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Biden says Republicans ‘want a national ban on abortion’
President Joe Biden followed up his visit Wednesday to the North American International Auto Show with a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Detroit. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer thanked him for making the trip. “We know he’s a car guy, but he didn’t have to be here,” she said, per a White House pool report. The president […]
Susan J. Demas: Michigan has a 1931 law banning abortion. Now voters can decide if it stands.
It’s been a confusing time for women since June, when the far-right U.S. Supreme Court gleefully chucked almost 50 years of precedent and overturned Roe v. Wade. Suddenly, one in three women across America are no longer able to make intimate health care decisions for themselves and their families. There have been so many heart-wrenching […]
How Trump’s footprint is all over Michigan’s race for governor
Days before Michigan’s Republican gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, former President Donald Trump made an announcement some of his supporters had begged him not to do: He just might endorse right-wing media personality Tudor Dixon for governor. “Giving Tudor Dixon a good, hard look,” Trump wrote Friday morning on Truth Social, the social media company he […]
Susan J. Demas: Normalcy bias is a hell of a drug
When life becomes overwhelming, it’s normal to try and protect ourselves by insisting that things aren’t that bad. That coping mechanism can work, at least in the short-term, but most of us know that choosing to live in denial will never solve the real issues at hand. So what happens when we’re living through this […]
Susan J. Demas: Forcing 10-year-old rape victims to give birth isn’t moral, just or ‘pro-life’
For the first decades after Roe v. Wade was decided, anti-abortion forces made the case that they were the real pro-women movement. They claimed to love the sinner (the fallen woman) but hated the sin of abortion. They just wanted to save female babies. And some promised to be there with the first box of […]
Susan J. Demas: It’s OK to cut people from your life who don’t regard you as a person
With an illegitimate Supreme Court deciding that half the population doesn’t deserve basic rights in overturning Roe v. Wade, we can’t even grieve in peace. We also have to deal with an onslaught of exceedingly dumb takes and trolls. Thanks to social media, there’s really no escape from what everyone from the kid you sat […]
Susan J. Demas: The anti-abortion movement’s extremism can no longer be whitewashed
After years of seeing gauzy anti-abortion ads cajoling women of color not to “kill” their Black and Brown babies, last week may have been a bit of a jolt. Amid a baby formula shortage (thanks to a heavily monopolized industry), Republicans quickly adopted the talking point that the Biden administration should withhold formula from migrant […]
Susan J. Demas: Turning on those who have saved lives and made the pandemic a little less awful
There’s really no more apt embodiment of the deadly, gleeful ignorance that’s marked the pandemic than obnoxious, honking anti-vaxxers showing up to protest Dr. Anthony Fauci’s commencement for 2020 University of Michigan graduates who had their lives turned upside down. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had an erudite […]
Susan J. Demas: The far-right’s repulsive ‘groomer’ attack is a clarion call for violence
Earlier this month, Sen. Lana Theis (R-Brighton) used her invocation on the Senate dais to launch a political tirade that children are “under attack” from “forces that desire things for them other than what their parents would have them see and hear and know.” That prompted walkouts from some Democratic senators, so Theis saw an […]
The Michigan candidate filing deadline has passed. Here are the 2022 races to watch.
Updated, 10:44 a.m., 4/21/22 Several Republican candidates for governor descended on the Richard H. Austin Building in Lansing Tuesday to drop off petition signatures necessary to make it onto the August ballot before the deadline to do so. Ten Republicans who hope to face Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in November filed signatures with the Bureau […]
Susan J. Demas: Nothing radical about Whitmer fighting the GOP’s anti-abortion extremism
Ten years ago, I was having a beer with a Michigan GOP consultant who informed me that liberals should stop all the fear-mongering because Republicans would never be dumb enough to outlaw abortion. “If they did that, they’d lose the next election by 20 points,” he declared. It was a simpler time during the 2012 […]
Susan J. Demas: Republicans said KBJ was soft on pedophiles. But they have a Michigan problem.
If you sat through the excruciating Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, it was clear just how exceptional the first Black female justice in history had to be just to get there. Just compare Jackson’s composure and legal analysis in hearings to Brett Kavanagh, who was credibly accused of sexual assault (which naturally […]