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LANSING, Mich - Republican lawmakers are pushing back against a new budget that is on track to increase state spending by 47% since 2018 and contains no plan to fix the state’s roads.
Whitmer’s $83.5 billion proposal for the 2026 state budget adds $1 billion in spending to the current year’s total. That total is 47% higher than the $56.8 billion budget in 2018, the year before Whitmer took office.
Whitmer made fixing the roads a key part of her 2018 election campaign. Her next budget proposal does not contain any mechanism for achieving that goal.
The governor’s budget calls for spending increases, Rep. Donni Steele said in a press release, but it fails to address the road problem.
“The governor’s proposal includes a billion dollar increase to the state budget over last year, which includes 800 new state employees and no additional funding to fix local roads,” the Orion Township Republican said. Click here to read more.
WASHINGTON D.C - Elon Musk, head of the new “Department of Government Efficiency,” didn’t mince words when he announced last week that the Trump administration was closing the U.S. Agency for International Development. He said his team was “feeding USAID into the wood chipper” and that it was “time for it to die.”
The crudeness might not have been necessary, but the proposal itself was warranted. Foreign aid has too many (often conflicting) goals, including promoting democracy, stability and geopolitical ties. It is long past time for the U.S. government to scrutinize the entire foreign assistance program and recognize that one of the central goals – promoting economic growth – has been a failure.
That’s why it’s a good idea to close down USAID, drop economic development as a goal of U.S. foreign policy and assign the State Department to manage vital emergency and humanitarian aid. It does, however, need to be done lawfully and in accordance with the Constitution. Unfortunately the Trump administration has not been following the law in its push to shut down the agency, which needs to be rectified. Click here to read more.
ORLANDO, FLA - Executives at the Walt Disney Company are reportedly worried that soaring prices are alienating families from its theme parks, with internal surveys showing a decline in guests who are planning return visits to Walt Disney World and Disneyland.
The price of attending a Disney park has skyrocketed in recent years, with the typical price of a four-day stay inside the park rising by $1000 between 2019 and 2024, a new study conducted by The Wall Street Journal showed. The vast majority of that increase — nearly 80 percent — comes from new charges for services that were once free.
This has put a serious damper on fan enthusiasm. Internal surveys obtained by the Journal showed a decline in guests planning return visits to Walt Disney World in Orlando and Disneyland in Anaheim — a potentially disastrous trend for Disney whose theme parks have served as a reliable cash cow for decades.
Attendance at Disney’s U.S. parks rose a mere 1 percent in the last fiscal year, down from 6 percent from the year before. Click here to read more.
ORLANDO, FLA - A judge ruled in favor of a school district that prevented a mom in Florida from volunteering at her kids’ elementary school after learning that she has an OnlyFans page.
In 2023, Victoria Triece sued the Orange County Public School District for $1 million after they allegedly banned her from volunteering at the Sand Lake Elementary School in Orlando, where her 5-year-old and 10-year-old sons attend.
She said someone sent an anonymous email to the principal in 2021 voicing their concerns, WESH reported.
“If I’m not hurting anybody and I’m not affecting anybody’s day, then it’s somebody’s choice to do something that’s fully legal,” Triece said.
Triece said the principal shared the email with her boss, including images of her adult content.
In her original filing, Triece claims the district violated her right to free speech and also alleged “sexual cyber harassment” for sharing pictures from her OnlyFans account with media outlets. Click here to read more.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Federal and Nashville officials announced the indictment Tuesday of eight people involved in a human trafficking operation in Middle Tennessee, connecting two of those individuals to a Venezuelan gang.
Those individuals were indicted in the U.S. District of Middle Tennessee on charges ranging from conspiracy to commit interstate transportation for the purposes of prostitution from sex trafficking conspiracy. The indictment said those indicted in the case entered through the United States illegally.
As outlined in the indictment, a mother and son team who are accused of orchestrating the human trafficking ring consisted of Yilibeth Del Carmen Rivero-De Caldera (nicknamed Rivero) and Klevier Daniel Mota Rivero (Mota). They had the primary connection to Tren de Aragua — or TdA — a violent gang out of Venezuela.
Authorities said the crimes happened July 2022 and July 2024. The indictment stated that Rivero, her other children and their spouses rounded out the operation. Court records show that targeted women from Central and South America to offer them a better life in the United States. However, that proposition came at a cost for the women, who wound up being commercially sex trafficked in Murfreesboro and Nashville. Click here to read more.
