News roundup, 12 Nov 2025

- There are signs that the record-setting government shutdown in the US may be moving towards resolution. Eight centrist Democrats in the Senate voted with the Republicans in return for a vote on enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies at some unspecified time in the future, with no guarantees of Republican support for the subsidies. The House of Representatives is expected to approve this today. This does not sit well with the more left-leaning Democrats, though, who see it as a capitulation. Probably the fact that over 10,000 flights have been cancelled in the country due to the shortage of air traffic controllers is a factor; the US Thanksgiving holiday is just around the corner, and presumably nobody wants to be the one blamed for ruining that.

- The European Union has proposed legislation that would, among other things, require satellite operators to address the space junk problem. The Americans are foaming at the mouth about this, saying that it would place "unacceptable regulatory burdens" on US companies and could threaten threaten technological advancement in space. Even if that last point is true, though, the threat to technological advancement from this is trivial compared to that posed by "Kessler syndrome"; hopefully the Europeans will stand their ground.

- Canada's top public servant, the Clerk of the Privy Council, met with the CEO of Saab recently. Now, a delegation including Sweden's king and numerous members of the country's business community are scheduled to visit next week, including a tour of aerospace plants. This is leading to speculation that the government may be considering a purchase of Gripen fighters. That would be a very interesting development; stay tuned.

- Canada has lost its status as a country free of measles transmission following over 5,000 recent cases. Of course the decline in vaccination is the reason. Meanwhile there are fears of a mismatch between the current flu vaccine and the strains spreading across the country, which could make for a very bad flu season this year.

- An event held at UC Berkeley by Turning Point USA, the organization founded by the late Charlie Kirk, was met with over 100 protesters, and there was at least one violent altercation between protesters and supporters. The US Department of Justice is investigating the university's preparations for the event.

- The US Travel Association is forecasting a 3.2% decline in tourism for this year, driven mostly by a decline in visits by Canadians. This is expected to cost the travel sector some $5.7 billion.

- Arizona representative-elect Adelita Grijalva is finally expected to be sworn in, potentially tipping the balance towards forcing a vote on the release of the Epstein files. 

News roundup, 21 Jan 2024

- Well, it's now official - Donald Trump is President of the United States once again. In preparation for this, Joe Biden issued last-minute preemptive pardons to public health physician Anthony Fauci and former Joint Chiefs of Staff director Mark Milley, as well as all of the members of Congress who served on the Jan. 6 committee, some staff of said members of Congress, and some DC police officers who testified at committee hearings. He also pardoned members of his own family, suspecting (probably rightly) that there's no limit to how low the Trump administration will go to exact revenge on their perceived enemies. In addition he has commuted the sentence of Leonard Peltier to house arrest, much to the annoyance of outgoing FBI director Christopher Wray.

- Trump, for his part, seems to be following through on his promise to be a dictator; he has a huge number of executive orders lined up already. Among these are withdrawing (again) from the Paris climate agreement, declaring a "national energy emergency" in order to get around environmental legislation, an attempt to find a workaround for the 14th Amendment to the Constitution in order to end birthright citizenship for those born in the US to undocumented parents, and cancelling the TikTok ban. This last order evidently did not come soon enough for one teen in Wisconsin, who is accused of torching the office of a congressman who voted for the ban. In so doing the lad inadvertently made one of the best arguments in favour of the ban.

- One executive order that Trump did not issue on the first day was his threatened 25% tariff on Canadian goods. He's still saying, though, that tariffs could come shortly.

- Elon Musk was not subtle in how he expressed his enthusiasm in the leadup to Trump's inauguration. The crowd were evidently unfazed by this - to the contrary, they seem to have been swept up in his enthusiasm. The ADL, usually the first to fulminate about the slightest whiff of antisemitism, seem strangely reluctant to condemn him for this; perhaps they hope the Trump administration will be useful to them in their efforts to defend the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. On the other hand, maybe they (like so many others) just terrified of what will happen if they cross him.

- Scientists are calling for the United Nations to take on the space junk problem, as it is a matter of critical importance to humanity as a whole. Of course, you can be sure that Elon Musk will resist this by any means necessary, and acting against the perceived interests of their biggest source of funding has not historically been one of the UN's strengths.

- The International Criminal Court fears an intensive sanctions regime by the new administration, possibly including a prohibition for American companies to do business with the court. This could include banking, but also IT - and like most large organizations, the ICC is highly dependent on Microsoft software. In an ideal world, of course, this would be resolved by a comprehensive switchover to open-source software, but (as recent events make apparent) this is not an ideal world. Such a shift is not the sort of thing that can be done overnight, and depending on the whims of Trump, "overnight" could well be what is needed to keep the court functioning. Of course existing software would continue to work, but security updates might well not be forthcoming - and without security updates, state-sponsored hackers (whether from the US, China, Israel, Russia, or goodness knows where) would have a much easier time at, say, finding the identity of witnesses.

- Donald and Melania Trump each launched their own cryptocurrencies, a day apart. The website of the company that has the largest holdings in these products has an interesting bit of fine print saying that they are not an investment or security but "an expression of support for, and engagement with, the ideals and beliefs embodied by the symbol '$TRUMP'." Of course, it's a safe bet that most of the rubes who buy these products don't read this, and moreover that they will believe Trump when he inevitably says that the only reason they're losing value is because the evil globalists are shorting them. Interestingly, this is a source of alarm to serious crypto enthusiasts, who fear that the reputation of cryptocurrencies in general could suffer; if that does come to pass I'll file it under "silver linings", though.

- American activists are seriously wondering if mass protest has any future as a tactic against the Trump regime. As one activist wondered, "Is the goal to demonstrate you are an activist and to self-actualize, or is the goal to actually effect change?" Many are seeing the need to "get creative" and work on a smaller scale. Not sure what "getting creative" might entail, but given that this is the US we're talking about there's a good chance that at least some of these measures will involve violence.