News roundup, 16 Jan 2026

- Donald Trump is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act in Minnesota, which would enable him to send regular military into the state to maintain order. This follows widespread protests against the killing of Renee Good and the wounding of another person. Some protesters (and/or agents provocateurs, and/or straight-up nihilists) apparently threw stones at law enforcement, and tear gas and flashbangs were used by police. Meanwhile governor Tim Walz is calling on citizens to film ICE agents operating in their communities, stating that this footage may be useful for future prosecutions. A bold move for sure; Walz had better stay well away from upstairs windows for the next while. And someone in this Reddit thread made this comment:

Firearms for liberals is like abortion for Republicans. We have them too, we just don't talk about it.

 All in all, things could get rather interesting down there.

- Mark Carney has made a major breakthrough on tariffs after meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping. China will drop tariffs on canola and other products, and in return Canada will allow the import of 49,000 electric cars at a tariff rate of 6.1%. It's the right move I think, but a politically dangerous one given the importance of the auto industry.

- Winnipeg Centre MP Leah Gazan has endorsed Avi Lewis for the federal NDP leadership. She is the first sitting member to issue an endorsement for this race; former MP Charlie Angus has endorsed Alberta MP Heather McPherson. 

- A former Winnipegger who now heads the Anhart Community Housing Society, a BC-based housing nonprofit. is interested in redeveloping the site of the destroyed Manwin Hotel. They hope to work with the Main Street Project to build affordable housing on the site. The organization is also interested in redeveloping the site of the Sutherland Hotel which burned last year. A snag has arisen already, however - the cleanup of the Manwin site has been delayed due to concerns about asbestos.

- The Manitoba government will not be participating in the federal government's buyback program for firearms that were banned in legislation passed in 2020. Justice Minister Matt Wiebe has expressed concerns about the cost and effectiveness of the program, especially given that a pilot of the buyback in Cape Breton that was expected to collect some 200 firearms netted only 25.

- A construction crane fell onto a passenger train in Thailand, killing at least 32 people and putting another 64 in hospital, seven of them in serious condition. The accident is under investigation.

- UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has removed MP Robert Jenrick from her shadow cabinet and suspended him from caucus after being presented with what she calls "irrefutable evidence" that he was planning to defect to another party, which other sources identified as the far-right Reform UK.

- As of the new year, all margarine and dairy milk sold in Canada is required to be fortified with vitamin D. This is a good idea, but it will be interesting to see how the antivax/anti-flouridation crowd will react. I suspect they won't like it; anything done by the government that improves people's health goes against their libertarian individualist spirit.

News roundup, 15 Jan 2025

- Several NATO countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, are sending troops to Greenland as a message to Donald Trump. Subsequently, France announced that they'll be sending troops as well. This follows an unsuccessful attempt by Danish diplomats to talk sense into the orange monster. There is talk of Canada sending troops as well, though Defense Minister David McGuinty says that no decision has been made on the matter.

- Unions and community organizations in Minnesota are calling for a general strike on the 23rd of January. Meanwhile, ICE is being accused of using private information, of the sort that's not supposed to be readily accessible to them, to intimidate people keeping an eye on them. Under Minnesota law, license plate readers and car registration data is only supposed to be accessible to law enforcement during a criminal investigation, but ICE seems to be getting around the safeguards. ICE has also shot another person, this one non-fatally.

- The FBI searched the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson on Wednesday and seized several devices, apparently in an attempt to find the source of a leak about a defense contractor that Natanson had covered in one of her articles.

- Trump is backing away from threats to strike Iran, saying that the government has reassured him that the killing has stopped. This is good news for international stability, unless of course it's happening because he thinks he needs to focus on Greenland. The least bad possibility (still very bad though) is that he wants his troops close at hand to use at home.

- Quebec premier François Legault has announced his resignation, just under nine months prior to the scheduled election. Legault's Coalition Avenir Québec is being clobbered in the polls; only 18% of eligible voters plan to support them. If an election were held today, the CAQ would come third in the popular vote, and fifth in seat count. Also resigning is Ontario Liberal leader Bonnie Crombie, who fared poorly in a post-election leadership review.

- Winnipeg's infamous Manwin Hotel, which had been vacant since last year when it was declared unfit for habitation, was destroyed by fire yesterday morning. The fire forced the evacuation of the Main Street Project next door, and it may be several days before the facility is able to reopen. Nobody died, which is more than can be said for rather a lot of days when the hotel was actually open. Housing advocate Marion Willis of St. Boniface Street Links calls the fire a "predictable outcome" of the city's lax approach towards vacant buildings. To their credit, the city seems to be moving towards potential seizure of such buildings; we'll have to wait and see how well they follow through with that.

News roundup, 14 Jan 2026

- Austria's advisor on NATO enlargement, Gunther Fehlinger, has warned the US that if they go ahead with trying to take Greenland, Europe just might respond with the seizure of US bases in their territory. I do hope this is policy and not just bluster.

- ICE appear to be conducting door to door raids in the Twin Cities. Meanwhile, more than half the staff at the US Attorney's office in Minnesota, responsible for federal prosecutions in the state, have resigned in protest over directives from Washington following the killing of Renee Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross. In addition to locking state officials out of the investigation, the Justice Department is asking the office to look into possible charges against Good's widow.

- Philadelphia's district attorney, Larry Krasner, is echoing the warnings of the city's sheriff, saying that ICE agents who commit crimes will be prosecuted.

- The Toronto Sun's parliamentary bureau chief has been suspended after his tweet calling Renee Good's death at the hands of ICE "well-deserved" embarrassed his employer just a bit too much.

- Manitoba premier Wab Kinew says his government will not mandate full-time return to office for its employees, in contrast to Alberta and Ontario. Instead, the current policy of up to 2 remote days per week will be continued. This will not apply to managers of frontline staff. I can kind of see the reasoning behind that from a staff morale point of view, but on the other hand fewer cars on the road and less crowding on buses is good no matter who it is that gets to stay home. A side note - the CBC interviewed the founder of a company called Gov Fox Municipal Consulting for the contrary view; she actually admitted that RTO isn't about productivity but still favours it due to nebulous notions of "improving culture". I looked at her company's client list, and most of them are rural municipalities. So her position may be more a reflection of rural prejudices than actual good business.

- Rob Ashton, a union leader who is one of the frontrunners in the NDP leadership race, recently participated in one of those "ask me anything" sessions on Reddit. Ashton has raised (entirely legitimate) concerns about the growth of AI, but Redditors are an astute bunch and several of them noticed telltale signs that he was using AI to generate his responses. Having been caught out, he confessed and apologized. Hopefully this will harm his campaign; he seems to be the "anti-environmentalist" candidate, accusing fellow candidate Avi Lewis of being "divisive" due to his focus on climate change.

- The City of Winnipeg will be installing tempered glass suicide barriers in the Millennium Library to prevent future tragedies like the one last August.

- An Air Canada flight from Toronto to Moncton was cancelled after a baggage handler was locked in the cargo hold. Passengers heard the man screaming and banging as the aircraft began to taxi. By the time the matter was addressed, the flight had to be cancelled because the crew would have exceeded their maximum work hours by the time they reached their destination.

News roundup, 13 Jan 2026

- Manitoba premier Wab Kinew is voicing solidarity with Minnesota following the killing of Renee Good last week. Less sympathetic is far-right perennial candidate Patrick Allard, who has had his membership and board position with the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party suspended following some unpleasant social media posts about the killing. One tweet quoted in the article was posted as an inquiry about whether ICE is hiring in Canada; not mentioned in the article is that he also declared that Good was "rightfully terminated". I guess stuff like that is a bridge too far even for Obby Khan. The thing is, the Cons presumably knew he was a scumbag when he was elected to their board (he hasn't exactly made a big secret of it) so they're presumably just annoyed that he said the quiet part out loud.

- The US sanctions against the International Criminal Court are making life difficult for the court's judges. They find themselves unable to do business with any American company, including credit card companies, or even buy US dollars. The court itself is having to adopt new payment systems in order to pay its employees and receive payments from the countries that recognize its authority; it has also abandoned Microsoft Office in favour of openDesk, an open source package similar to LibreOffice. This doesn't solve all their problems by any means; there are fears that even non-American companies might be reluctant to deal with them for fear of annoying the US.

- Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum has managed to talk Trump down from intervening militarily in her country. Trump has mused lately about doing just that to deal with drug cartels; hopefully he can be sufficiently distracted by something else (and hopefully that something else won't be Canada).

- The US Department of Labor released a promotional video that contains the slogan "One Homeland. One People. One Heritage". The similarity to "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" is hard not to notice; whether they're actively trying to sound like Nazis or just using punchy slogans that will resonate with the simple-minded folks that they're trying to appeal to and just end up sounding that way is uncertain. Either way, not a good thing.

- A Dallas woman who worked for a subcontractor for the Hilton hotel chain was apparently fired after posting a warning on TikTok about ICE agents staying in one of the chain's hotels. 

- A novel that had been awarded both the grand prize and "reader's choice" awards in a contest in Japan has had the prizes revoked after it was discovered that it had been written mostly by AI. 

- A 19 year old woman in Baton Rouge, Louisiana was apparently irate at being blocked on TikTok by an 18 year old acquaintance. She's now accused of killing her over the matter. 

News roundup, 12 Jan 2026

- Philadelphia's sheriff, Rochelle Bilal, has called ICE "fake, made-up law enforcement" and warns that members who commit crimes will be prosecuted. Acting ICE director Todd Lyons was not impressed with Bilal's warning, replying "try it. Try [and] arrest my folks and see what happens". I kind of hope she does; this could get interesting.

- A clinic in Gaza started by Médecins Sans Frontières is in danger of shutting down after Israel banned the organization from sending new staff and supplies as of the new year. Israel claims MSF as well as around 40 other organizations including Oxfam and Save The Children were banned because they allegedly "failed to meet new security and transparency standards".

- Eight people were arrested on Saturday following an anti-immigration protest in Toronto's Nathan Phillips Square. The protesters were met with counter-protesters from Community Solidarity Toronto and other organizations. Police allege that following confrontations between the two groups, some attendees assaulted their opponents and then police officers; the Toronto Police Association says that its members were pelted with eggs, used toilet paper, and bags of urine. It is not stated in the article who started the confrontation or which group those arrested came from; a Toronto Sun article points the finger at the counterprotesters, though.

- The death rate from motor vehicle accidents in Toronto in 2025 was the lowest it's been in a decade. Coincidentally (or not), the number of speed cameras in the city doubled last year, until the provincial government banned municipalities from using the cameras at all. Doug Ford, of course, refuses to consider the possibility that the two are connected.

- Texas has eliminated American Bar Association oversight of its law schools, the first state to do so. I guess if you're worried about your graduates leaving the state, making it difficult for them to get jobs anywhere else might help...

News roundup, 9 Jan 2026

- Fiona Hill, a former advisor to Donald Trump, alleges that Russian officials indicated to Trump in 2019 that they would be willing to throw Venezuela under the bus so long as Trump would let them have their way with Ukraine. I guess from a realpolitik point of view, it makes perfect sense. Meanwhile Columbia's president, Gustavo Petro, fears that his country may be next to be attacked by the US. 

- Two people were shot and wounded by a Customs and Border Patrol officer in Portland on Thursday. The regime once again claims that this was self-defense after the victims allegedly tried to use a vehicle as a weapon and that they were involved in a Venezuelan gang.

- State investigators in Minnesota say that Kash Patel's FBI is denying them access to evidence in the fatal shooting of Renee Good by one of Trump's ICE stormtroopers. For his part, JD Vance says that the suspect (recently identified as Jonathan Ross, though the agency refuses to confirm this) has absolute immunity from prosecution for her death. Meanwhile some witnesses say that a doctor was denied access to the scene and ambulances were delayed because ICE had blocked the street.

- A hotel in Lakeville, Minnesota that refused to rent rooms to ICE agents has had its franchising agreement with the Hilton chain cancelled despite issuing a grovelling apology.

- Iran has shut down all internet access as protests rock the country. Trump is threatening to intervene if protesters are hurt; kind of ironic in view of his attitude towards protests against his own regime.

- A NASA mission to the International Space Station is being cut short due to a medical emergency experienced by one of the crew.

- A philosophy professor at Texas A&M University has been ordered to remove Plato's Symposium from an introductory course reading list due to it being too woke on gender and sexuality matters. 

News roundup, 8 Jan 2025

- A woman was shot and killed by ICE agents in a traffic stop in Minneapolis on Wednesday, apparently while serving as an observer keeping track of the agency's activities. The city's mayor, Jacob Frey, has condemned the killing and called for ICE to "get the fuck out of Minneapolis", but of course the Trump regime is spinning it as "domestic terrorism" on the part of the victim, claiming that she was trying to run down their officers with her vehicle (there's video here so you can judge for yourself). The Minnesota Department of Public Safety says that they will investigate the shooting "with federal authorities"; sadly that probably means that nothing will happen to the suspect, at least not through legal means. There are a couple of photos said to be of him here though. More information on the victim may be found here.

- Donald Trump mused about cancelling this year's midterm elections while speaking at a retreat for Republican members of the House. He quickly walked that back, but warned that he will be at risk of impeachment if the Republicans don't win the midterms.

- A professor at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee who was fired after posting a tweet with Charlie Kirk's famous quote on gun violence being a necessary evil shortly after Kirk himself fell victim to it has been reinstated and will be getting a $500,000 payout from the university.

- An antiwar protester in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was arrested immediately after being interviewed by a local TV station, as the cameras still rolled. 

- A newly enacted ministerial order by the Danielle Smith's education minister, Demetrios Nicolaides, requires schools to remove "sexually explicit" books from their libraries. School divisions are complying, but notably most of them, including those in the big cities, are not revealing what books are on the banned list. This is in stark contrast to the response to an earlier version of the order announced in July, which specifically included written descriptions as qualifying as "explicit". Back then, the Edmonton public school board publicly released a list of books that would have to be removed based on their interpretation of the order. Among the books listed were some of the usual suspects (The Handmaid's Tale, The Color Purple, A Game of Thrones, American Psycho) as well as some that you don't usually see on such lists (including The Godfather, Jaws, and, amusingly enough, two Ayn Rand novels (The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged). This put one of the activists who had been calling for the bans in the first place into a tizzy, accusing the school division of "malicious compliance" (and Smith later called it "vicious compliance").  It appears that the new version is more directed at comics/manga/graphic novels; perhaps the school divisions figure those aren't such a good hill to die on as stuff that older folks recognize as literature, so they're keeping their heads down for now.

- In the last couple of days Winnipeg has seen antisemitic graffiti at a school and Islamophobic graffiti at a mosque. While it's possible that one was done as a sort of collective revenge for the other, I think it's more likely that the people responsible don't come from either of those communities.

- Donna Cox, a councillor for a Manitoba municipality, was reinstated by a court after an attempt to remove her. The Rural Municipality of Thompson (a confusing name, since it's nowhere near the city of the same name) had rescheduled council meetings so they conflicted with her work, then removed her after she missed three consecutive meetings. The change in schedule happened shortly after Cox was elected; previously, council had alternated between morning and evening meetings, but then the entire council except Cox voted to hold all their meetings in the morning. I'd be very curious to know what kind of policy differences Cox has with her colleagues; this sounds malicious to me.