Locals Express Appreciation for Canadians; How an Incorrect Tweet Sent the Market Soaring–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: April 7, 2025

Indy Digest: April 7, 2025

Full-time Coachella Valley residents like to make jokes about snowbirds. Back in 2015, on his late, lamented website Cactus Hugs, Casey Dolan discussed various snowbird-related memes, and challenged his readers to come up with new ones. Here’s one of my personal faves:

Putting the jokes aside: Most local shop and restaurant owners will tell you that snowbirds bring them a lot of business—and, of course, a sizable chunk of the Coachella Valley’s snowbirds come from Canada.

Because—as mentioned previously in this space—our president and his administration seem hellbent on pissing off Canadians as much as possible, a lot of Canadians are choosing to stop coming to the United States.

Our partners at Calmatters recently took a look at the statewide financial impact of visitors from Canada:

California tourism could lose billions of dollars because of President Donald Trump’s policies on tariffs, immigration and gender identity, as well as his talk of annexing Canada. 

Visit California, a nonprofit organization that promotes tourism in the Golden State, recently revised its overall visitor spending forecast for this year from $166 billion to $160 billion, saying international travel into California is already beginning to slow. Canada, the second-largest source of international tourism dollars for the state after Mexico, accounted for $3.7 billion of the $26.5 billion foreign travel brought into the state last year, Visit California said.

So it could be a big problem for California that many Canadians are angry about tariffs and Trump’s insistence that their country should become the 51st U.S. state. Many are refusing to buy U.S.-made products and don’t want to cross the border. Canada and other countries have also issued advisories for travel to the United States, warning travelers that they risk being detained, or that because of the Trump’s administration’s policies on transgender people there could be complications for them depending on what gender is shown on their passports. 

Our friends at the Palm Springs Post looked at the local affects:

With all the bad blood, Canadians are vowing to skip out on vacationing in the U.S. and selling their second homes in the Sun Belt.

Budget airline Flair Airlines dropped several routes from Vancouver to the U.S., including summer routes at Palm Springs International Airport. Early data from RV parks in Canada suggest Canadians are opting to stay local and planning summer vacations within Canada rather than the U.S.

A local realtor, Sheri Dettman, told Fast Company that sales and inquiries from Canadians looking to sell their second homes in the Coachella Valley have skyrocketed.

In response, Palm Springs city officials, tourism leaders, and business owners are keeping their eyes glued to the headlines and noticing warning signs of a drop-off in Canadian tourism.

“Canadian traffic on the website’s down a little over 20%,” said Randy Garner from the Palm Springs Bureau of Tourism during a meeting of downtown business owners earlier this week. “I’ve talked to a number of hotels, and they are getting cancellations for reservations, so it’s definitely hitting the hotels.”

Meanwhile, local leaders are making it clear that the Coachella Valley still appreciates and values Canadians. If you were in downtown Palm Springs over the weekend, there’s a good chance you saw some of the new “Palm Springs Loves Canada” banners the city recently installed.

Will these local efforts make any difference? We’ll see..

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• The nation’s top vaccine official was forced to resign. He says that happened because he stood up to RFK Jr. and his unfounded vaccine denialism after the Health and Human Services secretary’s team asked for information about vaccine-related issues. The Associated Press reports: “In an interview with The Associated Press, former Food and Drug Administration vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks discussed his efforts to ‘make nice’ with Kennedy and address his longstanding concerns about vaccine safety, including by developing a ‘vaccine transparency action plan.’ Marks agreed to give Kennedy’s associates the ability to read thousands of reports of potential vaccine-related issues sent to the government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS. But he would not allow them to directly edit the data. ‘Why wouldn’t we? Because frankly we don’t trust (them),’ he said, using a profanity. ‘They’d write over it or erase the whole database.’ … Since being sworn in, ‘Mr. Kennedy has increased the pace by which he intends to minimize the use of vaccines in this country,’ Marks said.”

• Related: In better news, RFK Jr. did come out and endorse the MMR vaccine, as a deadly measles outbreak in Texas continues. As NPR reports, his somewhat tepid remarks ticked off some of his supporters: “‘The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,’ Kennedy said in the third paragraph of a lengthy post on the social media platform X. Kennedy made the post following meetings on Sunday in Gaines County, Texas with the families of two children who have died of measles during a recent outbreak in the state. He also said he had instructed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to ‘supply pharmacies and Texas run clinics with needed MMR vaccines,’ along with other medical supplies. Kennedy’s endorsement is in line with all available scientific evidence on the MMR vaccine. … But Kennedy’s suggestion that the vaccine was effective infuriated several members of the anti-vaccine community who responded on X to the statement. ‘I’m sorry, but there is no defense for this poorly worded statement,’ wrote Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, a prominent anti-vaccine activist who once claimed during a legislative hearing in Ohio that the COVID vaccine could cause patients to become magnetized, allowing them to stick ‘spoons and forks’ all over their bodies.”

• An inaccurate headline that was posted on X earlier today led the stock rocket to spike—leading to trillions of dollars in (temporary) market gains. NBC News reports: “An unfounded claim that President Donald Trump was considering pausing the implementation of sizable tariffs briefly sent U.S. stocks skyrocketing on Monday, an indication of just how volatile the current economic situation has become. Just after 10:10 a.m., a headline was posted by several well-followed finance-focused accounts on X that said White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett had indicated that Trump was considering a 90-day pause—China excluded—on his sweeping tariffs plan. Though unverified, the headline was instantly digested by investors—many of whom operate through algorithmic software that can parse information for buy or sell signals—and sent stocks soaring, reversing an earlier massive sell-off. … Yet it soon became clear that no one could trace the origins of the alleged news. Hassett appeared earlier Monday on Fox News but did not mention a 90-day pause—though he was asked about one. The White House later said on X that the claim was false, and one of the administration’s accounts reposted Hassett’s Fox News appearance to clarify that no such pause had been floated.”

• Today’s recall news involves … hot sauce! However, only people with food-allergy issues should be concerned. USA Today explains: “T.W. Garner Food Company, the parent company of Texas Pete, has recalled multiple hot sauce products due to potential allergens found in some bottles, the company announced last week. According to the North Carolina-based company, the Texas Pete Habanero Buffalo Sauce products were mislabeled and may contain undeclared sulfites, the company said Thursday. ‘The Sriracha Sauce contains sulfites which are not declared on the label,’ the company wrote in its announcement on the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s website. ‘People who have an allergy or severe sensitivity to sulfites run the risk of serious or life-threatening allergic reaction if they consume these products.’” California is one of the 10 states on the recall list.

• A longtime columnist for The Washington Post has left the newspaper. The reason? Owner Jeff Bezos’ new policies, which critics say are in place to make the paper friendlier to Trump. The AP says: “Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson is leaving the newspaper, the second such veteran to exit in the wake of owner Jeff Bezos’ directive that the Post narrow the topics covered by its opinion section to personal liberties and the free market. Robinson, 71, has worked at the Post since 1980 and been a columnist since 2005, winning a Pulitzer Prize for his work focused on the election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first Black president in 2008. In a memo to colleagues reported by The New York Times on Thursday, Robinson said the ‘significant shift’ in the opinion section’s mission had encouraged him that it was time to move on. Last month, columnist Ruth Marcus, who had worked at the newspaper since 1984, resigned after she said management decided not to run her commentary critical of Bezos’ policy. As the Post has faced turmoil in the past year, it has enforced a policy of not letting its staff members write about internal matters. The newspaper’s opinion editor, David Shipley, also resigned because of the shift in focus.”

• And finally … some good news: A nonprofit has reached a deal to eliminate $30 billion in medical-bill debt. Unfortunately, it doesn’t come close to solving the country’s problems with unpaid medical bills. NPR says: “Despite the size of this deal, however, even proponents of retiring patient debt acknowledge that such purchases cannot solve a crisis that now touches around 100 million people in the U.S. ‘We don’t think that the way we finance health care is sustainable,’ Undue Medical Debt chief executive Allison Sesso said. ‘Medical debt has unreasonable expectations…the people who owe the debts can’t pay.’ In the past year alone, Americans borrowed an estimated $74 billion to pay for health care, a West Health-Gallup survey found. And even those who benefit from Undue’s debt relief may have other medical debt that won’t be relieved. This large purchase also highlights the challenges that debt collectors, hospitals, and other health care providers face as patients rack up big bills that aren’t covered by their health insurance.”

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