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, 8 July 2025

- The town of Leaf Rapids, Manitoba is being evacuated due to wildfires. Thompson has also declared a local state of emergency; while the city of 13,000 is not immediately threatened, officials are warning people to ensure their vehicles are fueled up in case the situation changes.

- Nahanni Fontaine will keep her job as Manitoba's Minister of Families (whose responsibilities include accessibility) after Premier Wab Kinew accepted her apology for her unfortunate gaffe last week.

- The Smith government in Alberta is considering withholding social services from immigrants who don't have an "Alberta-approved" immigration status. The premier hasn't said exactly what "Alberta-approved" would mean, but I think we can all guess what she hopes rural Albertans will take from that particular dog whistle.

- The auto industry is pressuring the Carney government to scrap the zero emissions mandate. Currently the requirement is 20% of new vehicles sold in 2026 to be either fully electric or plug-in hybrids; this is supposed to rise to 100% by 2035. The industry claims that these requirements "cannot be met"; no explanation for this claim is given other than a vague statement about "current market forces".

- A lawyer in Orange County, California was detained by ICE despite being an American citizen. She apparently was in a park in the city of Santa Ana when she spotted ICE vans, and started speaking in Spanish to advise people of their rights. Evidently ICE did not approve of this and hauled her in, though they released her after confirming her citizenship.

- Border crossings from BC to Washington are down for the fifth straight month. Crossings in June were down over 40% compared with the previous June; anger at the US, not to mention fear of getting sent to some hellhole concentration camp in El Salvador, probably has something to do with it.

- A Winnipeg man was refused boarding on his return flight from Montreal after a WestJet agent refused to accept his Indian Status Card as a valid form of ID. 

- A time capsule in Seward, Nebraska that was sealed in 1975 has just been opened. The capsule, which at the time was billed as the world's largest, contained various memorabilia from that year, of which perhaps the most notable is a 1975 Chevrolet Vega. The car was found to be in very good condition, which is more than can be said for the vast majority of Vegas sold. The capsule also contained a Kawasaki motorcycle and over 5,000 other miscellaneous period items such as the infamous Pet Rocks.

- An Australian woman has been found guilty of murdering three of her in-laws and the attempted murder of her husband after she served them a meal containing deadly death cap mushrooms. Erin Patterson had claimed that the poisonings were accidental, but evidence was found that she had searched online where to find the mushrooms, and dehydrated the mushrooms in a food dehydrator (which she later disposed of in the hope of covering her tracks) and mixed doses into the individual servings given to the victims, then feigned illness herself as they sickened and died.

News roundup, 30 June 2025

- The US Supreme Court has narrowed the scope of nationwide injunctions so that they only apply in the jurisdictions that brought the matter to court in the first place - severely limiting courts' abilities to stop the Trump regime's efforts to limit birthright citizenship (and potentially many other things).

- A man has been charged with mischief after allegedly vandalizing the National Holocaust Monument with red paint and the slogan "feed me" (apparently a reference to Israeli starvation tactics against the Palestinians). While anger at Israel for this is more than justified, it's hard to justify expressing said anger with an attack on a monument to a crime that was committed against the Jewish people before Israel even existed. The suspect is a lawyer who was employed by the City of Ottawa until his arrest, whereupon he was fired.

- The federal government has decided to cancel the digital services tax in the hope of appeasing the Trump regime sufficiently to get them to reopen negotiations on tariffs.

- A poll suggests that the majority of supporters of the Conservative party in Manitoba say that they would either definitely or probably vote to leave Canada. The "definitely or probably" group accounted for only 22% of Manitobans overall, but 52% of supporters of the provincial Conservatives and 56% of supporters of the federal party lean towards separatism. On the positive side, this will make it harder for the Cons to court non-extremists; on the downside, under our first past the post electoral system this will probably make it harder for reasonable alternatives to the Liberals (e.g. the NDP or Greens) to make any headway.

- Winnipeg's revamped bus network made its debut yesterday; whether it improves service for more people than it worsens it remains to be seen.

- Manitoba's Minister of Families, Nahanni Fontaine, had an unfortunate hot-mic moment when, at a graduation ceremony for indigenous women, she muttered to her assistant about the placement of the ASL interpreter in a way that could have been interpreted as a complaint about the very presence of said interpreter. Unfortunately her utterance was picked up by an APTN camera crew. Fontaine, whose responsibilities include people with disabilities, has apologized about the matter, though some members of the deaf community are not satisfied.