muslim women, the first Native American women, and the youngest woman ever elected to that body.

2. Exit Polls: How Voting Blocs Have Shifted From the ’80s to Now

Democrats won the House as voters across nearly all demographic groups moved to the left, especially women and young people, according to exit polls.

1. Trump Cannot Define Away my Existence

The administration seems to think transgender people like me are as imaginary as hippogriffs.

2. The Secret Anxiety of the Upwardly Mobile

Children who do better than their parents often must choose between blending in and standing out.