Editorials

State urges testing for radon gas in homes

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has again declared this to be Radon Action Month in Michigan, encouraging all residents to learn more about this environmental hazard and test their homes during this winter’s heating season. Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas produced by the natural decay of uranium found in all soil types. It enters buildings from the soil and can accumulate to high concentrations indoors. Yet radon cannot be seen, smelled or tasted, and has no short-term side effects that could cause alarm or warn of its presence, according to the Michigan Department of ...

Editorial cartoon for Jan. 7, 2026

Almanac for Jan. 7, 2026

Today is Wednesday, Jan. 7, the seventh day of 2026. There are 358 days left in the year. Today in history: In 2015, masked gunmen stormed the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French newspaper that had caricatured the Prophet Muhammad, methodically killing 12 people, including the editor, before escaping. (Two suspects were killed two days later.) Also on this date: In 1610, astronomer Galileo Galilei observed three of Jupiter's moons for the first time and a fourth days later. In 1955, Marian Anderson became the first African American to sing with the Metropolitan Opera in New ...

Trump and the UN come to a head

The Trump administration will always couch even its most reasonable decisions in the most dramatic terms possible, and so it was with a State Department announcement that the U.S. would be sending a significantly smaller humanitarian aid package to the United Nations: “Individual U.N. agencies will need to adapt, shrink, or die.” The $2 billion announced this week is down from $3.8 billion in 2025 and a major reduction from America’s contributions under President Joe Biden, which peaked at $17 billion in 2022. It’s easy to write this off as a shortsighted America First policy, ...

Editorial cartoon for Jan. 6, 2026

Trump’s mass firing of diplomats dangerous

President Trump, would-be peacemaker on a global scale, has apparently decided he can fulfill that role with a decimated diplomatic corps that by mid-January will see more than half of the U.S. embassies around the world lacking an ambassador. Nearly 30 ambassadors were told just before Christmas to pack up and leave their postings this month, adding to the 79 ambassadorial vacancies already on the books, according to the Ambassador Tracker maintained by the American Foreign Service Association, the union that represents career diplomats. The United States at full complement has some ...