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Police raid Twin Flames Universe home: Michigan AG announces investigation

Shortly after 11 am this morning, federal, state and local law enforcement officers raided the Leelanau County home of Jeff and Shaleia Divine, leaders of the Twin Flames Universe organization, which critics and multiple documentaries have described as a cult that manipulates its online followers. A neighbor observed a police officer carrying out a box of papers from their residence near Suttons Bay. Early in the afternoon, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel issued a press release that announced an ongoing investigation into the Twin Flames Universe as well as a second raid against people associated with the coercive group. According to Nessel’s office, the search warrants were carried out by special agents from the Department of Attorney General, along with the U.S. Department of Labor—Office of Inspector General, and law enforcement officers from Michigan State Police, the Leelanau County Sheriff’s Office and the Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office.

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Descendents of Black pioneers return to Leelanau for film screening

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“The Search for Anna and Levi: A Lost History of Black Homesteaders in Leelanau County” will show at Leland School on May 31—not at the hamstrung Sleeping Bear Dunes headquarters, as originally scheduled. The Bay Theatre in Suttons Bay initially screened the film in February. Northern Michigan has begun to feel like a second home for Philadelphia resident Carmen Hopson. Ever since she received a life-changing Facebook message in September 2022 from Kevin Brooks, an amateur genealogist based in Grand Rapids, who shared photos to show that their ancestors—hers Black, his White—were neighboring farm owners and pioneering homesteaders more than 100 years ago along Little Glen Lake. “It feels like we’re coming home. This is a place where we will be welcomed home,” said Hopson. The National Lakeshore decided that it could no longer host the screening following the Trump administration’s March 27 executive order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” that cast this nation’s collective reexamination of historical racism as a “distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.”

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Resistance awakes as “Hands Off” rallies energize Northern Michigan against Trump

As many as 4,000 demonstrators rallied at the Traverse City Governmental Center on Saturday, April 5, as part of nationwide “Hands Off” protests to oppose the Trump administration’s aggressive policies on trade tariffs, cuts to social services, health programs and National Parks, and threats against immigrants and free speech. Hundreds more protested along state highways in towns including Benzonia and Suttons Bay. Huge crowds at the “Hands Off” rallies suggested that the resistance to Trump’s policies has awoken.

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Fighting Climate Change, one solar array at a time

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Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel met with local business owners and nonprofit leaders at the solar array on the corner of M-72 and Bugai Rd in southeastern Leelanau County on Friday, July 7. Nessel said that renewable energy generators such as this solar array are an important tool to combat man-made climate change, which has affected Michigan in recent years in the form of rainstorms and flooding, heat waves, toxic algal blooms, rapidly fluctuating Lake Michigan water levels and beach erosion, and more ticks and tick-borne diseases. Warmer and shorter winters have also put northern Michigan’s cherished cherry crop at risk, and smoke from Canadian wildfires has polluted the air across the Midwest this spring and summer. “Climate change is real,” said Nessel. “And if you didn’t believe it before, you ought to start believing it now.” Under Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and a Democratic-led state legislature, Michigan’s climate plan to wean utilities and industry off fossil fuels and coal- and gas-fired power plants is among the most ambitious nationwide.

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Michigan Attorney General visits Cherry Republic

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who faces a reelection campaign this fall, spoke to supporters in the Cherry Public House beer garden on August 17. The event was organized by the Michigan League of Conservation Voters and by Cherry Republic. Nessel spoke about shutting down Pipeline 5 and protecting abortion rights.

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Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel to discuss clean water during Aug. 17 event at Cherry Republic

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel will lead a conversation on clean water at Cherry Republic’s Glen Arbor campus on Wednesday, Aug. 17, from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. The event is sponsored by the Michigan League of Conservation Voters.

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VanderWall: Lame duck legislation “unfortunately part of politics”

State Representative Curt VanderWall (Republican) who represents Michigan’s 101st district says the bills being rushed through the legislature during this month’s lame duck session are “unfortunately part of politics”.

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