George Washington University students camp out on campus to demand that their university divest from Israel and call for a ceasefire in Gaza, on April 25, 2024, in Washington, DC, United States. | Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images Campus protests for Gaza may be the biggest of the 21st century. Protests against the war in Gaza have spread to college campuses across the country in the days since students at Columbia University were arrested last week, evoking images of historical student protests that were met with similar backlash. Recent protests have not yet reached the scale of the ma ..read more

Pierre Poilievre speaks at a protest against a Federal Carbon Tax increase on March 27, 2024. | Artur Widak/NurPhoto/Getty Images The rise of an unusually tame right-wing populist reveals how Canadian democracy stays strong — and why the world should take notes from Ottawa. “Are we a country that looks out for each other ... or do you go down a path of amplifying anger, division and fear?” That’s how Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the stakes in his country’s upcoming election in an interview with Vox’s Today, Explained this week — outlining the 2025 contest as no ordinary ele ..read more

Former US President Donald Trump exits his criminal trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments at Manhattan Criminal Court on April 25, 2024, in New York City. | Jeenah Moon/Getty Images Trump allies newly indicted in Arizona, testimony continuing in New York, and the Supreme Court hearing arguments in DC. The Arizona attorney general’s office unsealed a new case indicting several top Trump allies, including Rudy Giuliani, for trying to steal the 2020 election. The former publisher of the National Enquirer spilled new details about Trump in testimony during the former president’s firs ..read more

Then-President Donald Trump shakes hands with Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who Trump placed on the Supreme Court. | Getty Images It’s unclear if the Court will explicitly hold that Trump could commit crimes with impunity, or if they’ll just delay his trial so long that it doesn’t matter. Thursday’s argument in Trump v. United States was a disaster for Special Counsel Jack Smith, and for anyone who believes that the president of the United States should be subject to prosecution if they commit a crime. At least five of the Court’s Republicans seemed eager to, at the very least, permit Trump to dela ..read more

Former President Donald Trump greets his own appointee, Justice Neil Gorsuch, ahead of the State of the Union address in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives on February 04, 2020. | Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images The justices already effectively gave Trump what he wants in his Supreme Court immunity case. Today, the Supreme Court will hear what might be one of its least consequential arguments in modern history. I’m referring, of course, to Trump v. United States, the case asking whether former President Donald Trump is immune from a federal criminal prosecution arising out of hi ..read more

Confiscated guns on display at Attorney General Letitia James’s announcement that the Attorney General’s Office, Drug Enforcement Administration, New York Police Department, and State Police took down ghost guns and narcotics trafficking ring in New York.  | Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images The fight over “ghost guns” is back before the justices. The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will hear Garland v. VanDerStok, a case that could open up a massive loophole in US gun laws, effectively neutralizing federal laws requiring gun buyers to submit to a background c ..read more

Pro-Palestine student demonstrators march from the University of Colorado campus in Boulder to show solidarity and to protest the sale of US jets to Israel in this October 1973 photo. | Denver Post via Getty Images And for decades, schools have tried to crack down on their activism. Last week, the country watched one of the biggest escalations in campus unrest this year unfold, when dozens of New York City police officers clad in riot gear entered the grounds of Columbia University and, on the orders of university president Minouche Shafik, arrested more than 108 student protesters who had bui ..read more

An activist with the Center for Popular Democracy Action holds a large photo of US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s head as the group blocks an intersection during a demonstration in front of the US Supreme Court on December 1, 2021, in Washington, DC.  | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images But it’s not yet clear they’ve settled on a rationale for doing so. A federal law requires most US hospitals to provide an abortion to patients experiencing a medical emergency if an abortion is the proper medical treatment for that emergency. This law is unambiguous, and it applies even in red states wi ..read more

Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images The Columbia protests and the debate over pro-Palestinian college students, explained. Protests over the war in Gaza erupted on Columbia University’s campus last week and have sparked demonstrations at other universities across the country. The demonstrations have resulted in some intense crackdowns and political scrutiny, all coming in the wake of recent congressional hearings on antisemitism on campus and amid an uptick in both antisemitism and anti-Muslim sentiment in the US. Protests have emerged across the country, including at Yale University, New Yor ..read more

Ukrainian soldiers fire artillery near Siversk, in Donetsk, Ukraine, on April 1, 2024. | Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu via Getty Images New American weapons will buy Ukraine’s defenders some valuable time. Ukrainian forces are having their best week in months, and it’s coming not on the muddy battlefields of the Donbas, but across the Atlantic. On Saturday, after months of delay, the US House of Representatives approved $61 billion in new funding for Ukraine, alongside aid packages for Israel and for US allies in the Pacific; last night, the Senate approved the package and sent it on to President Jo ..read more