News roundup, 23 Jan 2026

- One of the things about Donald Trump's sudden retreat in the Greenland crisis is the extent to which it undermines his case for taking the territory in the first place. After all, if it were really essential to national security as he was claiming, there would be no room for compromise - but yet he backed down quite abruptly, no doubt having been finally convinced of the economic disaster that could result to his country - and his and his friends' stock holdings - if he went ahead and Europeans started dumping Treasuries and other key American securities. One hopes that this might, ever so slightly, chip away at his tough-guy image among the MAGA crowd. This is certainly not the end, or even the beginning of the end. Is it the end of the beginning? Time will tell.

- A leaked internal ICE memo advises officers that they don't need a warrant to enter private homes, contrary to officially acknowledged training materials (not to mention the Constitution).

- The US has followed through with its threats to withdraw from the World Health Organization. Under their own laws they're supposed to give a year's notice and pay all outstanding fees (around $260 million), but a State Department official denies this.

- Pierre Poilievre says that he will not run in his current riding in the next election, saying that Damien Kurek (who stepped aside to allow him to sit in the House after he was defeated in his old riding of Carleton) will be allowed to have the riding back, no nomination needed. Where he is going to run remains to be seen; maybe he'll just slink away with his tail between his legs if we're lucky.

- Edmonton mayor Andrew Knack reports that there has been a disturbing amount of harassment of snowplow operators as well as a city councillor, Erin Rutherford. Plow operators have had shovels thrown at them, while Rutherford has been the target of an online disinformation and doxxing campaign by rightwing influencer Jesse Watson (who was Rutherford's opponent in the last municipal election). More information about this charming character may be found here.

- Power generation from coal has declined in both China and India for the first time in 52 years, with clean energy technology taking up the slack.  

- A teacher in the Louis Riel School Division in southeast Winnipeg was suspended for five days without pay and transferred to a different school after mimicking a nine year old's temper tantrum to mock the child, prompting other kids to do the same.

- Investigators in Queensland have concluded that the Canadian woman found dead on a beach surrounded by dingoes most likely drowned and that the bite marks on her body were inflicted after death. 

News roundup, 17 Oct 2025

 - In addition to the surviving hostages they have released, Hamas has released the bodies of 10 others, but say that they'll need specialized equipment to recover the rest due to them being buried in rubble. The Israelis also claim that one of the bodies they returned was not one of the hostages. Hamas also accuses Israel of violating the ceasefire by killing at least 24 people since Friday. It's almost as if Netanyahu doesn't really want the ceasefire to last (not that Hamas likely does either).

- The US Supreme Court is hearing a legal challenge to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which limits states' ability to gerrymander based on race. Not surprisingly, it is widely expected that the court will rule in favour of the challenge. The potential impact of this is hard to overstate - in parts of the country the Democrats could be virtually shut out. On the other hand, some are pointing out that blue states could play the same game. This could conceivably work in the Democrats' favour - but at a cost of reducing the diversity of Congress overall. Ultimately, though, I think that debate is pretty much academic - I don't see any scenario in which next year's midterms are sufficiently free and fair for the Dems to have any real chance of regaining control of either house of Congress no matter what some blue states try. Heck, I'm not 100% certain if there will be any midterms. I'd like to be proven wrong on that; I guess we'll know in just over a year.

- As of next month, the most populous and wealthiest US state will no longer be using coal to generate electricity. Some of this capacity is being replaced by natural gas, and some by hydrogen of unspecified origin (note that a lot of hydrogen is produced using carbon-heavy techniques), but a lot of it is because of huge improvements in renewables. California is also the first state to prohibit the use of AI to replicate real people. And Hollywood is having second thoughts about the technology given its implications for their intellectual property.

- Nearly every news media outlet in the US has refused to agree to new rules set by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, despite being told that they will have to turn in their Pentagon press passes if they don't sign on. This includes not only those you'd expect such as the New York Times, CNN, and NBC but also rightwing outlets like Fox News and Newsmax; only the One America News Network agreed. The rules prohibit reporters working at the Pentagon from using any "unauthorized" material for their work, even if it is not classified material.

The Centers for Disease Control has lost some 25% of its workforce to the Trump regime's purges. Damage from a loss of expertise like that could take decades to repair, if ever.

- The antivaxxer, far-right activist, and multiple times failed political candidate Patrick Allard has lost his defamation suit against the Manitoba NDP. Allard had sued after the party described him as someone who spouts "racist rhetoric" during the 2022 byelection campaign in Fort Whyte. The judge acknowledged that the statements the NDP was referring to were sufficiently vague to have some plausible deniability, but concluded that the doctrine of "qualified privilege" applies here. The judge also noted that Allard had breached a court rule by leaking texts that had surfaced during the trial to the Winnipeg Sun.

News roundup, 7 Oct 2025

- South Korea's Ministry of National Defense is giving medals to 11 soldiers who refused unlawful orders when President Yoon Suk Yeol attempted to declare martial law last year. This has not been without controversy; some soldiers and online commenters fear that rewarding disobedience and encouraging soldiers to think for themselves will erode military discipline and even harm national security. I'd wager that most of those complaints come from Yoon's rightwing supporters. 

-  The control tower at the airport in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank was unstaffed Monday evening, after all the controllers scheduled for that shift called in sick. Of course, when controllers are being expected to work despite not getting paid due to the government shutdown, stuff like this is bound to happen. ATC operations for the airport were being handled out of San Diego.

- The home of South Carolina judge Diane Goodstein was destroyed by fire on Saturday; she was not home at the time of the fire but her husband, son, and one other relative were seriously injured. While arson has not been confirmed as the cause of the fire, Goodstein had received death threats in recent weeks after ruling against the federal Department of Justice last month. The DOJ had requested detailed personal information of over three million registered voters, ostensibly to prevent voter fraud; Goodstein had ruled that this violated privacy rights.

- California governor Gavin Newsom has signed into law a bill that allows drivers in ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft to unionize. To placate the companies he also signed a measure that significantly cuts their insurance requirements.

- Newly appointed French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu, a member of President Emmanuel Macron's centrist Renaissance party, has resigned mere hours after being appointed, after concluding that he would be unable to win the confidence of the country's parliament. Left leaning parliamentarians are calling for Macron to appoint one of their number as prime minister; National Rally leader Marine Le Pen is calling for snap parliamentary elections and for Macron's resignation. Jean-Luc Mélenchon's far-left La France Insoumise party is making the same demand as Le Pen.

- The Trump regime has cancelled nearly $8 billion in clean energy projects. This in itself is par for the course; one thing that stands out though is that all of the states affected voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. Presumably the regime is aware that the projects are creating badly needed jobs in red states, and they're leery of angering those states until they've tightened their grip on power. It's reminiscent of mid-20th century Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis, who paved roads right up to the boundaries of constituencies that voted for his party while leaving them unpaved in places that voted for the opposition.

- An executive order from Trump earlier this year has targeted 100 million acres of forest for logging. This order was followed by a memo from agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins that specifically identifies the Wayne National Forest, Ohio's only national forest, as a site for lumber production. Over 80% of the forest has deemed suitable for logging, which could mean the end of the forest as we know it.

- A 17 year old boy has been charged with two counts of first degree murder after allegedly running over two teenage girls in New Jersey, one of whom he had been accused of stalking. Not mentioned in the CBS article are allegations that the accused, Vincent Battiloro, was a Charlie Kirk fan and may have been partially motivated by that victim's mocking of Kirk. I guess the folks at CBS don't want to open that can of worms.

News roundup, 18 Aug 2025

- The IDF has reportedly created a "legitimization cell", tasked with trying to find whatever tenuous connections it can find between Hamas and journalists working in Gaza. That way, when they kill said journalists, they can present this "evidence" as a way of claiming self-defense.

- California, unlike most states, has an independent electoral commission to draw district boundaries. However, Governor Gavin Newsom is prepared to override the commission for seats in the House of Representatives if other states, such as Texas, go ahead with highly gerrymandered districts for their own states. Public opinion in California opposes this, and partisan redistricting has been shown to erode confidence in democracy, but it might be the best chance the Democrats have of regaining control of the House.

- The Carney government attempted to order striking Air Canada flight attendants back to work over the weekend, invoking Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to order binding arbitration. The union, however, is defying the order, essentially calling the government's bluff. It definitely seems like a questionable order; being able to hop on a plane to fly wherever you like is not an essential service by any reasonable standards.

- Back in the 1970s, uneasiness about the safety of nuclear fission energy led Oregon's liberal legislators to introduce legislation to give the public more say over the location of power plants. Unfortunately this has now backfired; rightwing activists are using the legislation to hold up the construction of wind farms and upgrades to transmission lines.

- The Winnipeg Humane Society was kicked out of the Hanover Ag Fair because they had a display with a papier mâché pig. The display was meant to show people the kind of conditions actual pigs are typically kept in, but the fair's organizers were not amused. They have said little about the reason for kicking the WHS out other than saying that the display was not what they had expected. 

US Chamber of Commerce faces schism over climate

It seems a breakaway group of chambers is much more favourably disposed towards taking action on climate than the main body would like:

A new split over climate policy is brewing within the ranks of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as a breakaway group of local chambers is getting ready to publicly split with the business lobby's hardline stance against climate legislation. The new climate coalition, known as the Chambers for Innovation and Clean Energy (CICE), will press Congress to take stronger action on climate and energy issues. It has already signed up about a dozen chambers and will officially launch later this year.

The U.S. Chamber is already working behind the scenes to discredit the new group. After it caught wind of the effort last month, it fired off a letter to local chamber leaders, discouraging them from joining CICE, which it claimed was "established by the Natural Resources Defense Council." The letter, written by U.S. Chamber board member Winthrop Hallett, the president of Alabama's Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce, states that the new group's "indirect purpose appears to be undermining the U.S. Chamber's and the business community's leadership on" climate issues.

The claim that CICE is little more than a front group for the NRDC is "outrageous" and "really just pissed me off," says Steve Falk, the president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, which has been organizing the independent climate coalition. Hallett's letter, which has not been posted publicly but which Mother Jones has seen, does not explain the alleged connection between CICE and the NRDC. Hallett and a spokesman for the U.S. Chamber did not respond to requests for comment.

From the Guardian. This is a good sign; once big business has doubts about business as usual, there's a chance that change will finally start to happen.