Auchtoon!

A story broke this week about two Chinese scientists at the University of Michigan’s research laboratories who have been charged with smuggling biological materials into the United States. The U.S. Education Department (at least as far as it exists today) has opened an investigation into U of M’s foreign funding, which is in line with the priority President Trump has cited for increasing transparency in these matters.

It’s no secret that I tend not to agree with the President about much, but, good! Investigate. Find out what happened. Let the legal system (at least as far as it exists today) do its work and release the findings.

But my dear Mr. President, let us not be so selective in our demands for transparency. You and many, many of your appointees rode the Jeffrey Epstein story into office. Release the findings.

If, as Karl Marx is often paraphrased, religion is the opiate for the masses, then major league sports may just be the alcoholic beverage. Think about it. People have always turned to focus on their favorite teams for a refreshing respite, but especially during difficult times. Taking in a ball game as a metaphoric beer or two to relax and escape for a moment from this frightening bizarro world we’re currently experiencing.

And sure (to carry this thread perhaps further than necessary), overindulging in sports fandom is a bad idea and addiction to it can bring ruin. But for the most part, it’s a positive. Sometimes a big positive. The success of the 1968 Detroit Tigers is famously credited for helping the city avoid a repeat of its disastrous 1967 riots.

Right now, it’s a particularly good time to be a Michigan sports fan. To the astonishment of all, the Tigers have the best record in Major League Baseball. The Lions are a popular Super Bowl pick. The Pistons are ascending. Detroit will be getting a WNBA team in a few years. And hopefully the Red Wings will figure it out soon.

So here’s to their success and the feeling of community that their success brings to us. Cheers!

Happy Independence Day to our fragile young republic — here’s to all the good we’ve been and to all the good we hope to be!

Mike Lee: “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” in reaction to the fatal shooting of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband.

Joni Ernst: “Well, we are all going to die,” in reaction to likely deaths that will come from Medicaid cuts.

Mitch McConnell: “They’ll get over it,” also in reaction to death and suffering from proposed Medicaid cuts.

It’s not that I’m surprised by the astonishing callousness of these Republican US Senators. In fact, it helps explain the cruelty of the budget bill they are crafting.

But — good news! — some of the billions in the proposed bill for capturing and deporting people will be spent on private, for-profit prisons. This will create jobs in rural communities such as Baldwin, Michigan, which will compensate a bit for the closed medical facilities, reduced food assistance, and increasingly limited education opportunities.

So, on the whole, not actually good news.

It’s easy to say you want transparency in government when you aren’t in government. It’s even easier to say it when you want to get elected. But apparently it’s very difficult to make it happen once you’re elected.

At least, that’s what I gather from observing Michigan state government. Exhibit A: Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Exhibit B: House Speaker Matt Hall. (And seemingly, there is an entire alphabet of additional exhibits.) Perhaps one day, hopefully soon, we will run out of exhibits.

I have the person being bullied in the cartoon as representing NPR. But I could have just as well labeled her CPB, PBS, CDC, FDA, NIH, FEMA, NOAA, University boards, Kennedy Center, or many other public entities, and the cartoon would still make sense.

It’s the same pattern: the Trump administration berates, belittles, and threatens a public agency (while remaining steadfastly incurious about its actual operations or purpose), and then laments that its staff or board aren’t properly populated with their people. Well, duh. If you actively dislike an organization and don’t believe in its worth, why would you expect them to want people like you to be on their team?

This week former University of Michigan President Santa Ono was rejected from taking the position of president at the University of Florida. Ono had quit U of M and proclaimed to “believe in Florida’s vision for higher education” in being their sole finalist for the position. But then the Florida Board of Governors, which oversees the state’s universities, voted 10-6 against Ono.

So… a bit of disaster. And yet, also utterly predictable.

What was Ono thinking? It’s Florida. Florida! Did he really think it was going to be a seamless transition from Ann Arbor to (checks notes) the Jim Crow Wannabe Era? I mean, sure, January and February are very nice there. But at what cost?

Look, let’s be honest, there are plenty of things not to like about U of M. There is the air of superiority, the often cloying nostalgia, the tendency to take things a step too far. It can be annoying, to be sure. But the school and Ann Arbor are (and very likely will always be) their authentic selves. Ono was a leader of that for two and half years. Sure, he did bend the knee and promise to align on cultural issues. But still, how was it ever going to be possible for a state ruled by MAGA imperialists to accept him?

Well, they didn’t.

The trigger for this week’s cartoon was the story about a “Cryptocurrency Bill of Rights” being introduced as legislation in the Michigan House:

State Representative Bryan Posthumus (R-Rockford) said that bill and others would help Michigan attract the crypto industry to the state.

“Cryptocurrency is here to stay. I believe that 20 years from now, it’ll be the foundation of our entire financial industry. And Michigan can be a national leader in that effort,” Posthumus said.

Yeah, okay, fine. Go ahead, I suppose. But is anybody else bothered by politicians in full embrace of technologies they know very little about while they are summarily rejecting and defunding the scientific and education communities?

Back in January of this year, Jocelyn Benson, the current Secretary of State in Michigan, held a press conference inside a state-owned building to launch her 2026 campaign for governor. This week, the state attorney general determined that this was in violation of the state’s campaign finance law.

The good news for Benson is the only formal punishment she’ll face is a warning (presumably not to do it again). This is because there currently is nothing in the law to deal with this specific set of circumstances. It broke a norm. The folks who wrote the law never anticipated that an active Secretary of State would do something like this.

The bad news for Benson is that she’s facing political punishment for her mistake. Yes, she had intended to give the press conference outside her office building, and, yes, it seemed sensible on a frigid winter day to move it inside to the lobby. But Benson and her team should have been aware of the situation. She wants to be governor, after all. The leader needs to know what the laws are and abide by them.

You know, just like the President of the United States does.

Much has been said about Governor Whitmer and her more, shall we say, nuanced approach to the Trump 2.0 presidency. The reality is, Trump is running the federal government like a monarchy, and he’s the king (or the emir or the crown prince — it’s clear he was in his element on this week’s Middle East tour). So what is a governor to do if she needs to get stuff done? Bend the knee, butter him up, and at least appear to give him what he wants. And apparently it works.

He signed a memo Friday directing the federal government to “achieve maximum speed and efficiency” on a project designed to block the spread of an invasive fish into the Great Lakes. A couple weeks ago, he announced a new fighter jet mission for Michigan’s Selfridge Air National Guard Base. If Whitmer only had a spare luxury airliner to give him to ensure the new Soo Lock in Sault Ste. Marie gets completed.