On Friday, the Supreme Court took up a case that could grant special privileges to religious employees at the expense of their coworkers; it would also legalize discrimination within the workplace. Groff v. DeJoy is a frightening case because this court, and much of the federal judiciary, simply cannot be trusted to adjudicate sensitive disputes about religious accommodations on the job. The current state of the law is biased against religious minorities with legitimate claims of mistreatment, especially Muslims and Sikhs.

The period following May 2013 witnessed a slew of disclosures about mass surveillance. There were jaw-dropping revelations about National Security Agency programs, software, and spy gear. Someone leaked an entire catalog of malware developed by the Central Intelligence Agency. And let’s not forget all the juicy reports about companies secretly cooperating with the intelligence community to install backdoors, establish data-stream backchannels, and provide early access to information on vulnerabilities.

Canada told banks to unlock financial accounts belonging to individuals involved in a weekslong Covid-19 protest in Ottawa that police shut down this past weekend, according to a finance ministry official.

“They started [Monday] to unfreeze accounts,” Isabelle Jacques, a senior official in Canada’s finance department, told lawmakers Tuesday.

The step marks a reversal for the Liberal government, which has argued the sweeping power to freeze bank accounts and other assets was crucial during what was declared an emergency period.

Demonstrators against vaccine mandates halted traffic at two major border crossings in Western Canada and some vowed to stay even as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used a law giving his government emergency powers to end blockades. 

The main border posts in Alberta and Manitoba were closed Monday, with commercial traffic to the U.S. blocked by semi-trailers and farm equipment driven there by people opposed to COVID-19 vaccine rules.

In just a matter of weeks, Canadian truck drivers protesting coronavirus vaccine mandates became the unexpected darlings of the global right wing.

Republican politicians showered the truckers, who descended on the Canadian capital, with praise. Copycat convoys gathered from New Zealand to France.

The protests against U.S. and Canadian regulations barring unvaccinated truck drivers from crossing the border began Jan. 28 — and soon attracted a range of anti-government activists, far-right figures and opponents of pandemic restrictions more broadly

For weeks, the world has been riveted by a unique populist uprising in one of the most docile nations on earth: Canada. The Freedom Convoy, a cavalcade of semis, pickups, and other vehicles crossed the country and set up camp in the capital to demand that the government lift vaccine mandates, ditch vaccine passports, and give Canadians their freedom back. 

Washington, D.C., played host to a political rally this weekend, and one you might not have heard much about in the media. If you did hear something, it was probably negative. I speak, of course, about the anti–vaccine mandate rally at the Lincoln Memorial.

Whenever I write about police abuse and use-of-force issues, I often hear from the "back the badge" crowd to defend whatever it is the police officer did in a given situation. They're not always wrong, of course, but one recurring theme always sticks in my craw, especially given that these writers typically describe themselves as "conservatives."

In a bid to keep the coronavirus out of the country, Australia’s federal and state governments imposed draconian restrictions on its citizens. Prime Minister Scott Morrison knows that the burden is too heavy. “This is not a sustainable way to live in this country,” he recently declared. One prominent civil libertarian summed up the rules by lamenting, “We’ve never seen anything like this in our lifetimes.”

Until the 1600s, the average annual rate of economic growth in human history was approximately zero, on a per capita basis. Economies developed haltingly and, by today's standards, minimally. Politics consisted of a long and bitter series of wars, revolutions, and coups, punctuating variously short or long periods of oppressive and corrupt rule. Regimes came and went, and borders were redrawn, and politics staggered from one empire, invader, or upheaval to the next. Doctors and scholars knew barely more than the ancients had known—in some respects, less.