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‘This is our blood on your hands’: Students describe a crushing emotional toll of mass shootings
In the wake of mass shootings at Michigan State University and Oxford High School, as well as the gun violence that has shattered lives across the state, the children now living with the permanent scars of trauma keep hearing the same message: They are the future; their advocacy is the reason this country will change. […]
‘I don’t know how I survived’: Reflections on three years of the pandemic
Three years ago, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, then Michigan’s chief medical executive, made an announcement: The first two cases of COVID-19 had been confirmed in the state. “We’re Michiganders; we’re tough; we will get through this,” Whitmer said on March 10, 2020, when she declared a state of emergency. Three years later, […]
Whitmer signs $1.3 billion spending plan, includes $630M for Ford EV battery plant
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a bipartisan $1.3 billion supplemental spending bill Wednesday, which includes about $630 million for a Ford Motor Company electric vehicle battery plant in the Marshall area that the administration said will create thousands of jobs. House Bill 4016, sponsored by Rep. Angela Witwer (D-Delta Twp.) and passed in the House and […]
Whitmer signs tax relief bill; law increases EITC, repeals pension tax
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Tuesday signed House Bill 4001 into law, which boosts a tax credit for low-wage workers and rolls back the state’s retirement tax. The legislation, coined the “Lowering MI Costs” plan by Democratic lawmakers, overhauls tax changes made by then-Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, in 2011. The new law is expected to […]
Michigan firearm owners advocate for gun reform
Michigan firearm owners and strong proponents of Second Amendment rights at a Thursday press conference threw their weight behind the gun reform bills introduced by state Democrats and urged lawmakers to cast what they said should be “an easy vote” in favor of the legislation. “I can’t think of any other issue in this state […]
‘If not now, when?’: At House hearing, lawmakers hear emotional pleas to pass gun reform bills
Under the fluorescent lights of the Anderson House Office Building in downtown Lansing, a crowd gathered Wednesday afternoon. They wore orange, a color symbolizing gun violence survivors, and clasped hands with one another as people spoke of suicide and students dying and operating on children with gun wounds. Often, they cried. For many of those […]
Firearm ban planned for Michigan Capitol
Close to three years after armed right-wing protesters swarmed the state Capitol and two weeks after a gunman killed three students at Michigan State University, the Michigan State Capitol Commission (MSCC) approved on Monday a resolution to develop a plan to implement a total ban on firearms and enhance other security measures at the Capitol. […]
‘How many more bullets must be dodged?’
“Run, hide, fight.” The students kept chanting, their voices filling a cavernous room in Boji Tower. “Run, hide, fight.” And again: The words that came to them in an email almost exactly two weeks ago. “Run, hide, fight.” Two weeks ago, they would have never imagined themselves in this room in the tallest building in […]
GOP focus on mental health after MSU shooting will not reduce gun violence, experts say
After the hundreds of shootings at schools in the United States over the past two-plus decades — 366 since 1999 — there is, gun violence researchers said, a familiar political playbook that follows: Democratic lawmakers push for gun reform; Republicans largely do not. Instead, GOP legislators focus on increasing access to mental health care. There’s […]
Amid burnout and exhaustion, nurses at two mid-Michigan hospitals OK new contracts
Nurses at McLaren Central Hospital in Mt. Pleasant and MyMichigan Alma have approved new three-year contracts for workers who described facing burnout and exhaustion throughout the pandemic, the Michigan Nurses Association (MNA) announced Thursday. McLaren Central nurses ratified their contract on Wednesday; MyMichigan Alma nurses approved theirs on Feb. 17. Both contracts “protect and expand […]
‘We grow out of crime’: Advocates urge state to abolish juvenile life without parole
Updated, 2:02 p.m. 2/24/2023 In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that sentencing juveniles to mandatory life without the possibility of parole is unconstitutional. But more than a decade later, there remain Michiganders who, years after entering prison, are continuing to serve out their life sentences for crimes they committed as children. That must change, […]
After Oxford, gun violence advocates felt helpless. But there’s hope for change in Michigan now.
Dread had consumed Winnie Brinks. Like parents across the state — and across the country and world — the new Senate majority leader spent Monday night calling and texting her daughter, a student at Michigan State University, in the wake of a mass shooting that killed three students and critically injured five others. “I felt […]