If you worried that poor, maligned Enbridge Energy was alone in its fight against the monstrous power of Michigan citizens who are desperate to save our Great Lakes from an unimaginable environmental catastrophe, you may now rest easy. A new corporate front group, an “AstroTurf” group as they are frequently called, has come to their aid, posing as, in their […]

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, one of America’s largest chemical industry disasters For the past three years, the Trump administration has made it quite clear they want to eliminate the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) by zeroing out its funding. The CSB is an independent federal agency charged with investigating industrial chemical […]

It’s not every day that a candidate tees themself up to be rejected by voters TWICE and to be defeated by not one, but TWO sitting U.S. Senators. But this week, that’s precisely what John James did, announcing he will run for U.S. Senate in Michigan a second time, this time facing off against the highly popular and well-funded Gary […]

We’re finally seeing how voter suppression, mass incarceration, the war on women and the demise of labor all feed off each other. Unfortunately, conservatives figured that almost 50 years ago. Abortion is being criminalized in state after state, punishing poor people and people of color. We have no attorney general. Prosecutions of Trump’s political opponents seem inevitable. War crimes are […]

As has becoming glaringly obvious, the forced birth lobby in America has been operating in a well-coordinated fashion to end the legal right of women to seek an abortion. Like the Sons of Jacob in A Handmaid’s Tale, they want to take away a woman’s right to control her own reproductive decisions and hand those decisions over to misogynistic religious […]

The following post was written by Rebecca Ramaswamy. Rebecca is a civil rights attorney at Equal Justice Under Law, and one of the attorneys on the Fowler v. Benson case in Michigan. The Litigation Long Game As a Michigan native, I was excited when my D.C.-based civil rights organization, Equal Justice Under Law, decided to bring a lawsuit against my […]

Secretary of Education and Disney villain Betsy DeVos spoke to a group of education writers in Baltimore the other day, and it appears her feelings are hurt. “I never imagined I’d be a focus of your coverage. I don’t enjoy the publicity that comes with my position. I don’t love being up on stage or on any kind of platform. […]

In a presidential administration that seems to function as a turnstile with people coming and going from their positions on a nearly continuous basis, one person seems to be a constant: Betsy DeVos. It’s no surprise, of course. She and her husband and other families members give enormous amounts of money to Republicans. The Center for Responsive Politics found the […]

The following essay was written by my friend Krystle DuPree, a member of the Washtenaw County Democratic Party Executive Board (among many other roles she has) of which I am the Chair. It is in response to an article posted on MLive.com titled “Ann Arbor area’s cost of living jeopardizes veteran’s efforts to escape poverty“. Since the article was published, […]

If you can ban Nazis, you can ban Republicans If you want to know what the gravestone of American democracy might say, consider this recent Vice headline: Why Won’t Twitter Treat White Supremacy Like ISIS? Because It Would Mean Banning Some Republican Politicians Too. Possibly in response to this embarrassing admission and the obvious failure to successfully delouse one of […]

A couple of weeks ago, I published an essay titled Betsy DeVos and the Koch brothers must be so proud: Michigan teacher salaries down 16% from 2009. The title is pretty self-explanatory and the bottom line is that there is a very predictable (and predicted) teacher shortage in our state now because of how we have demonized, diminished, and demeaned […]