Friday, May 31, 2024

News roundup, 31 May 2024

- Donald Trump has been convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal the hush money payments to Stormy Daniels. He responded pretty much as you'd expect Donald Trump to respond. Despite the fact that these are felony convictions, the chance of an actual custodial sentence may not be that high.

- A recent poll has revealed that Joe Biden has serious problems appealing to younger voters. Among voters under 45, he leads Trump by only 4 points, although the lead among millennials and Gen Z specifically is a bit higher, at 6 points. What's really worrisome, though, is that if you include RFK Jr., Jill Stein, and Cornel West in the polling, Trump is 6 points ahead with Gen Z/Millennials and 8 with the under 45s overall.

- Justin Trudeau says that he wants to make housing more affordable for younger folks... while not bringing down values for existing homeowners. This is of course probably not possible, and it illustrates a serious problem that  nearly all governments face in tackling the housing crisis. Because if you drive down property values, you make older folks (aka the people most likely to vote) feel less well off. Another problem, not mentioned in the article, is that if you drive down housing prices you weaken the main source of revenue for municipalities and, in some provinces, school boards.

- An investigation by the Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call has found that Israel's intelligence agencies have been spying on the International Criminal Court for a decade. They are also not above intimidation evidently; following Palestine joining the court in 2015, two men showed up at the home of ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and handed her an envelope with cash and an Israeli phone number, and people familiar with the case suspect that the real reason was to make it clear to her that they knew where she lived. They also hacked her email. Some legal experts recommend that these actions be investigated as "offences against the administration of justice".

- Following yet another instance of shots being fired at a Jewish school, this one in Toronto, Doug Ford was quick to suggest, without evidence, that immigrants were to blame.

- A bill to recognize Two-Spirit and Transgender Day of Visibility was passed in the Manitoba legislature. What's interesting is that most of the Tory opposition voted with the NDP government to pass the bill, though four of them voted against it - Kelvin Goertzen (Steinbach), Josh Guenter (Borderland), Konrad Narth (La Verendrie), and Ron Schuler (Springfield-Ritchot).

- A city councillor in Whitehorse introduced a motion calling on the mayor to write a letter on behalf of the city to the prime minister and the foreign affairs minister calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. The motion was ruled out of order due to it being outside the city's jurisdiction.

- A Winnipeg bakery that has experienced several robberies, most recently one in which someone pushed her way behind the counter, scaring off the staff, and took the cash from the till, has decided to go cashless. Under the circumstances I can't blame them, but if this becomes a trend, especially with services more essential than a rather niche bakery, it will be very bad for people who can't open a bank account (say, because they don't have a fixed address).

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