Is your Christmas tree still up? I can’t blame you — ours is still up, too, and it’s anybody’s guess for when it might come down. For those of you in that situation — and even for those of you who make sure your tree is in the gutter on Dec. 26 — here’s a Jane Kenyon poem, “Taking Down the Tree.” The last line is a rallying cry for those of us awaiting that magical day when the sun finally sets after 5 p.m. (The reliable website timeanddate.com tells me that magical day is coming up later next week. )

If you’re wondering how the Trump administration’s continued war against higher education will play out in the classroom, a recent dust-up at Texas A&M offers a clue: University administrators there told a philosophy professor that he needed to excise some references to Plato in a class he was preparing to teach. Let me emphasize a couple of words and phrases in that last sentence: “Philosophy professor.” “Plato.” Alan Blinder has the details for The New York Times.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s misguided war against voting by mail suffered a setback late this week: A Washington state judge permanently blocked an executive order that sought to require voters prove citizenship and that all ballots must be received by Election Day. Oregon allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted, as long as they arrive at election offices within a week. The federal judge who issued the ruling found that Trump lacks the authority to order such changes. Julia Shumway at the Oregon Capital Chronicle has the story.

A divided Corvallis City Council has decided to temporarily stop sweeps of most homeless encampments later this month in an attempt to improve the accuracy of the annual Point-in-Time Count of people who are unsheltered. The idea behind the motion — which passed on a 6-3 vote over the objections of city administrators — is that such a pause in the sweeps would allow people who are homeless to stay in their camps a little longer, making them easier to be counted. The count, which is widely considered an undercount, helps determine the allocation of federal funding (assuming, of course, that Oregon is in line to get any funding at all for anything from this administration). It’s worth remembering that last year’s Point-in-Time Count notched an increase of 130 souls over the previous year.

Images generated by AI contributed to the misinformation surrounding this week’s shooting of a Minneapolis woman by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent — and contributed to very bad days for people named Steve Grove, including the publisher of the Minnesota Star Tribune.

The news this week about journalism was — well, let’s just say 2026 started at about the same level as the previous year: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, one of the nation’s oldest newspapers, announced this week that it would stop operations entirely — not just cease producing a print edition, but pull the plug on the whole operation. But Joshua Benton at Nieman Lab argues that the Post-Gazette’s departure may clear the way for a different news operation in Pittsburgh. (By the way, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution no longer has a print edition, but is maintaining its newsroom and focusing its attention entirely on digital.)

Here’s Angela Fu at The Poynter Institute weighing on last week’s news that a Florida billionaire, David Hoffmann, has bought a majority interest in Lee Enterprises, the owner of the Gazette-Times. The bottom line still seems to be the same: The deal allows the company to save millions in interest on its debt, but it’s still uncertain what it means for the chain’s smaller papers, such as the G-T and the Albany Democrat-Herald.

This week’s long read comes from Alexandra Petri, the humorist who recently joined the staff at The Atlantic. I’m a fan, and it troubled me that I haven’t been seeing her byline much over the last few months. Now I know why: She was working on a monthslong project in which she attempted some of the tasks that the government used to do before Elon Musk fired up his chain saw. So, Petri tries her hand at predicting the weather, inspecting milk and collecting consumer prices, among other tasks. It turns out, to paraphrase the words attributed to Ronald Reagan, that Petri is not from the government and she is not much help.

The flu season this year is bad, Katherine J. Wu reports in The Atlantic — which is to say, it’s about what we expected. Is it too late to get a flu shot? No, regardless of what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tells you. Although you may still catch the flu, getting vaccinated reduces the chances that the illness will land you in the hospital.

Rest in peace, Bob Weir.

What I’m reading: “The Director,” a novel by the German author Daniel Kehlmann, based on the life of G.W. Pabst, the famed movie director who made films under the auspices of the Third Reich. It’s a compelling (and timely) novel about the borderline between art and complicity: Can you navigate the line? How do you know when you cross it? Can you find your way back?

Movie of the weekend: I want to finish Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” which is available on some streaming services and which I suspect will be back in theaters — where you really should see it — before too long. If you’ve seen “Sinners,” “One Battle After Another,” “It Was Just an Accident,” “Sentimental Value,” “The Secret Agent” and “Marty Supreme,” my guess is that you’ll have a good head start when the Oscar nominations come out Jan. 22. (Sunday’s Golden Globes should offer a bit — but just a bit — of Oscar guidance.)

That’s all for this weekend. Let’s gather here next weekend, when we’ll be enjoying precisely 12 more minutes of daylight.