News roundup, 15 July 2025

- Clownvoy organizer James Bauder is seeking political asylum in the US after his lawyers warned him that his chance of avoiding conviction on charges related to the protest are virtually nonexistent, given the fates of his co-conspirators.

- A man who was born in New Brunswick but has lived in New Hampshire for most of his life was denied reentry into the US after a family trip due to convictions he received some two decades ago for marijuana possession and driving while suspended. Funny thing is, he approved of the Trump regime until this happened to him, but now he's not so sure.

- The property committee of Winnipeg city council has unanimously approved an exemption to height limits for an apartment tower that's part of the Market Lands project. The tower, when completed, will include 148 units of which two thirds will be rented out below median market rates.

- The fire district serving northeastern BC could see 30% of its forested areas burn this year, according to provincial forestry minister Ravi Parmar. South of the border, an iconic lodge in Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona was destroyed in a wildfire over the weekend. Here in Manitoba preparations are being made to house thousands of people if needed; for perspective, if the city of Thompson alone were to be evacuated that would more than double the number of evacuees. Fortunately some progress is being made towards protecting Thompson. But given that there's only a single highway connecting Thompson with the rest of the province's road system, they also might not want to wait until the city is in imminent risk of burning down - if the highway is cut off, getting 13,000 people onto airplanes on short notice would not be an easy task.

- For the first time, one of Donald Trump's posts on Truth Social has been "ratioed"; in social media jargon, the ratio in question is that of replies (which are disproportionately often negative reactions to a post) compared to likes and shares (which are normally positive). The post in question was made in defense of his attorney general Pam Bondi's handling of the Epstein files.

- Nahanni Fontaine, whose cabinet post includes responsibility for accessibility, has again apologized for her unfortunate remarks about the ASL interpreter at a recent event. She has agreed to undergo training on deafness and deaf culture. That's a good move, certainly. Not such a good move was when whoever runs her official social media accounts made the decision to block the entire news team of APTN, the network whose mic picked up her remarks in the first place. Fontaine attributes this to overzealous staffers and she says she directed them to reverse this once she became aware of it. For what it's worth, I believe her (it's the norm for staffers to handle that sort of thing), but it still isn't a good look.

News roundup, 11 July 2025

- Manitoba has once again declared a provincewide state of emergency due to wildfires. Garden Hill First Nation (population 4,000) and the town of Snow Lake (population 1,000) are being evacuated, bringing the number of evacuated communities to nine. Thompson (population 13,000) is preparing for the possibility of evacuation as well; there is a fire near the city that is estimated at over 10,000 hectares. While there has been some favourable weather that has helped those trying to protect the city, officials are pre-registering residents just in case. Meanwhile several Republican members of Congress have sent a letter to Canada's ambassador in Washington, demanding that Canada stop ruining their summer by sending smoke their way. Wab Kinew is not amused.

- Donald Trump is threatening to hit Brazil with tariffs as high as 50%, accusing the country of a "witch hunt" against its former president Jair Bolsonaro, who is being prosecuted for a Jan 6-style putsch following his defeat in the 2022 election. Trump also accuses Brazil of unspecified "attacks" on American tech companies. He's also threatening Canada with 35% across the board tariffs, citing fentanyl as well as our supply management systems as the reasons.

- The Trump regime is imposing sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories. Trump accuses her of "political and economic warfare" against the US as well as Israel. The executive order essentially prohibits "US persons" (which includes corporations) from doing business with her. How this will impact her work remains to be seen.

- The Market Lands project, a mixed income housing project planned for the site of the former Public Safety Building in downtown Winnipeg, is running into opposition from heritage advocates. The plan calls for a 16 storey building to be constructed on part of the site; this would require an exemption from the standard height limit of 100 ft for the area. While the site is outside the limits of the heritage-protected area of the Exchange District, Heritage Winnipeg executive director Cindy Tugwell fears that it would set a precedent that could lead to other tall buildings being built in the area. Whether this is the actual reason, or whether said heritage advocates own condos in the area that they fear could be devalued by too much affordable rental housing in the area, is unclear. In any case, city council's property and development committee will be voting on the matter on Monday.

- While the recent changes to Winnipeg Transit are getting mixed reviews, some of the complaints are downright absurd. This person has gone full Karen about the fact that a bus route now goes down Waterfront Drive; she has half-baked arguments against it but given how much she has blathered on about homeless people in the past I suspect that the real reason has something to do with not wanting to live near the kind of people who take the bus.

- The citizen science database iNaturalist is a hugely useful resource for naturalists, but it has come under some scrutiny after Erin Patterson used it to locate the mushrooms that she used to kill her in-laws. Many entries on the site give the exact latitude and longitude where something has been found; some are advocating that the precise location should be obscured on the public portion of the website. Others question this, pointing to the extreme rarity of situations like this.