News roundup, 27 May 2026

- When Trump was first reelected in 2024, European leaders tried their darnedest to please him. Happily, they're starting to wake up to reality - they're finally realizing that the Americans can't be trusted to keep them safe and that it's time for them to stand on their own. More governments are making efforts to procure European military hardware, for instance. And a "coalition of the willing" including 35 states, mostly European but also including such countries as Canada, Japan, and Australia, is coming together on the goal of European security - as Mark Carney said recently, "the international order will be rebuilt, but it will be rebuilt out of Europe". This is undoubtedly a good thing from a global perspective, but could be devastating for the US given how dependent many American jobs are on military spending - if Europe and Japan aren't going to be reliable customers anymore, they might have a hard time making up the slack.

- The federal government has concluded that the Clarity Act, which lays down conditions for a province to hold a referendum on secession, will not apply to Alberta's upcoming referendum, since the question on the ballot is not technically about separation per se but is "a question about a question".

- The unprecedented rise in fuel prices has driven many Americans to do something that they previously considered unthinkable - use public transit. This is especially true in California, where gas is topping $6 per US gallon, or about $1.60 a litre, but it's happening in many other places. It's even driving state governments to actually provide some funding to transit - the Chicago Transit Authority, facing a deficit of $770 million, was set to make a 40% cut in services until the state legislature bailed them out.

- Homelessness advocates are concerned that Winnipeg's encampment policies, which among other things enforces prohibitions against encampments within 50 metres of bus shelters, schools, daycares, playgrounds, pools, recreation complexes, and adult care facilities, are leaving very few places where it's still possible, especially in the inner city where many of the supports that might help get them off the street are located. Organizations like Sunshine House say that they have lost track of a number of regular clients as a result. 

- Despite the fact that Manitoba is one of the sunniest provinces in Canada, solar power has not been a priority. The fact that Manitoba Hydro could start to run short of generating capacity as soon as 2030 has driven the province to expand wind farms to an extent, and although there have been some investments in wind power, solar power has not been a priority and the latest plans call for the electricity shortfall to be made up for by burning natural gas. A pilot project introduced during the twilight days of the Selinger government in 2016 showed a lot of promise; it's no surprise that it wasn't renewed by Brian Pallister's Conservatives, but it's kind of a mystery why the Kinew government isn't more interested, especially given that solar is booming in other provinces. Hydro claims to be concerned about our short days during the winter (questionable given the huge amount of storage capacity inherent in a mostly hydroelectric grid) and solar panels getting covered with snow (which hasn't been a huge problem in other areas). I can't help but wonder if the NDP still has illusions about winning back rural voters and is afraid to introduce something highly visible that would be triggering to such voters.

- A UFC fighting cage is being erected on the White House lawn in preparation for the upcoming 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Because nothing stirs the patriotic heart of good red-blooded Americans than watching two guys beat the living crap out of each other. Yet another example of why publications like The Onion have a hard time competing with reality.

News roundup, 3 March 2025

- Volodymyr Zelenskyy attempted to talk some sense into Donald Trump and JD Vance in a meeting at the White House on Friday. It did not go well; Trump and Vance spent the whole time berating Zelenskyy and trying to get him to grovel, and then kicked him out of the meeting without an agreement when he didn't. Europeans were appalled; Italy is calling for an immediate summit between the EU and the US, though it's doubtful that this will change anything. The Globe and Mail's Andrew Coyne has made no bones about the scale of the disaster we are seeing; he warns that we have always underestimated just how far Trump will go, and that we're going to have to learn fast. Now it's worth noting that Coyne is a liberal (his cousin Deborah Coyne ran for the Liberal Party leadership in 2013), and a centrist or centre-right liberal at that. So he naturally sees the potential collapse of the American hegemony as an unmitigated disaster. From a more leftwing perspective, it's a bit less clear. Some hope that this could lead to a more multipolar world, where instead of a single hegemon you have a number of major powers (perhaps the US, EU, China, Russia, and India) balanced against each other. That is indeed possible, and it could lead to a good outcome in the long run. On the other hand, another possibility (probably more likely) is the US and Russia both become sufficiently weak due to their own failings that China simply becomes the new hegemon - and while the Americans have been far from benevolent overlords in much of the world I don't share the confidence of some leftists that the Chinese would be better. A third possibility that no new stable equilibrium can form and the world degenerates into chaos and, eventually, nuclear war; a fourth is something not unlike the scenario created decades ago by science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle, in which the US and Russia (the USSR in the novels) form a political union called the "CoDominium" to maintain stability, which they do but at immense social cost. Given the friendly relations between Trump and Putin, and the fact that they seem to need each other, this last scenario actually starts to look sort of plausible.

- Jagmeet Singh is calling for Donald Trump to be "uninvited" from the G7 summit that Canada is hosting in Kananaskis, Alberta in June, and for the meeting to be refocused on building a "common front" against Trump's America. This seems to be a bridge too far for the federal government; energy minister Jonathan Wilkinson was particularly dismissive, calling on Singh to "find new advisers who could provide him with more thoughtful positions". See my comments above about liberals being unable to imagine an alternative to the existing world order; it seems that in Wilkinson's mind the only possible course of action is to continue doing CPR on the old order until rigor mortis sets in.

- A "guidance document" from the US Centers for Disease Control prohibits scientists employed by the agency from co-authoring papers with anyone employed by the World Health Organization. It further orders that employees who have co-authored papers with WHO employees that were submitted before the Trump regime took power must withdraw them, or remove their names from the papers prior to publication. Because "international" is a four-letter word to the MAGA crowd, after all.

- Tesla's sales in Europe have dropped by 45% since last year, even as EV sales overall increased by 37% over the same period. The company's stock has dropped by 23% since the start of the year.

- One of the many downsides of firing huge numbers of civil servants is that you end up with a lot of disgruntled people, who may become recruitment targets for foreign intelligence.

- Kash Patel, Trump's new FBI director, wants the agency to establish a formal relationship with the Ultimate Fighting Championship. I guess he figures submission holds could be a useful technique for interrogating prisoners.