Writer Meakalia Previch-Liu’s opening line to her cover story this week, 3/20/2025, “Library programs at risk of funding cuts” was this, “...following one of President Donald Trump’s latest executive orders aimed at gutting the government and its essential functions.”
I had to read it several times to be sure I read it right: President Trump’s executive orders are aimed at gutting the government and its essential functions.
Perhaps a few words accidentally got cut out of this sentence and the error was not caught before press time, because in fact, President Trump and his administration’s actions are “aimed at gutting WASTE from the government and CUTTING its NON-essential functions.
Certainly compared to the $115 billion in waste (fraud, entitlement, pet projects of bureaucrats) identified to date by the Trump Administration, federal funding for public libraries, and specifically of MeL and MeLcat are critical in providing broad and equitable information access to residents across our entire state. In fact, in 2023 alone, there were 24 million retrievals from MeL and MeLcat. I think we can all agree THAT is essential.
So, it’s helpful to encourage readers to write to their local representatives to make sure they think so too!
On the other hand, to fearmonger and spread misinformation about the current administration’s actions in the Enterprise is not.
Kim Bailiff Lake Leelanau
