Michigan faces $890M bill looming for food stamp program

President Donald Trump signed a spending bill into law on July 4 that will shift responsibility for about $890 million of food stamps to Michigan. The state can’t pay the bill, according to Michigan’s top executive.

A change Congress could make to the program that feeds about 1.5 million Michiganders would be “unacceptable,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a June 4 post.

"In Michigan, we will fight to make sure our kids and families are fed, but we need Republicans in our congressional delegation to step up for their own constituents who need SNAP and Medicaid to survive," Whitmer said in a statement made public June 4. “If these cuts are signed into law, more Michiganders will go to bed with a pit in their stomach. That’s unacceptable.”

The federal government funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which the state administers. Click here to read more.

 

A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem

These days, everyone seems to have an opinion about A.I. companions. Last year, I found myself joining the debate, publishing a paper—co-written with two fellow psychology professors and a philosopher—called “In Praise of Empathic A.I.” Our argument was that, in certain ways, the latest crop of A.I.s might make for better company than many real people do, and that, rather than recoiling in horror, we ought to consider what A.I. companions could offer to those who are lonely.

This, perhaps unsurprisingly, did not go over especially well in my corner of academia. In the social sciences and the humanities, A.I. tends to be greeted less as a technological advance than as a harbinger of decline. There are the familiar worries about jobs—ours and our students’—and about the ease with which A.I. can be used for cheating. The technology is widely seen as the soulless project of Silicon Valley billionaires whose creativity consists mostly of appropriating other people’s. But what really rankles is the idea that these digital interlocutors are a plausible substitute for real friends or family. You have to be either credulous or coldhearted, many people believe, to think so. Click here to read more.

 

First US Rare Earth Minerals Mine in 70 Years Will Lessen Dependence on China

Last week on the Senate floor, I hailed the opening in Sheridan, Wyoming, of the Brook Mine—the first rare earth elements mine to break ground in the U.S. in 70 years.

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright recently joined me in Sheridan for its opening and deemed it a “landmark moment” for America’s energy independence.

Here’s what I said on the Senate floor about it:

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Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed into law a historic economic plan. This new law unleashes American energy—and with it, American prosperity. It makes it easier to produce oil, natural gas, and coal here at home. It opens up energy production onshore, offshore, and in Alaska. It means lower prices and more savings for the American people. Click here to read more.

 

Publicly owned grocery stores are a bad idea

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani recently made headlines by proposing five government-owned grocery stores — one in each borough — as a kind of “public option” for food. His pitch echoes familiar progressive talking points: the stores wouldn’t pay rent or taxes, they wouldn’t aim for profit, and their mission would be to offer lower prices in a market supposedly dominated by greed.

But the idea of publicly owned grocery stores isn’t just flawed for New York City. It’s flawed everywhere. While Mamdani’s plan might be the most high-profile example, experiments with government-run food retail have taken place in rural towns and small cities across the country. They’ve all failed. The results are overwhelmingly clear: public grocery stores are inefficient, unsustainable, and ultimately counterproductive especially when the private sector is already doing the job.

Take Baldwin, Florida. When the town’s only grocery store shut down, the city stepped in to fill the gap with a government run-store. It was hailed as a bold solution to a food desert. But less than five years later, the store closed. The store was unable to break even despite being owned outright by the city and subsidized with public dollars. Click here to read more.

 

Troy Likely Violating First Amendment with City Council Commentary Rules

TROY, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – The city of Troy is violating the First Amendment with its restrictive policies it has in place for commentary during city council meetings, according to a free speech watchdog group.

Troy’s commentary rules state: “Please direct your comments to the City Council as a whole rather than to any individual. Please do not use expletives or make derogatory or disparaging comments about any individual or group. If you do, there may be immediate consequences, including being muted and having your comments omitted from any re-broadcast of the meeting. Please abide by these rules in order to minimize the possibility of disrupting the meeting.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free speech watchdog, said Troy’s rules have Constitutional issues.

“Bans on derogatory/disparaging comments violate the First Amendment because they discriminate based on viewpoint, allowing praise but not criticism,” said Stephanie Jablonsky, a senior program counsel with FIRE. “As for Troy’s requirement that comments be directed to the council ‘as a whole rather than to any individual,’ a similar policy was invalidated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Ison v. Madison Local School District Board of Education, which banned ‘antagonistic,’ ‘abusive,’ and ‘personally directed’ comments at public meetings.” Click here to read more.

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Claims about Medicaid work requirements ignore facts, fuel fear.

Debates over Medicaid policy are intensifying across the country, with rhetoric often running far ahead of reality. In Michigan, that’s playing out in real time — with alarming claims and overblown numbers drowning out thoughtful discussion.

Rather than give in to fear-based talking points, we need to get back to basics: Medicaid is meant to be a safety net, not a substitute for self-sufficiency. Work and community engagement requirements for able-bodied adults are one tool to keep that promise.

A widely circulated quote, citing numbers from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, warns that “Republican cuts will strip away healthcare for 730,435 Michiganders in Wayne County.” That figure is mathematically impossible — and dangerously misleading.

Michigan’s total Medicaid enrollment is approximately 1.9 million. Wayne County accounts for only about 518,000 of those enrollees. Click here to read more.

 

‘Missing’ 9-year-old girl found dead after father falsely reported her abducted, police say

TICONDEROGA, N.Y. - A 9-year-old girl was found dead after her father reported her missing, according to authorities.

New York State Police say just before 10 p.m. Saturday, Warren County 911 received a call from Canadian resident 45-year-old Luciano Frattolin reporting his 9-year-old daughter Melina Frattolin missing in a possible abduction, leading to an AMBER alert being issued.

On Sunday, hours after the alert was issued, Melina was found dead. Her body was found north of Lake George village, near state border with Vermont.

Troopers say as the case progressed, law enforcement found inconsistencies in the father’s account of events and the timeline he gave. Click here to read more.

 

Michigan paid more in fraud than it would cost to fix Bridge cards

Criminals stole at least $14 million in food stamp benefits from Michigan’s most vulnerable residents last year — and the state shows no interest in pursuing a relatively low-cost fix for this growing problem.

The state loads money onto cards used by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which recipients can use to swipe at grocery stores, farmers' markets, and gas stations. It could solve part of the problem by switching from magnetic cards that are easily cloned to more secure chipped cards. Switching to chipped cards would cost Michigan $8 million, and the federal government would pay $8 million, Michigan Capitol Confidential reported in May.

SNAP fraud in Michigan jumped by nearly 400% from 2023 to 2024, CapCon exclusively reported in May. The state mailed more than 269,000 replacement Bridge cards in 2024. Click here to read more.

 

Whitmer’s Michigan: Unemployment continues to outpace national average

Michigan’s job market showed signs of modest improvement in June, according to a recent release from the state’s Department of Technology, Management and Budget. The state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate dipped slightly to 5.3%, down one-tenth of a percentage point from May. This marks the second consecutive month of decline, with the number of unemployed Michiganders falling by approximately 6,000.

Despite the improvement in the unemployment rate, total nonfarm payroll jobs declined slightly in June. However, over the broader second quarter of 2025, Michigan recorded a net gain of more than 10,000 jobs, suggesting underlying momentum in the labor market. The data reflect a complex but generally stabilizing employment landscape.

Wayne Rourke, director of Michigan’s Center for Data and Analytics, noted that the decrease in unemployment was “a sign of labor market stabilization during the second quarter,” adding that “Payroll jobs also declined this month but recorded a solid second quarter gain of over 10,000 jobs.” Click here to read more.

 

Elon Won’t Cooperate With France’s ‘Politically Motivated’ Investigations Into X

Elon Musk announced on Monday that he would not cooperate with French authorities in their “politically motivated criminal investigations” against his social media platform, X.

The Paris public prosecutor’s office opened a probe against X in June in response to allegations by politician Eric Bothorel that the platform was performing “fraudulent data extraction” for “foreign interference purposes.”

A separate complaint said that X “now offers an enormous amount of hateful, racist, anti-LGBT+ and homophobic political content, which aims to skew the democratic debate in France.”

Musk has dismissed the allegations as “completely false” and says the probe “egregiously undermines X’s fundamental right to due process and threatens our users’ rights to privacy and free speech.” Click here to read more.

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LANSING, Mich. — Michigan officials recently celebrated the erasure of more than $144 million in medical debt for residents, but a portion of that debt appears to belong to people who are no longer living.

A letter sent to one Michigan address this month shows a debt cancellation notice for a patient who died in early 2021. The letter, from the nonprofit Undue Medical Debt, confirms that $3,469.91 in medical bills from Henry Ford Macomb Hospital had been abolished.

 

The document is co-signed by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Undue Medical Debt President Allison Sesso, and says the forgiveness was made possible “by the State of Michigan and Undue Medical Debt.”

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The inclusion of deceased individuals in the debt relief effort isn’t intentional, according to Daniel Lempert, Vice President of Communications and Marketing for Undue Medical Debt.

“Our Information Systems team does a scrub to remove accounts belonging to anyone who is deceased or has gone through bankruptcy,” Lempert said. “We source this information from FinThrive. That said, information on deceased individuals is not always available in a timely fashion or there’s a lag time in it being available in the public record. State laws can also muddy the waters.”

He added, “The nonprofit does its due diligence in scrubbing out these medical debts, but there’s a margin of error.”

According to estate law experts in Michigan, hospitals and collection agencies generally file claims against a decedent’s estate if one exists. If there are no assets or if the estate is insolvent, the debt is usually written off as uncollectible. Collection notices are not typically sent to surviving spouses or executors, unless they personally guaranteed the debt.

“A patient might die in the hospital, but if the billing system doesn’t catch it, statements can still go out in their name,” one probate attorney said. “It’s an error, not malicious.”

Michigan’s recent announcement of the $144 million debt relief initiative involves funding from the state and from counties like Oakland, Wayne, and Kalamazoo, which are using federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) dollars. Undue Medical Debt says only a fraction of the $4.5 million in funding has been spent so far — $764,000 was used to eliminate more than $125 million of that debt.

Despite questions about accuracy, the recipients of the debt forgiveness aren’t being asked to repay anything — and the forgiveness carries no tax consequences.

"You no longer have any obligation to pay these specific accounts," the letter states. "You can show this letter as proof if needed."

Still, the inclusion of accounts tied to deceased individuals raises concerns about oversight and transparency in how debt portfolios are screened before being purchased with taxpayer funds.

For more on Undue Medical Debt’s Michigan program: https://unduemedicaldebt.org/faq/announcement