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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States end race and sex quotas in public service

Americans are generous with their time—coaching youth sports, feeding the hungry, cleaning parks, and serving their communities in countless ways. Many also volunteer on state boards and commissions, helping shape policies that affect us all. But what if your chance to serve depended not on your skills or dedication, but on your race or sex? Until recently, that was the reality in at least 25 states. It’s an injustice that’s finally being addressed.

One of those states—South Carolina—required a majority of the nine-person Commission for Minority Affairs to be African American. Created in 1993, the Commission for Minority Affairs studies socio-economic issues affecting minorities in South Carolina and implements programs necessary to address those issues, among other things. Click here to read more.

 

Michigan’s auto jobs drive South from 8 Mile to I-65

Detroit put the world on wheels in the 20th century, but from 2001 to 2023, it shed more auto jobs than any other state, as factories and workers flocked to the South, according to an analysis from Michigan Capitol Confidential.

Michigan lost more than 125,000 auto jobs over the last two decades — a 41% drop — while Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and other states gained tens of thousands.

Jobs sprouted in Alabama, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia and Kentucky.

Ford, General Motors, BMW, Mercedes, Nissan, Honda, Toyota, Subaru, Hyundai, and Kia have all built factories in Southern states rather than in Michigan since the 1990’s. Click here to read more.

 

UK Hotel Migrants Accused of Hundreds of Crimes, Including Rape and Sex Assault

Investigation uncovers over 700 crimes allegedly committed by illegal immigrants living at taxpayer expense in hotels over the past three years.

Although the UK government continues to refuse to publish crime stats based on immigration, as is done in other Western nations such as Denmark, a report from the Mail on Sunday has given a glimpse into the criminality linked with the move to put up illegal migrants in hotels across the country by the previous Tory government and continued by Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.

According to the paper, which examined local court records in conjunction with the addresses of 70 migrant hotels listed for defendants, it was found that at least 312 asylum seekers have allegedly committed 708 crimes over the past three years, including rape, sexual assault, theft and attacks on emergency service workers. Click here to read more.

 

710k Illinoisans avoid work advancement to keep welfare benefits

An estimated 710,000 Illinoisans have intentionally hurt their personal finances to avoid losing a welfare benefit, according to a new study.

A new report by the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis shows nearly 1-in-4 welfare recipients has taken at least one negative action to avoid losing benefits, such as turning down raises or promotions, working fewer hours, declining job offers and refusing to build savings. With 3.2 million Illinoisians living at or below 200% of the federal poverty level, that translates to at least 710,000 people in Illinois intentionally holding themselves back.

Social welfare programs are supposed to support families during times of need. Instead, they punish people in Illinois and across America as they work their way back to independence by removing health care, food and other benefits – a dynamic known as a “benefit cliff.” Research shows these cliffs are not only real, but that they affect a sizable number of Illinoisans. Click here to read more.

 

Why American Energy Dominance Is a Strategic Imperative

The Trump administration’s energy dominance agenda is not merely an economic policy but a strategic doctrine. Its objectives are clear: 1) to ensure energy independence through the use of domestic fossil fuels and nuclear power; 2) to influence global energy prices; 3) to provide affordable, reliable energy to Americans and our allies; and 4) to reduce dependence on China’s green energy supply chains. These goals reflect a realist approach to energy policy, grounded in national interest and global leverage.

This marks a sharp departure from the Biden administration’s climate-centric energy strategy. In the name of decarbonization, President Biden restricted oil and gas development on federal lands and imposed sweeping regulations across federal agencies to discourage fossil fuel production and infrastructure. The result was higher energy costs for American households and businesses, with negligible effects on global temperatures either now or projected for the end of the 21st century. 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