Sen. Jeff Irwin’s Proposed Elimination of “Assets Based Test” for State Food Assistance is Not Good Enough
Note: According to a Feb. 27 article in MLive.com, "Senate Bill 35 introduced in January would delete the asset testing requirement used by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) to determine eligibility for the…
DTE Can’t Tree Trim its Way to Reliability
After ice storms and thundersnow cause mass outages, DTE must admit: Burying power lines underground is the answer
By James David Dickenson
DTE will never trim enough trees to avoid mass power outages in Southeast Michigan.
Every…
Michigan Senate Passes Historic LGBTQ+ Civil Rights Protections
by Laina Stebbens, Michigan Advance
A key civil rights bill on Wednesday cleared the Michigan Senate, marking a key step toward solidifying protections for LGBTQ+ Michiganders that advocates have been waiting for decades to see adopted.…
U-M Grad Students Ask for $14,500 Pay Raise, and President Santa Ono Counters With a Wage Cut
by Lily Zhao and Matthew Brennan
Over 2,000 graduate student workers at the University of Michigan have been negotiating for a new three-year contract since November 2022. Their current contract expires on May 1. On Tuesday, an…
Ann Arbor Superintendent Refutes “Learning Loss” Among Ann Arbor Students
Superintendent Jeanice Swift disputes value of the term “learning loss,” admits COVID affected “trajectory of growth”
by Jaime A. Hope
The superintendent of Ann Arbor Public Schools says students who were locked out of classrooms for…
Seven Days After Ice Storm 11K DTE Customers in County Still Without Power –Who’s to Blame?
by P.D. Lesko
As of Feb. 28, DTE's outage map showed that 5.24 percent of its customers in Washtenaw County--some 8,836 customers--are still without power as a result of a record-breaking Feb. 22 ice storm that knocked out power to over…
Watch: Why’s the County Prosecutor on a Black Men’s Health Panel Hosted by a Child Sexual Predator?
Note: These videos contain profanity, marijuana use and may not be suitable for children.
The Ann Arbor Independent's "Urban Exile" columnist Shannon McFall lives in Pittsfield Township and vlogs about race, local, county and national…
Outages in Washtenaw County Still impacting Almost 40 Percent of all DTE Customers
Note: Updated on Feb. 24 with a statement from City Administrator Milton Dohoney.
by P.D. Lesko
According to an email Ann Arbor Council member Lisa Disch (D-Ward 1) sent Feb. 23, two-third of Ann Arbor residents were without power…
Citizen Requested Info. About County Employee, Chief Asst. Prosecutor Threatened “Criminal Charges”
Note: This article has been updated to include the email sent by Victoria Burton-Harris.
by P.D. Lesko
Emails shared with The Ann Arbor Independent showed that on Jan. 31, 2022, an Ann Arbor man phoned and then sent an email to the…
Film Review: “The Locksmith”
Nicolas Harvard’s directorial debut is a by-the-numbers crime story, distinguished slightly by Kate Bosworth's supporting turn.
MPA Rating: R. Running time: 91 MIN.
by Murta Elfadl
“The Locksmith” has the right elements for a…