Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.Flip to the last page of any Atlantic print magazine, and you’ll find a humble ode.The source of all this goodwill is James Parker, a lyrical writer (and poet) turned monthly gratitude correspondent. In honor of Thanksgiving, I asked James to write an original holiday-themed ode.

Here’s the first and most important thing to understand about the crime for which President Trump just pardoned former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn: Flynn did not lie to protect himself. He lied to protect Donald Trump.At the end of December 2016, Flynn had a series of conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. A month later, on January 24, 2017, Flynn was asked about those conversations by the FBI agent Peter Strzok.

President Donald Trump’s announcement that he has pardoned Michael Flynn, his former national security adviser who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, is infuriating—and not merely because of the gross favoritism on display. What Trump has done once again is corrupt something that ought to be beyond corruption: the mercy that the most powerful person in the world can bestow upon those who are in chains.I know the beauty of this power. I’ve seen it at work myself.

In 1960, Dwight Eisenhower’s attorney general, William Rogers, read the paper with alarm. He learned that Random House intended to purchase the venerable publisher Alfred A. Knopf. Rogers began making calls to prod his antitrust division into blocking the sale. In those days, monopoly loomed as a central concern of government—and a competitive book business was widely seen as essential to preserving both intellectual life and democracy.

Photographs by Dina LitovskyThe Lesbian & Gay Big Apple Corps, one of the first queer marching bands in the United States, was founded in 1979 in New York City, a decade after the Stonewall uprising. This year, the Big Apple Corps reached what Marita Begley, the group’s director, called “the mountaintop”: Tomorrow, it will become the first openly LGBTQ group to perform in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.