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Michigan Treasury Accused of Hiding Secret Subsidy Deals

The Michigan Treasury Department is hiding records from the Detroit Free Press about millions of dollars the state paid to a real estate firm as part of a major development in downtown Detroit, and the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation will represent the daily in a lawsuit filed July 22 in the Court of Claims.

The Mackinac Center's lawsuit involves the expansion of the One Campus Martius by Detroit-based Bedrock Management Services LLC.

The project benefits from transformational brownfield plan incentives. The state pays developers with a portion of the taxes generated by their projects — money that would otherwise fund public services like schools and cities.

The Free Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request March 17 seeking key reports used by the state to calculate the value of these payments. Click here to read more.

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Woman brutally attacked in horrific Cincinnati brawl is single mom

Authorities have charged at least five suspects in a violent attack that took place in downtown Cincinnati, according to police.

FOX 19 reported that the beating took place on Friday night between Elm and Fourth Streets, with videos going viral on social media.

Video circulating around social media shows two people attacking a man wearing a white T-shirt, who is eventually shoved to the ground. The man wearing a white T-shirt was kicked several times while he was on the ground, but eventually gets up.

A woman was also seen lying unconscious in the street after being punched. Several people can be seen helping her get up, and she eventually regained consciousness. Click here to read more.

 

Michigan schools should go back to basics

LANSING, Mich - Michigan schools began the 21st century close to the top of national rankings, regularly posting results that were better than scores in most other states, especially those in the south. But the state has endured a long slide from the mid-1990s to today. Michigan’s math achievement ranking declined from 14th to 36th, based on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Over the same time frame, Michigan’s reading score ranking declined from 20th to 42nd on the NAEP.

Michigan student school performance ranks 44th in the nation. How can that be?

Clearly, we need to reverse this downward trend. I am not heartened, however, by the calls for action coming from political advocates and interest groups. Our education plan brings to mind a saying often attributed to Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Click here to read more.

 

Self-deportations. Factory layoffs. Military zones. How Trump is transforming the U.S.-Mexico border.

Juan Ortíz trudged through 100-degree heat along the U.S.-Mexico border, weighed down by a backpack full of water bottles that he planned to leave for migrants trying to cross this rugged terrain.

Only there hadn't been many migrants of late.

When Ortíz started water drops in this especially dangerous stretch of desert near El Paso nearly two years ago, he sometimes encountered dozens of people trying to reach the U.S. in a single afternoon. Now he rarely sees any. Border crossings began falling during the final months of President Biden’s term, and have plunged to their lowest levels in decades under President Trump. Click here to read more.

 

Public School Report Cards Deserve a Failing Grade

For decades, American education reformers have promised that technocratic accountability systems would transform our schools. We’ve spent billions implementing standardized tests, creating elaborate school-rating systems, and demanding “data-driven” improvements.

Yet two new reports reveal an uncomfortable truth: These government accountability systems aren’t just ineffective—they’re actively misleading parents and policymakers while failing the students they claim to serve.

A revealing new study published in Education Sciences examined how parents use and perceive the A-F school rating systems in 15 states. Researchers conducted focus groups with 44 parents across Arizona, North Carolina, and Texas—three states with established letter-grade accountability systems. Click here to read more.

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‘Obama Phone’ Scam: Florida CEO Headed to Prison, Must Pay $128 Million Fine After Defrauding Government.

TAMPA, FLA - The owner of a Florida telecommunications company will spend the next five years in prison and his firm must pay a hefty fine regarding an “Obama phone” scam.

Q Link Wireless LLC and its owner, identified as CEO Issa Asad, previously pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit wire fraud and steal federal funds from the Lifeline program that began in the 1980s, Fox News reported Sunday.

The program offers subsidized cellphone services to lower-income people. In 2012, a video emerged of a protester outside a Mitt Romney event who claimed her neighbors received an “Obama phone,” Breitbart News reported at the time.

When asked why she supported Obama, the woman said, “Everybody in Cleveland low minority got Obama Phone. Keep Obama in President, you know? He gave us a phone, he’s going to do more.”

The clip shows the woman standing with other protesters on the side of a roadway while holding signs. Click here to read more.

 

Trump’s Justice Dept. shuts down dark web child abuse sites that had 120,000 members and millions of files

When FBI agents arrived outside William Spearman's home in the quiet suburb of Madison, Alabama, in November 2022, they were prepared for danger.

Their search warrant was so important to the bureau that it was approved by the FBI director himself. When the agents breached Spearman's door with tactical explosives, Spearman fought back, tussling with the agents as three of his handguns remained barely out of reach. The FBI managed to handcuff and arrest Spearman, a high-value arrest, in what a top Justice Department official called "one of the most successful" prosecutions of its kind.

Spearman went by the nickname "Boss" and was labeled by the Justice Department as "one of the most significant" purveyors of child sex abuse material in the world. His arrest in 2022, his guilty plea a year later and his eventual life sentence were part of an unprecedented takedown of a prodigious child abuse network. Click here to read more.

 

Parents claim funeral home gave them dead son’s brain in a box, lawsuit says

ATLANTA, GA - A couple in Pennsylvania has filed a lawsuit against two funeral homes after their son’s brain was allegedly given to them in a box by accident.

According to the suit, the pair’s son, Timothy Garlington, died on Nov. 15, 2023, while living in Georgia.

The family hired the funeral homes, Philadelphia’s Nix & Nix Funeral Home and Marietta’s Southern Cremations & Funerals, to ship their son’s body to Pennsylvania and handle his affairs.

About a week after his death, the couple went to Nix & Nix Funeral Home to pick up his personal items, which included an unmarked red box inside a larger cardboard box. Click here to read more.

 

Michigan AG Dana Nessel sues Trump to keep taxpayer-funded benefits flowing to illegal immigrants

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is suing President Donald Trump’s administration for the 25^th time, this time to stop the government from verifying immigration status for taxpayer-funded benefits.

Nessel on Monday joined 20 other attorneys general who filed a lawsuit in the U.S DIstrict Court of Rhode Island over a policy from the departments of Health and Human Services, Education, Labor, and Justice that restricts states from using federal funds for illegal immigrants. Click here to read more.

 

Lawsuit Against School District Which Secretly Transitioned Tween Girls Added to SCOTUS Docket

The America First Policy Institute asked the Supreme Court to hear the case of two families whose daughters were exposed to transgender ideology behind their backs.

In 2021, Erin Lee’s 12-year-old daughter was invited by her art teacher to come to art club after school in the Poudre School District in Fort Collins, Colorado. Little did Lee know, it was a Gay Straight Awareness club where a guest speaker told her daughter if she’s “not 100% comfortable in her female body, she’s transgender.”

The 12-year-old girl, who was new to the middle school, then adopted a transgender identity and was affirmed by the art club. The guest speaker, Kimberly Chambers, director of SPLASH Youth, an LGBTQ group open to kids as young as 5 years old, told students parents aren’t safe and encouraged them to lie to their parents to attend the club. Chambers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lee said she called 40 lawyers to take her case, and they all declined because the art club didn’t use a formal gender transition plan, until she found America First Policy Institute. Click here to read more.

 

 

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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