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April Fools’ Day: Trump orders mass deportation of Piping Plover, calls migratory bird “un-American vermin”

The Trump regime plans to carry out a mass deportation of the Piping Plover, an endangered migratory shorebird that nests on the beaches of Sleeping Bear Dunes between early April and mid August before spending the winter along the Gulf of Mexico. The Glen Arbor Sun learned the news when a reporter was inadvertently added to an unencrypted text message thread between Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins. “I want them gone. Gone from our Beautiful Country!” wrote Trump. “Those birds are Losers. They’re un-American, they’re vermin!”

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Demonstrators at Sleeping Bear Dunes and nationwide stand up for National Park Service workers

Bitter cold winds and temperatures in the teens didn’t stop them. Neither did the catatonic state of the federal government as the Trump administration and oligarch-in-chief Elon Musk take a wrecking ball to the national workforce. Yesterday, March 1, more than 60 local demonstrators gathered at noon at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore headquarters in Empire to rally on behalf of their fired National Park workers and to protest the federal spending freeze that will delay the hiring of more than 100 seasonal employees who are integral to opening our National Lakeshore to 1.6 million visitors this summer. They marched through snow and wind from the Visitor’s Center to the Empire public beach and back.

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Trump’s tariffs—bad for local newspapers, bad for fruit, bad for Michigan

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The news media has suffered in recent years. Corporate consolidations have forced mass layoffs; the Internet and social media have redrawn the map; and demagogues at podiums malign us as convenient scapegoats. The latest blow to local news is the current administration’s shortsighted, illogical tariffs on newsprint from Canada.

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Could Trump’s hiring freeze hurt Sleeping Bear staff, operations?

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Could Trump’s hiring freeze affect staff, and operations, at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, which typically hires 100 seasonal employees in May when it opens popular mainstays such as the Sleeping Bear Dune Climb and Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive in time for the summer tourism season?

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Leelanau Women March on Washington

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The January 21, 2017, Women’s March on Washington, D.C. attracted more than half a million demonstrators to the banks of the Potomac. Writer Anne-Marie Oomen of Empire, and other Leelanau women shared their experiences from that day.

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Go With Me: Reflections on the day after the presidential election

Scared, scared, scared. Three of them hold hands. Of the three holding hands, one is Thai international, one is Native American in transition (from female to male), one is white, also in transition. Among the others, one is bi, one is gay, one is trying to figure it out. They are bright — a few are brilliant. They are all generally kind, generally hard-working, opinionated, funny, eager, quirky, often silly, tousled, sometimes-in-need-of-a-shower secondary students. Some have pink hair, or maybe blue this week. Some have tattoos and piercings. Some have creatively decorated their uniforms in such a way that there is no general sense of uniformity. They all understand that this election affects their future.

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