When my children were little, they would periodically ask me whom I loved best. And my way out of that impossible question was to say, “I love each of you more than the other.” It confused them enough in a satisfying way to settle the question for a while. This week, I could say the same thing about the stories we’ve published. Usually I pick one or two stories to highlight in our politics newsletter, but I couldn’t choose standouts this week because they all stood out.

There was the gut-wrenching detail of USC Dornsife historian Susan Kamei’s story about Japanese Americans who, during World War II, were forced from their homes by the government, “imprisoned in a detention camp under armed guards and behind barbed wire – and then … required to join the military to fight for the nation that had locked [them] up.”

University of Memphis historian Aram Goudsouzian wrote a lyrical story about James Meredith, a civil rights hero “who does not associate himself with the civil rights movement. He espouses conservative ideas of self-reliance, discipline, morality and manhood, yet he proclaims a radical mission to destroy white supremacy.” Meredith’s complex personality and attitudes are a lesson, Goudsouzian wrote, that “humans are too complicated to assign to one political tribe.”

And we had a story for those who are still slack-jawed at the brazenness of Belarus’ authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, who forced down a commercial air flight so that his police could remove and arrest a dissident Belarusian journalist. Political analyst Tatsiana Kulakevich from the University of South Florida fills in the blanks on the complex relationship between Lukashenko and his powerful supporter, Russian leader Vladimir Putin – hint, they’re yachting buddies – and how what was essentially an airplane hijacking complicates the upcoming summit meeting between Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden. “Russia is critical to holding Lukashenko accountable,” writes Kulakevich, “but Putin is unlikely to endorse any effort to do so.”