Everything is coming up Kellyanne Conway. Ever since she signed on to become Donald Trump's campaign manager (and now counselor to the president), she has bloomed into one of America's most polarizing political figures. Conway is the first woman to run a successful presidential campaign, but her infamy stems from cable news appearances, where she spins her boss's controversies into what she deems "alternative facts" while flaunting blond split-ends and fruit-colored dresses. (Conway's style is best described as what would happen if one of Cinderella's step sisters grew up to join the cast of Real Housewives of New Jersey.)

Conway would be the most hilarious White House staffer of all time, maybe even a gay icon (Valerie Jarrett sure never allegedly punched anyone at an inaugural ball), if she weren't also somehow good at her job. Conway terrifies because she managed to lead Trump past the "grab her by the pussy" video to victory. Her success shocked America, especially given 53 percent of white women voted for Trump.

Conway spent decades studying American women as a pollster. After founding the Polling Company in 1995, she spent years conducting studies about women, both as consumers and as voters, and appearing on cable news spouting her findings to the public, though her work was often criticized by her male counterparts for being too female-focused. Together with Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham, she became part of a trio known as the "pundettes"; Conway was the only one with a day job involving political campaigns.

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A version of this article originally appeared on the Trace.

When police arrived at the Goldsboro, North Carolina, home of Billy and Gina Williams shortly after midnight on January 20, Billy was administering first aid to his wife on the front porch as she bled from a gunshot wound to the neck. Gina died at the scene soon after.

"The last words Gina said to me as I held her was, 'I love you,'" Williams wrote on Facebook.

What that devastating post doesn't reveal is that Billy was the one who shot her. According to news reports, the 49-year-old husband retrieved a handgun from a safe after one of the couple's children heard someone at the front door. Suspecting an intruder, Williams approached the entryway. The light on the front porch was off, and as he opened the door, he faced a figure in the dark. He fired a single shot, striking his wife. She had come home after getting off her overnight shift earlier than expected.

There are an estimated 265 million firearms kept in American homes, according to a landmark survey from Harvard and Northeastern University researchers. Most of those are kept for the purpose of self-defense—as protection against other people who might try to do them harm.

Sometimes, tragically, a gun is used by its owner to kill family members mistaken for intruders. At least 34 times over the last three years, gun owners attempting to protect themselves against a perceived threat shot a loved one instead, according to a Trace analysis of news clips and data from Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization that tracks incidents of gun violence in the noted States. The incidents resulted in 14 deaths, and 20 injuries of varying severity.

In St. Cloud, Florida, in December 2015, Sherry Campbell was wrested from her sleep by what she thought was a stranger approaching her bed. She reached for her handgun and opened fire in the dark, sending a bullet into the chest of the would-be assailant—who turned out to be her 27-year-old daughter.

"Baby, I love you so much, please!" Campbell shouted during a call to police as Ashley Doby, an aspiring teacher, lay bleeding. Doby later died in the hospital.

In Cincinnati, two weeks later, Georta Mack, 14, left school to play hooky and snuck into the basement of his home. Mack's father, believing he heard an intruder, grabbed his .45 and opened fire in the direction of the basement. The 72-year-old man hit the teen in the neck, killing him.

"I heard noise and went downstairs looking, and he jumped out at me and I shot him," the bewildered 72-year-old told a 911 dispatcher through sobs. "He scared me."

Neither he nor Campbell were charged in the unintentional deaths of their children.

In April 2016, two Prince George's County, Maryland, firefighters were mistaken for intruders and shot while performing a welfare check on a diabetic man at the behest of his brother. One of the firefighters died.

Three months later in Goldsboro, North Carolina—not far from where Billy and Gina Williams live—a 31-year-old man fired a shot down a hallway in his home after he heard noises at 3:20 AM. The bullet struck his 49-year-old mother, killing her. And in August 2016, 11-year-old Timea Batts was shot and killed by her father as she returned to her Hendersonville, Tennessee, home after her first day of middle school.

Check out the VICE News look at how 2016 was the worst year for homicides in Chicago in decades, with many of them the product of gun violence.

Hard numbers on the frequency of defensive gun use are elusive. Gun rights advocates claim millions of incidents each year. Gun Violence Archive, a nonpartisan clearinghouse of gun-violence statistics online, calculated 4,626 incidents of reported and verified defensive gun use over the past three years, resulting in 1,657 deaths and 2,495 injuries.

But research suggests that a gun kept in the home is more likely to be used against its owner, to bully or kill a romantic partner, to be left where children can find it, or be stolen, than for legitimate self-defense purposes.

A 2014 meta-analysis of 16 studies by Dr. Andrew Anglemeyer and his colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, found that household gun ownership doubles the risk of homicide and triples the risk of suicide for those with access to firearms.

A 2010 Harvard study found that nearly half of unintentional shootings in 17 states between the years 2003 and 2006 were perpetrated by family members.

"Many more people believe guns in their home make them safer, when in fact, epidemiological research suggests precisely the opposite," Deb Azrael, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health and one of the authors of the gun ownership study, told the Trace in September.

In North Carolina, the Williams family is still reeling from Gina's death. She leaves behind two daughters and a stepdaughter.

"This is something I will have to live with for the rest of my life," her husband Billy wrote in his Facebook post.

A version of this article was originally published by the Trace, a nonprofit news organization covering guns in America. Sign up for the newsletter, or follow the Trace on Facebook or Twitter.

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Over the weekend, US President Trump's ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries sent the world into chaos. Detainment, deportations, and absolute confusion from the ambiguity of Trump's executive order put airports across America on high alert. In response, protests—arguing against the constitutional basis for the ban—spread like wildfire across the United States.

Since then, outrage at Trump's executive order has spurred protests across the globe. Canada in particular—reeling from a terrorist attack Sunday night that left half a dozen Quebec mosque-goers dead—saw a large protest at Toronto's US consulate Monday morning, actually causing the office to shut its doors in advance. In a statement posted online, the consulate advised Visa-holders and those seeking consular services to come back the next day.

Despite being the city being smothered in -18 C weather and the office being closed, hundreds showed up to the event. VICE spoke to some of them to hear why they came out and how they feel about Canada's role in handling the unfolding US immigration crisis.

John, 54
Indigenous Protester

VICE: Why are you here today?
John: I'm here because of Trump's policies. I do not agree with them—the immigration, the pipelines, the hate. It's that simple.

How do you feel about what happened this weekend—the travel ban, the detainment, the Muslim discrimination?
I think it's wrong. It's absolutely disgraceful. No matter where you are from, anybody should be able to come here—the US or Canada. This is a land of immigrants.

Do you feel like Justin Trudeau has a greater responsibility to take on Trump directly? Some say he's been too neutral on the matter.
You gotta expect that from him. The US is our biggest trading partner. That's just the way politicians are. It is their primary interest—to protect money.

What needs to happen next?
People. People are coming out and rising up. We need to let Trump know we do not stand for his policies. We definitely will not stand for him.

Joe Cressy, 34
Toronto City Councillor

Mr. Cressy, you've been very vocal about Trump's presidency. Why are you out here today?
Cressy: I think as residents of an international world, we all have a role to play. Whether that's condemning hatred all over the world, or hatred here in the city that we live in. This city, all cities, are a response to how we choose to live together. We must stand up and let everyone know that Toronto is here to welcome them.

Most Canadian politicians have avoided directly criticizing Trump—both at the federal level and here in the city. How do you feel about that?
The City of Toronto is a welcome city and a sanctuary city—with or without documentation, you can access public services without fear. Has everyone on the local level been as vocal about supporting this? No, unfortunately they haven't. But the principle is here, and many of my colleagues stand beside me in this fight.

On the federal level, politicians are saying that people are welcome here and our borders are open. As some have said, that may not be enough, but people are here to hold us to account for that.

Do you think Toronto is doing enough to make sure that we welcome refugees and those in fear because of their ethnicity, race, or religion?
Well, this week, there is a motion coming forward in city council to reaffirm our place as a sanctuary city, and to strengthen our resolve in making sure that everybody is welcome here. We need to do more to help settle newcomers, and protect those who are persecuted—both locally and abroad.

Elizabeth, 22
Protester

Why are you here today?
From the Muslim ban to the attack in Quebec yesterday, I felt like it was a moral obligation for me to be here. Something like this shouldn't happen in the 21st century. The Holocaust happened, and I don't ever, ever want to see a repeat of something like that.

A lot of Canadians like to say that Canada doesn't have the same issues as the US—racism, bigotry, discrimination. Does that bother you?
It's very unsettling. Canadians like to take a moral high ground when it comes to immigration or human rights, but our country is founded upon those same wrongdoings. We had residential schools, we had colonization, and we still have racism. It has no border. If we're going to stand against something like this, we need to look at it here as well. We can't pretend those same feelings aren't growing here in Canada.

Are you worried that Canadians might not see that?
I am, especially because there's this idea that we need to do polite politics. This idea that there are subtle ways to address Islamophobia, and racism, and bigotry. I want to see stronger stances like this. I don't think that the Canadian government, or Justin Trudeau, will do enough without being pushed.

From top left to bottom right: Naomi, Maria, Kaitlyn, and Ana.

Naomi, 19; Maria, 21; Kaitlyn, 18; Ana, 18
University of Toronto students

VICE: Why are you guys here today?
Naomi: We wanted to make it clear we're not going to stand for the kind of discrimination we've been seeing this last week. It's not acceptable.

The travel ban has affected a lot of people. Have any of you personally been affected or moved by what's happened so far?
Naomi: I'm Jewish. My grandmother is a Holocaust survivor. I'm seeing the cultural and political climate, and I'm seeing a lot of similarities. I'm scared for a lot of people, and I know that it's my duty as a person—who has the power to stand up—to come out here.

Maria: Forget the fact that we may be from whatever religion, this is just inhumane and heartbreaking. People are coming to us for shelter and refuge from horrible atrocities, and we're spitting at them. It's so disgusting.

Kaitlyn: I'm seeing it with my friends and my family. Look around us. The majority of the people here are of visible ethnic or religious minorities. The people affected are just like us. We all feel it.

Ana: I just ask myself, "Why is that I'm lucky enough to be born here and am free? " It's that simple. It's wrong.

Justin Trudeau has tweeted and said a lot of things, but he hasn't stood up to Trump. Do you guys feel like he's doing the right thing by playing it cautiously?
Maria: I get that he is trying to maintain good relations, but this isn't a normal scenario. Trump isn't like another president from before. He needs to be more vocal. We're behind him, the people in the US are behind him. He can't lead in fear.

Ana: Yeah, what we're doing right now says that. Everybody is out here. People are ready to speak up.

Philip, 64
Communist Party of Canada

What brought you here today?
I—we are here to protest the fascist and racist policies that are being pushed by the United States, and we're here to say that attacks on Muslims or immigrants or anybody, are not acceptable. The other reason I'm here are to oppose US wars of aggressions—the ones that caused the refugee crisis in the first place.

Do you think that Canada is doing enough to combat Trump's policies?
Well, we are a country that is principally different than the US. We are a country that accepts immigrants and refugees. That said, we still participate in the process that enables this hatred elsewhere. We participate in wars against Middle Eastern countries. We do not enforce or stand behind the idea of sanctuary cities as much as we should. We need to do more than feel good about being better—we need to actually work harder than we are now to rise above what is acceptable and what is passable.   

Follow Jake Kivanc on Twitter.

It was the subtweet heard round the world. On Saturday, January 28, Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, tweeted the following in response to Trump's Muslim ban: "To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada." While some questioned Trudeau's intentions and commitment to the cause, others would use his comment as a way to forward their own brands.

One of the first was Norm Kelly, a Toronto city councillor perhaps best known for his annoyingly large Twitter presence and for referring to himself as "6dad." Kelly's profile was notably elevated after his beef with Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill in 2015, and since then, he (or his nephew, depending on if you believe the conspiracy behind Norm's Twitter) can be seen sounding off on just about anything that will get him more followers.

Though Norm later pointed out in a follow-up tweet that proceeds of the "I'm moving to Canada" sweater would be going toward "a charity assisting refugees," like most of what Norm (or his nephew) does on Twitter, it still served to attract attention to him.

While Norm's intentions can at least be construed as nuanced, this Canadian vodka brand's motives are considerably more shaky. With the message of "Proud to be Canadian today. #welcometocanada #lovetrumpshate" and throwing extra money behind this Facebook post (it's listed as "sponsored") to increase exposure, this is pretty nasty (and not in a good way).

Some people were understandably outraged at an alcohol brand using the plight of those targeted by Trump's anti-immigration policies to forward their brand, prompting a response by Nütrl: "To all who have written with good constructive criticism of our direction, position and content...and to those who are threatening, swearing, yelling and straight up hate what we are doing… Thanks for sharing your opinions." Lol OK.

And then there's this jewelry company: "Diversity is our strength… #proudtobecanadian #welcometocanada #hewillnotdivideus #sageandsoul." Yes, because thread, beads, and little maple leaf charms are going to do anything to help refugees.

Canadians aren't the only ones making an attempt to benefit off of the devastating state of America's politics. Notably, Uber managed to piss off just about everyone who isn't a Trump supporter between its CEO's relationship to the new American president and disrupting the taxi protest at JFK airport in New York City by dropping its surge pricing during the action.

Other big brands, such as Starbucks, have taken their anti-Muslim ban stances public—the multi-billion-dollar coffee chain pledged to hire 10,000 refugees in response to Trump's policy. While this is a meaningful promise, it cannot be denied that moves like this also serve to boost a company's brand. In these troubling times, it's undeniably important to take a stand for what you believe in, but if you're going to do so, it's best to do it with tact.

Follow Allison Tierney on Twitter .

In the basement of a stately, high-ceilinged church here earlier this month, a class for newly arrived refugees was momentarily interrupted by a young boy dressed in a Christmas-colored elf costume and a girl in a princess dress who'd run in chasing after him. Both were after their mother, who was seated among other Afghan and Iraqi women attending the day-long crash course on American laws, culture, and local logistics. It would be one of the last refugee orientations conducted in the US for some time.

Roughly 50 men, women, and children from a half-dozen countries sat at small, round classroom tables to take in the spectacle of resettlement professionals and volunteers role-playing various aspects of American life. Instructors offered advice on how to properly handle domestic arguments before they turned violent, every day interactions with pharmacists, and diet and exercise. Down the hall, children played with blocks and puzzles and other toys.

"In America, this is how we do things," Chris George, the director of New Haven's Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services resettlement program, said to the class, "and you're all Americans now." It was as much a welcoming embrace as the kind of carefully constructed warning worried parents are prone to using—listen to me; it's for your own good.

George paused while translators at each table delivered his declarative statement to refugees from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Congo, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria; a wave of smiles and laughter soon followed. Upon arriving in the United States, resettlement workers like George and his colleagues are usually a refugee's lifeline, coach, and first phone call, providing them with crucial support and guidance on their way to self-sufficiency.

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The Sundance Film Festival works kind of like a distant star—by the time its light hits most of the world, it's over. But while there may have been plenty of distractions stealing the thunder from this year's Park City premieres, this is by no means the finale for most of these films. Sundance is often seen as the beginning of the road to the next year's Oscars. But as streaming services and their fat wallets become more of a driving force at the festival, the opportunity to actually see some of this stuff—even if you don't live in Los Angeles and New York—is very real.

I saw 15 films at this year's festival, just a fraction of the huge program. Several films I didn't get to see, but have heard great things about, including Macon Blair's directorial debut I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore and Eliza Hittman's Beach Rats. In my experience, 2017 was not as great a year for underdog discoveries and surprise hits from unknown directors. However, with that caveat aside, there were still a number of films that stood out to me at this year's festival. Here are the top five—and how you'll be able to see them.

Call Me By Your Name. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival

Call Me By Your Name

Over and over, this is what I heard people say about Luca Guadagnino's fifth film: "It doesn't feel like a Sundance film." First of all, ouch. Second of all, it's not not a Sundance film—based on the celebrated novel by André Aciman, it's a sensitive, lyrically told gay coming-of-age story co-starring a Hollywood actor (Armie Hammer) doing some "edgy" stuff on-screen. But I suspect the sentiment comes from Guadagnino's idiosyncratic direction, which continues to feel surprising and abundantly fresh with each successive film.

The film takes place over one memorable summer for Elio (the revelatory Timothée Chalemet), the son of scholars living "somewhere in northern Italy" in the early 80s. In many ways, it follows the expected beats of a coming-out story, but always darts in an unexpected direction as it hits each one, finding new emotional notes that we rarely get to see. Elio is in many ways wise beyond his years, but his emotional inexperience is as important as his sexual inexperience; the visiting grad student that he becomes enamored with (Hammer) treats him as an intellectual equal. Their corner of the crumbling Italian countryside is buzzing and restless and seductive and yet somehow never drifts into cliché. The film brings back that first summer when everything felt like the most important thing in the world with deep intimacy, and its unforgettable final shot will stay with me for a while.

Where can you see it? Call Me By Your Name is being released theatrically by Sony Pictures Classics sometime this year.

Mudbound. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival

Mudbound

Director Dee Rees's big swing for the fences after her 2011 Sundance breakout Pariah has paid off in this prestige-y historical drama that's deceptively conventional everywhere but where it matters. It's a tale a two farming families trying to make it in the unforgiving Mississippi Delta before and after World War II, one black and one white. Rees makes us feel the weight of a thousand tiny injustices pile up over the years, and easily pivots between a systemic view of racism and a person-to-person one. The film is worth it alone for the friendship between Laura (Carey Mulligan) and Florence (Mary J. Blige), which is wildly privilege-imbalanced and ultimately supportive and loving.

Where can you see it? Netflix just bought Mudbound for $12.5 million, narrowly beating out the next film as the biggest sale of the festival. A release date has not yet been announced.

The Big Sick. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival

The Big Sick

Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon's more-or-less faithful retelling of an early episode in their relationship has the logline of a sappy hugging-and-learning movie of the week. But it wins on the strength and clarity of its writers, stars, and director Michael Showalter. Kumail (Nanjiani) and Emily (Zoe Kazan) embark on a quintessential millennial relationship with one unaddressed complication: Kumail's family is Pakistani Muslim and are dead set on setting him up with an arranged marriage. Then a sudden crisis brings Kumail unexpectedly closer to Emily's parents (Ray Romano and Holly Hunter), and yes, everyone hugs and learns a lot.

The thing is, I've never seen a Sundance audience laugh they way they did at the premiere of The Big Sick. It's a deep, satisfying, and often dark humor, dismantling Emily's parent's latent prejudice one minute, and Kumail's Pakistani geekery the next. What takes it over the top, though, is that Gordon and Kazan have created a living, breathing, complicated romantic partner in Emily, a person whose absence is felt keenly. It has an Apatovian runtime (2 hours) and a somewhat shaggy third act, but its heart stays true to the very end.

Where can you see it? The Big Sick got picked up by Amazon and will have a theatrical release in conjunction with its streaming release. No release date here, either.

A Ghost Story. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival

A Ghost Story

Wait a second, what is this doing here? Sure, I didn't ultimately fall for David Lowery's A Ghost Story, a decidedly kooky fable in art-house clothing, but I do appreciate its presence at this year's festival. At any rate, it's something to talk about. This is the one where Casey Affleck is a ghost in a sheet, and Rooney Mara eats a whole pie, after all. Lowery is going for some grand statement on souls and the passage of time, but I'm not sure anyone could really say what that was, and what he's ultimately left with is a very clever little puzzle box of a movie that doesn't actually fit together. The incoherence of its finale isn't what bothered me, though. The film is at its best when it genuinely doesn't care about making you feel comfortable or smart. And the constant image of Affleck as the ghost is by turns disturbing, beautiful, and sweet—certainly a great centerpiece to an imperfect but daring film.

Where can I see it? The powerhouse indie distributor A24 will be releasing A Ghost Story theatrically, date TBD.

Roxanne Roxanne. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival

Roxanne Roxanne

Writer-director Michael Larnell retells of the life of Roxanne Shanté Gooden, the original queen of battle rapping whose career took a nosedive after an exhilarating brush with fame, as a (mostly) feel-good music biopic, slickly produced with help of Pharrell Williams and Forest Whitaker. Larnell paces the film a little strangely and doesn't give us nearly enough battle rapping, but the real draw is star Chanté Adams, who easily embodies the charisma and ferociousness of the film's heroine, ethering everyone who dares underestimate her through a row of sparkly braces. There's not much subtlety here, but if you're looking to tide yourself over before the next half-season of The Get Down, it'll do just fine. (Also, The Get Down's Tremaine Brown, Jr. shows up in a very winky role, which potentially upsets the entire space-time continuum of contemporary adaptations of the early New York hip-hop scene.)

Where can I see it? Roxanne Roxanne was picked up by Neon, a new-ish distributor that also got festival favorites Ingrid Goes West and Beach Rats.

Follow Emily Yoshida on Twitter.

The White House Correspondents' Dinner is sort of like the Oscars of DC. The event, which started as a way to foster relationships between the press and members of the president's administration, usually features a comedian host that tries their best to make topical jokes without coming across like a total jerk. This year, however, there might not be a dinner, due to Trump's "running war" with the media and his inability to laugh at himself.

To make sure that Trump does get the roasting he deserves, comedian Samantha Bee announced Monday that she will host an alternative to the traditional event, which she's calling the "Not White House Correspondents' Dinner." It's set to feature performances from various comedians and will take place at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, on April 29, the same night and just a few miles away from where the actual event is scheduled to take place.

"Samantha Bee, noted purveyor of FAKE NEWS™, will host the gala affair, welcoming journalists and non-irritating celebrities from around the world," TBS said in a press release Monday. "We suspect some members of the press may find themselves unexpectedly free that night, and we want to feed them and give them hugs."

In recent years, the White House Correspondents' Dinner has evolved into a star-studded affair and has been criticized by media figures like Tom Brokaw for blurring the ethical line between the president and the journalists tasked with covering him objectively. After a scathing column by Frank Rich in 2007, the New York Times stopped sending its reporters to the dinner.

The Full Frontal with Samantha Bee host told the New York Times—Trump's bête noire—that she wanted to bring like-minded comics together in case the decades-old event doesn't happen this year. It's not clear which reporters will attend, or who will perform, but Bee plans to donate all the proceeds from the night to the Committee to Protect Journalists. It will also air on TBS sometime after the taping.

"The evening is sure to bring plenty of surprises, music, food and laughter—and if you're not careful you just might learn something," Bee said in the statement. "Specifically, you'll learn how screwed we'd be without a free press."

While the comedians tasked with hosting the event lightly rib the president and members of his administration, they've gotten more critical over the last few years, like when Stephen Colbert made President George W. Bush visibly uncomfortable when he served as host in 2006. It's almost certain that Bee will make Trump uncomfortable with her jokes on the night of the Not Correspondents' Dinner, though he likely won't be in attendance.

The media is constantly "condemning and providing false information again, with some truths omitted, some issues exaggerated, and some news reported without scrutiny."

That's not a quote from Trump administration talking head Kellyanne Conway on FOX News. It's a statement given by General Prayuth Chan-ocha, the leader of Thailand's military junta, in September 2014. And yet, those words have been repeated daily—almost verbatim—by the new administration, from Conway, to White House press secretary Sean Spicer, and even from Donald Trump himself.

In the first ten days of his tumultuous and controversial presidency, Trump has borrowed five key aspects—willfully or not—from the playbook used by despots around the world. His early strategies and style mimic authoritarian governance around the world—strategies I've seen firsthand in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa. This does not mean that Trump is a despot or will become one. But it does mean we should worry.

First, in order to roll back democratic checks, despots must blur the lines between truth and falsehood. This makes it difficult to ascertain who to trust in times of crisis. Throughout history, this graying of truth often starts on trivial matters, particularly on issues that surround the cult of personality associated with the leader. Trump did not disappoint; his administration's first press event as president was an aggressive and angry assertion of falsehoods related to his inaugural crowd size. Like many despots, Trump is unable to accept popular narratives that challenges his standing as the man of the people.

This blurring of the truth becomes dangerous when real crises break out. If China makes a claim about the South China Sea and Trump makes the opposite claim, how can Americans—or American allies—trust the White House? After all, if Trump's team lies about an easily disproved claim where citizens can simply look at side-by-side photos, what about statements that aren't easily verifiable with photographs?

And yet, in spite of these risks, despots thrive on this uncertainty. Blurring that line between fact and falsehood dilutes critiques and ensures that citizens question the nature of truth itself.

Second, but relatedly, Trump is doing what despots do best—attacking the media for accurate reporting. At CIA headquarters, Trump called the media "among the most dishonest human beings on Earth." He tweeted that the media was the "opposition party." Kellyanne Conway has suggested that journalists who "talk smack" should be fired. And perhaps most famously, Trump has called CNN and the New York Times "fake news." With some different names, these developments read a lot like the early stages of a war on the media in Turkey, where President Recep Erdogan has relentlessly attacked journalists. Trump is not yet going nearly as far as Erdogan, who jails journalists, but the preliminary logic is the same— an attempt to undermine the credibility of those who hold power to account.

Third, Trump has repeatedly cast aspersions on the integrity of American elections, falsely claiming that 3 million people voted illegally. Remarkably, this is a reversal of a tactic often used by despots. Typically, despots rig elections and lie to say they were clean. Trump won an election that was not rigged—at least not in terms of voter fraud or the electoral process itself—and lied to say it then claimed it was rigged against him. However, there is a method to his madness. In Côte d'Ivoire, I saw the violent fallout from politicized claims that foreigners illegally voted in droves. That claim was used as a pretext to disenfranchise citizens, robbing the opposition of an electoral path to victory.

Trump's administration and the people surrounding it have already suggested that they will "strengthen" voting procedures, in a way that makes it more difficult for some people to vote (most likely minorities and poorer citizens who have a harder time complying with new rules like being required to produce photo ID at the polls). Furthermore, denigrating the electoral process is an important way for despots to downplay election results that hint at any semblance of unpopularity. Trump's claim that he would have won the popular vote without illegal voting reeks of this strategy. Without that long-term goal, his attempt to undermine public confidence in his own victory make no sense.

Fourth, and perhaps most sinister, Trump is already politicizing national security and using the "rally around the flag" effect to erode rights. Over the weekend, Trump banned immigrants, refugees, and even legal residents from seven Muslim-majority countries. Nobody from these countries has committed a major terrorist attack on the United States in the last 15 years. Indeed, countries that have produced most of the terrorists that have attacked Americans in America are exempted from the ban. But Trump's rhetoric around this policy is aimed at suggesting that anyone who opposes him is unpatriotic and opposed to the goal of American security. This tactic is as old as despotism itself, and has been used recently from Turkey to the Philippines to Tunisia to roll back democratic rights and institute draconian measures aimed at consolidating power.

Trump is currently using this tactic to allegedly protect Americans from foreign threats. But it is fair to wonder what will happen if a terrorist attack occurs from within the United States on his watch: Will American Muslims be his next target?

Furthermore, Trump is also politicizing national security decision-making in an unprecedented fashion. Steve Bannon, the Breitbart media mogul who has become Trump's chief strategist, has been added to the National Security Council. Simultaneously, the director of National Intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—people with real military and national security expertise—have been downgraded and are now attending only when "issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed." Democracy is weakened when partisan politics is injected into national security advising.

Fifth, and finally, Trump is moving at such a rapid pace of change that normal citizens can't keep up. Policy changes are deliberately being obscured by a constant stream of tweets, executive orders, television interviews, press conferences, and outbursts. This deluge has a clear purpose, and one often used to autocrats: it forces the opposition to narrowly pick their battles. Already, Democrats wary at the threat of unqualified cabinet appointees have decided to only focus on a few choice picks to block. People like me, who care most about democratic institutions, become less concerned by major policy shifts because they seem miniscule and irrelevant by comparison to threats to democracy itself. Trump is a master of this strategy, often floating "trial balloons" of extreme policy ideas, only to walk them back and look like he's compromising.

He combined the second and fifth strategies most recently, suggesting that he would move the White House press corps out of the White House only to capitulate—and claim credit for doing something that literally every modern president has taken as given.

To be clear, Trump is a democratically elected leader who is subject to democratic oversight and the rule of law. He is not a despot. But if American democracy were to slide toward authoritarianism, the first ten days of that process would look a lot like the ten days we just witnessed. It's time to remind ourselves that the Constitution and democratic institutions are not self-enforcing magical documents: They are only as strong as those who fight for them during times of distress.

Dr. Brian Klaas is a fellow at the London School of Economics and the author of the Despot's a Accomplice: How the West is Aiding and Abetting the Decline of Democracy.

Speaking to reporters Monday, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer implied that terror attacks like the Quebec City mosque shooting are a good justification for President Donald Trump's Muslim ban.

Sunday night's shooting at the Islamic Cultural Center in Sainte-Foy left six men dead; two more are in serious condition in hospital and will require additional surgeries.

Police originally apprehended two men, identified in media reports as Laval University students Alexandre Bissonnette and Mohamed El Khadir, but only one of them is now considered a suspect. La Presse is reporting the suspect is Bissonnette.

During a press briefing, Spicer, who came under fire last week for lying about the size of Trump's inauguration crowds, said the president had offered his condolences to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

A protest against the Muslim ban outside the US Consulate in Toronto. Photo by Jake Kivanç

On Friday, Trump enacted an executive order that's being referred to as a Muslim ban, banning immigrants and refugees from seven countries—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen—from entering the US for the next 90 days. Syrian refugees are banned indefinitely.

Although Spicer said both Trudeau and Trump agreed it was too early to talk about motives for the mosque shooting, he added, "it's a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant and why the president is taking steps to be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to our nation's safety and security."

In making that statement, Spicer seemed to suggest that a ban on Muslims would somehow protect Muslims from being attacked.

No refugee to the US has ever been responsible for a domestic terror attack.  

Spicer also said the American government has offered to support Canadian authorities "in any way necessary."

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Even before Sunday's horrific killing of six men at a Quebec city Mosque, violence directed against Muslims has been an open, dirty secret in the province. Community leaders have been complaining about harassment, vandalism, even physical threats directed against them. Women especially have been targeted when wearing devotional headdress or body-covering clothing like the niqab.

Anti-Muslim hate crimes haven't been limited to symbolic, highly inflammatory acts like the dumping of a pig's head on a mosque's doorstep during Ramadan, as happened last year at the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec, where Sunday's shooting took place. Mosque windows have been broken, death threats have been uttered, cars vandalized and defaced. Megmet Deger told the CBC that following recent acts of vandalism against his mosque in the Montreal suburb of Dorval, members of his community no longer feel safe. "Our lives are in danger," he said.

Photo via Flickr user ibourgeault_tasse

Islamophobia has been creeping into the public sphere as well. In a local referendum in the borough of Ahuntsic-Cartierville last June, voters rejected a project to turn a community centre into a mosque. The Charter of Values, which would have banned prominent religious symbols in public spaces and from civil servants and seemed to specifically focus on head coverings, was proposed by the Parti Québécois ahead of the 2014 provincial elections. And there has been no shortage of incidents played up in local media designed to spark outrage and stoke anti-Muslim sentiment over the past several years.

But where does bigotry devolve into murderous hatred? And why did it happen here, and why now? Academics will be studying that for years to come, but it is probably safe to say that the factors leading up to it go well beyond mental illness and access to firearms.

According to Daniel Weinstock, a professor at the Faculty of Law at McGill University and an expert on interfaith relations and religious minorities' issues in Canada and Quebec, the looping echo chamber of politics and media—mainstream, social and fake—swirling around the Muslim community created the environment in which this kind of shooting could occur. To him, the shooting was unpredictable but sadly, not unexpected.

"We have in Quebec in the last few years had a political climate which, for a variety of political reasons, shone a lot of light on the Muslim community," he says. "They are salient in ways that other communities are not... And they have become salient in the minds of people who have developed murderous intent."

By being so prominent in the news through no fault of their own, says Weinstock, the Muslim community has become a target. No one is shooting up Baha'i centres because nobody is paying attention to the Baha'i. Muslims, on the other hand, have been getting plenty—and well before the advent of Donald Trump's own particular brand of Muslim baiting.

Research suggests that there has been an uptick in right-wing extremism in Quebec. In a study released last year, Barbara Perry of the Ontario Institute of Technology and Ryan Scrivens of Simon Fraser University estimate that there are about 100 extreme-right groups in Canada, with up to a quarter of them based in Quebec. Membership ranges roughly between 15 and 100 people.

And while those numbers aren't overly impressive, there have been an estimated 800 hate crimes committed in the province between 2010 and 2015. But 2014-15 saw a 50 percent jump from the previous year in the number of reported crimes, from 167 to 257, according to figures provided to the Montreal Gazette by the provincial Ministry of Public Security. According to statistics provided by the Montreal police, the number of hate crimes based on religion (150) was slightly higher than those based on race and ethnicity (146), and far outstripped those resulting from sexual orientation (35).

But Weinstock is quick to add that a shooting like Sunday's can certainly happen anywhere where there is a super-charged atmosphere rooted in ethnic or racial tensions. White supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, as the US was in the midst of a resurgent civil rights movement; days after Donald Trump initiated his Muslim ban, a mosque was torched in Texas.

"There's a psychological dimension to anybody who gets to the point in their life where they are willing to take up arms and kill defenseless human beings," he says. "Where is that getting triggered? Is the trigger going to be something that directs them towards this target or that target? That depends on what's going on in the environment. And the environment today makes it so that it's not likely that this will happen, but if it does, it is more likely that it will happen to Muslims than anybody else."

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As Lisa Chavis sits inside Haylo Healing Arts Lounge, a tattoo and permanent makeup studio in Charlotte, North Carolina, she admits she's had a little liquid courage to prepare herself for this day.

In May 2016, Chavis was diagnosed with breast cancer in the areola. It wasn't invasive, she says, but the treatment plan was a mastectomy. She ultimately decided to have both breasts removed because, as she puts it, "I'm a 54-year-old woman. I just thought, let's just get rid of them both to prevent [this] from happening in the future. I'm not having any more babies, it's not that important of a thing—it's just a boob."

Before she underwent the procedure, though, Chavis had to make a decision about her reconstruction: Would she leave her new breasts as is—meaning, as she puts it, looking "like a Barbie Doll" without any nipples?

She also thought about the option to have new nipples created surgically. By the time a cancer survivor makes it to this stage, she's typically dealt with a slew of medical procedures and treatments, and may not want to undergo another surgery. That was the case for Chavis.

Alternatively, Chavis could have gone the artistic route and opted for a brightly colored tattoo to cover her scars and commemorate her journey.

Read more on Broadly

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On Monday, Barack Obama issued his first statement since departing the Oval Office, aligning himself with those protesting against Trump's controversial travel ban on refugees and immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, Politico reports. The statement, written by spokesman Kevin Lewis, echoes Obama's farewell address and defends protests when "American values are at stake."

"President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country," Lewis writes. He adds, "Citizens exercising their Constitutional right to assemble, organize, and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake."

The statement falls short of blatantly calling out Trump or explicitly addressing the executive order he signed Friday, which places a temporary ban on all refugees and denies entry to people traveling to the US from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen for 90 days. It does, however, remind people that the ban is not something Obama would have done as president, so at least that's something.

"With regard to comparisons to President Obama's foreign policy decisions, as we've heard before, the president fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion," Lewis states.

President Donald Trump campaigned against lax immigration laws, arguing that porous borders cause problems as diverse as drug use and terrorism, but his frenetic use of executive orders during his first week has made it difficult to keep up with everything he's planned to do, let alone contemplate the full scope of Trump's immigration doctrine.

This past weekend, as the effects of Trump's abrupt and rather vaguely worded restrictions on refugees and immigrants from seven majority Muslim countries took hold, America's airports and courts were plunged into chaos. It was enough to make you forget for a moment that Trump's executive order from earlier in week aimed at creating a border wall that probably won't do what he says it'll do.

All the way back in 2015, when Trump announced his campaign, he accused undocumented immigrants of bringing drugs into the US, a point he has repeated several times since. According to historian Kathleen Frydl, Trump voters in parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania ravaged by drug addiction may have voted for him based on the idea that the narcotics flooding their communities came from foreign countries and that Trump alone could halt this flow.

But a wall, no matter how big and beautiful a symbol it may be, can't do much to stop the flow of drugs into the US. In the grand scheme of things, a wall acts as little more than a literal speed bump that can be driven over by a literal car, according to Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies. In a recent interview, Tree—whose organization opposes the war on drugs—told me about all the ways highly motivated and well-funded cartel engineers can build infrastructure that will stymie Trump's anti-drug ambitions.

VICE: Can you give me a picture of how motivated and sophisticated the cartels are when it comes to moving product?
Sanho Tree: Just ask El Chapo. His people built a tunnel over a mile long, just for his private, one-time use [to break out of prison].

That's a good point. But before we talk about tunnels, is Trump right? Are packets of drugs simply crossing the border with migrants?
Yes, that has happened. It certainly has. But we're talking about small quantities—a couple kilos per person—because they're also carrying water and their worldly possessions with them as they cross the desert. According to CPB, drug seizures along the Southwest border have dropped from 2.5 to 1.5 million pounds over the past five years—and much of that was smuggled through regular checkpoints, not desert expanses. [Elsewhere], drugs are being smuggled in by the ton—by the hundreds of tons.

All at once? What smuggling method moves multiple tons all at once?
A single narco sub can carry anywhere from six to 12 tons per run, and they're extremely hard to detect. They used to be fiberglass semi-submersibles that would stay 90 percent underwater, and in the daytime, they'd throw a blue tarp over themselves and lie still in the ocean.

Ultralights fly really low under the radar, but over the wall. They had drop cages attached to them, so each one can release hundreds of pounds of drugs, and their accomplices pick them up.

The obvious next question would be about drones. Can drones carry enough to be a profitable smuggling operation?
The payloads are getting much bigger now. When you're talking about things like heroin and meth—high value things, you don't need to carry a whole lot to make a lot of money, and the drones are even better because there's no pilot to capture. They can't talk. It's low-risk to extremely high reward.

OK so if they don't do any of this Inspector Gadget shit, they still have the tunnels, right?
The tunnels are the real nightmare scenario. We've found about 100 of them so far, and there are probably hundreds more. They can operate, once they're open, 24/7, 365 days a year. And they can move in both directions, which means that they can bring in ammunition and repatriate cash. It's very difficult to move that cash around, so the tunnels are a great innovation in that sense.

Do the tunnels do the same kind of high-volume business you were talking about before?
They found one in Tijuana a couple years ago that was about ready to open. It had rails, ventilation, electricity, and all that stuff, and they found 40 tons of marijuana on the Mexican side, waiting to be put in the tunnel.

How do the cartels keep migrants from revealing where the tunnels are?
If they chose to smuggle migrants through these tunnels, they could drug them, or blindfold them, and they would never know where the tunnels are. That's the biggest concern. You go into a warehouse on one side, and you come out of a warehouse on the US side. That's it. Sometimes the manhole cover is right in the street. And there's a false bottom in a cargo van. At the moment, there's little incentive for them to work with international terrorists because the risk isn't worth it, but in theory they could also use these tunnels to smuggle WMDs or terrorists through these tunnels.

In fact, they don't even need to develop these huge tunnels anymore because of fracking technology. One of the great innovations has been horizontal drilling—you can angle the drill, and then drill in different directions, and that's what the traffickers realized. You don't need to build a full tunnel and move people through. You just need to make it like a pneumatic tube you can shoot drugs through.

Let's be generous and say the wall makes it 10 percent harder to get drugs into the US, is it worth it?
We create all these barriers, and all it does is create this snowball effect of value added artificially. All we're talking about is minimally processed agricultural and chemical commodities that are easy to produce, and cost pennies per dose to manufacture, and they're worth billions.

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Rex Tillerson has yet to be confirmed as secretary of state but already hundreds of foreign service officers in his department are preparing a public demonstration of opposition to the Trump administration's executive order temporarily banning immigrants and refugees from seven Muslim majority countries.

The demonstration is expected to come through the State Department's dissent channel which is reserved for people within the department to express opposition without reprisal. The officers will criticize the executive order for standing "in opposition to the core American and constitutional values that we, as federal employees, took an oath to uphold," according to a draft of the memo obtained by LawFare.

The Trump administration dismissed such protests Monday afternoon. "They should either get with the program or they can go," said White House spokesman Sean Spicer at the daily press briefing.

"Foreign service officers are notoriously risk averse and coalescing around a risky demonstration of dissent like this by our standards is notable," one retired foreign service officer told VICE News.

Continue reading on VICE News

Does It Suck? takes a deeper look at pop cultural artifacts previously adored, unjustly hated, or altogether forgotten, reopening the book on topics that time left behind.

From his 1971 countercultural transformation until his death in 2008, fans and colleagues saw George Carlin as a consistent and incisive bullshit detector for American society. I'm a comic, and in my circles, Carlin is invoked with the reverence of a saint. On his podcast, comedian Todd Glass has his guests "swear to George Carlin" instead of swearing to God when they want to convince everyone they're not kidding around. Carlin is that a big of deal.

Unfortunately, stand-up comedy doesn't tend to age well. So much of the humor relies on a contextual understanding that is hard to communicate through time. After a couple years, even the best material can have all the edge and insight of a Cliff Clavin quote in an email forward from your grandmother. Wanting to know if Saint George could avoid this fate, I rewatched Carlin's 1999 HBO special You Are All Diseased. I picked this one because I remember watching it as a kid, but also because 1999 was the last time anything in our society seemed to make any sense. So much of our cultural and political landscape has changed (some might say "gone to shit") in the last 18 years. Would any of this still resonate? More importantly, would it still seem funny?

There are certainly parts of the special that haven't stood the test of time. I watch hours of stand-up a week at shows and open mics and, well, most of it sucks. I have a practiced ear for comedy cliches and there are definitely a lot of those here, even if Carlin was the originator of them. In 2017, Carlin's insistence on "ass rape" as a metaphor for any kind of exploitation, as well as his usage of "cocksucker" for anybody he doesn't like, seem not only homophobic but also trite and uninspired. A lot of the rhetorical scaffolding holding up the punchlines shows its age—the trend in stand-up these days is much more conversational, and Carlin introducing a list of song parodies or some unconnected bits of wordplay make the slight bits feel even slighter. Yet even with this clunky delivery, most of the actual jokes remain pretty solid.

I had already prepared myself to hate a chunk where Carlin talks about fictional restaurant and bar names, a mind-numbingly common premise now (an open mic game: drink every time you hear a "Pho" pun), but his suggestion that TGI Fridays could sell more drinks if they changed their name to "Holy Shit It's Only Wednesday" made me laugh out loud. For all of his reputed darkness, gleeful silliness is just as integral to Carlin's success. His anarchic sense of joy is what's missing from his imitators in political comedy today, those who tend to come off preachy or dour—two things Carlin never was. It's interesting we remember him as a spitter of bile when there's a good chunk of time here devoted to his idea for a television program called "Missy Takes a Big Dump in the Woods."

I thought Carlin's overtly political material might age worse than his absurdity, but that's mostly untrue. Sure, there are some corny Clinton jokes (including the most sexist refutation of Bill Clinton's lechery possible: that he sucks because didn't think to cheat with somebody hot). There's some talk of the dangerous nonsense of religious dogma that seems a little beside the point now that godless neo-Nazi billionaires run our country. (Really? A man in his 60s just discovered that people make up stories about God?) But the overarching theme of Carlin's material here, that human beings are very afraid—of terrorists, of germs, of God Himself—and that we sometimes greatly compromise our own quality of life in service of those fears is just as relevant today as it ever was. When he describes the prospect of a terrorist attack as "exciting" in his opening bit, his stance seems to be that a full life is impossible without some danger, and since some danger is inevitable, we might as well embrace it. It might seem dark on its face, but even Carlin's darkest jokes here ultimately have a sort of groovy, life affirming perspective that a lot of his imitators sadly lack.

Of course, danger feels even less avoidable now than it did in 1999. It's certainly possible that being able to "lighten up" in the face of it is a luxury that a lot of people don't have. But I don't think Carlin's saying people are wrong to take their survival seriously. Rather, according to Carlin, if you stop having fun and let the autocrats he rails against set up shop in your brain, you might as well be dead already.

Follow Kath Barbadoro on Twitter.

Police have charged Laval university student Alexandre Bissonnette with six counts of first-degree murder in relation to the Quebec City mosque shooting.

Bissonnette, 27, was arrested after Sunday night's terrorist attack at Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec that left six men dead and another 19 injured, including two who remain hospitalized in serious condition.

He has also been charged with five counts of attempted murder.

The names of the dead have been released by the Quebec coroner's office: 

• Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42 
• Abdelkrim Hassane, 41
• Khaled Belkacemi, 60
• Aboubaker Thabti, 44
• Azzeddine Soufiane, 57
• Ibrahima Barry, 39 

According to multiple media outlets, Bissonnette's home in Cap-Rouge was being searched by investigators today. He reportedly called police on himself and was arrested on Île d'Orléans Bridge, about 20 kilometres from where the shooting took place.

Media reports paint Bissonnette as a loner with right-wing views.

According to La Presse, Bissonnette is a political science student at Laval university, who was known to troll a Facebook group for refugees. Group administrator François Deschamps told La Presse Bissonnette was generally xenophobic and used the term "feminazi."

The Globe and Mail reported that Bissonnette also expressed support for French nationalist Marine Le Pen, who has compared Muslims praying in the street to a Nazi "occupation."

Two men who knew Bissonnette told le Journal de Québec that he was a Trump supporter.

One, Éric Debroise, said he informed police Bissonnette is an "ultra nationalist white supremacist" while one of Bissonnette's classmates, Jean-Michel Allard-Prus, said "he has right-wing political ideas, pro-Israel, anti-immigration. I had many debates with him about Trump. He was obviously pro-Trump."

Several acquaintances also said Bissonnette didn't have many friends and was bullied in high school.

Another man who police originally described as a suspect, Mohamed Belkhadir, is actually a witness who La Presse reports was helping a shooting victim at the mosque when he ran away thinking a policeman was an attacker.

Belkhadir, 29, an engineering student originally from Morocco, said he was giving his friend first aid when he spotted someone with a weapon and fled to the mosque's parking lot, not realizing the person he saw was a cop.

"They saw me flee, they thought I was suspicious, that's normal. For them, someone who flees is a suspect," he told La Presse.

Follow Manisha Krishnan on Twitter.

Friday's executive order from President Trump to halt all refugee admissions and temporarily bar people from seven Muslim-majority countries has sparked protests across the US, and drawn condemnation from the wider world.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, fresh from committing snafus on his Townhall Tour—which appears to be a mitigation strategy for his declining popularity—declared Canada to be a safe haven for refugees and those fleeing terror, his timely tweet unleashing a very hopeful #WelcomeToCanada sentiment over the weekend.

Being Canadians, and never wanting to waste an opportunity to peg ourselves as better than our neighbour down south, Trudeau's tweet was followed by a deluge of pledges declaring our superiority, which flooded social media without much critical thought.

That was until last night, when a shooter opened fire on people praying in a mosque in Ste-Foy, Quebec—claiming six lives and injuring more than a dozen others, five of whom remain in hospital at this time.

The same fervour proclaiming Canada as holier-than-you-know-who literally hours ago turned to statements of "shock" and "dismay" alongside declarations of "This is not my Canada" and "Trump's poison is affecting us." All of which were seemingly oblivious to the many who expressed markedly contrary reactions, like some of the tweets sent out when the news about Quebec was first posted:

It's as if we have our own version of US's "isolated incident" lens when we look at homegrown terrorism. That instead of facing these incidents as symptoms of broader and much entrenched problems, we gloss over them by treating them as anomalies with no systemic or sustaining roots.

We are fond of saccharine-laced rhetoric like "We have to stand united as a nation" when pressed for concrete action plans to address growing anti-immigrant sentiments. We say things like "Today we are all Muslims," which is frankly insulting and absolutely ineffective in raising people's empathy, if that's what it aims to do. Platitudes like this are problematic because they make safety and equity conditional on similarities that don't exist. We are not all Muslims. This framing is precisely why well-intentioned progressives end up making little headway in creating conditions of equity and dismantling racism, anti-blackness and xenophobia in their communities. This liberal sentiment of trying to force "common ground" language to appeal to people's empathy is erasure and codified assimilation, plain and simple.

Many were shocked at the brazen Islamophobia in Trump's choice of which seven countries' immigrants will be disallowed entry into the US. However, it's worth remembering that not too long ago, we witnessed a targeted cultural attack on Muslims from then Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney when they tried to ban the niqab from citizenship ceremonies. Or when former Quebec Premier Pauline Marois pushed a "Quebec values" policy in an attempt to ban "all" religious symbols—except those of Christians, and the amount of traction that attempt gained.

And although Quebec has a particularly vehement xenophobic and Islamophobic record in these last few years, being an almost entirely conservative province when we look outside Montreal, this tide is not limited to Quebec. Starting early last year, there was a wave of physical assaults on Muslim women wearing hijabs - like the ones in Toronto and also London, Ontario - while a mosque in Peterborough, Ontario was set on fire. The Muslim community of Cold Lake, Alberta reeled from not one but two incidents of vandalism between 2014 and 2015.

This Saturday, Maher Arar stepped in to remind us that words mean little when not backed by actions, that the Canadian government also has a sordid history of being selectively benevolent. Arar was a Canadian citizen deported to Syria and tortured by its state intelligence service on the completely unfounded assumption that he was involved in terrorism. He warned Canadian Muslims to be wary of what could be empty assurances for some given that the Canadian government had done little to assist him in the year and a half of his unlawful detention and torture.

It is imperative that we recognize that Canadians are not above deep-seated bigotry and hatred within our communities. This is not because of Trump, or the hate-mongering politicians currently vying for the Conservative party leadership, preening to be crowned Trump-lite with their screening calls for "Canadian values."

As a proud Canadian who also happens to be a woman of colour, an immigrant from Pakistan, and as someone raised a Muslim, the current climate is definitely terrifying. But what is more concerning is the ease with which Canadians are ready to spout heartwarming rhetoric about unity yet avoid openly addressing the casual xenophobia faced by so many of us daily. Canada is one election away from possibly becoming another version of what's happening down south. It is our responsibility to stay vigilant and resist the cozy comfort of merely spouting words that sound poetic yet have zero impact on policy or public discourse. Our violent history as settlers on Indigenous lands underscores our responsibility to uphold equity for those facing institutional discrimination.

Sunday's attack, though possibly emboldened by the rise of fascism in the US, is hardly an opportunity for us to gloat about how much better we are, because a closer look at our recent years will tell us a very alarmingly dissonant story.

Let's stop our infatuation with hashtags, and refuse to settle for lip service that erases and trivializes the lived experiences of many Canadians. Our communities, our national media, and, most of all, our vulnerable citizens, deserve truth and transparency about how far we have to go to own up to the hate living and festering within our own borders. May our next actions help us earn the pride in diversity Canada is much too quick to claim.

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Six are dead, two are in hospital and a country is in mourning after a man with a gun opened fired into a Quebec City mosque Sunday night.

Police have charged Alexandre Bissonnette, 27, with six counts of first degree murder in connection to the shooting. The motive has still not been released by police but Bissonnette has been described as a far-right Trump supporter who was radicalized by nationalistic leaders. Bissonnette has also been charged with five counts of attempted murder.

The names of the dead have been released by the Quebec coroner's office:

• Mamadou Tanou Barry, 42 
• Abdelkrim Hassane, 41
• Khaled Belkacemi, 60
• Aboubaker Thabti, 44
• Azzeddine Soufiane, 57
• Ibrahima Barry, 39 

The men killed range from civil servants to university professors to grocery store owners. One of the victims, Azzeddine Soufiane, told Le Soleil in 2009 that he never experienced any troubles during the 20 years he lived in Quebec.

"We live in society, we live in peace, and we hope that it will continue like this," he said.

Azzeddine Soufiane, 57, one of the victims killed in Sundays terror attack. Photo via Facebook.

Jean-Michel Allard Prus did his undergraduate with Bissonnette at Laval and at one point was in a group project with the 27-year-old. Allard Prus said that because the two had different leanings, himself left and Bissonnette right, they would debate politics online and in person.

"He was a pro-Israel and pro-Trump guy," Allard-Prus told VICE. "He didn't have his arms open to immigrants you could say. He was against all gun control. He could have been a perfect Republican."

Allard Prus said that in person Bissonnette was quiet and didn't speak up much in class but online his personality would change.

"When we were in person and working on the paper, he was a normal guy, he was timid. An introvert who didn't speak to a lot of people. I never would have talked to him if I wasn't forced to be with him by the professors," he said.

"He didn't make a lot of friends in our classes and didn't ask a lot of questions but on Facebook he was more aggressive, like a troll. He was always challenging people on Facebook, he could be very rude."

Allard Prus said, in the last year, Bissonnette trolling habit became more and more prominent, saying "he didn't want to have a constructive argument with people, he just wanted to say anything and start a fire." However, while Bissonnette would troll online, Allard Prus said he didn't see a violent side and that, in their conversations, immigrants wouldn't come up very often.

"He never spoke of violence as a political way of expressing himself. He never talked about violence and seemed to be against violence in general. So I think that in the last year, there was a radicalization process."

The Globe and Mail has reported that it was a speech given in March by the French nationalist Marine Le Pen which may have inspired Bissonnette.

Toronto Imam Yusuf Badat said that there is a feeling of "a combination of shock and sadness" within his community as a result of the attack.  Badat didn't want to speculate on the motive of the shooting prematurely but said there is a sense that Islamophobia is growing in Canada.

"Previously, walking into their mosques, [congregants] would feel very comfortable and now they're looking around and being more vigilant," Badat told VICE.

"Obviously we see south of the border Muslims are being targeted, the other day a mosque was burnt down in Texas. There is a fear that this might spill over and this right-wing ideology might fester into what we saw in Quebec."

Over the last few years, several mosques have been targeted in both Canada and the United States. Last year, a pig's head was left at the Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec, the same mosque where the shooting took place, with the note that read "Bon appetite."

However, Badat said the cross-Canada vigils held tonight for the victims were heartening to the community.

"We need to remove the ignorance and all tackle as a community, as a nation together, all forms of hate and violence," he said. "I think when we come together and work together it will bring better situations and circumstances."

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On Monday, Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, said that no matter who President Trump chooses as a Supreme Court justice, Republicans can expect their rival party to filibuster any attempt to confirm the nominee, Politico reports.

Trump revealed early Monday morning on Twitter that the search for a replacement for the late constitutional originalist Antonin Scalia is over, and the new nominee will be announced "live" at 8 PM on Tuesday night. But Merkley told reporters Monday, "we will use every lever in our power to stop this," because Scalia's vacant seat has been "stolen."

"A very large number of my colleagues will be opposed," he said.

If you'll recall, way back in March, President Obama nominated a moderate named Merrick Garland with a long history of bipartisan support to fill that seat. Still, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to confirm the new justice, claiming that lame duck presidents in their last years in office—despite having the constitutional duty to fill vacant Supreme Court seats—aren't allowed to actually appoint justices, citing an ironclad custom put in place by one speech Joe Biden made in 1992.

Senate Democrats will need 41 votes to mount a successful filibuster. The last time a filibuster even came up during the confirmation process was in 2006, when Democrats—among them Barack Obama—attempted to garner enough support to block George W. Bush's nominee Samuel Alito in 2006. That didn't work.

Since 2015, Republican senators, including Lamar Alexander and Roy Blunt, have been talking seriously about getting rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court confirmations. That move would certainly streamline the process of appointing justices, including liberal ones in administrations to come.

But Senator Orrin Hatch, a Republican from Utah, pushed back on the idea of nuking the filibuster shortly after Trump's win in November. "It's the only way to protect the minority, and we've been in the minority a lot more than we've been in the majority," he told the Huffington Post.