It’s the most wonderful time of the year—for journalists! No, not just because of the days off and the enhanced opportunities for free food and drink. It’s the annual rite of revisiting your hits and misses and trying to provoke a few last-minute page views.

Immigration was perhaps the biggest story of the year for many of America’s editorial departments. It surely was for Dispatches, The Weekly Dispatch and in my feature writing for the magazine.

Other topics that consistently drew interest were reports on the Trump administration’s devastating handling of foreign aid, beginning with Elon Musk’s ruinous few weeks as head of the Department of Government Efficiency. His team dismantled the life-saving U.S. Agency for International Development and raised havoc with other humanitarian efforts that are now being haphazardly restored under the Department of State. Many humanitarian workers worry that millions will die while the U.S. restoration work continues. (See: Trump closing U.S.A.I.D. could cost an estimated 14 million lives by 2030.)

One report generated some good readership on our website but, given its gravity, I had been hoping for a bigger impact: More immigrants are dying in ICE detention. That story reflects what will no doubt prove an ongoing concern. Two other stories similarly never found an audience but remain matters worth attending to: We know how to fight global poverty. But do we have the energy to actually do it? And Trump’s deadly strike on a drug-trafficking boat sets a dangerous example.

Other reporting on the mass deportation then being proposed by the Trump administration did not account for how severe and swift the effort proved to be (‘Our people are living in fear’). I believed at the time that the worst impact would only begin in 2026 when significantly beefed up budgets at the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement moved through the federal pipeline. I was wrong: From its first days, the campaign created chaos in communities with large numbers of legal and irregular immigrants and neighborhoods where they worked.

Sadly, however badly folks believe that effort landed on U.S. communities this year, primarily launched on cities run by Democrats, it remains likely that the worst is yet to come in 2026.

After years when Vaticanistas and state-side analysts, self-appointed and otherwise, found distinctions in tone, style or practical emphasis among the American bishops, dividing some as “Pro-Francis” and others as, well, less so, the conference has been broadly united by one man. No, not Pope Leo, though he has helped.

U.S. President Donald Trump has done much heavy lifting in bringing America’s bishops together. His policies on immigration, refugee resettlement, missile strikes off Venezuela and foreign aid have created a remarkable unity among bishops. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted almost unanimously for a “special message” at the end of their fall meeting that was deeply critical of the president’s mass deportation campaign.

Some compassion fatigue (or at least news fatigue) became evident in reporting about Gaza. Those stories did not draw as many eyeballs as perhaps the suffering of Gaza noncombatants, or the frequency of such reports became too much for some subscribers and site visitors.

Excluding reports that occurred during the papal transition this year, the top Dispatches were:

And some Dispatches that warrant more attention:

Here are my top stories for 2025:

Kevin Clarke is America’s chief correspondent and the author of Oscar Romero: Love Must Win Out (Liturgical Press).