By Craig Mauger and Beth LeBlanc, The Detroit News

The chief general counsel for the Michigan Economic Development Corp. tried to conceal evidence as investigators executed search warrants on the organization earlier this month, two agents of the Attorney General’s office alleged in signed affidavits.

The agents’ sworn statements said that veteran MEDC attorney Linda Asciutto “directly intended to prevent investigators from accessing evidence” when employees of Attorney General Dana Nessel raided the MEDC office in downtown Lansing on June 18.

The records, along with a transcript of the conversation that occurred during the search, revealed Asciutto said Matthew Payok, an assistant attorney general working on the case, “and the AG’s office will pay for this” and that it would be “the last time I cooperate with the AG on a thing.” In addition, the MEDC attorney told investigators she would be filing “a complaint as an attorney.”

“What are you gonna do, arrest me?” Asciutto also asked investigators, at one point, after they told her she couldn’t return to her office, according to the transcript.

The raid was part of an ongoing probe into a $20 million grant awarded to the nonprofit of Fay Beydoun, a prominent Oakland County businesswoman and Democratic donor.

“Given Asciutto’s reluctance to open her office to a search plus … the fact that she clearly had relevant material open and in use in her office for the exact subject of the search warrant, my conclusion is that Asciutto acted to conceal evidence,” special agent Kyle Kolka wrote in a June 24 affidavit that was submitted as part of a legal battle over the search warrants.

Special agent Steve Morse signed his own affidavit on June 24, saying Asciutto told investigators they had been given everything in the office related to Beydoun, “when in fact more related documents were sitting on her desk and clearly in use.”

Asciutto’s alleged actions raised questions about the MEDC’s handling of the attorney general’s probe into the use of state tax dollars and about whether a key employee complied with a law that makes it illegal to “knowingly and intentionally” conceal evidence.

Asciutto, who has been a licensed attorney in Michigan for 37 years and has worked at the MEDC since 2008, didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Detroit News.

According to the transcript from the raid, Asciutto argued that her records were protected by attorney-client privilege, a standard that specifically protects confidential communications between a client and their legal adviser.

“Everything in here is privileged, and I’m working on everything,” Asciutto said about her office, according to the transcript. “I’m an attorney. Everything I’m working on is privilege (sic). Everything.”

Otie McKinley, a spokesman for the MEDC, declined to comment.

The MEDC is a quasi-governmental agency with a portion of its economic development efforts funded by tax dollars and a portion of its money coming from private sources. However, the organization is managed by an executive committee appointed by the governor.

Asked about the affidavits’ allegations about Asciutto, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer spokeswoman Stacey LaRouche said, “Our office expects any state department to cooperate with ongoing investigations.”

Inside the search

After a series of reports by The Detroit News, Nessel’s office announced in April 2024 that it would investigate the $20 million grant awarded to Beydoun’s Global Link International, a nonprofit incorporated just 10 days after the Legislature’s approval of the spending bill that contained the earmarked funds.

The bill described the project — monitored by the MEDC — as “an international business accelerator” that “supports the growth of the Michigan economy by attracting top international entrepreneurs.” However, public records obtained by The Detroit News previously showed that Beydoun paid $11,000 for a single flight to attend a conference in Budapest and $4,500 for a luxury coffee maker.

Beydoun, a former member of the MEDC’s executive committee, defended her costs and said she had received millions of dollars in monetary commitments toward a business retention and attraction fund. The MEDC canceled the grant in March, with Asciutto writing a letter to Global Link alleging the organization had misused money, including an “unreasonable” $550,000 annual salary for Beydoun.

In court filings about the June 18 search warrants, Nessel’s office said the MEDC had “stonewalled” the investigation into the Beydoun project. After multiple requests and unmet deadlines, the MEDC had provided only documents given to journalists as part of Freedom of Information Act requests and hadn’t provided a single witness who worked on the grant, according to Nessel’s office.

As the Attorney General’s office began executing search warrants at the MEDC office on June 18, Asciutto said, “I got to get up to my office,” according to a transcript of the discussion that occurred inside the building.

“You need to stay down here in the lobby,” Kolka then told Asciutto.

“I don’t need to stay,” she replied.

Asciutto argued that items in her office were “off limits” and her records were protected by attorney-client privilege. But investigators told her that they had court-authorized search warrants to take all of the MEDC’s documents related to the Beydoun grant, and a separate so-called “taint team” would determine what records were protected by attorney-client privilege.

At one point during the search, Asciutto pushed a box across the floor and said, “That’s all of it,” according to Morse’s affidavit.

“I imagine that it doesn’t matter to you that I am an officer of the court, and I’m telling you there’s nothing else,” Asciutto said, according to the affidavit.

However, Morse wrote, a “cursory scan of Asciutto’s desk” revealed another purple file that was marked “AG Investigation Update.” Asciutto admitted that the file was related to Beydoun’s Global Link International organization, Morse wrote.

“She also then provided a three-ring binder that, despite her earlier comments to the contrary, was also related to GLI,” the special agent wrote.

“Asciutto’s conduct — including telling us that, as an officer of the court, we had everything related to GLI when in fact more related documents were sitting on her desk and clearly in use — indicates that she directly intended to prevent investigators from accessing evidence that we were there to seize under the warrant,” Morse added.

During the raid, Asciutto told investigators that she hoped they were “searching the legislative offices.”

“They’re the ones that did this grant,” the MEDC attorney said, according to the transcript.

‘Shouldn’t get to do that’

It’s a standard protocol for investigators to collect documents and then use a “taint team” to separate privileged records from non-privileged records, said Todd Flood, a former prosecutor whom former Attorney General Bill Schuette appointed to investigate the Flint water crisis.

The approach keeps privileged information out of the hands of prosecutors.

“The fact of the matter is that privileged communications cannot be reviewed by the government/prosecution team,” Flood said in a Wednesday interview.

Gerald Gleeson, a criminal defense attorney hired to represent MEDC staff, argued in a Tuesday court hearing in Oakland County that the agency had cooperated with the Attorney General’s office and had no reason to believe it would be served a search warrant with multiple agents entering the Lansing headquarters.

MEDC staff members, he argued, have never been painted as the subject of any grant investigation.

“I’ve been told unequivocally that the people I am representing are not targets of this investigation,” Gleeson said.

The defense attorney stressed that investigators’ seizure of documents from Asciutto’s office that were labeled privileged threatened the concept of attorney-client privilege.

“They shouldn’t get to do that,” Gleeson said.

However, the Attorney General’s office has countered that courts had ruled that attorney-client privilege should be “strictly confined within the narrowest possible limits.”

The MEDC can’t establish “blanket privilege claims” over large boxes of documents, the Attorney General’s office said.

Nessel’s office contended the MEDC hadn’t argued why specific information obtained during the search was protected.

“Do they have anything to do with providing legal services?” Payok asked in a court filing about the documents. “Who does Asciutto represent? Just MEDC employees? MEDC board members as well?

“Certainly not MEDC’s grantees and specifically not Fay Beydoun.”

By The Detroit News

A 12-year-old boy has been arrested in connection with a series of auto thefts from a Pontiac business.

The boy entered numerous vehicles in the business’ parking lot and was carrying a license plate when he was apprehended, a release from the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office said.

Through their investigation, detectives learned the boy had taken three or four vehicles over the past month, selling at least one of them for $30, the release said.

“This young man is on a very bad path, attempting to live his own grand theft auto,” Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said in the release Saturday. “Hopefully intervention by the courts will send him on a better life path as well as stopping the constant theft from this business.”

The boy is being held in Oakland County Children’s Village. The case remains under investigation.

By Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News

Michigan Democratic U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin on Thursday laid out an economic “war plan,” declaring the country’s shrinking middle class an existential threat to U.S. national security and calling on her party to go on the offense and “ruthlessly” focus on the economy.

In a speech in Washington billed as an alternative vision for the country’s future, the former Pentagon official and CIA officer urged her party to “face up” to what’s not working, change course and pursue “an economy that works for everyone.”

“Michigan is … a place where people feel like it’s harder and harder to get in and stay in the middle class. … This is the thing that many Democrats have, quite frankly, lost touch with. When you can’t provide for your kids, you feel anger, you feel shame, you lose your dignity, and you look for something or someone to blame,” the Holly Democrat said Thursday.

“That anger, that suspicion among Americans, that right there is what I mean by an existential threat. Because in a multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy like ours, when people don’t feel like they can get ahead, when the system is rigged against them, they start blaming people who don’t look like them or who sound different, or who pray different. It’s how we begin to tear each other apart from the inside.”

Slotkin blamed “broken” government systems, failures by both parties and politicians distracted by special interests, their own reelections and niche issues ― compounded by “bitter fighting” daily between Democrats and Republicans.

Things aren’t “off” because Americans have stopped working hard, but because the government hasn’t lived up to its responsibility to set the conditions for success, Slotkin said.

“To me, those fundamentals are the following: Jobs that pay enough to save every month. Schools that prepare our kids for those jobs. A home you can call your own. Safety and security from fear. Energy to power our lives, and an environment to pass on to our kids. Health care you can actually afford,” Slotkin said.

“This economic war plan aims not just to ‘fix’ these systems or nibble at them around the margins ― but to rebuild them. And, as Democrat, if we have to slaughter some sacred cows to do it, then so be it.”

The three-term congresswoman was elected to the U.S. Senate last fall on the same ballot as President Donald Trump, a Republican, in battleground Michigan by nearly 2 percentage points.

Her speech on Thursday echoed themes of economic security from her winning campaign and from her high-profile rebuttal to Trump’s joint address to Congress on behalf of her party in March. Slotkin plans two other speeches later in the year ― one on security and another on democracy, she said.

Her remarks Thursday come as the Democratic Party debates its direction after taking a beating in the 2024 election and casts about for leaders. In a series of appearances this spring, Slotkin has had some “tough love” messages for her party, advising them to drop identity politics, stand up with a “muscular” defense to Trump’s actions and to unite behind a strategic plan in response to him.

Her choice of venue Thursday was notable for its intended audience: The Center for American Progress is a think tank in the heart of both downtown D.C. and the Democratic establishment, founded in 2003 as a progressive alternative to the conservative Heritage Foundation. Many of its staff have been influential thinkers or policymakers in both the Obama and Biden administrations.

“I wanted to come here, frankly, because we haven’t agreed on every single issue in the past,” Slotkin said.

Her remarks Thursday were followed by a conversation on stage with Neera Tanden, CEO of the Center for American Progress, who served as director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Joe Biden.

Slotkin told Tanden that Democrats have lost some of their “alpha energy” ― what she described as football coach “bravado”: “Sometimes people are not looking for a 13-page policy treatise on the website, but for you to show some fight,” she said, pounding her fist.

She suggested their alpha energy is partly why she and Trump both won Michigan on the same ballot.

Slotkin has described her “war plan” as a road map for not only going on “offense” to contain and defeat Trump and Republicans who control majorities in Congress but to detail what Democrats would do if they had control of the levers of power in Washington.

“No team in history ― on the field or in Washington, D.C. ― ever won a damn game without going on the offense,” she said. “We need to offer a different vision and demonstrate an affirmative, positive plan for the country.”

Since her election to Congress in 2018, Slotkin has cultivated a centrist brand, and she’s not shied from separating herself from the progressive wing of her party. In Thursday’s remarks, she contended that the shrinking middle class is a “core issue” that unites moderates, progressives “and everything in between.”

Some of her policy prescriptions would sound familiar to anyone who has followed her campaigns and policy proposals in recent years: Bringing home critical supply chains from overseas, an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy needs, the option of a nationwide public insurance plan and allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs.

 

Slotkin also repeats some long-sought reforms for Congress that she says would regain the public’s trust, like banning candidates from taking corporate political action committee money and barring lawmakers from trading stocks and cryptocurrencies so they aren’t “personally profiting from their access.”

But she also pitched newer ideas like banning cellphones in K-12 classrooms and declaring a housing emergency to spur the construction of 4 million homes to catch up with demand. “The single biggest thing holding us back is overlapping and outdated housing regulations,” she said.

The freshman senator has also called for “slaughtering” some of the Democrats’ sacred cows, targeting the party’s approach to climate change and regulation, saying she’s open to peeling back some environmental permitting rules that can drag out the approval process for major job-creating projects.

“The way some Democrats approach climate change is elitist. You’re either with us or against us,” Slotkin said. “People get that extreme weather is a pocketbook issue. Let’s start from there and try and bring as many Americans into the cause as we can.”

She also wants to take “a stick of dynamite” to the federal workforce training programs to blow them up, noting they’re found across 40 different programs in 14 different agencies. “We have to align all those programs around one goal, training and retraining people for a future economy,” Slotkin said.

In the speech, Slotkin said Congress needs to abandon the talking point of “comprehensive” immigration reform, blaming both parties for rejecting immigration deals for 20 years because they preferred to use the issue for political ammo or the bill wasn’t “perfect.” Incremental reforms are OK, including boosting the caps for every visa category, she said.

“Both parties have been a mess on this issue,” Slotkin said. “I will work with any adults I can find who are actually interested in making some kind of progress on immigration.”

She defended unions but challenged her party to quit “vilifying” corporate CEOs and others who employ a lot of people because it makes too many voters think the party is anti-business.

“Yes, we want everyone in America, including the president of the United States, to play by the same set of rules. Yes, we need a fair tax code to ensure all Americans are paying their fair share,” she said. “No matter who you are or where you come from, Black, White, Latino, first-generation, we want you to make as much money as possible.”

But the government shouldn’t give tax breaks to big companies and then have to pay again to keep their employees from going hungry, Slotkin asserted. Those companies should lose eligibility for tax incentives, she said.

“That’s double-dipping — it makes the taxpayer pay twice for corporate greed. And it’s got to stop,” she said.

By Owen McCarthy, The Detroit News

Geopolitics haven’t historically complicated annual fireworks shows, including the marquee extravaganza over the Detroit River scheduled for Monday — but that could be changing.

Many of the show’s viewers watch from the Detroit River’s south bank in Canada, a country where many have been offended by President Donald Trump’s musings about making it the 51st U.S. state. And nearly all fireworks in the United States are imported from China, Trump’s biggest adversary in his global trade war.

The trans-Pacific tension appears to be affecting the festivities already: Zambelli, the Pennsylvania-based company that supplies and sets up the Ford Fireworks display, said it ate higher production costs this year rather than pass them on to the Detroit-based Parade Company, which hosts the event, and Ford Motor Co., the event’s lead sponsor.

And Zambelli is warning that tariff “volatility” — a concern voiced by many economists and business leaders — could threaten the fireworks industry’s ability to meet the high demand it is likely to face for Fourth of July 2026, marking the United States’ 250th anniversary.

Whether Trump’s rhetoric around Canada will have much impact on the event — which, in past years, was billed as a celebration of the countries’ close ties — is still unclear. But Windsor restaurant manager Brad Dunlop of Jose’s Bar and Grill said he thinks a tariff-induced slowdown in manufacturing there might actually free up more Canadians than in past years to watch the fireworks.

And like any other year, the company putting on Monday night’s show said the national anthem, “O Canada,” will be sung, and the nation’s maple leaf flag will be flown from a helicopter.

“It’s not our position to make political statements and things like that,” said Tony Michaels, the president and CEO of the Parade Company, adding: “I hope our neighbors enjoy the show.”

Impact on costs, supply

Julie Heckman, executive director of the American Pyrotechnics Association, said that costs for this year’s Fourth of July celebrations will be virtually the same as last year’s because fireworks companies can still rely on inventory they had shipped from China before Trump’s tariffs went into effect. That bodes well for upcoming fireworks displays across Metro Detroit.

It’s next year — when communities will want to go all out with their fireworks for the nation’s 250th birthday — that worries Heckman. That’s a central reason her association is calling on the Trump administration to grant a tariff exemption for fireworks similar to the one it approved in 2019.

“We support America First policies,” Heckman said. “Our base probably supported the current president. It’s not political for us, we’re just trying to make the case for ‘you understand our unique reliance on China, and we should be exempt again.'”

According to the APA, 99% of the world’s consumer fireworks and 90% of its professional display fireworks come from China.

Zambelli, which supplies pyrotechnics for Ford Fireworks and is a member of the APA, said that it has already seen cost challenges this year, and is also hoping for a tariff exemption: “Unlike other industries, we cannot shift sourcing quickly or renegotiate pricing within our tight seasonal windows,” the company said in a statement to The Detroit News. “Looking ahead to 2026 and the nation’s 250th anniversary, stability in trade policy will be essential.”

Zambelli President Michael Hartman said in a separate statement that this year his company absorbed higher production costs for the Ford Fireworks display rather than pass them on to Parade Company. He said that to produce the same quality of show in 2026 as it’s putting on this year, Zambelli would need to see increased contributions for the fireworks display from the “good people” at the Parade Company and its sponsors.

Michaels, the president and CEO of the Parade Company, said that while his company negotiated with Zambelli to pay the same for the fireworks display this year as it did last, the firm would consider paying more next year if necessary.

“We at the Parade Company, like every other company, negotiates their price. It’s good business” Michaels said. “So absolutely, if (Zambelli’s) price goes up next year, we will take a look at it, see where it’s at, and then we make decisions from there, just like any other well-run business.”

Trump’s frequently fluctuating tariff policies have hampered the fireworks industry’s ability to plan business decisions for the future and have already strained supply, according to the APA and Zambelli. Those concerns closely mirror those expressed by industries across the economy amid on-again, off-again tariffs.

Trump’s 125% tariff on Chinese imports in early April took effect during peak shipping season for the fireworks industry, Heckman said. That led large sectors of the industry to cancel orders, figuring that they had enough inventory for the Fourth of July and couldn’t afford the tariffed shipments anyway.

Michigan Fireworks Co. in South Lyon was one such company: “We could not take something that was 50 bucks and sell it to someone for $125,” said Eric Konopka, the store’s owner. “Good conscience wouldn’t let us do that. It wasn’t worth it.”

Canceled shipments were then left in Chinese factories, which Heckman said had a compounding effect. Fireworks production facilities have to be extra cautious not to overcrowd their space, given the explosiveness of what they’re producing, so most factories halted their production at that point: “We lost a couple months of critical manufacturing time.”

That will mean limited fireworks supplies, which will compound once more with the 30% tariff currently on Chinese imports — a trend Heckman called “unsustainable.” And that’s not to mention the possibility that the rate will revert back to triple-digits when Trump’s 90-day pause on higher Chinese tariffs expires in early July.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty right now, which is making it very difficult for these small, multi-generational family businesses, including Zambelli, to make business decisions,” she said, referencing the Pennsylvania-based company that supplies and sets up the annual pyrotechnics in Detroit.

Konopka, the owner of the fireworks store in South Lyon, said prices for the “bigger stuff” in his shop are largely the same as last year because he’s relying on inventory ordered last July and shipped to the United States in January, before tariffs went into effect.

Still, Konopka said he recently “allowed one container to come in for some little stuff,” gesturing toward a rack of sparklers and small fireworks, when the tariff rate was at 30%. Prices on those goods have risen by about $1, he said.

“If you’re in our store from this year to last year, 95% of the stuff is exactly the same price,” he said.

However, Konopka said the fireworks “tents,” commonly set up outside of grocery stores, and other fireworks retailers that weren’t able to stock up before tariffs went into effect will inevitably be hurt as they look toward New Year’s and next summer.

“You will see significant firework shortages at the end of this year,” he said.

Konopka, who works as a financial adviser, owns the fireworks store as a “hobby” with his wife Jessica, a nurse. Though Trump’s tariffs will make his job in the fireworks industry “difficult,” he said tariffs are a necessary tool to motivate countries to strike more balanced trade agreements with the United States.

Feet away sat a box of “Make America Great Again” fireworks, with an AI-rendered Trump celebrating in front of the White House, red and yellow fireworks lighting up the skies.

New questions over U.S.-Canada relations

In times past, the fireworks over the Detroit River have been expressly billed as a celebration of neighborly appreciation between the United States and Canada. Established in 1959, the Detroit-Windsor International Freedom Festival ran for decades as a days-long celebration in late June and early July, according to the Detroit Historical Society. They commemorated both Canada Day on July 1, and Independence Day on July 4.

Then in 2007, the festivities were separated into two autonomously operated events. But the fireworks display — which has been sponsored by American companies Hudson’s, Target Corp. and now Ford Motor Co. — has maintained its Canadian appreciation. A helicopter flies a Canadian flag overhead, and the event kicks off with both countries’ national anthems.

This year’s Ford Fireworks, though, come at a time of unprecedented tension between the United States and Canada. Trump’s tariffs have hurt the country’s economy, and his flirtations with annexation have angered many of the famously friendly Canadians, with some even booing the U.S. national anthem at NHL games.

That presidential static is slowing Canadians’ travel to the United States this summer, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The number of people crossing into Michigan from Canada fell 13% in April and 16% in May.

Nevertheless, Brad Dunlop, the manager of Jose’s Bar and Grill in Windsor, said he thinks Windsorites will have no problem staying in Canada and “spending the money in our own country” to watch the fireworks, where the view is better anyway.

“We have the bigger waterfront,” he said.

Dunlop said the “Trump ordeal” has frustrated plenty of Canadians and caused them not to travel to the United States, but that he thinks attendance in Windsor for the fireworks will be the same as always, if not even higher this year. He attributes that to the tariff-induced slowdown in manufacturing in Windsor, which he said could free up more people’s schedules.

And, given the cost-effectiveness of watching fireworks amid Canada’s economic woes, Dunlop said he thinks people in Windsor will be especially motivated to attend the festivities.

“With the economy the way it is, especially in Windsor with manufacturing — it’s a free show,” he said. “I think you’re going to see families go down because it’s something you can do for free.”

By Melissa Nann Burke, The Detroit News

Michigan hospitals would take an estimated hit of more than $1 billion a year if a Medicaid cut proposed in the Republican-led U.S. Senate this week were to become law, according to the industry group that represents them.

Hospitals across Michigan already operate on average with a negative margin, and some ― especially rural facilities with higher shares of low-income patients on Medicaid ― are likely to reduce services and staff or even shut their doors under the proposal, according to the Michigan Health & Hospital Association.

“What’s in the Senate version, I want to be very clear, is specifically cutting Medicaid. It’s not addressing waste, fraud and abuse,” said Laura Appel, MHA’s executive vice president for government relations and public policy, in a dig at Republicans’ messaging on Medicaid reforms.

“It’s cutting the funding that Michigan uses ― as do 48 other states ― to support Medicaid,” the government health care program for mostly low-income residents.

Appel was referring to a provision in the Senate Finance Committee’s proposed version of President Donald Trump’s so-called “one big beautiful bill” that would gradually shrink states’ use of so-called provider taxes from a safe-harbor threshold of 6% to 3.5% by 2031. The Medicaid reforms are part of a larger tax cut and spending bill that is the cornerstone of Trump’s second-term agenda.

The $1 billion impact that the Michigan hospitals group has estimated is specific to the GOP-run Senate’s changes. It doesn’t account for a projected spike in uncompensated care that hospitals would encounter due to coverage losses as a result of other provisions in the legislation, such as expanded Medicaid work requirements and twice-annual eligibility assessments for Medicaid participants.

“We’re going to keep pushing right up until the very last vote to protect coverage and funding, because cutting funding is cutting coverage is cutting care,” Appel said. “We’re going to keep taking care of people. But it’s already hard enough. Let’s not make it harder for people to get the care that they need.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said Tuesday that reducing the Medicaid provider tax rate that states may charge represents “important reforms.”

“We think they rebalance the program in a way that provides the right incentives to cover the people who are supposed to be covered by Medicaid,” Thune said.

“But we continue to hear from our members specifically on components or pieces of the bill that they would like to see modified or changed or have concerns about. And we’re working through that.”

Pressure to rein in Medicaid use

Medicaid is a health insurance safety net for low-income adults and children funded jointly by the states and the federal government. Every state except Alaska imposes provider taxes to help finance the state share of Medicaid costs.

Michigan uses provider taxes ― with federal approval ― on hospitals, nursing homes, ambulance companies and health insurers (managed care organizations) to generate 20% or $3 billion of the state’s share of Medicaid program costs. The extra tax leads to higher payments from the U.S. government, which critics argue is a loophole that lets states abuse the system and swell enrollment in the program.

In a report last month, the state health department said Michigan’s hospital provider tax was projected to generate enough revenue in fiscal year 2025 to support $5.84 billion in Medicaid payments to Michigan hospitals, including the federal matching funds that the tax revenue draws down.

But if the hospital provider tax were limited to 3%, reimbursement payments to Michigan hospitals would decline $2.33 billion, according to estimates by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. (The state hasn’t provided a revised estimate based on the 3.5% limit proposed by the Senate.)

Michigan is one of 22 states that could be required to lower their provider taxes on hospitals or health plans because their rates are currently more than 5.5% of patient revenues, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. So Michigan hospitals would feel the impact of the new limits almost immediately if the provision goes into effect in 2027.

The reduced provider tax limits only apply to states like Michigan that have expanded Medicaid. Some experts view the change as a way for Congress to pressure these states to drop their expansions, rather than face the drastic cuts to provider taxes that would devastate state budgets.

“States are going to be in a bind: Either raise other taxes ― income taxes, sales taxes ― or they’re going to cut other parts of the budget like K-12 education or most likely make big cuts to their Medicaid program,” said Edwin Park, a research professor and Medicaid policy expert at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.

“This is an attempt to really roll back the Medicaid expansion,” Park said. “The clear intent is to undermine financing of the program.”

Michigan expanded Medicaid eligibility under Republican Gov. Rick Snyder in 2014. The Medicaid program known as Healthy Michigan currently enrolls 749,000 low-income adults, according to state figures. Overall, Medicaid provides health care coverage to more than 1 in 4 people in Michigan, totaling 2.6 million beneficiaries, including 1 million children, according to state data.

Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall, R-Richland Township, last week embraced the proposed federal spending cuts to Medicaid and food assistance, despite their potential to blow a $3 billion hole in the state budget.

“I can’t force (Democratic Gov. Gretchen) Whitmer’s administration … to spend tax dollars wisely,” Hall said at the White House.

“But President Trump and the Congress can, because they’re the ones who are entrusting her with the dollars. So if they just pay out accurately and don’t pay out fraud, they won’t get penalized.”

That kind of language grinds on J.J. Hodshire, president and CEO of Hillsdale Hospital, who is “disgusted” by lawmakers claiming that the average Medicaid participant is a 27-year-old man playing video games in his parents’ basement. In his rural south-central Michigan community, Medicaid covers the pastor of a local church, farmers, pregnant moms and grocery-store workers ― the working poor, Hodshire said.

“This is me speaking as a Republican. This is me speaking as someone who has supported his party, but you’re also talking to someone who has been on the recipient side of Medicaid growing up one of seven children of my parents, when we were on Medicaid,” Hodshire said.

“This notion that Medicaid is for the lazy or those that are refusing to work isn’t true,” he added.

Hodshire estimated that the Senate’s proposal to limit provider tax rates would result in his hospital losing $6 million a year in reimbursement payments. That amount would reduce services at Hillsdale Hospital, and he predicted that it would result in hospital or program closures in some communities.

“Board rooms across this country are gonna have to make tough decisions. One side might say, ‘They’re just fear-mongering that you’re going to lose your Medicaid. You’re not going to lose your Medicaid,’” Hodshire said. “That might be true. But where are they going to get those services if their local hospital is closed?”

More revenue losses

The Senate’s proposal keeps language that passed the U.S. House in late May that would freeze states’ provider taxes and prohibit certain types of taxes because of how they’re structured using variable rates.

Michigan’s Insurance Provider Assessment (IPA) tax generates about $450 million a year toward the state’s base Medicaid costs, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, and would be prohibited under the GOP’s proposal, posing another hit for the state budget.

The Michigan Association of Health Plans has estimated that changing the variable IPA tax to equalize the rate would result in a 300% tax increase on commercial insurance providers in the state ― something that would be passed along to customers through premium increases, said Dominick Pallone, executive director of the industry group representing health insurers.

However, the current bill text makes no provision for states to revise the tax to eliminate the variable rates that are no longer allowed, Georgetown’s Park said.

Michigan and other states are also barred under the legislation from creating a new provider tax or increasing existing taxes to replace the lost revenues.

“It’s a little bit like changing the speed limit and then giving a ticket to somebody who sped before you changed the speed limit,” Pallone said.

A proposed rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also seeks to bar certain provider taxes on managed care plans that lack uniformity in seven states, including Michigan. Neither the legislation nor the proposed rule would guarantee a transition period for the states to adjust.

While Michigan’s health plans would like to see the provider taxes continue, it’s “pretty clear” that Congress won’t allow them to operate as they have in Michigan, Pallone said.

“Now, we’re just really asking for a three-year timetable, so that we can have some very difficult conversations in Lansing about how deep and how broad the cuts to Medicaid will have to be,” Pallone said. “And giving us several years to get there would be helpful.”

On the insurer side, he said, the cuts would likely mean lower reimbursement rates paid to Medicaid providers, which would hit rural hospitals hard and could prompt closures. Health plans would also, where allowed, use more prior authorizations to “squeeze” out low-value care, Pallone said.

“It’s pretty dire consequences here of reducing this without being able to find revenue sources to offset it,” Pallone said.

Gabe Schneider, director of government relations for Munson Healthcare ― the state’s largest rural hospital system ― was in Washington, D.C., lobbying Michigan lawmakers this week, urging them not to support the changes by the Senate Finance Committee, he said.

Munson has eight hospitals across 24 counties in the northern Lower Peninsula — an area that includes 140,000 people who receive insurance through Medicaid, he said.

Schneider said he’s reminding lawmakers that Munson can’t turn away Medicaid patients just because their reimbursement rate is being slashed. That loss of revenue will hurt all patients, he said.

Munson’s medical facilities across northern Michigan include hospitals in Cadillac, Charlevoix, Frankfort, Gaylord, Grayling, Kalkaska, Manistee and Traverse City.

“We are the sole community hospital where we’re at, and so patients can’t just go down the road by 15 minutes and get to another hospital because there are no other hospitals,” Schneider said.

“In rural areas, this really has an outsized impact because we’re talking about services that are really critical for our patients and our communities that we serve.”

Nursing homes hit

Provider taxes on skilled nursing facilities and intermediate care facilities that care for people with disabilities would be exempt from the new limits.

However, Michigan’s provider tax on nursing homes wouldn’t be allowed under the prohibition against differential rates, said Melissa Samuel, president and CEO of the Health Care Association of Michigan, which represents nearly 370 nursing facilities in the state.

“If you’re a state that needs to fix your provider tax after May 1, 2025, you wouldn’t be eligible for the exemption,” Samuel said. “It’s clear that they’re directing us to fix it, but in doing so, it’s almost like you’re being penalized.”

Michigan’s skilled nursing facility tax generates $680 million toward the state budget, according to HCAM. The Senate’s new proposed limit would mean a $120 million cut in reimbursements to skilled nursing facilities, Samuel said.

She anticipated the cut would hit labor and benefits and potentially prompt owners to reduce hours or staff, which would in turn limit the number of patients who could be admitted and cared for.

Like Pallone, the Health Care Association is hoping for a transition period to restructure the provider tax so it can continue to be used in Michigan, Samuel said.

“I know there’s language around ‘fraud’ and ‘misuse’ of the provider tax. But the skilled nursing facility tax came in under (Republican Gov.) John Engler in the ‘90s. It’s very straightforward in the state of Michigan and goes directly into skilled nursing reimbursements,” she said.

“We assume that the restructuring of our provider tax is something we’ll have to do, because it was in both the House and Senate versions. That’s something we’re willing to do. But give us another glide path to do that, so then, how much do we have to close the gap?”

U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, said he was “deeply frustrated” that GOP senators are pushing for cuts to Medicaid in their bill and said he’d oppose it.

“The bill would take away health care and food assistance from millions of Americans, and hundreds of thousands of Michiganders, in order to give a tax cut to billionaires,” Peters said in a statement.

“It would increase our nation’s deficit and put our country on worse financial footing, all while hurting hardworking families. I will never vote for a bill that does that.”

By Carol Thompson, The Detroit News

Smears of crusted goo plastered the grip tape Tim Harrison pulled off a tree in southern Monroe County.

They aren’t patches of mud. The streaks were the leftovers of egg masses left behind by spotted lanternflies, invasive insects working their way through lower Michigan and the Midwest.

This early into the summer, the hatchlings from these egg masses are small nymphs, black with white spots. They will soon grow larger, a centimeter in diameter, and turn bright red. They will eventually transform into large, showy insects with striking gray and red coloring.

And eventually, the bugs that are limited to a few sites in southeast Michigan will make their way throughout the Lower Peninsula.

“It’s just a matter of time,” said Harrison, a Michigan State University graduate student studying entomology.

The Lower Peninsula — particularly cities such as Detroit, Lansing and Grand Rapids — is a ripe breeding ground for spotted lanternflies, Harrison said. The places are littered with the bugs’ preferred food, an invasive, fast-growing and common tree called the tree of heaven.

Spotted lanternflies have become a sensational nuisance on the East Coast, where they were discovered in the Philadelphia area in 2014. They are prolific breeders and voracious. They suck the sap from trees and other woody plants, leaving behind a sweet, sticky excrement called honeydew that attracts insects, and can build up and mold.

Cities pursued public awareness campaigns encouraging people who encounter a lanternfly to “squish it.”

Spotted lanternflies are in 18 states, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They were first identified in Michigan in 2022 at a site in Pontiac. Since then, they have been seen in Monroe, Oakland, Wayne, Lenawee and Macomb counties.

Although annoying in high numbers, “they aren’t the end of the world,” Harrison said.

Unlike emerald ash borer and hemlock woolly adelgid, two other invasive insects in Michigan, spotted lanternflies don’t majorly affect the state’s forests or other ecosystems. They can damage vineyards and disturb outdoor gatherings, but they don’t threaten entire species.

“It’s a nuisance that we’re going to have to get used to because no matter what we do, they’re going to spread throughout lower Michigan,” he said.

‘Stinkweed,’ lanternflies’ favorite food

Spotted lanternflies’ spread through the United States depends on two things, Harrison said.

First is shipping. The bugs appear to have arrived on imported material from their native Asia. From there, they spread long distances along highways and railways radiating out from the Philadelphia area.

Second is the tree of heaven, an invasive tree that was introduced to the U.S. by European colonists in the 1700s and then by immigrants on the West Coast more than a century later. It has since spread widely.

“You’ll never stop seeing it once you know what it looks like,” Harrison said. “Lansing’s loaded with it, Detroit’s loaded with it. Ann Arbor, especially, is particularly bad.”

Spotted lanternflies love the tree of heaven and appear to breed more successfully when they lay eggs on the invasive trees compared with others. Cities that have lots of it “can expect very heavy infestations if treatments aren’t done,” Harrison said.

Removing the tree of heaven is one of the key strategies cities and landowners can use to avoid the incoming deluge of spotted lanternfly, Harrison said.

It won’t be easy, said Deb McCullough, an MSU forest entomology professor. The trees are incredible breeders. She said a single tree of heaven can produce 300,000 seeds, which blow around, float down rivers and plant themselves. The trees also release new shoots when their trunks are cut, making them hard to kill.

“Removing it is a lot of work,” McCullough said. “Somebody has to be motivated.”

Tree of heaven is also challenging to identify, said Fai Foen, green infrastructure director for the nonprofit Greening of Detroit. It looks similar to a black walnut tree or sumac, but its leaves smell like rancid peanut butter when crushed, she said — that’s why some people refer to it as “stinkweed.”

The tree is common in unkempt areas, such as railway corridors.

Foen said the communities first hit by a pest or disease can offer advice to others. Detroit found itself in a similar position with the emerald ash borer, the sparkling green beetles that decimated ash trees in southeast Michigan before spreading throughout the country.

Eastern communities are now in the position to advise Michigan on how to deal with spotted lanternfly. Foen said communities should convene to share education about the pest and to coordinate their response efforts.

“We’re in a position where it’s already here,” Foen said. “We should have that discussion.”

The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development this summer is monitoring sites for spotted lanternfly. The department’s monitoring efforts last year yielded new small populations throughout southeast Michigan. The department asks people to report sightings of the bug to Michigan.gov/eyesinthefield.

Unlike states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, New Jersey and others, Michigan has not imposed a quarantine to help slow spotted lanternflies’ spread.

“As we’ve seen in other states, stopping the movement of spotted lanternfly is extremely challenging,” MDARD spokesperson Lynsey Mukomel said over email. “Our current focus is on raising public awareness. By teaching people how to identify spotted lanternfly and avoid unintentional spread, we can help slow its movement and reduce its impact.”

Quarantines do not stop the bugs from spreading, but they do slow their spread, said Matt Helmus, a Temple University professor who tracks spotted lanternfly movements. Other states’ quarantines typically require commercial shipping companies and landscape industry businesses to inspect vehicles and wares for spotted lanternfly or the egg masses they lay in the fall.

“But when you have some type of quarantine and inspection, coupled with public informational campaigns, you definitely see that spread slowing,” Helmus said.

Harrison and MSU undergraduate field technician Madisyn Holman are studying the effectiveness of “lantern traps” for preventing lanternflies from flourishing. The traps are made with grip tape or roofing material, inexpensive supplies that can be purchased at a hardware store. By wrapping one piece of material on a tree and another domed top like a lampshade, they can make an environment female lanternflies find ideal for laying eggs.

The traps appear to lure a lot of egg-laying lanternflies, Harrison said, making them a cheap and effective way to reduce lanternfly breeding. He recommended people install traps in infested trees and squash the egg masses laid there.

Spotted lanternfly researchers have had to race to understand the bugs as they spread through the United States, said Brian Walsh, a Penn State University Extension educator and spotted lanternfly researcher.

Beyond recognizing the bugs’ taste for the tree of heaven, they’ve made some discoveries: The bugs can fly longer distances than people first expected, and they are somehow able to detect their favorite foods, such as grapes. Their populations follow a boom-and-bust cycle, sometimes so abundant they seem to fill the sky, then almost unnoticeable.

Vineyards brace for infestation

But even when they are in the “bust” cycle, spotted lanternflies consistently flock to vineyards, Walsh said.

“Growers shouldn’t panic, but they also need to have a game plan in place for how to deal with it,” he said. “Information is the key. Don’t panic, but being well-informed will help them make decisions that are going to benefit them in the long run.

“We don’t want people thinking this is going to end their vineyards or end their farms. It can be managed.”

Spotted lanternflies will reach Michigan’s vineyards eventually, Helmus said.

“It’s in Detroit, and now it’s in Chicago,” he said. “Think about all the people from Chicago that go up the west side of Michigan on vacation. It will probably spread into western Michigan. Relatively quickly is my guess.

“Once it starts to get into the vineyards, there’s going to be a lot more outcry.”

The first spotted lanternfly Anthony Vietri encountered was sitting alone on the ground near his vineyard in southeast Pennsylvania. It was “bizarre and gorgeous and frightening,” the Pennsylvania vineyard owner said.

By the next year, Vietri would be driving his tractor into clouds of spotted lanternflies, knocking dozens from the top of his fedora as he wound through the vineyard, wearing a cloth over his face to keep them from leaping into his mouth. They would drop from the trees like snow.

He’s learned to manage them at the vineyard, Va La Vineyards. When he prunes his vines, he scrapes off each egg mass he sees. The strategy significantly reduces the number that breed on his farm, which means he mostly just deals with the adults that fly in from elsewhere.

“Then it’s a matter of looking at them and saying ‘Hey, this is not as bad of an infestation as it could have been, and we’ll just ride this out,’” Vietri said.

Spotted lanternflies have not wiped out the Pennsylvania grape industry, he said, but they have taken a toll on certain vineyards that rely on expensive insecticides or host a lot of outdoor events.

“Weddings, outdoor events, they feel completely invited to,” Vietri said. “Unfortunately, the folks that are hosting that event or paying for it are not at all pleased about it, but there’s nothing really that the vineyard can do.”

Grape growers in northwest Michigan are concerned about what spotted lanternflies will do to their vineyards, said Nikki Rothwell, coordinator of Michigan State University Extension’s Northwest Michigan Horticulture Research Center. Growers have seen warnings from Pennsylvania about the bugs’ behavior and potential to swarm outdoor spaces like cities and wineries.

Michigan State Extension workers are experimenting with pesticides to control spotted lanternflies, but the number of bugs that can appear on a farm makes pesticide control difficult, Rothwell said.

“There’s not much you can do about them other than kill them,” she said. “They’re going to get here. I don’t really know why they wouldn’t come this far north.”

By Craig Mauger, The Detroit News

Money from some of Michigan’s largest companies and wealthiest business executives secretly flowed to a fundraising account for state Senate Republicans during the early days of the pandemic, according to a trove of court records.

Dick DeVos, husband of then-U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, gave $50,000 to the organization Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility, while the Las Vegas-based data center company Switch, which won tax breaks from the Legislature four months earlier, provided $50,000, a prosecutor and an investigator for Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office said in open court.

Likewise, J.C. Huizenga, the founder of a charter school management company, gave $25,000, and Edward Levy, the leader of a Dearborn-based road construction company that wanted lawmakers to ease regulations on gravel mining in 2020, chipped in $30,000 for the nonprofit that falls under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code, according to the Attorney General’s office.

“The account is a non-disclosed and unlimited (c)(4) account so no one will know that you contributed to the account,” wrote Heather Lombardini, a Republican political consultant who worked with Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility, in a fundraising pitch to one donor, according to an email read in court on Aug. 8, 2024.

For years, Michigan lawmakers have allowed themselves to collect millions of dollars in contributions through nonprofit organizations that aren’t required to release their donors’ names or the details of how they spend the cash. Residents of the state have rarely gotten information about who’s behind the money and how key officeholders are involved in soliciting it.

But an ongoing criminal case against Lombardini has unlocked bank records and internal emails involving Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility. The group, which worked on behalf of Senate Republicans, raised $8.6 million over a seven-year period from 2014 through 2020, as Republicans set the agenda in the Senate.

The new documents — detailed in court hearings, including one on Wednesday — showed that consultants, along with then-Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake, privately promoted the nonprofit to potential donors as a vehicle to move political money without the public’s knowledge. Those who gave secretly were often individuals with direct connections to bills before the state Legislature, according to the records.

In one email exchange with Lombardini in June 2020 — three months into the COVID-19 pandemic in Michigan — Rory Lafferty, director of government affairs for the Health Alliance Plan, said the insurer wanted to give $20,000 in corporate money to Senate Republicans. Health Alliance Plan or HAP is a Troy-based health insurance company owned by the Detroit-based Henry Ford Health hospital system.

Lafferty specifically identified the nonprofit Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility as the entity to receive the money after Lombardini floated the idea of tying the cash to a Sept. 8, 2020, fundraising dinner for the Senate Republican Campaign Committee, which is required to disclose its donors.

“We are trying to be sensitive of the optics of our corporate support because both HAP and Henry Ford Health Systems (sic) furloughed some employees due to the COVID crisis,” wrote Lafferty, according to an email previously read in court. “The plan is to bring these folks back when demand for health care picks back up but that’s happening slower than we expected.

“Maybe, we can hold off until we get closer to the dinner before we decide if we can publicly support the event? Maybe, we’ll be bringing back some of the furloughed employees at that time.”

Lafferty then asked Lombardini to forward an invoice for Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility. Lombardini sent Lafferty a $20,000 invoice to record the transaction, according to court records.

Two months earlier, in April 2020, Henry Ford Health had announced that it would furlough 2,800 employees or 9% of its 31,600 workers across its five hospitals. In 2023, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer appointed Lafferty to the state’s Public Health Advisory Council, a position he still holds.

In a statement provided Thursday by a public relations firm on behalf of HAP, the health insurer said there was “absolutely nothing improper about this corporate contribution.”

“Further, any contribution to Sen. Shirkey in 2020 was made with strict adherence to campaign finance and nonprofit corporation laws, as were all our other contributions,” the HAP statement said. “Contributions to the senator had no relation to any statements he made or positions he held relative to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Henry Ford Health had no involvement in the $20,000 contribution, said Lauren Zakalik, a spokeswoman for the hospital system.

‘Other account options’

Shirkey, who left the Senate because of term limits at the end of 2022, didn’t respond to a Thursday request for comment from The News.

Lombardini and Shirkey privately promoted Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility as a way for donors to support a 2020 petition campaign to limit Whitmer’s emergency powers without their names being made public, according to emails read in open court and recorded in a court transcript.

The Unlock Michigan campaign, which launched on June 1, 2020, aimed to repeal a 1945 law that allowed Whitmer to declare an emergency and issue executive orders without the Legislature’s approval. Whitmer’s orders were used to close schools, curtail dining at restaurants and restrict social gatherings, among other measures aimed at limiting the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

In one message to potential donors on June 5, Shirkey touted the need to repeal the 1945 Emergency Powers of Governor Act and said the effort would require “significant financial resources.”

The Senate leader also shared with the group of donors a W-9 tax document to help businesses make their contributions to the Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility.

“Attached is the W-9 for the preferred non-disclosed (c)(4) account that we will be using,” wrote Shirkey, adding that checks should be made payable to Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility.

In an Aug. 3, 2020, email, Lombardini sought a contribution from Bobby Schostak, former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party and whose family has a Livonia-based real estate development company. She attached information about Unlock Michigan.

“Attached but please know this is all disclosed since it is a ballot committee,” Lombardini wrote to Schostak, according to court records. “Let me know if that will be an issue. If yes, I have other account options that are non-disclosed.”

In a similar June 26, 2020, email, Lombardini wrote about the Unlock Michigan campaign, but asked Dan Hibma, owner of Land & Co., which manages rental properties in west Michigan, to give $25,000 to Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility.

Lombardini promised Hibma that “no one will know” about his contribution.

“Dan, we appreciate the conversation and consideration,” added Lombardini, referencing that Hibma had also spoken directly with Shirkey on June 26, 2020.

Hibma’s Land & Co. ended up donating $25,000 to Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility, according to court records. It wasn’t clear in the records whether Schostak contributed.

Hibma is the husband of former Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, a Republican whose job included overseeing Michigan’s campaign finance system. He didn’t respond Thursday to a request for comment.

In a July 15, 2020, email to Hibma, Lombardini described his $25,000 contribution to Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility as a $25,000 check “for Unlock Michigan,” according to court records.

Mark Brewer, a lawyer and a former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, argued funneling money through a nonprofit to a petition campaign to hide donors’ identities would be illegal.

The records made available in court likely represented the “tip of the iceberg” when it comes to lawmakers raising money from donors interested in matters before the state Legislature, he added.

“This practice has got to end,” Brewer said.

‘Mystery money’

Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility shifted about $1.8 million it raised from previously undisclosed donors to Unlock Michigan in 2020. The court records disclose the identities of contributors of $1.2 million that went to the nonprofit in 2020.

At the time, Shirkey was the top Senate Republican and the caucus’s primary fundraiser. He was also one of the most vocal critics of Whitmer’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and her use of unilateral orders to limit public gatherings and shutter businesses.

Lafferty reached out about contributing on behalf of HAP on June 26, 2020, according to court records. Less than two weeks earlier, Shirkey publicly acknowledged on June 15, 2020, that he had defied Whitmer’s stay-at-home emergency orders by getting professional haircuts. On May 6, 2020, Shirkey and then Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, announced the Legislature was suing Whitmer over her emergency orders.

Currently, Chatfield is facing separate criminal charges over allegations he misused money raised by his nonprofit, the Peninsula Fund. He pleaded not guilty.

On Oct. 2, 2020, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that Whitmer’s use of the 1945 Emergency Powers of the Governor Act to respond to the pandemic was unconstitutional.

Throughout 2020, Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility was moving money from undisclosed donors to the Unlock Michigan campaign, providing a pathway for people to secretly support the effort to limit Whitmer’s powers and help Shirkey while ensuring the public and the governor wouldn’t know about their involvement.

The Detroit News reported on July 27, 2020, that the campaign to limit Whitmer’s emergency powers was being funded by “mystery money.” Spurred by the reporting, Bob LaBrant, a longtime campaign finance lawyer who previously worked for the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, and Brewer filed a complaint alleging contributions were being improperly moved through Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility to conceal the identity of donors to Unlock Michigan.

That complaint eventually led to Nessel announcing charges against Lombardini and fellow consultant Sandy Baxter on Feb. 21, 2024. Nessel, a Democrat, said they had been involved in an effort to “evade” the disclosure requirements of the Michigan Campaign Finance Act and then lied about it as state officials investigated.

Transparency in court

Lombardini, a longtime fundraiser for Republican candidates and causes, is now facing felony charges of forgery and uttering and publishing after she signed an affidavit on Sept. 9, 2020, denying that funds had been solicited through Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility to give the dollars to Unlock Michigan, the regulated ballot campaign committee.

She has pleaded not guilty, and the charges remain pending in Ingham County Circuit Court, where Judge Wanda Stokes is considering whether the accusations should proceed to trial. Forgery as well as uttering and publishing are punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Lombardini was originally charged with additional campaign finance violations, but those allegations were knocked down in district court because Judge Kristen Simmons ruled they were not filed quickly enough by prosecutors.

During a Wednesday court hearing in Lansing, Lombardini’s lawyer, Thomas Cranmer, argued that “the truth or falsity” of a single sentence in an affidavit shouldn’t render the entire document false.

“An affidavit with a single false statement is still an affidavit,” Cranmer said. “It’s simply an affidavit with a factual inaccuracy.

“Now, it may not be an ideal state of affairs, but it doesn’t constitute the crime of either uttering and publishing or forgery.”

During that same hearing, Stine Grand, an assistant attorney general, listed the names of donors behind $700,000 in giving to Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility, including the DeVos family and the Cotton family.

Grand said the donors’ names and contributions had been included on a spreadsheet that Lombardini sent to Shirkey in a 2020 email. The subject line of the message was “Unlock—$$$,” even though the money went to Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility, according to testimony recorded in court transcripts.

“She directed individuals to contribute to MCFR to fund Unlock,” Grand said Wednesday of Lombardini in court. “She planned and organized with Mike Shirkey and others to fundraise and solicit for Unlock by using MCFR.”

‘Friends asked me’

Five members of west Michigan’s DeVos family combined to give $200,000, and two members of Metro Detroit’s Cotton family donated $300,000 to the Shirkey-led fund. The Cotton family previously ran Meridian Health Plan before selling the Medicaid provider in 2018. Jon Cotton gave $150,000 to Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility in 2020, and his brother Sean Cotton gave $150,000, according to the Attorney General’s presentation.

It wasn’t clear in the court records whether all of the donors knew their money would end up going to Unlock Michigan.

In 2020, members of the Cotton family were “vehemently” opposing a bill in the Senate that would have limited the ability of local governments to block gravel mining operations, said former Sen. Adam Hollier, D-Detroit, who sponsored the measure meant to ensure there’s aggregate material available to improve the state’s roads.

Hollier introduced his measure in August 2019. It advanced out of the Senate Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in September 2020, but it never received a vote on the Senate floor, where Shirkey controlled the agenda.

“The Cottons are big Republicans. They’re billionaires. I am not surprised,” Hollier said of the $300,000 in previously undisclosed contributions to Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility.

Attempts to reach the Cottons by The News on Thursday were unsuccessful.

Matthew Resch, a public relations consultant who worked on behalf of the Metamora Land Preservation Alliance in opposition to the gravel mining bill, said Thursday that he had no interaction with the Cottons and couldn’t speak to the contributions.

Another donor was Michigan Energy First, a nonprofit group connected to Detroit-based DTE Energy, Michigan’s largest electric utility. Michigan Energy First, which features multiple DTE officials on its board, spent $17.5 million from 2020 through 2023, according to its tax filings.

Michigan Energy First previously reported giving $100,000 to Michigan Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility in 2020. But the new court records showed how closely tied the group was to DTE.

On July 9, 2020, Pamela Headley, DTE’s chief of staff for corporate and government affairs, sent Shirkey an email notifying Shirkey of the $100,000 contribution from the seemingly separate nonprofit.

“Friends asked me to let you know that the Michigan Energy First board approved a $100,000 contribution to Michigan Citizen’s (sic) for Fiscal Responsibility,” Headley wrote to the Senate majority leader.

By Anne Snabes, The Detroit News

Oakland County is working on methods to try to prevent overflows of raw sewage into the Red Run Drain including creating more storage in its drainage system and increasing “permitted discharges” from a Madison Heights retention basin, according to a corrective action plan sent to state regulators.

The plan, submitted by the Oakland County Water Resources commissioner to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy on May 29, comes after the agency issued a violation to Oakland County for discharging nearly 1.2 million gallons of raw sewage from the Dequindre Sanitary Sewer Interceptor to the Red Run Drain during a heavy rainfall on April 3.

EGLE told the county “to take immediate action to achieve and maintain compliance.” The notice required Oakland County to submit a corrective action plan to EGLE by May 30.

But Candice Miller, Macomb County’s Public Works commissioner, said last week she believes Oakland County’s letter to the state shows “a total lack of concern” about what it is discharging into the Red Run Drain and how the releases affect the environment.

Miller has been voicing concerns for months about discharges of combined wastewater and stormwater from the George W. Kuhn Retention Treatment Basin and about sanitary sewer overflows from Oakland County’s pipes. In April, three Macomb County state legislators introduced a bill package that targets what they believe are damaging releases of raw and treated sewage by Oakland County into the Red Run Drain, which leads to the Clinton River and then Lake St. Clair.

Oakland officials have maintained that they are following state guidelines and have only discharged treated sewage from the Kuhn basin, which is located in Madison Heights.

According to Oakland County’s six-page plan, it is working on methods to reduce its “flow rate” to the Great Lakes Water Authority, which treats wastewater for many southeast Michigan communities. Oakland County sends wastewater from its sewer pipes to GLWA’s pipes so the water can be treated at GLWA’s wastewater plant.

But in the letter to EGLE, Oakland County Water Resources Commisioner Jim Nash’s office attributed the sanitary sewer overflows to the fact that wastewater isn’t able to flow from one of its drainage districts to GLWA’s system during certain rain events because the water level is too high in the GLWA system.

To reduce its flow rate, Oakland officials said they are working on methods that include operating the drainage district “in a manner to create storage” in the system and increasing permitted discharges from the George W. Kuhn Retention Treatment Basin. The Kuhn basin is used to store a mix stormwater and wastewater during heavy rains, later releasing it into the Red Run Drain after it has been treated.

Nash’s office referred questions about the corrective action plan to EGLE.

Miller objected to the proposal to discharge more water from the Kuhn basin saying that the quantity of water discharged from the basin “really exceeds the capacity of the Red Run Drain,” which flows through Macomb County. The discharged water, she said, contributes to flooding in Macomb.

Miller said that Nash’s office doesn’t have “any particular plan.” She and others were outraged when they discovered sanitary wipes, condoms and tampons in the area where the Dequindre Interceptor discharges into the Red Run Drain after the April 3 overflow.

“I think EGLE should hold (Oakland’s) feet to the fire to get a definitive plan, not: ‘OK, we’re looking at it,’” she said. “What is your plan, specifically? What is your specific plan? What do you think the costs are?”

What the letter says

In its letter to EGLE, Nash’s office has determined that there is a “direct relationship” between the Dequindre Interceptor sanitary sewer overflow level and the corresponding level in the GLWA system. The Dequindre Interceptor is part of the George W. Kuhn Drainage District.

The author of the letter, Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner Chief Engineer Evagelos Bantios, said the flow from the George W. Kuhn Drainage District is unable to discharge into the downstream GLWA system when the GLWA system has an elevated water level. The water won’t be discharged until the Kuhn drainage district’s water level increases to overcome the downstream water level.

Bantios noted that, in some situations, it appears that the GLWA system flows in reverse into the Kuhn drainage district system.

He said Nash’s office plans to store as much flow as possible in the Kuhn system during wet weather events and continue to discharge water from the George W. Kuhn Retention Treatment Basin.

“Historically, we maximize our discharge into the GLWA system,” Bantios said in the letter. “The new modification will allow us to have more storage in the Dequindre Interceptor to allow for backwater and reverse flow from GLWA to minimize and potentially eliminate SSOs.”

Bantios said implementation of this change is “in process.” He also said that his office continues to work with the Great Lakes Water Authority to determine how the GLWA system interacts with Kuhn drainage district system and see what improvements can be made to either or both systems.

“We hope to be completed with the initial investigation by late summer,” Bantios said. “Then, we plan on evaluating other improvements to both systems. We expect this process to take six months to one year.”

GLWA officials weren’t available for comment Thursday evening.

EGLE spokesman Jeff Johnston said his agency believes that untreated or improperly treated sewage discharges are “unhealthy and unacceptable.”

“This is why EGLE is taking action to address these discharges in accordance with Michigan law,” he said.

EGLE is currently reviewing Oakland County’s response letter. Johnston said compliance staff generally review and decide on the acceptability of a corrective plan within 30 days of receipt but are expediting this matter and expect to have a decision within two weeks.

Macomb Daily reporter Jameson Cook contributed to this story.

By Max Reinhart, The Detroit News

An Oak Park man was recently struck and killed while crossing a street in Ohio, police said.

Jamil Osman, 32, was walking in the 200 block of North Coy Road, near Ice Castle Drive in the city of Oregon, a suburb located just east of Toledo, at about 11:23 p.m. on May 31, Oregon police said in a press release.

He attempted to cross the street and was struck by a Toyota traveling south on Coy.

Osman was transported to a nearby hospital, where he died the next day, authorities said.

The driver of the vehicle, Caleb Sims, 31, of Toledo, was not impaired and was wearing his seatbelt when he struck Osman, police said. As of Tuesday, he had not been charged in the crash.

Police have not released any further information and said the incident remains under investigation.

By Craig Mauger, The Detroit News

A state lawmaker argued Tuesday against ongoing efforts to cap class sizes in Michigan elementary schools, saying classes of 30, 40 or even 50 students had worked successfully in the 1920s to produce the Greatest Generation.

The term Greatest Generation generally refers to Americans who were born from 1901 to 1927 and who lived through the Great Depression. Many of them also fought in World War II.

State Rep. Josh Schriver, R-Oxford, cited the generation — individuals who were in elementary school a century ago and 50 years before personal computers became broadly accessible — during an occasionally heated House Oversight Committee hearing about the future of education in Michigan and the state’s declining reading scores.

In a presentation at the meeting, Michael Rice, Michigan’s superintendent of public instruction, asked lawmakers to fund a plan to lower class sizes in high-poverty elementary schools.

An April investigation by The Detroit News found that, unlike most other states, Michigan has no policy aimed at capping class sizes or tying funding to smaller class sizes in elementary schools. The newspaper documented 206 elementary classes, ranging from kindergarten through fifth grade, across 49 schools over the 2023-24 and 2024-25 years that had at least 30 students in them.

Among them was a kindergarten class at Bennett Elementary, where the Detroit Public Schools Community District said 30 students were enrolled.

“(In) 1920, you know, the classroom sizes were 30, 40, 50 kids. That produced the Greatest Generation,” Schriver said.

As the Michigan Legislature continues to craft a funding plan for schools for next year, Schriver said his solution to large class sizes in traditional public schools was to establish a voucher program so parents could spend state tax dollars on homeschool programs.

“That will reduce the amount of individuals in public education,” Schriver said.

There’s no clear evidence that strategy would lead to smaller class sizes. It would likely lead to less funding flowing to Michigan school districts because the state ties funding to every student enrolled and that could impair districts’ ability to keep the staffing levels necessary to offer small classes.

Asked five times after the meeting if he supported having class sizes of 50 students in Michigan elementary schools or if he would be OK with class sizes of 50 students, Schriver didn’t answer with a yes or no but said he was opposed to a mandate capping class sizes.

“I’m drawing a correlation between 1920, when we had zero of these requests,” Schriver said. “We were spending money on zero of these things that they’re coming in here and they’re requesting. And that produced the Greatest Generation.”

‘Whatever is best for the kids’

As a reporter was interviewing Schriver on Tuesday in a hallway of the state Capitol, state Rep. Sharon MacDonell, D-Troy, walked up to him and said in 1930, only about 30% of people graduated from high school. Federal data showed that in 1920, about 16% of people over the age of 25 had completed high school.

“Forty to 50 kids in a classroom, it didn’t work,” MacDonell told Schriver. “It was a disaster.”

“Most people didn’t go to college,” Schriver replied of the 1920s.

“They didn’t go to high school either,” MacDonell fired back.

“Yeah, and it produced the Greatest Generation,” Schriver said.

Asked if he was attributing the Greatest Generation to the large class sizes, Schriver said he was connecting the generation to “many factors.” When asked whether he was OK with class sizes of 50 students in elementary schools in his Oakland County district, Schriver said there should be no mandate on the topic.

“It should be whatever is best for the kids,” Schriver said.

The lawmaker didn’t explain what that meant.

At least 31 of the 50 states have laws about class sizes, tie funding to small classes, or set goals for their schools to attempt to meet and against which to be accountable; Michigan currently doesn’t. As an example, Tennessee state law includes both average class size benchmarks for school buildings and maximum class size limits for individual classes.

In May, Michigan’s State Board of Education approved a resolution calling for limits on class sizes to be put in place by the 2030-31 school year, including a cap of 20 students per class for kindergarten through third grade.

Mitchell Robinson, a Democratic member of the State Board of Education, authored the resolution and said action on class sizes was overdue.

“Smaller class sizes are going to be a better learning situation for kids and a better teaching situation for teachers,” said Robinson of Okemos, a former music teacher.

‘Get back to the fundamentals’

After Tuesday’s hearing in the state House, Schriver told a reporter that state Rep. Brad Paquette, a Republican and former teacher from Niles, had led a class of 50 students and the reporter should ask Paquette “how awesome” it was.

Paquette said the 50-student class he was involved with was a high school class and included a team teaching strategy.

In the traditional model of teaching — one teacher in front of a single class of students — Paquette said having 50 students in an elementary school class would not be ideal.

Tuesday’s hearing was supposed to focus on the “current state of Michigan’s public education,” according to the agenda. However, it also showcased the partisan divisions that have dominated the debate around the topic.

Michigan ranked 44th among the 50 states in the average reading score of fourth graders, according to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress results. And during her State of the State address in February, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said just 24% of Michigan fourth graders were able to read proficiently.

House Oversight Chairman Jay DeBoyer, R-Clay Township, said the state’s education system was “failing” students.

Pamela Pugh, a Democrat and the president of the State Board of Education, responded that policymakers were failing children and that funding increases for K-12 schools had not kept pace with inflation.

After the hearing, state Rep. Dylan Wegela, D-Garden City, and a former teacher, said the meeting amounted to “an attack on public education.” Having 50 students in an elementary school class would be unmanageable, he said.

“That sounds like chaos,” said Wegela.

State Rep. Jason Woolford, R-Howell, contended that Michigan schools needed to get back to teaching the “fundamentals” of English, math, history and what he described as “morality.”

“I’ve traveled and taught in 13 different countries, places like Africa, where there’s no educational budget, there’s no diversity program, no anti-(President Donald) Trump resolutions,” Woolford said. “Yet, they’re increasing in their reading.”

The State Board of Education approved a resolution in March against executive orders by Trump that the Democratic-controlled board said “pose direct threats to children, public education and fundamental civil rights.”

While literacy rates appear to be increasing in some countries in Africa, which is a continent, the countries’ rates appear to be lower than the current rate in the United States, according to data from international organizations.

Woolford also said, “I think we’ve got to just let our kids be kids and get back to the fundamentals that made this country great, invented the car and electricity and other things.”

Asked what Woolford was talking about when he referenced the discovery of electricity, Paquette said one of the problems is that everyone discusses education, but no one defines what the word means to them.

“I think there are a lot of people that are grasping at straws because what they want to do is they want to better a system,” Paquette said. “And that’s a noble cause.”

By Breana Noble and Owen McCarthy, The Detroit News

Consumers’ hunger for new vehicles persisted in May, but affordability concerns could cool sales in June as dealerships start running short on cars and SUVs delivered ahead of President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs.

In May, Ford’s U.S. sales increased 16% year-over-year while Hyundai’s grew 8% and Kia’s rose 5%. Subaru and Mazda Motor Corp., however, reported declines of 10% and 19%, respectively. General Motors and Stellantis will report second-quarter sales next month.

Spring typically marks a surge in vehicle sales, as tax returns hit bank accounts and the weather warms up. But consumer sentiment has plunged to some of its lowest levels in decades amid frequently changing rules on tariffs, and concerns that new vehicle prices could climb later this year. It has led some consumers to purchase vehicles sooner than they had planned.

S&P Global Mobility forecasted May sales up 2% compared to a year ago, but predicted sales were slowing to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 15.7 million vehicles, down from 17.6 million from March to April.

“Consumer confidence is down, but the sales are not,” said Stephanie Brinley, associate director of research and analysis at S&P’s AutoIntelligence. “It doesn’t usually work that way.”

With inventories down and non-tariffed models moving off lots, the “affordability bullet has not come through yet. There’s a little bit of wait-and-see for what automakers really do,” Brinley added, noting June could start revealing the direction companies choose to take.

Some have given consumers confidence that they can wait a bit. Ford, through the July 4 weekend, is offering its customers thousands of dollars per vehicle in discounts typically reserved for its employees. In early May, however, it did increase prices by up to $2,000 forf its Mexico-built vehicles because of tariffs.

Stellantis — the parent of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram and other brands — is offering a similar employee discount program, which it has been extended through June. Volkswagen has said it will hold to its current manufacturer’s suggested retail prices through June. GM CEO Mary Barra has said the automaker doesn’t expect major price increases.

But vehicle imports are expected to slow, which will mean less availability and price increases, said Charlie Chesbrough, a senior economist at Cox Automotive Inc.

“As more tariffed products replace existing inventory over the summer,” he said, in a May forecast, “prices are expected to be pushed higher, leading to slower sales in the coming months.”

Some dealers are already noticing wariness. “I haven’t seen people this cautious since before, or during, the early stages of COVID,” said Jim Walen, the owner of Stellantis and Hyundai showrooms in Seattle.

The ports in Seattle look “empty,” he said. Layoffs by Microsoft in the state of Washington haven’t helped business either. Stellantis’ employee discount program, however, is a boon: “Anytime you can affect the transaction price, it’s a good thing.”

Meanwhile, some dealers are planning to pull back over revenue concerns, Walen said, but he’s taking a different approach: “We’re very aggressive. We stock a lot, we’re part of the community, we advertise a lot.”

While some May sales are occurring over tariff concerns, other shoppers are dropping out of the market altogether, said Ivan Drury, director of insights at auto information website Edmunds.com. It may still be too early to determine if the circumstances will affect vehicle segments as some customers hold off rather than get a vehicle without certain features.

There are also differing views on tariffs, how they work and the impact they will have, Drury added: “Not everybody’s on the same page.”

But there are trends. More consumers bought out their leases in May than in April, rather than leasing again. That could be a sign customers are seeking to limit increases to their monthly payments, but it also means they’re stepping out of the market, Drury said.

He added that while inventory is declining there’s still too much stock — more than 2.5 million vehicles are on dealer lots — to see substantial price increases.

“The last time when we had people really get hit with price increases, where it took them back, was when we were down to 1 million units,” Drury said. “And that’s where you start to see that crossover between consumers getting a deal versus consumers just dealing and saying, ‘OK, fine, I’ll pay MSRP. I’ll pay above.’”

The share of electric vehicles in the market was forecasted to continue slipping. EV’s accounted for about 7% of sales in March and April, and S&P Global Mobility predicts it would be 6.8% in May. Ford EV sales in May were down by a quarter, driven by decreases in the F-150 Lightning pickup and Transit commercial van.

Trump has pulled federal funding for EV charging infrastructure and directed his administration to reevaluate greenhouse gas tailpipe emission regulations and incentives that could be construed as an “EV mandate.” The U.S. Senate last month also removed a waiver that enabled California and a contingent of states to enforce stricter zero-emission requirements on passenger vehicle sales. The result is an uncertain policy environment around EVs.

“They’ve been trending a little bit down the whole year,” Brinley said. “It may be some people looking for an EV in January bought, expecting the incentives to go away, but they’re not afraid of that anymore.”

Rhett Ricart, who has eight new-vehicle stores for Ford and Chevrolet to Nissan and Mitsubishi in and near Columbus, Ohio, said tariffs and policy changes are on the minds of EV buyers, but he otherwise describes sales as normal.

“A possible tariff scare … doesn’t seem to exist,” Ricart said, adding about expectations that Trump or the judicial system will offer some clarity on import taxes. “For any jitteriness, we will hopefully find out if the tariffs stick soon.”

The Michigan Panthers had a chance to get some revenge, clinch the top record in their conference and gain more momentum as the UFL playoffs near.

The Panthers couldn’t get the job done against a familiar roadblock, as they came up empty in the red zone in the closing seconds and fell to the Birmingham Stallions, 26-22, Saturday at Protective Stadium in Alabama.

Backup quarterback Danny Etling guided the Panthers (6-3) to the Birmingham 9-yard line on their final drive. After spiking the ball to stop the clock, the Panthers had three cracks at the end zone with 19 seconds left.

The Stallions (6-3) stood tall, breaking up two of Etling’s passes over the middle and forcing three incompletions. On third down, Etling found receiver Jaylon Moore in the back of the end zone, but Moore couldn’t get his feet down inbounds to complete the catch.

Etling, who was making his second straight start in placed of injured Bryce Perkins, finished 23 of 39 passing for 236 yards and two touchdowns. He led the Panthers to points on three of their four second-half possessions.

Receiver Siasoi Mariner had a 33-yard touchdown reception and finished with five catches for 115 yards. Running back Toa Taua had 62 total yards and scored on a 2-yard run that gave Michigan a 22-20 lead with just under eight minutes to go.

Stallions quarterback J’Mar Smith completed 22 of 31 passes for 307 yards and threw two touchdown passes to Deon Cain, including a 19-yarder that gave Birmingham the lead for good with 2:30 remaining.

Since the USFL and XFL merged to form the UFL in 2024, the Panthers are 0-5 against the Stallions, including a loss in last season’s USFL Conference Championship game.

The Panthers and Stallions, who both secured playoff berths last week, will meet in the conference title game for the second straight season on June 8. The winner will advance to the UFL Championship game on June 14.

Before that, the Panthers will host the Houston Roughnecks in their regular-season home finale on May 31 at Ford Field. Kickoff is set for 3 p.m.

©2025 The Detroit News. Visit detroitnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The Michigan Panthers stayed hot and secured a spot in the UFL playoffs.

Behind a three-touchdown performance from backup quarterback Danny Etling, the Panthers rolled past the Houston Roughnecks, 30-18, on Saturday at TDECU Stadium in Houston.

With the win, Michigan’s third in a row, the Panthers (6-2) became the first team to clinch a berth in the UFL Conference Championship on June 8.

The Panthers led 14-12 at halftime before they pulled away in the third quarter. On a third-and-16, Etling found receiver Devin Ross down the right sideline for a 35-yard touchdown to make it a nine-point game.

On Houston’s ensuing possession, cornerback Keni-H Lovely (Western Michigan) jumped the route on a quick screen pass and returned it 45 yards for a touchdown to extend the lead to 27-12 with 4:15 left in the third.

The Panthers thwarted any thought of a comeback by forcing a pair of turnovers in the fourth quarter — one on a fourth-down stop in the red zone and another on a fumble recovery.

Kicker B.T. Potter tacked on a 52-yard field goal to make it 30-12 with 5:21 remaining before the Roughnecks (3-5) scored in the closing seconds.

Etling finished 14-for-22 passing with 167 yards. He threw a 5-yard touchdown pass to receiver Malik Turner in the first quarter and a 1-yarder to receiver Samson Nacua in the second quarter. Nacua’s score was set up by an 88-yard punt return by Xavier Malone.

Roughnecks quarterback Jalan McClendon completed 30 of 50 passes for 316 yards, two touchdowns and the pick-six. Houston outgained Michigan by a considerable margin, 441-254, but went 1-for-3 in the red zone and lost the turnover battle (2-0).

The Panthers will travel to Alabama to face the Birmingham Stallions on May 24 before hosting the Roughnecks in the regular-season finale at Ford Field on May 31. Kickoff for both games is slated for 3 p.m.

After that, it’s on to the playoffs, where the winners of the two conference championship games will advance to the UFL Championship on June 14.

By Candice Williams, The Detroit News

As Michigan prepares for another warm-weather travel season, one thing is increasingly clear: President Donald Trump’s tariffs are sparking backlash that could reduce international visits to the United States — and deepening concerns that the levies may cause domestic travelers to adjust their plans.

The impact of tariffs amid a trade war is already showing up in travel from Canada to Michigan. The number of people crossing into the Great Lakes State from Canada fell 11% in both February and March, with vehicle crossings down 15% in February and 18% in March. Last fiscal year, 14.4 million travelers crossed the Canadian border into Michigan, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Tim Hygh, CEO of Mackinac Island Tourism, said he has heard of several cancellations from one day-trip tour operator based in Canada. Even though tariff-related cancellations may not impact the island’s overnight-stay business, there is concern that it could affect daytime traffic.

“You never want to see an interruption in business or any kind of a loss, especially when you’re only open six months out of the year,” he said. “So there are concerns. It won’t make or break us, but any loss is a concern.”

Dana Orlando, vice president of sales and marketing for Grand Hotel, said overall guest bookings are continuing as usual but the landmark property’s Canadian business has slowed. The hotel continues to focus on catering to a wide demographic, including multi-generational families.

“They love those traditions, and we stay true to those traditions,” she said. “So we’re trying to reach everyone.”

Tourism officials across the state are hoping for a busy summer, despite reduced air travel between the two North American neighbors and economic uncertainty threatening to cloud the outlook for hotels, restaurants and retailers up north. So far, operators say they are cautiously optimistic.

Trevor Tkach, president of Traverse City Tourism, expects more last-minute and budget-conscious travelers this summer, as many people scale back from long-distance or international trips. He described it as “a tale of two travelers” — those who are more conservative but still traveling and more affluent travelers who opt for closer destinations instead of going as far as they have in the past.

“It’s kind of reminding me of COVID, honestly,” he said. “It’s weird to say that. When we couldn’t travel as far, people still wanted to go somewhere. So we saw growth in affluent travelers then, too. Traverse City tends to find a customer one way, whether times are up or down. We end up being a pretty good landing spot because we’re a sought-after destination. We’re lucky in that way.”

Business owners like Bob Sutherland, owner of retailer Cherry Republic, are counting on people continuing their traditional summer trips to northern Michigan. The retailer has several stores in Michigan, including Traverse City, Charlevoix and Glen Arbor, with a new one opening this month in Mackinaw City.

“I think for Cherry Republic, in this time of uncertainty, we are going to be as rock solid, true to our brand, and certain and consistent,” he said. “For our customers coming north … they want that piece of peaceful, beautiful northern Michigan.”

On Mackinac Island, bookings are on par with last year so far, Hygh said. Early May is when many of the businesses at the popular tourist destination reopen to welcome tourists after a winter break.

“When I do a survey of our hotels almost weekly now, especially with the market turbulence at this point, their phone calls are steady,” Hygh said. “So at this point, it looks like it could be a good season, and we’re just grateful that all indications are good so far.”

Brian Bailey, general manager at Chippewa Hotel Waterfront, said Mackinac Island is fairly insulated from upheaval as people seek regional travel.

“People will travel shorter distances and go to a place that they know they can count on and they love,” he said.

Todd Callewaert, president of Island House Hotel, said bookings are up about 4% from the same time last year: “I’m sort of surprised at that. They’re coming in pretty strong. So I’m looking for a pretty good year.”

Canadian tourists are a small part of the hotel’s business, Callewaert said, booking about 60 nights total last year. As of early May, the hotel had booked 35 nights for Canadian residents.

“We’re going to do just fine with Canadians,” he said. “We’ll probably do the same, if not more.”

Staffing up

While some hotels say they are on pace with their summer bookings, most also report being fully or nearly fully staffed to accommodate guests.

Detroit-based immigration attorney Bob Birach estimates that about 20% of workers who staff businesses on Mackinac Island are foreign workers in the country through work visas, such as J1 and H2B.

Hygh on Mackinac Island said he doesn’t anticipate any changes to the J1 or H2B programs.

“Everything was laid in place with the last administration and the current administration has not changed anything, nor have they made any plans into the future,” Hygh said. “So no effect at this point.”

At the Grand Hotel, Orlando said the hotel is fully staffed with more than 700 employees during the peak of the season. About 80% are temporary employees, including foreign workers employed through the H2B program.

“It’s a big workforce for us,” she said. “We have to work with the government every year in order to get those. And you just never know what the number will be. And we’ve been thankful that this year we have everyone that we need.”

Mission Point expects to have all of its workers in place soon, said Leah Anderson, senior marketing and content manager. She said the hotel requests around 150 H2B work visas each year, but due to the nature of the program, there are delays. As of early May, the hotel had 68 H2B workers, she said.

“We expect the remainder to arrive by the end of May, but this does create significant challenges for us in the beginning of the season,” she said.

Promoting a ‘coolcation’

The Upper Peninsula saw $1.6 billion in total visitor spending — 5.5% of Michigan’s total visitor economy — in 2023, according to an economic impact analysis released last week by the Upper Peninsula Travel and Recreation Association. Mackinac County, which includes Mackinac Island, led with $309.4 million in visitor spending.

Visitors returning to Mackinac Island will notice some improvements this year. The Grand Hotel has completed renovations, including a new Mackinac Market and the Dorothy Draper Home shop. The Inn at Stonecliffe has updated its kitchen facilities, while Mackinac State Historic Parks is preparing a series of events to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Mackinac National Park.

New transportation options could also help boost visitation. Starting in May, United Express will begin daily direct flights from Chicago O’Hare to both Chippewa County International Airport and Pellston Airport.

Officials say ferry service to the island has improved as well. Hygh, CEO of Mackinac Island Tourism, said service is back on track following fleet issues last year, and the schedule has increased by 10%. The Arnold Transit brand has returned after a 12-year absence.

Hygh said cooler summer temperatures — 10 to 15 degrees lower than many Southern locations — are being used to promote the island as a “coolcation” destination.

“Mackinac Island is cool,” Hygh said. “Take that any way you want. The St Louises of the world, the Memphises of the world, the high heat, high humidity. We’re really trying to reach out and tell them, don’t go south, come north and get a break. Get out of the heat.”

Mission Point Resort completed a redesign of its fine dining restaurant, Chianti, and added a new Lilac Lounge. “Brighter colors, along the water,” said Mark Ware, CEO of Mission Point. “Really exquisite food.”

Liz Ware, co-owner of Mission Point, said the hotel is seeing a mix of travel behaviors, with some guests making weather-dependent, last-minute plans and others booking early. October and May travel is on the rise, she said, as guests seek more affordable shoulder-season trips.

“Summer is peak season and everyone wants to come to the island,” she said. “It’s going to be a strong season for us. And I think the other thing that people want is the experience. And Mackinac, you get this really great feeling of being able to disconnect and then reconnect with your family and your friends.”

Jeri-Lynn Bailey, spokesperson for Arnold Transit Company, said the company, previously known as Mackinac Island Ferry Company, rebranded back to Arnold Transit after a difficult 2024 that saw major fleet issues. The company invested $6 million in repairs and is now focused on dependable, no-frills service.

“We stripped it down,” Bailey said. “We’re a ferry boat company again — no gimmicks.”

A new ticketless boarding system is launching June 1, and a slower, scenic “classic service” from St. Ignace will offer rides as low as $22.50, $11.50 below a regular adult round-trip.

“It’s like you step back to the pace of Mackinac before you even step on the island,” she said.

The new season starts as Mackinac Island and the ferry companies are in a dispute over ferry operations. Shepler’s Inc. filed a complaint earlier this year alleging the city has overstepped its authority in regulating the company’s fares and schedules for ferries, prices for parking and its business operations.

Mackinac Island has filed a countersuit, saying that it has the right to regulate fees for parking and fares for Shepler’s Inc. and Arnold Transit Company, claiming that the companies’ common ownership, Hoffmann Marine, created a monopoly and eliminated competition.

Jenny Gezella, president of Hoffmann Marine, said she couldn’t discuss the ongoing litigation between the ferry companies and the city. However, she noted the $6 million investment in what is now known as the Arnold Transit ferry fleet. Shepler’s picked up the slack while Arnold Transit’s fleet was out of service.

“Shepler’s … it was hard on their equipment last year,” she said.

Regarding the rebranding of Arnold Transit, Gezella said, “You’re gonna see a whole different look and feel … the yellow star is gone. It’s back to that traditional brand of that green and red, and so lots of enhancements you’re gonna see.”

‘Maximizing our potential’

Tkach of Traverse City Tourism said the city has had ongoing development, a sign of investor confidence. Several new hotels are opening this year, including a Residence Inn on the East Bay side, plus Home2 Suites and Fairfield Inn on U.S. 31 south of the city. The old Fairfield Inn on U.S. 31 just south of the city is being converted into a Spark hotel that is scheduled to open in June. Short-term rental inventory continues to expand, and new downtown condos offer visitors a more urban option.

Traverse City is leaning heavily on its food and wine scene, he added: “As a destination, there’s some strategizing going on, so I think you’ll see more opportunities, maybe just more strategic alignment between growers, the farmers and the vendors. Being a little more deliberate to make sure we’re maximizing our potential with the consumer.”

In several northern Michigan communities, including Traverse City and Glen Arbor, Cherry Republic is fully staffed for the season, Sutherland said. The company — which does about half of its annual business between June and September — will carry 20 new products this summer. Cherry Republic has developed a balanced staffing model that includes J1 visa holders, H2B workers, college students and retirees.

“We provide spaces in an RV park so that we can have camp workers — people that own RVs and drive up here for the summer,” he said. “Usually semi-retired, and they’re terrific workers.”

Sutherland believes the workforce improvements are paying off in customer service. “We’re excited to have enough employees and fresh employees and really rock-solid people to serve our customers,” he said. “It makes a huge difference … to not have an exhausted employee whose lips are too tired to smile.”

In Grand Rapids, a year-round destination, 2025 is pacing ahead of last year in terms of visitors, said Janet Korn, senior vice president with Experience Grand Rapids.

“Through the end of March, (we’re) about 3.4% ahead of last year,” she said. “So currently we’re ahead of what we hope to be for the end of the year. So that’s a ray of optimism.”

Korn said June and July are shaping up to be “really strong” with group business. “That might hold true, because people that are planning to go to their meeting and convention at this point are likely coming,” she said. “Of course, there is all this uncertainty, but we have many reasons to believe that people who are traveling to visit their friends and relatives and coming to the Grand Rapids-Kent County area for tourism are going to come here.”

Korn noted the city’s proximity to major Midwest markets as another advantage: “We’re in this wonderful three-hour drive from Chicago, which is a large market. We’re only a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Indianapolis. And we’re only two, two-and-a-half hours from Metro Detroit,” she said. “We do get a lot of visitors coming from there.”

By Julia Cardi, The Detroit News

The first of three men charged in connection with the killing of an Oakland County sheriff’s deputy in 2024 will spend between five and 20 years in prison after his sentencing in a Detroit courtroom Friday.

Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Charise Anderson ordered Karim Moore, 19, to spend at least five years in prison after he pleaded guilty in March to conducting a criminal enterprise, receiving and concealing a stolen motor vehicle, and felony firearm in connection with Deputy Brad Reckling’s death.

Recking, 30, was killed June 22, 2024 while he and other members of a cross-jurisdictional task force investigated a Chevrolet Equinox stolen from an Oakland County waterpark. Reckling allegedly was shot three times while tailing the car in Detroit, working undercover.

The Wayne County prosecutor’s office charged three people, including Moore, in connection with Reckling’s death. Anderson sentenced Moore to two years for the felony firearm count and between three and 20 years for the criminal enterprise count. Those two sentences will run consecutively, which brings the minimum time Moore will spend in prison to five years. Anderson sentenced Moore to one to five years for the stolen motor vehicle charge.

Prosecutor Matthew Penney said in court he hoped Friday’s sentencing would be the first step in allowing Reckling’s family to “turn the page” in their lives after his killing. He acknowledged they still have a long road ahead of them, with the cases of two other people charged in connection with Reckling’s death still yet to reach resolutions.

“This is just the first step in a much longer process that this poor family has been enduring for the last 11 months,” Penney said.

More than a dozen supporters of Reckling sat on one side of the courtroom, including his widow, Jacqueline. The couple had three small children and a fourth on the way when Reckling died.

Wearing a white dress shirt, bow tie, sneakers and ankle monitor, Moore did not make a statement to the court. He appeared with his defense attorney, Adam Clements, who characterized Moore as someone who has accepted accountability for what he did and has been cooperative in showing up to court. He has not posed an ongoing danger to his community and even found a job, Clements told the court.

“This young man will have an opportunity, when he gets out, to try to turn his life around.”

Clements had requested Moore be sentenced under a law targeted at young defendants that would have made him eligible for release after three years.

“He’s accepted accountability for his actions. He was wrong, and he embraced that,” Clements told The News in an interview after the sentencing.

Reckling’s family did not speak at the sentencing or to reporters afterward.

A separate case against Moore accusing him of resisting arrest has been dismissed.

Deputies escorted him out of the courtroom to begin his sentence. He was not handcuffed.

Ramon DeBose, 18, of Clinton Township is accused of killing Reckling. Marquis Goins, 18, of Detroit, also faces charges as an accessory. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said DeBose drove the SUV, and Goins and Moore rode as passengers at the time of the shooting.

Judge Shawn Jacque in Detroit’s 36th District Court ordered DeBose in March to stand trial. DeBose faces life in prison if convicted.

jcardi@detroitnews.com

©2025 The Detroit News. Visit detroitnews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Anne Snabes, The Detroit News

The Rev. Lorn Snow, a Jesuit priest in Detroit, felt a sense of loss for himself and the Catholic Church after hearing the news that Pope Francis had died.

But that sadness later turned to two other feelings, he said.

One was joy, since Francis’ death was amid the Easter season, which is the “highest moment in the life of the church,” said Snow, the pastor of Gesu Catholic Church in Detroit. On Easter, Catholics celebrate the rising of Jesus from the dead after his crucifixion.

“And I just thought it was so beautiful that the Risen Jesus came for Pope Francis in the midst of our Easter season — our resurrection,” he said. “And, you know, he shares in that resurrection now.”

The other feeling was gratitude. Snow said he is thankful for the pope’s years of “shepherding us” and caring for “not only the church, but really in a deep sense, for the world.”

Faith leaders in Metro Detroit are reflecting on Pope Francis’ life and legacy following his death Monday morning from a stroke and heart failure, as well as his Saturday funeral mass. Some Catholic priests remember Francis’ authenticity, his concern for the Earth and the example he set for older adults who are aging.

Some Protestant pastors remarked on his care for the poor and the marginalized, and a local rabbi called him “such a devoted, sincere, humble man.” An imam in Detroit praised Francis’ attention to the Palestinian people in Gaza.

The Rev. Elbert Dulworth, pastor of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Rochester, said he was excited to see a pope who “seemed to kind of bring people together.”

“As someone coming from a Protestant denomination, I felt like he really was a pastoral leader for not just the Catholic Church, but for all of us in the Christian church, kind of calling us together ― a more unifying presence for us,” Dulworth said.

Tens of thousands of people came to St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican to pay their respects to Francis, who lay in state for three days. His funeral Mass was Saturday morning in St. Peter’s Square.

‘In touch with his people to the very end’

The Rev. Terry Kerner, pastor of St. Kateri Catholic Church in Dearborn, noted that on Easter Sunday, Francis ministered to the people in St. Peter’s Square, including blessing babies.

“He was in touch with his people to the very end,” he said.

Francis was “a beautiful example of aging” and how to grow old in “a gracious and faithful way,” Kerner said. His parish has a lot of elderly parishioners, he said.

“I just think his life spoke to them by his example and his writings,” Kerner said.

He said Francis’ message was that the elderly have gifts for the young, and the young have gifts to give to the elderly.

“Nobody is disposable,” Kerner said, adding that seniors are “certainly a gift” to the church and humankind.

He noted that he doesn’t know anyone who disliked Francis.

“They may not have agreed with some of his policies,” Kerner said, “but it was hard to dislike him, because he’s just so authentic and genuine and loving.”

His concern for the environment

In 2015, Pope Francis released an encyclical — which is a letter — on the environment called Laudato Si’. In the letter, Francis called for a global dialogue about how people are influencing the future of the planet through their actions.

Gesu Catholic Church’s Snow said his church is considered a Laudato Si’ parish. Gesu promotes environmental justice and is trying to reduce waste coming from the parish and its grade school.

“It will be his great legacy, I think, as pope — is his care for creation,” Snow said.

At Gesu, students compost in the lunchroom, and the school gives leftover food to local farmers. When the parish provides coffee and donuts to parishioners on Sunday, they don’t use Styrofoam or other plastics.

The parish also has solar panels on its school buildings and electric vehicle charging stations in its parking lots.

“We’re doing everything possible we can,” Snow said. “We don’t use pesticides on our property. … All our landscaping are natural plants that would be here in Michigan, and we don’t utilize any things that would harm the Earth.”

The Rev. Faith Fowler, the lead pastor of Cass Community United Methodist Church and executive director of the nonprofit Cass Community Social Services, said Francis’ stance on the environment resonated with her. She said there should be “a planet for future generations.” Her organization has installed solar panels on its campus, and it harvests rainwater and is replacing grass with native plants.

“I’m a firm believer that although the planet belongs to God, we have the responsibility of being good stewards of what we’ve received, what we’ve been blessed with, and that we should pass it on to future generations as best we can,” Fowler said. “And I think I mirror the pope in that love for the environment and the understanding that we should be good stewards.”

His care for the poor

Fowler said many members of her church are poor, and “they too are feeling diminished” by Francis’ death.

“He was somebody who stood up and stood with and ministered to and was ministered by poor people,” she said. “And that’s not always true in the church ― any church. The higher you climb, the more distant you are from people who are discounted by the larger society. He was a man who stayed connected and stayed caring and reminded the church to be less worried about the things we worry about most of the time.”

She said Cass Community United Methodist Church works with people who need food, shelter and clothing. She said the gestures of Pope Francis’ ministry, including visiting a prison on Holy Thursday last week, were “very inspiring.”

“I really looked up to him,” Fowler said.

Kerner said Francis reminded the Catholic Church of “an incredibly important mission” that it has to the poor and the marginalized.

“We are at our best when we’re serving the poorest and the most vulnerable,” he said.

LGBTQ+ issues

Dulworth, pastor of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, said he was thankful to see Pope Francis take a step in reaching out to the LGBTQ+ community.

Catholic teaching on LGBTQ+ issues didn’t change during Francis’ tenure, including the prohibition on same-sex marriage, but Francis conveyed through his actions and remarks that he wanted the church to be a more welcoming place for LGBTQ+ people.

Fowler said she “sensed the position” that Francis was in, because many churches in Africa are more conservative than churches in the U.S., Germany and other places.

“And yet they were all a part of his church, so how you maintain unity is a tough call,” she said, adding that progressives “probably didn’t get everything they wanted.”

Fowler said she would have loved to have seen Pope Francis allow women to be ordained as priests or deacons. He did, however, appoint women to top Vatican positions, including Sister Simona Brambilla, the prefect of the department responsible for all the Catholic Church’s religious orders.

Muslim and Jewish leaders share their perspectives

Imam Imran Salha of the Islamic Center of Detroit said he offers his condolences to “my Christian brothers and sisters.”

“And I pray that God replaces him with many others to follow in his example of compassion and wisdom and clarity of choice,” he said.

In Pope Francis’ last speech, which Archbishop Diego Ravelli read aloud on Easter Sunday, he called for a ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas militant group in Gaza. He also urged Hamas to release the dozens of Israeli hostages it is holding and condemned growing global antisemitism.

Salha said Francis “always recognized the people of Palestine and their suffering on their occupation.” He said the pope regularly called people in Gaza to check in on them.

Rabbi Asher Lopatin, director of community relations for the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor, called Francis “such an incredible man.” He said Francis showed care for immigrants, the weak and the environment, and showed “respect for every human being.”

“These resonated very much with the Jewish community,” he said.

Lopatin, who is the rabbi at Kehillat Etz Chayim in Oak Park, added that the Jewish community appreciated Francis’ denunciation of antisemitism and the love he showed for the hostage families.

“However, I think in the life of the pope, of Pope Francis, all the values that he had could have been reflected in a stronger, more robust support for the Jewish state” and for the struggle that the Jewish state has with “all its enemies,” he said.

He said calls for a ceasefire have to be coupled with a demand for Hamas to release the hostages. Hamas-led militants abducted 251 people in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and killed around 1,200, mostly civilians. Some hostages have been released, some of whom were dead, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners. Some hostages were rescued by Israeli military forces. The bodies of more than 40 hostages were retrieved by Israeli forces.

Lopatin said he thinks Jews expected Francis to “be more of a voice” for getting the hostages released.

“But … there’s always more to do, and I hope the Catholic Church takes from his teachings and becomes that voice of support for the one Jewish state,” he said.

asnabes@detroitnews.com

 

By Hannah Mackay, The Detroit News

A search warrant affidavit for the West Bloomfield home where three siblings died in a fire in February revealed that the first 911 call came from the family’s 16-year-old daughter, who told authorities, “there’s no way for us to get out.”

The affidavit sheds new light on the Feb. 2 fire that killed Hannah, Jeremiah, and Jacob Oliora, ages 16, 14, and 12, and why the siblings, one of whom had nonverbal autism, weren’t able to escape.

The investigation into the fire, meanwhile, is ongoing, according to West Bloomfield police. The West Bloomfield police and fire departments have denied Freedom of Information acts requests related to the fire and its investigation.

Police executed a search warrant at the Oliora home on Feb. 4. No findings have been submitted to the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office, according to Police Chief Dale Young.

According to the affidavit, Hannah told 911 dispatchers that the fire started in the living room. Authorities haven’t revealed what caused the blaze.

After the fire, police interviewed the parents, Don and Liz Oliora, the next day and learned that Jeremiah had been diagnosed with nonverbal autism. He’d previously attempted to climb out of a second-story window of the home on Pembury Lane and left the home unsupervised through the front door. He was found in their neighborhood by a passerby, according to the documents.

To prevent similar incidents from happening again, the parents told police they installed window locks and an interior front door lock. The key to unlock the front door was kept in a lockbox inside, near the home’s garage. Only the parents and their oldest daughter had access to the lockbox, according to court documents.

Hannah’s initial 911 call came in around 8:05 p.m. on Feb. 2. Her father had left the home around 2:40 p.m. to work for DoorDash, and her mother left at the same time for work as a nurse, according to the documents.

At 7:10 p.m., Hannah called her father to ask about the family’s dinner plans. She told her father that she would start cooking hamburgers for her and her brothers, and her dad said he would come home after completing a few more DoorDash stops.

Liz was working when she was told about the fire by a neighbor and the police. She told police that her three children were inside and that she was on her way home, and called her husband to alert him at 8:27 p.m.

When police arrived on the scene of the fire and learned about the children trapped inside the home, they attempted to extinguish the flames in the back of the house but couldn’t.

Firefighters then arrived and were able to enter the home and extract the kids. One was found right behind the front door, while another was in an upstairs bathroom, according to the documents.

Hannah and Jeremiah were taken to Detroit Receiving Hospital, while Jacob was taken to Henry Ford Hospital in West Bloomfield, but all three succumbed to their injuries.

An autopsy by the Oakland County Medical Examiner’s Office revealed that Jacob’s preliminary cause of death was accidental and due to smoke and soot inhalation, according to the court documents. Autopsies for his brother and sister had not been conducted when the search warrant affidavit was filed.

When firefighters entered the home, they could hear the ignitor of the gas stove clicking, according to the documents.

hmackay@detroitnews.com