Censorship and cancel culture

Please review each article prior to use: grade-level applicability and curricular alignment might not be obvious from the headline alone.

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AI company Anthropic sues Trump administration seeking to undo ‘supply chain risk’ designation

Matt O'brien, The Associated Press 6 minute read Preview
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AI company Anthropic sues Trump administration seeking to undo ‘supply chain risk’ designation

Matt O'brien, The Associated Press 6 minute read Friday, Apr. 24, 2026

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is suing to stop the Trump administration from enforcing what it calls an “unlawful campaign of retaliation” over its refusal to allow unrestricted military use of its technology.

Anthropic asked federal courts on Monday to reverse the Pentagon’s decision last week to designate the artificial intelligence company a “ supply chain risk.” The company also seeks to undo President Donald Trump's order directing federal employees to stop using its AI chatbot Claude.

The legal challenge intensifies an unusually public dispute over how AI can be used in warfare and mass surveillance — one that has also dragged in Anthropic's tech industry rivals, particularly ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which made its own deal to work with the Pentagon just hours after the government punished Anthropic for its stance.

Anthropic filed two separate lawsuits Monday, one in California federal court and another in the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., each challenging different aspects of the government's actions against the San Francisco-based company.

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Friday, Apr. 24, 2026

Children’s book on Ramadan put back on school shelves

Maggie Macintosh 3 minute read Preview

Children’s book on Ramadan put back on school shelves

Maggie Macintosh 3 minute read Friday, Mar. 6, 2026

A Ramadan-themed children’s book is returning to elementary school shelves in Winnipeg following public outcry.

The Louis Riel School Division announced on Friday afternoon that it was bringing Upside-Down Iftar back into circulation.

The newly released picture book by Palestinian author Maysa Odeh is about a girl and her grandmother preparing a traditional dish for their family to break their fast together after sunset.

It was temporarily pulled from schools last week following a complaint about an illustration of a map.

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Friday, Mar. 6, 2026

Manitoba premier says U.S. men’s hockey team offside on Trump phone call

Dayne Patterson, The Canadian Press 5 minute read Preview

Manitoba premier says U.S. men’s hockey team offside on Trump phone call

Dayne Patterson, The Canadian Press 5 minute read Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew is praising Winnipeg Jets goalie Connor Hellebuyck for his performance in this year's Winter Olympics, but says when it comes to promoting sport and respect, the entire U.S. men’s hockey team was way offside.

Kinew, speaking to reporters in Winnipeg, made the comment when asked about the American players celebrating in their dressing room after their gold medal win over Canada and laughing at disparaging comments about the gold medal-winning women’s team made by U.S. President Donald Trump.

“The women’s team, for America, deserved a lot better than they got, both from the men’s team but also from their president,” Kinew said Friday.

"With Hellebuyck, I’m a Winnipeg Jets fan, so I’m going to bite my tongue about the Trump stuff. But (to Hellebuyck), win a Stanley Cup for our city now.”

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Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026

Generalizations and facts

Mac Horsburgh 4 minute read Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026

Recently, I ran across a social media post with 100,000 followers which stated that “the media is the communist arm of the government.”

At first blush, it is easy to write off an outlandish comment like this as a function of a neurodegenerative illness or a psychological disorder.

Certainly, as a middle-of-the-road regular contributor to articles on the Think Tank page, I have never thought of myself as a communist. Truth be told, the Free Press neither offers me direction about what I write, nor do they pay me for my op-ed pieces. A post like this also does a grave disservice to the many dedicated journalists who ply their trade according to strict ethical guidelines.

At the same time, however, I realize that there are people who don’t read the Free Press because they believe that the mainstream media (MSM) have been co-opted and corrupted by government subsidies.

Festival du Voyageur and the modern fur industry

Tracy Groenewegen 5 minute read Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026

Festival du Voyageur, which wrapped up its 57th annual run this past weekend, is hard to pin down.

It is Western Canada’s largest winter festival and francophone event. It celebrates Indigenous history and culture. It used to hold staged gunfights or “skirmishes” and a casino.

It can be easy to forget that Festival du Voyageur is at its core a celebration of Canada’s fur trade history. Without the fur trade, there would be no Canada as we know it. Among other things, it was the engine of French settlement in North America and gave birth to the Metis Nation. At the same time, the fur trade had profound and lasting negative impacts on Indigenous communities and devastated local populations of beavers and other animals. Any event that commemorates a history as deeply contentious as that of the fur trade — especially one that draws tens of thousands of people each year — must do so responsibly.

Festival du Voyageur agrees.

Eby says it looks like OpenAI could have prevented ‘horrific’ Tumbler Ridge killings

Wolfgang Depner, The Canadian Press 5 minute read Preview

Eby says it looks like OpenAI could have prevented ‘horrific’ Tumbler Ridge killings

Wolfgang Depner, The Canadian Press 5 minute read Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026

VICTORIA - British Columbia Premier David Eby said it "looks like" OpenAI had the opportunity to prevent the recent mass shootings in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., in which nine people died, as pressure piled on the artificial intelligence firm over its handling of interactions with 18-year-old shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar.

The firm has been summoned to Ottawa on Tuesday to explain why it didn't go immediately to police after its internal safeguards flagged worrisome interactions between the shooter and its ChatGPT chatbot at least seven months ago.

Eby — who is also calling for national standards for AI companies on reporting potential threats — said Monday there would be a public accounting by the company to explain why it only reported its concerns to police after the Feb. 10 killings by Van Rootselaar, who shot dead her mother, half-brother, five school pupils and a teacher's aide, then herself.

"From the outside, it looks like OpenAI had the opportunity to prevent this tragedy, to prevent this horrific loss of life, to prevent there from being dead children in British Columbia," he said. "I'm angry about that."

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Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026
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Grandson of the inventor of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups accuses Hershey of cutting corners

Dee-ann Durbin, The Associated Press 5 minute read Preview
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Grandson of the inventor of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups accuses Hershey of cutting corners

Dee-ann Durbin, The Associated Press 5 minute read Thursday, Mar. 12, 2026

The grandson of the inventor of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups has lashed out at The Hershey Co., accusing the candy company of hurting the Reese's brand by shifting to cheaper ingredients in many products.

Hershey acknowledges some recipe changes but said Wednesday that it was trying to meet consumer demand for innovation. High cocoa prices also have led Hershey and other manufacturers to experiment with using less chocolate in recent years.

Brad Reese, 70, said in a Feb. 14 letter to Hershey’s corporate brand manager that for multiple Reese's products, the company replaced milk chocolate with compound coatings and peanut butter with peanut crème.

“How does The Hershey Co. continue to position Reese’s as its flagship brand, a symbol of trust, quality and leadership, while quietly replacing the very ingredients (Milk Chocolate + Peanut Butter) that built Reese’s trust in the first place?” Reese wrote in the letter, which he posted on his LinkedIn profile.

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Thursday, Mar. 12, 2026

Protest bylaw goes too far

Neil McArthur, Arthur Schafer and R.J. Leland 4 minute read Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026

From Minneapolis, to Tehran, to Bangladesh, people are taking to the streets to protest against perceived injustices.

Peaceful protest is a critically important line of defence against the unjust actions of governments.

Incredibly, here in Winnipeg, some members of our city council want to put strict limits on that essential right.

The proposed safe access to vulnerable infrastructure bylaw, if passed, would be the most draconian law of its kind in Canada.

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Plight of imprisoned Hong Kong ex-publisher Jimmy Lai evokes grief over loss of press freedoms

Kanis Leung, The Associated Press 1 minute read Preview
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Plight of imprisoned Hong Kong ex-publisher Jimmy Lai evokes grief over loss of press freedoms

Kanis Leung, The Associated Press 1 minute read Tuesday, Mar. 3, 2026

HONG KONG (AP) — About five years after Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Apple Daily shut down and its founder was jailed, the newspaper’s former staff and readers are lamenting the loss of the city’s press freedoms.

Founder Jimmy Lai, 78, was sentenced Monday under a Beijing-imposed national security law to 20 years in prison, the longest such sentence so far. His co-defendants, six other former Apple Daily journalists, received jail terms ranging between six years and nine months and 10 years.

Officials in both Hong Kong and Beijing defended the case against Lai, with the city's leader John Lee accusing the newspaper of inciting violence and poisoning young minds. The government insisted his case had nothing to do with press freedom, saying the defendants used journalism as a guise to commit acts that harmed Hong Kong and China.

There's no question that things are different in Hong Kong without the Apple Daily. Since it folded, the city’s once freewheeling press scene has changed drastically. Its voice was one of many that have been silenced in the former British colony.

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Tuesday, Mar. 3, 2026
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A curator’s dilemma: art, power, and the limits of neutrality

Stephen Borys 6 minute read Preview
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A curator’s dilemma: art, power, and the limits of neutrality

Stephen Borys 6 minute read Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026

In recent weeks, a major Canadian art museum found itself at the centre of international attention — not over an exhibition on the wall, but over whether a recently produced artwork should enter its collection at all.

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Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026