Yemeni nationals living in the United States who have Temporary Protected Status (TPS) have until April 13 to self deport or seek other legal residency through asylum or work visas.
In February the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—who was fired last week—announced the end of TPS for Yemen.
The designation was first granted in September 2015 due to war in the country. Noem said conditions have improved, no longer warranting TPS. About 1,400 Yemeni nationals had TPS status as of last year according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
People who wish to self deport are encouraged to use the Customs and Border Protection CBP Home app to report their departure. That includes a complimentary plane ticket and $2,600.
People who do not leave or find alternative legal residency could be deported and banned from future immigration to the U.S.
Additional headlines from Monday, April 6, 2026
Detroit Ride to Rise
Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield launched the Ride to Rise program Monday. It allows all students living in Detroit to ride city buses for free.
The program is aimed at reducing absenteeism, as well as providing transportation for students to get to after school activities such as tutoring, enrichment programs, and more.
Sheffield says the program also brings more money back to the district.
“It’s about $700,000 a year that they currently spend on bus fare for students. Bus passes, that money, again, will be redirected back into the school system. The school board and the superintendent will decide what…they use that money for,” she says. “We have been advocating for it to go back to after school programming.”
The 6-month pilot allows any student to show their school ID to get on a D-DOT bus for free. That includes students who attend charter, private, and other city schools.
A new report shows Michigan’s gender pay gap widened in 2024. Women who worked full-time earned 79 cents for every dollar a man earned. That’s three cents less than the year before, as men’s wages grew faster.
“The bigger picture is that women are being impacted by caregiving duties, they’re impacted by state policies. Unpaid leave paid sick time. They’re impacted by what education and training they can receive, and they’re also impacted even way earlier than they enter the workforce.”
Javaid says supporting childcare, banning employers from asking about salary history, and increasing education access would help close the gender pay gap.
Last year’s partial federal government shutdown made it hard for Michigan to collect statewide job data. The state’s last unemployment rate was 5% in January. Michigan lost jobs last year as more people left the workforce.
The revised annual report shows unemployment remained essentially flat last year. Michigan showed a net loss of about 2,300 hundred jobs.
The Michigan Bureau of Labor Market Information Director Wayne Rourke says Michigan’s workforce declined by 1.6% percent over the course of 2025. He says that’s largely due to older people retiring and exiting the workforce.
The new monthly federal jobs report for March showed the nation added jobs last month and the unemployment rate ticked down.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer declared April as Arab American and Chaldean-American Heritage Month.
Dearborn, Michigan is home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans per capita in the U.S.
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Since 2015, consumer confidence in the economy has plummeted according to recent consumer survey data by the University of Michigan. But while confidence has declined, spending has remained strong. Why? And, how have rising gas prices factored into the economy?
Professor Joanne Hsu is the director of the monthly Surveys of Consumers at the University of Michigan. She spoke with The Metro’s Sam Corey.
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Automakers and auto suppliers are a huge part of metro Detroit’s economy. And they will likely have to change as the war unfolds.
As America’s strikes against Iran continue, and the Strait of Hormuz remains in question, gas prices are rising, and more people are thinking about purchasing an electric vehicle.
But despite interest, how much will EV sales actually increase for companies like Ford, GM and Stellantis — especially as car sales in general have plummeted over the past few decades?
John McElroy is an automotive analyst with Autoline. He spoke with The Metro‘s Robyn Vincent.
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The economy has undergone many drastic changes over the years. If you’re a millennial, change and chaos have been commonplace.
The Great Recession hit in the late aughts, reducing wealth. About ten years later, the pandemic occurred, causing many to stay at home and others to risk their health at work. Inflation deepened during President Joe Biden’s time in office. President Trump enacted tariffs. And now, the U.S. and Israel are at war with Iran.
It’s hard to gauge all the consequences of this latest shock, but it’s a continuation of one thing: uncertainty.
Rising gas prices and supply chain disruptions are now among the challenges small businesses must navigate. It might be why over half of small businesses owners in Michigan say they’re making operational changes to prepare for a recession, according to a recent survey.
Which small businesses are hit hardest by the war in Iran and its disruptions? And, what could make them more resilient in the face of chaos?
Mark Lee is the president and CEO of The Lee Group, where he consults with small businesses across Southeast Michigan. He spoke with The Metro‘s Robyn Vincent.
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Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield gave her first state of the city address last night at Mumford High School.
She announced a new program starting today for Detroit Public Schools students. “Any K-12 student in the city can ride the bus for free, seven days a week, 365 days a year.” Sheffield said some of the school budget money for bus fare will be rerouted into after-school programs.
And she announced a plan to lure businesses to economic corridors in the city, with a new position: the Director of Retail Attraction.
“For too long, the city has waited for retailers to come to them. My administration will go out and compete for that investment, because strong neighborhoods need more than housing and infrastructure. They need vibrant commercial corridors where people can shop, work and gather close to home.”
Sheffield also said she was working with billionaire Dan Gilbert and the Move Detroit Coalition to entice more people to move to the city. “Our first program will support 313 current and future Detroiters with real resources, $15,000 to support home ownership and business growth, and $1,000 in relocation assistance to make it easier to come home to Detroit.”
The mayor also highlighted some of the things she’s already done since taking office, such as raising the minimum wage for city workers, and bringing the program Rx Kids to the city to help new mothers.
Additional headlines from Wednesday, April 1, 2026
According to the Treasury department, nearly 80% of metro Detroiters earning below 125,000 report never receiving formal education in personal finance. Roughly 25% of Detroiters do not have access to a bank.
The initiative includes a website that links to free tools and courses on credit, banking, and student loans.
Neighborhood Enterprise Zone tax
Detroit City Council debated the value of Neighborhood Enterprise Zone tax incentives yesterday, questioning whether they are a useful tool for relieving the tax burden on residents.
NEZ tax incentives cap the city and county millage rate at 50%. Under the current structure, a $300,000 home would be taxed $6,000; in the suburbs, the same home’s taxes would be less than $2,000.
Councilmember Scott Benson says the city needs to be competitive with neighboring cities, which the NEZ does by lowering taxes—even if they aren’t as low as a suburb’s.
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A new report from the Detroit Regional Chamber is ringing the alarm with warnings that the house is on fire.
The report states that despite the resurgence of the City of Detroit the region itself is declining in national rankings of key economic areas, including per capita income education and population growth.
Chamber CEO Sandy Baruah says Michigan has fallen further and faster in key metric areas than any other state in the country. He spoke with WDET’s Bre’Anna Tinsley about the issue.
Listen: Detroit Regional Chamber calls for bipartisan plan to fix economy
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity
Sandy Baruah, CEO of Detroit Regional Chamber: The state of Michigan and the Detroit region both really need to understand where we are in terms of our national peers. It’s hard to get where you’re going if you don’t know where we are, and our polling shows that Michiganians believe that Michigan is essentially dead average in key metrics such as our K-12 performance, our per capita income, our unemployment rate, our ability to attract high tech jobs. The percentage of our adults in our society that have a college degree, they think we’re dead average, but in reality, in most of those categories, we’re in the bottom 10, and we have to turn this around.
Bre’Anna Tinsley, WDET: Where do you think that disconnect is coming from?
SB: To be perfectly candid, I don’t think anyone has told the Michigan public where we really stand.
We have been dropping pretty dramatically since the year 2000. For example, as recently as the year 2000 we were a top 20 state for per capita income, we were a top 20 state for fourth grade reading and K-12 performance. In both those categories, we’re now in the bottom 10.
So, we have fallen further and faster in some of these key metrics than any other state in history. You know, Republicans will point to the Democrats, and Democrats will point to the Republicans, and we think that’s just all bunk, because this fall has occurred under Democrat and Republican governors. It’s fallen under Democrat and Republican legislators. It’s fallen under, you know, mixed government over time.
So, we need a bipartisan, long-term path forward if we’re really going to address this issue.
BT: So if it’s not a political issue, do we know what the actual cause for this decline is?
SB: Michigan, as a purple state, has a tendency to ping pong back and forth between different political, economic and education strategies in the old days, you know, the parties would find a way to compromise and and kind of create some long-term solutions.
In Michigan, what we do is we go from a kind of a Republican approach for a few years, and we go to a Democratic approach for a few years.
We shift economic development strategies, we shift education strategies and the ping ponging back and forth, the inconsistency has not allowed us to really create a path forward, because successful change takes time. You can’t expect it in one legislative cycle or even one term as governor, it just doesn’t work that way.
BT: And so do you think that is the biggest change that needs to happen, or are there any other solutions that you have on how the state can improve?
SB: Well, I mean, certainly, you know, as a policy and economic development organization, the Detroit Regional Chamber certainly has our suggested solutions on various policy issues, but we really stress that what is desperately needed in the state of Michigan is the is the ceasing of the ping ponging policy back and forth between what you can call a left policy or a right policy, because businesses won’t come here. They won’t invest, if one, they’re uncertain about what the policy environment is going to be. Businesses certainly won’t come here if we exacerbate the reputation that what was policy one year will be taken away the next year.
If we want to grow jobs, if we want to grow incomes, if we want to grow the percentage of people with post-secondary degrees, such as a four year degree or a community college degree or a skilled trade certificate, that’s just not going to happen if we just keep ping ponging back and forth.
BT: So the situation, though, is not all doom and gloom. There are some highlights in the state of Michigan, in the Detroit region, where exactly are we succeeding right now?
SB: There are areas right I mean, certainly when you look at some of the municipalities, the city of Detroit, obviously, is a shiny example that has been held up, not just nationally, but internationally, as the turnaround city really, of the globe. It would be hard to think of a place that’s been more celebrated over the last decade than the City of Detroit for all that has happened, but also places like Grand Rapids, they’ve been on a 25-year growth and development trajectory. Kalamazoo has been on a long-term growth trajectory.
The second is that we are an innovation powerhouse. What we’re not good at, however, is really capitalizing on our innovation that occurs from our universities, Michigan, Michigan State, Wayne State and Michigan Tech and in attracting even more new high level young talent that will start jobs, start new companies. You know, that is a huge plus.
And then, thirdly, we have all of these new innovation nodes being developed, Michigan central new lab, the University of Michigan Innovation Center, the Dan Gilbert Health Innovation Center on Gratiot. I mean, these are all amazing new innovation centers.
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WDET is talking to candidates vying to become Michigan’s next governor as the state heads towards party primaries and November’s general election.
That includes Michigan Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt, who is part of a crowded field of Republican contenders for the top job in Lansing.
Nesbitt says Michigan’s next governor must focus on the state’s economy.
Listen:Gubernatorial candidate Aric Nesbitt speaks to WDET’s Quinn Klinefelter
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Sen. Aric Nesbitt: As a farm boy that grew up in southwest Michigan, I know how hard it is to make a living. I grew up baling hay and having to sleep on the main floor because it was 10 degrees cooler there. I worked my way through college, went to Hillsdale College and earned my economics degree. I had to take five different jobs there.
And the people of Michigan are hurting right now. It’s tough for families, for job creators and for kids to make it here in Michigan. We’re paying the highest insurance rates, the highest energy costs in the Midwest.
Our job creators are being crushed by regulations out of Lansing that are preventing them from expanding and growing and creating more wealth here in the state.
And then our kids, three out of five fourth graders can’t read at grade level. And we know if you can’t read at grade level, you have a nearly 70% chance of being on social welfare or in jail at some point. That paints a very tough and dark picture for the future of Michigan.
I want to paint a very bright picture for Michigan, one where every kid can read, every family can actually make it here in the state, and job creators can invest and grow so we can become a wealthy state again.
Quinn Klinefelter, WDET News: If you were elected to the governor’s office, how would you try to address some of those issues?
AN: The first thing is to help families. I was in north Michigan a little bit ago talking to a guy that moved here from Tennessee. You don’t meet too many of those folks because Tennessee is a right-to-work state with no income tax. He said he’d added up his cost for utilities, energy and his local property taxes. He says he’s paying about $5,000 more per year to live in Michigan than he did in Tennessee. And as a farm boy, $5,000 is a lot of money.
So you start off by looking at energy. Right now the Democrats in Lansing and Gov. Whitmer mandated this 100% renewable energy, banned natural gas, banned nuclear. It’s industrializing hundreds of thousands of acres of farm and forest land. Makes me sad seeing all these good corn fields going into industrial solar panels. If we’re going to grow and invest here in the state, we got to repeal the Green New Scam and allow them all of the above energy proposals. Actually allow nuclear and natural gas facilities to be built. Lower the costs for manufacturing and for families. Families are already paying the highest rates in the nation. Got to bring it back.
You look at our insurance laws, at the costs of auto insurance and homeowner’s insurance. We’re paying the highest prices in the Midwest. Ohio has a more competitive market. So does Illinois. If you take their laws and bring them to Michigan, you can cut our insurance rates. And that’s the same thing with why I’m running on eliminating the state property tax. That’s the start of finding how you can make sure that you put more money in hard-working families’ pockets and less money being sent up to Lansing.
QK: If one cuts or eliminates some of those taxes though, then that eliminates some revenue coming into the state. Is there a way that you would envision trying to make up that revenue? Or do you think we can just tighten the belt and go forward?
AN: Over the last seven years under Gov. Whitmer and the Democrats in Lansing, the state government has grown by 50%. I don’t know anybody who’s gotten a 50% pay increase around the state of Michigan. Hasn’t happened in our family and hasn’t happened in our neighbors’ families. If you would have only used funds from half the growth of government at the state level, you could have eliminated the state income tax.
This is the point. We haven’t been seeing that 50% increase in terms of services. We are a top 20 state in terms of spending on education. Yet we’re a bottom 10 state in reading scores, science and education. The state demographer says over the next 30 years, we’re going to lose upwards of another 700,000 people in the state of Michigan.
We’re on target to go down to 49th in terms of per capita income. We could become a poorer state closer to Mississippi. If we’re going to grow as a state and make sure our kids are able to learn, we got to shake up the status quo in Lansing and stop just tweaking around the edges, which is what we’ve seen.
So, as the next governor Michigan, I’m going to lower the cost of living, increase wages, create better job opportunities and make sure our kids have a choice to either go on to college or enter a trade school. I think we’ve lost that here in Michigan, having a good solid trades education. Those people are actually career ready.
QK: Earlier this year you had mentioned you thought it might be necessary to have a federal monitor oversee Michigan’s elections to ensure they were fair and legal. Do you still feel that way? Do you think that’s still something that needs to be watched for?
AN: This is the challenge Michigan has. We have the worst secretary of state.
QK: Who would possibly be your opponent if you were the GOP nominee for governor.
AN: Yes, Jocelyn Benson. We’ve seen time after time that she continues to ignore subpoenas from the Michigan House of Representatives and subpoenas from the federal Department of Justice I think that she needs to allow for federal oversight of these elections because she has a very poor history of administrating them. That needs to be corrected.
This is why it’s so important this fall that voters approve a constitutional amendment that’ll be on the ballot that makes sure every person in Michigan shows a photo ID to vote. It cleans up the voter rolls and ensures that you’re a legal citizen here in the state of Michigan.
QK: What would you say to those that argue those requirements will hurt voter turnout, because some people may not have some of that identification with them?
AN: These reforms happened in Georgia. They were saying the same thing there, yet they had a higher voter turnout the other year than the years before. These are just straw man arguments.
QK: If you are elected, you’d be taking over the governor’s chair from Democrat Gretchen Whitmer. Obviously she’s in the opposite political party. But she has gained a bit of a national profile. She’s had discussions with President Trump that seemed to at least affect some of the issues going on in Michigan. What are your thoughts overall about coming into that office if you were elected following Whitmer’s time?
AN: I joined with Gov. Whitmer a year ago when President Trump announced the new fighter mission at Selfridge Air National Guard Base. We worked together to be able to get that done. And to block the Asian carp in Chicago from entering the Great Lakes. And I worked with President Trump to find help for victims of the ice storms a year ago in northern Michigan.
I’m going to continue to partner with the Trump administration to make sure that Michigan issues are on the list of things they need to address.
And this is why the status quo in Lansing needs to be shaken up. It’s not about establishing a national profile. It’s about solving problems for hardworking Michigan families. And it matters. Detroit and Saginaw are two of the 10 cities with the highest crime rates in the nation. We got some tough challenges as a state.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Nesbitt says Gov. Whitmer banned nuclear power. But she has supported restarting the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant in southwest Michigan. The plant is in Michigan’s 20th state senate district, which Nesbitt represents.
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Vice President JD Vance made a stop at a robotics manufacturing plant in Auburn Hills this week. The visit was mainly focused on promoting Republican policies ahead of this year’s midterm elections.
The vice president spent most of time touting the administration’s economic policies, which Vance claims have been good for job growth. The most recent report from the Bureau of Labor statistics shows a loss of 92,000 jobs in February.
He made little reference to the ongoing war in Iran during his prepared remarks. When asked by reporters about oil prices, Vance acknowledged they are up.
“I will say,” says Vance. “the president said this and I certainly agree with it, this is a temporary blip.”
Vance promised the crowd gasoline costs would come back down once the U.S., quote, “finishes taking care of business” in the Middle East. He did not say when that would be.
It was his first visit to the state since last week’s attack on the Temple Israel synagogue, which took place about 30 minutes away from where the vice president was speaking. Vance says he and the president stand with Michigan’s Jewish community.
“We love you,” says Vance, “and we’re proud of how you’ve handled this particular situation because it is tough.”
The suspect, 41-year-old Ayman Mohamad Ghazali — a naturalized U-S citizen from Lebanon — took his own life during the attack. Vance praised the work of security guards at Temple Israel.
He reassured the crowd that the U.S. government is constantly monitoring to try to stop such attacks before they happen.
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Matthew Nix had driven past the brewery in Sauganash for years, but — not much of a weekday drinker — had never stopped in.
When he finally decided to meet friends at the taproom on a recent Saturday to play some cards, he found bartenders dancing on countertops, dogs wearing sweaters and the last of the beer draining from the tap. It was the farewell party for Alarmist Brewing.
“This is my first time here, first and obviously last,” said Nix, 36, a high school teacher living in the Edgewater neighborhood, about the closure.
In Illinois and across the country, breweries have been struggling as consumers seek healthier drinking habits or have a wider range of options, such as THC-infused drinks, as business costs continue to rise. Many have closed their doors, while others have redefined its meaning as a social space that offers beverage variety and events.
The number of U.S breweries closing outpaced those that opened for the second year in a row in 2025 for a net loss of 179 last year, according to preliminary 2025 data from Brewers Association, a trade group for small American brewers.
It stands in stark contrast from a decade ago — a golden age — for craft brewers when the number of breweries opening was about 10 times higher than those closing, according to Matt Gacioch, staff economist at Brewers Association.
One industry challenge is that Americans are now drinking less. A 2025 Gallup poll showed that only 54% of U.S. adults said they consume alcohol — the lowest percentage in 90 years.
Figures are even lower among young adults with only 50% reporting that they drink alcohol. These numbers fall in line with healthier drinking trends like “sober curious” and “Dry January,” which seek mindful and moderate drinking.
On top of drinking less, consumers are also seeking wider beverage options from nonalcoholic drinks to hard seltzers, which adds pressure for traditional craft breweries specializing in beer.
Sports and music arena United Center is expected to start selling THC-infused drinks Señorita and Rythm at its stands this month — apparently the largest U.S. arena to do so.
“Bringing Señorita and Rythm to the United Center reflects a simple truth: Consumers want nonalcoholic options, and leading venues are responding,” Ben Kovler, Rythm, Inc. chairman and interim CEO, said in a statement last month.
Other music venues that sell cannabis-derived drinks are the Salt Shed, Riviera, Ramova Theatre and Thalia Hall, taking up coveted beverage shelf space.
“There’s just so much more competition in terms of consumer attention and physical retail space,” Gacioch said. “There’s this whole world of other options.”
Rising business expenses and the cost of goods like aluminum have also contributed to the strain, particularly after the pandemic.
“You have the increased cost of just about everything,” said Andrew Heritage, chief economist at the Beer Institute, noting the increase in operating costs, rent and labor.
Some Chicago breweries were unable to recover, with Lo Rez Brewing in the Pilsen neighborhood closing its doors in 2023 in what cofounder Dave Dahl called a “pandemic casualty.” Another staple in the craft industry, Metropolitan Brewing, one of Chicago’s oldest, closed in 2023 after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Most recently, award-winning Alarmist Brewing closed on Feb. 1 after years of struggling with falling business after the pandemic.
“The bottom line is we’re just not selling,” said Alarmist owner Gary Gulley. “It just never recovered since COVID.”
Alarmist Brewing owner Gary Gulley, center, receives a hug from Keith Willert at the Sauganash neighborhood brewery and taproom in Chicago, Jan. 31, 2026. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
Illinois lost over 30 breweries in two years after 2020, falling to 218 total breweries, according to data from the Beer Institute. By 2024, the number of Illinois breweries rebounded to 251.
Some breweries have adapted to create third spaces, a place to mingle and play trivia with friends — and pups.
“I like a place where you can bring your dog, you can bring a book,” Nix said, likening these breweries to social spaces where you can play card games.
One brewery that has been bolstering events and activities is Maplewood Brewery and Distillery in the Logan Square neighborhood. The decade-old brewery holds events like its upcoming Pulaski Day Party to celebrate its Pulaski pilsner, trivia nights and beer festivals to cultivate brand loyalty.
“We have our core brand that we make, but we’re always coming out with something new and fun … that’s helped us out,” said Paul Megalis, co-owner and CFO of Maplewood Brewery.
Their expansive beverage options include ready-to-drink rum punch cocktails, in-house coffee liqueurs for espresso martini lovers and seasonal beer concoctions.
“We’ve essentially been a beverage company since Day 1, and so we’ve always had a diversified portfolio. I mean, we just hustle,” Megalis said.
They plan to open a second location in Glen Ellyn slated for this spring.
Despite the changing tides in the craft beer business, experts believe craft breweries are evolving not disappearing.
“Craft beer industry is nothing if not creative,” Gacioch said.
A woman drinks a beer in a packed taproom at Alarmist Brewing, in Chicago’s Sauganash neighborhood on Jan. 31, 2026. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)
UAW Stellantis workers are reportedly disappointed because they are not getting profit sharing checks from 2025. This follows the company facing a multibillion dollar deficit last year. It’s also the first time Stellantis hasn’t provided a profit-sharing bonus since the recession.
The Big Three has faced obstacles because of tariff uncertainty, Electric vehicle whiplash, interest rates and more, but Ford and GM still provided a profit-sharing checks to their employees. Stellantis says that it expects 2026 and its expanding product wave to bring profitable growth in North America.
Additional headlines for Friday, Feb. 27, 2016
Personnel shortage in behavioral health field
A new report from the Michigan Health Council shows that Michigan doesn’t have enough opportunities for students to become behavioral health care workers. This is contributing to a shortage of certified school-based mental health professionals across the state, according to the council.
This shortage puts a large workload on the personnel in this field. In the 2023-2024 school year Michigan had about 600 students per school counselor, over a thousand students per school psychologists, and almost 500 students per social worker. The report goes on to share that improving vocational programs could introduce thousands of high school students to fulfilling careers in behavioral health.
Sports updates
NBA
The Detroit Pistons face the Cleveland Cavaliers today at Little Ceasars Arena but—like their game against the Thunder—the opposing team is without their best players, with both Donovan Mitchall out with groin injuries and James Harden questionable with a thumb injury.
The Pistons are playing without their full strength with Isaiah Stweart out again because of his involvement in the fight with the Charlotte Hornets on Feb. 9. This is his sixth game of his seven game suspension.
Tonight’s game tip off is at 7 p.m. with a following away game against the Magic on Sunday, March 1.
NHL
The Red Wings face the Carolina Hurricanes tomorrow Feb. 28 at the Lenovo Center. The Red Wings are currently second in the Atlantic Divison with 34 wins and 19 losses. Game starts at 7 p.m.
Blueberry recall
More than 55,000 pounds of frozen blueberries, some of which were shipped to Michigan, have been recalled because of possible listeria contamination.
The Oregon Potato Company was the distributor of the recalled berries. This shipment was also sent to Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin and Canada.
The FDA recalled it initially on Feb. 12 and classified the recall as a Class 1 recall on Feb. 24, which means there is a reasonable probability that the use of or exposure to a violative product will cause serious adverse health consequences or death.
Go to your local grocery store to see if your purchase of frozen blueberries was in the mix.
Handmaid’s Tale in Detroit
And the dystopian world of the Handmaid’s Tale comes to the Detroit Opera House. The play, once a hit television series and novel, is a chilling look into a future where America’s democracy morphs into a religious tyranny.
There are showings on Sunday March 1, Thursday March 5 and Saturday March 7.
Listen to the latest episode of the “Detroit Evening Report” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.
Support local journalism.
WDET strives to cover what’s happening in your community. As a public media institution, we maintain our ability to explore the music and culture of our region through independent support from readers like you. If you value WDET as your source of news, music and conversation, please make a gift today.
President Trump lashed out at the U.S. Supreme Court after it ruled his use of certain tariffs was illegal.
Trump noted he had other options, including blocking all trade with other nations.
“I can destroy the trade. I can destroy the country,” the president said. “I’m even allowed to impose a foreign country-destroying embargo. I can embargo. I can do anything I want. But I can’t charge $1.”
Trump later said he would impose a new global 15% tariff, though it initially began at 10%.
Congress would have to extend the tariff in about five months. The president could potentially get around that provision by announcing a new round of levies at that time.
Many businesses are weighing the impact of the tariff upheaval, including Detroit’s Big 3 automakers.
The head of the trade association MichAuto, Glenn Stevens, Jr., says car companies had anticipated the High Court’s decision.
Listen: SCOTUS tariff ruling extends uncertainty for Detroit automakers
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Glenn Stevens, Jr.: It was pretty much assumed that the justices would rule this way based on some of the preliminary arguments. We also felt that there would be a response from the administration that they might use additional or new tools if the Supreme Court ruled this way. And we have seen the president state that. I think it does reaffirm the power of Congress according to the U.S. Constitution, in the case of this particular act. But it leaves a lot of uncertainty with our industries and in our economy.
Quinn Klinefelter, WDET News: The High Court ruled on the reciprocal tariffs on other countries. But they’re still allowing levies imposed ostensibly to protect national security. The 25% tariffs on imported vehicles and auto parts still stands, except for imports covered under the North American trade deal. So, how do you see the Supreme Court decision affecting the auto industry in particular?
GS: It affects a portion of it. But not by any stretch all of the tariffs and trade deals that have been put in place since Jan. 20 of last year when the America First Trade Policy Act was issued. Yes, the national security tariffs remain in place. The unfair trade practice tariffs remain in place. Those are very tied heavily to China. Those are significant. But anything that did deal with this Emergency Powers Act has been struck down now.
What happens from here, we don’t know. There will be court challenges. The question of whether companies will be able to get a rebate, so to speak, on what they paid, there was no direction from the court on that. So, again, we have a lot of uncertainty moving forward. And then we have a new wild card, which we anticipated, where the president said that he’d use fair trade and anti-dumping subsidy tariffs. And there’s a whole process for that.
QK: And how would that affect the auto industry?
GS: It’s such a complex supply chain. It depends on where the vehicles are assembled. It depends on what is the country of origin where the components come from. For example, a lot of the parts and the components are still exempt on this continent under the current USMCA agreement. But if you’re importing parts from other countries outside of that agreement, it does impact you, the 25% on imported vehicles does apply. So it’s actually quite complex and has been for some time. And this may muddle it up a little bit more.
QK: The trade deal between the US, Mexico, and Canada was coming up for review this year. It’s vital for automakers in particular, considering the cross-pollination of parts and vehicles between the three countries. But with this new Supreme Court decision, do you think the president may have a lot less leverage to push for a new USMCA deal that he would like?
GS: I’m not so sure about the less leverage. What I do know is our organization and many others that are related to the industry, we remain steadfast that we need to get to a renewed and strengthened USMCA agreement. We are stronger together with Canada and Mexico in the current supply chain.
Are modifications and some things needed to be adjusted? Yes. Where that goes, we’re not sure. Discussions are at a bit of a stalemate. But we have quite a bit of runway yet up to July 1st with regards to that.
QK: Canada reached a deal recently with China to sell some Chinese vehicles in that country. The Ford Motor Company has talked about perhaps trying to set up their own deal with Chinese automakers. General Motors has said they did not want that type of a thing. In light of what’s happened with tariffs now, how do you think all that might play out?
GS: Let’s look at the Canada situation first. Prime Minister Carney has a tentative agreement with China to import a small quantity, a very controlled number, of electric vehicles. That was a significant development that has drawn some criticism from the White House. It may complicate things. Again, I underscore that it’s tentative. There are a lot of other things going on with regards to trade and we’re not really certain where this is going right now.
QK: Some automotive analysts have forecast that the impact of tariffs would force car companies to raise prices on new vehicles this year. Now we have this Supreme Court decision. Even if it only affects the auto industry to an extent, as you said, it does not totally rid it of any of the difficulties companies might suffer from having tariffs. So where do you see it going now in terms of potential price increases?
GS: That’s hard to say. It’s probably not going to impact things too directly. At this point, most of the companies have absorbed as much of the increases they can within their supply chains. Affordability of vehicles is an issue. The average in our country is about $50,000 for a new vehicle. That’s a high number. Anyone who sells, distributes, or makes vehicles in this country is very hesitant to raise those prices any further. We have seen some creep.
We’ve seen some certain charges increase, like destination charges on the delivery of a vehicle, and that’s been one way the extra cost has been passed through. But there haven’t been significant increases. Most of the time in any type of consumer product, when prices go up, they don’t tend to come down too quickly. So that’s not good for the consumer.
QK: One of the things you’ve mentioned several times is the uncertainty of the situation. I’ve heard many business executives over the last year or so complain that one of the hardest things about tariffs is the uncertainty they create for people trying to make a business plan. Now we also have this Supreme Court ruling. In your view, is this making it even more uncertain now?
GS: It could, yes. The key words the in last year have been instability and uncertainty. If you apply those two words to just about anything, they’re not good. Especially if you apply them to the automotive industry. It is a long lead time, complex supply chain business that requires stability and certainty to make capital decisions, to look at its workforce, to look at supply chains. We do have new tariffs now. That doesn’t give stability and certainty.
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In her final State of the State address, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will discuss the next phase of her administration’s agenda, reflecting on progress made over the past seven years and describing what comes next. Her focus will include strengthening employment opportunities, easing financial pressures for residents, maintaining strong support for education and literacy, expanding housing development, and pursuing additional priorities moving forward.
Grocery stores offer colorful produce aisles, where pyramid-shaped mounds of apples, oranges and lemons sit waiting for your inspection.
In that moment, you might wonder — how did the prices on those apples and oranges and lemons come to be? Who decided on that particular number?
Food prices are influenced by many factors. And in recent years, the numbers have been going up.
In 2022, food prices increased by almost 10% — the largest increase since 1979. And while they haven’t increased as much since then, fruits and vegetables are still becoming pricier. Lettuce, for example, is up over 7% since last year. Why? And how much have prices changed because of President Donald Trump’s tariffs and immigration policies?
Bill Loupée is the COO of Ben B. Schwartz & Sons wholesaler, which operates out of Detroit. He spoke with Robyn Vincent. .
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Around Y2K, the mighty American private sector hit a momentous milestone. For the first time on record, frontline managers – supervisors, team leads, foremen, forewomen, etc. – outnumbered back-office managers.
That seemed significant, especially for the working-class folks for whom these noncommissioned-officer-style positions provided a rare path to the upper reaches of the career ladder. As quickly as the milestone was crossed, the trend reversed, according to our analysis of about 37 million responses to the census and American Community Survey from 1950 to 2024.
Once ascendant, supervisory jobs crop up all over our lists of the hardest-hit jobs of Americans’ working lives, even as white-collar management soars to new highs. What happened?
Having been burned by data-collection changes before, our first instinct was to take a long, hard look at how the Census Bureau classifies jobs. Or, more accurately, to spend 15 seconds emailing an extraordinarily talented economist and hoping they’ve already done the work for us.
We were in luck. Utrecht University economist Anna Salomons responded within an hour, even though the hour in question was already a wee one in the Netherlands. For her blockbuster 2024 analysis, Salomons and her collaborators collected and analyzed detailed Census Bureau job descriptions from 1930 to 2018 to figure out how our economy had evolved, mutated and automated.
She first mentioned that the change in occupational definitions around the 2000 Census was “notoriously large” and, like us, wondered if that might cause some of the shift we saw in the numbers.
But two factors argue against that thesis. First, as Salomons suggested, we’re using a system from our friends at IPUMS that carefully adjusts for all those changes in the raw census definitions.
Second, the changes come gradually after the inflection point – if a census definition change was the culprit, you’d expect a sudden swerve. But what if, Salomons suggested, those changes in definition took place outside of the friendly confines of the Census Bureau?
Specifically, she suggested we look at title inflation, which immediately blew the case wide open. Or at least blew it ajar.
It seems quite possible that, over the past few decades, jobs that were once called some variation on “supervisor” were now called some variation on “manager.”
A fancier title (and no change in pay) may, at least temporarily, fool a worker who’d been angling for a raise or promotion. But could it really fool the almighty Census Bureau?
We fear the answer must be “probably.” The American Community Survey’s superpower – that it hears directly from about 2 million U.S. households each year – is also, in this case, its Achilles’ heel. Because it must rely on what those households say.
The census crew does its utmost to elicit clean answers, but even the most carefully designed questions would struggle to distinguish a manager from a “manager.”
The survey asks not just for your occupation but also for your most important work activities or duties. That detail, plus answers to other questions throughout the survey, such as education level, give the clerks at the National Processing Center – and the government robot that handles the easiest cases – as much information as possible when they’re determining which job a respondent really performed.
But not everybody fills out those activities. And not every manager-in-name-only will provide enough information to reclassify them as a supervisor or even as an individual contributor. So, a certain percentage of inflated titles will slip through.
But that would mean census surveys still reflect a real trend toward title inflation. And why are titles inflating? Based on a lifetime of observation, we’d guess some of corporate America’s brightest minds have noticed that a title upgrade allows you to give a worker a “promotion” without a change in responsibility – or in pay.
Particularly crafty economists may even have found a way to measure one narrow instance of this. Salomons points to an analysis forthcoming in the Review of Financial Studies. In it, economists analyzed about 450,000 online job postings with salaries near the cutoff that makes you eligible for management under the Fair Labor Standards Act. (The postings came from 2010 to 2018, when the cutoff was $455 a week. It currently sits at $684.)
The authors – Lauren Cohen at Harvard University, and Umit Gurun and Bugra Ozel at the University of Texas at Dallas – found that jobs paying just above the legal cutoff are about five times more likely to have managerial titles than are similar jobs with pay just below it.
Why? Well, even a dubious title such as calling a barber a “grooming manager” or a front-desk clerk a “director of first impressions” could provide cover for employers looking to claim that person is exempt from overtime pay. The economists estimate such spurious classifications save employers about 13.5 percent on the pay of each “manager.”
To be sure, as Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, told us, the definition for overtime-exempt employees says nothing about titles – it’s purely about job function. Faux-promoting a worker to “manager” shouldn’t change anything. But in reality, she said, bosses often use these titles as a smoke screen.
“Titles can still matter a lot in practice,” Ozel said. “A ‘manager’ label can shape expectations about whether overtime is available and can muddy the record for anyone trying to assess the role from the outside. … Job duties are hard to observe and document without access to internal records and day-to-day work.”
But this dynamic, while suggestive, applies only to a narrow slice of the workforce. In any given year, less than a tenth of the workforce earned enough to put them within fudging distance (20 percent) of the cutoff.
What else might drive this title inflation?
Our best clue came in a call from Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University management expert who longtime readers may recognize is also a remote-work data impresario.
Bloom pointed out the rise of managers coincides with what he calls the overeducation of the American workforce. College graduates once made up a tiny, elite minority. Now, America’s colleges churn out so many that they outnumber the share of young people who never made it past high school.
As a result, Bloom said, there aren’t enough highfalutin’ positions for all those brand-new baccalaureates. Of course, employers would still love to attract these talented young grads to their unfilled lower-falutin’ positions. But to do so, they’d need to get creative.
“How do you get a college graduate to do a job that’s honestly probably better suited to a noncollege graduate?” Bloom asked. “You just shove the word ‘president’ into the title!”
When we took Bloom’s hint and charted the rise in managers by education, the fallout of his observation became clear. The increase in managers with a bachelor’s degree or higher drowns out any other trend. If we explain that segment, we explain the whole thing.
We started by looking at where all those college-educated managers worked.
As we should have guessed, they’re in the industries with the most-educated workers overall. In almost every major industry, as more educated workers roll in, the number of educated managers rises at the same rate.
Let’s look at an appropriate example: the industry of higher education. In that business, a four-year degree (or something fancier) gave you almost a 5 percent chance of being in management in 2000. By 2024, the share of educated workers in that sector had more than doubled, but your chances of being a manager conditional on having a college degree didn’t really change.
Many industries – banking, real estate, hospitals – follow this pattern. The exception? Computer services, which added more jobs than all but a handful of (mostly low-wage) industries over this time period, also saw your odds of becoming a manager double.
That matches what we heard from Ben Hanowell, an anthropologist who now helps direct ADP Research, the research arm of the outfit that probably processes your paycheck each month. The company’s endless piles of proprietary payrolls allow Hanowell to produce metrics that us mere civilians can’t match.
In his analysis, Hanowell found that U.S. teams got slightly smaller after the pandemic – an average manager went from 7.4 direct reports to about 7.3. But over that time, tech firms have gone from 6.5 workers per manager to about 5.3, with much of the drop coming after the pandemic.
So, while there are some situations where individuals became more likely to be managers, the much more common story is: People with college degrees had the same odds of becoming a manager as they always did, so as we got more people with college degrees, we got more managers.
But are these Potemkin promotions, or do they signal a change in the economy?
It hinges on whether the new boss, the “manager,” is truly the same as the old boss, the “supervisor.” We don’t have enough data right now to compare their actual duties, but we can at least look at their pay.
And sure enough, when we compare managers to similarly paid supervisors since the turn of the millennium, a clean pattern pops out. At every step of pay scale, managers rose, and supervisors fell in roughly equal quantities (after accounting for workforce growth over that time). To us, that looks a lot like replacement.
To be sure, they may not all be simple swaps in which a firm hires a college graduate to be a glorified supervisor with a cool title. We could also be seeing centralization. Perhaps work that once fell to supervisors – say, scheduling or coaching – now shifts to a central, college-educated staff of trainers and human resources professionals.
Around the edges, we expect those trends have been exacerbated by the decline of small businesses, since a megacorp in search of efficiency will centralize more functions. Similarly, the rise of outsourcing and perhaps gig work means jobs that were once done by small teams with supervisors inside the company are now handled by huge outside contractors.
And of course the increasing reliance on gig workers and outsourced workers that such a model implies might also help explain why tech’s managers now seem to manage so few employees – many of the folks they’re managing are now working outside the company.
But experts like Shierholz confirmed our hunch that the dominant force seemed to be the simplest: Job titles are getting a college-friendly makeover even if the jobs themselves don’t change much. Cory Stahle, senior economist at Indeed, agreed this seemed plausible based on his impressions from the online job site’s vast archives of job postings.
“We’re seeing a lot of jobs that have manager in them, but they are doing these more direct manager or direct supervising type of jobs,” Stahle said. “They are managers who are more directly involved in the day-to-day operations rather than a higher-up.”
Hiring sign is displayed at a grocery store in Arlington Heights, Ill., Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
Last week President Trump threatened to block the Gordie Howe International Bridge from opening. In a rambling post on social media, Trump argued that Canada is treating the U.S. unfairly without making any specific demands.
That’s left politicians on the Michigan and Ontario sides of the new span scrambling. Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens says he is unaware of any attempts by the Trump Administration to contact Canadian officials over the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge.
Listen: Mayor Dilkens discusses U.S. threat to block Gordie Howe Bridge
Dilkens says that while Canada paid to build the span, ownership of the bridge is shared.
“Canada as a federal government and the state of Michigan as a state government jointly own the Gordie Howe Bridge,” says Dilkens. “We’re 50-50 owners and we will repay the cost of construction through the collection of tolls over a period of many years, after which we will split the proceeds of toll revenue moving forward.”
Meeting with Morouns
The Windsor mayor blames the Moroun family for the President’s sudden desire to halt the bridge opening. There are reports of a meeting between the wealthy Ambassador Bridge owner Matthew Moroun and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick hours before Trump threatened the Gordie Howe Bridge.
“You know I’m not sure what the billionaires are doing behind the scenes,” says Dilkens, “but we’re really interested in the families that are affected by this on both sides of the border.”
The U.S. House Oversight Committee has sent a letter to Lutnick requesting all documents related to his alleged meeting with Matthew Moroun.
Dilkens says retaliating by blocking the Ontario side of the Ambassador Bridge is not something Canada would consider, regardless of the White House’s stance on the Gordie Howe span. The Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority says the international span remains on track to open early this year.
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Across the country, small businesses in immigrant communities are reporting the same pattern: customers are disappearing, workers aren’t showing up, and revenue is in decline.
Federal immigration enforcement has reshaped daily life in these neighborhoods, and some business owners say it’s hitting them harder than COVID, in part because there’s no PPP loan or government lifeline this time around.
In Los Angeles County, the vast majority of surveyed businesses reported negative impacts, with nearly 50% losing more than half their revenue. In Chicago’s Little Village, business sales have dropped an estimated 50 to 70%. And the Brookings Institution estimates that 2025 may have been the first year in over half a century that net migration to the U.S. went negative.
That same predicament is playing out in metro Detroit. In Southwest Detroit, Dearborn, and Hamtramck, the small businesses that anchor entire neighborhoods are under growing pressure. Business owners along Vernor Highway describe empty storefronts, canceled appointments, and streets that used to bustle with foot traffic now eerily quiet. Community networks — WhatsApp alert groups, volunteer patrols, whistle distribution — have emerged to help residents maintain their daily routines.
Mark Lee is the president and CEO of The Lee Group, a consulting firm that works with small businesses on strategy, marketing, and growth across Southeast Michigan. He joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to talk about what he’s hearing from owners on the ground.
Listen to the full conversation using the media player above.
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How is the Trump administration doing overall at managing the economy?
There are bright spots: inflation is down, unemployment is low, and the stock market is strong. But there are also concerns: Prices are still high in many areas, there’s been a hiring freeze across a number of industries, and most of the investments energy is are concentrated in artificial intelligence — not spread across a diverse range of sectors.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is traditionally pro-free market, pro-business, and conservative leaning — and that’s also true for their partner organizations around the country.
Faye Nemer is the CEO of the Middle East North Africa American Chamber of Commerce, which operates out of Dearborn. She told producer Sam Corey that she generally likes how the Trump administration is managing the economy. She thinks the tariffs are strategic. And while Nemer realizes small businesses are hurting, she thinks that’s likely to change as national policies will trickle down to everyone else.
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NEW YORK (AP) — It’s been a confusing time for people with student loans. Collections restarted, then were put on hold. At the same time, borrowers had to stay on top of changes to key forgiveness plans.
Last year, the long-contested SAVE plan introduced by the Biden administration ended with a settlement agreement. President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” introduced new borrowing limits for graduates and raised challenges to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. While several changes for student loan borrowers will take effect this summer, other key questions remain unresolved.
More than 5 million Americans were in default on their federal student loans as of September, according to the Education Department. Millions are behind on loan payments and at risk of default this year.
Borrowers “genuinely struggle to afford their loans and then to hear that the administration is making it more expensive and taking away some of the tools and resources that help folks afford their loans is really, it’s panic-inducing,” said Winston Berkman-Breen, legal director at Protect Borrowers.
Last month, the Education Department announced that it would delay involuntary collections for student loan borrowers in default until the department finalizes its new loan repayment plans. The date for this is still unclear.
If you’re a student loan borrower, here are some key things to know:
If you were enrolled in the SAVE plan
The SAVE plan was a repayment plan with some of the most lenient terms ever. Soon after its launch it was challenged in court, leaving millions of student loan borrowers in limbo. Last December, the Education Department announced a settlement agreement to end the SAVE plan. What is next for borrowers who were enrolled in this repayment plan is yet to be determined.
“Seven and a half million borrowers who are currently enrolled in SAVE need to be moved to another plan,” Berkman-Breen said.
As part of the agreement, the Education Department says it will not enroll new borrowers, deny pending applications, and will move all current SAVE borrowers into other repayment plans.
The Education Department is expected to develop a plan for borrowers to transition from the SAVE plan, yet borrowers should be proactive about enrolling in other repayment plans, said Kate Wood, a lending expert at NerdWallet.
If you are looking to enroll in an income-driven repayment plan
Borrowers can apply for the following income-driven plans: the Income-Based Repayment Plan, the Pay as You Earn plan, and the Income-Contingent Repayment plan.
“They all have similar criteria, and they function similarly. Your payment is set as a percentage of your income, not how much you owe, so it’s usually a lower payment,” Berkman-Breen said.
The payment amount under income-driven plans is a percentage of your discretionary income, and the percentage varies depending on the plan. Since many people are looking to switch plans, some applications to income-driven repayment plans might take longer to process, said Jill Desjean, director of policy analysis at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
You can find out which repayment plan might work best for you by logging on to the Education Department’s loan simulator.
If you’re working toward your Public Service Loan Forgiveness
There are no changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program yet. Last year, the Trump administration announced plans to change the eligibility requirements for participating nonprofits.
The policy seeks to disqualify nonprofit workers if their work is deemed to have “substantial illegal purpose.” The Trump administration said it’s necessary to block taxpayer money from lawbreakers, while critics say it turns the program into a tool of political retribution.
The proposal says illegal activity includes the trafficking or “chemical castration” of children, illegal immigration, and supporting foreign terrorist organizations. This move could cut off some teachers, doctors, and other public workers from federal loan cancellation.
“This is something that obviously is very stressful, very nerve-wracking for a lot of people, but given that we don’t know exactly how this is going to be enforced, how these terms are going to be defined, it’s not really something that you can try to plan ahead for now,” Wood said.
While this policy is currently being challenged by 20 Democrat-led states, it’s expected to take effect in July. In the meantime, Wood recommends that borrowers enrolled in the PSLF program continue making payments.
If your student loans are in default
Involuntary collections on federal student loans will remain on hold. The Trump administration announced earlier this month that it is delaying plans to withhold pay from student loan borrowers who default on their payments.
Federal student loan borrowers can have their wages garnished and their federal tax refunds withheld if they default on their loans. Borrowers are considered in default when they are at least 270 days behind on payments.
If your student loans are in default, you can contact your loan holder to apply for a loan rehabilitation program.
“They essentially come up with a payment plan where you’re making a reduced payment,” Woods. “After five successful payments on that rehabilitation plan, wage garnishment will cease.”
If you’re planning to attend graduate school
Trump’s “ Big Beautiful Bill ” has changed the amount graduate students can borrow from federal student loans. Graduate students could previously borrow loans up to the cost of their degree; the new rules cap the amount depending on whether the degree is considered a graduate or a professional program.
Wood said that if you’re starting a new program and taking out a loan after July 1, you will be subject to the new loan limits.
Under the new plan, students in professional programs would be able to borrow up to $50,000 per year and up to $200,000 in total. Other graduate students, such as those pursuing nursing and physical therapy, would be limited to $20,500 a year and up to $100,000 total.
The Education Department is defining the following fields as professional programs: pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry and theology.
If you want to consolidate your loan
The online application for loan consolidation is available at studentaid.gov/loan-consolidation. If you have multiple federal student loans, you can combine them into a single loan with a fixed interest rate and a single monthly payment.
The consolidation process typically takes around 60 days to complete. You can only consolidate your loans once.
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The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.
FILE – In this May 5, 2018, file photo, graduates at the University of Toledo commencement ceremony in Toledo, Ohio. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)
A new report finds that the rise in requests to build huge data centers across the country could reshape the size and cost of the electric grid in Michigan.
The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that within five years data centers could require well over half of all the new power demand in the state.
One of the report’s co-authors, Lee Shaver, specifically analyzed the likely impact of data centers on Michigan.
Shaver says the question is not how much new electricity Michigan will need, it’s who will pay for it.
Listen: Will massive data centers create large rate increase for Michigan customers?
The following interview has been edited for clarity.
Lee Shaver: The utilities have what’s called an obligation to serve. So they are going to build enough generation capacity to be able to meet the demand from data centers. The way that the system is supposed to work is that whoever causes that new demand pays for it. But the amount of demand we’re seeing from data centers kind of upsets the way that these things have been done historically. There’s a much higher likelihood that customers other than the data center would end up paying for a portion of those costs.
The big difference is just how much larger the data centers are. As an example, the total size of the data center that DTE Electric was just approved to connect to their grid in Saline Township would be 1.4 gigawatts, which is equivalent to the energy demand of over a million homes.
If could take decades for a million people to move into a new city. It’s slow growth that the utility can plan for over a long timeframe. Those costs can be spread out very easily. But when you’ve got a million homes showing up in a community in less than two years, that’s a massive amount of growth. There’s tons of new infrastructure that has to be built. And the regulation just can’t accommodate that level of growth without the way that those costs are covered being distorted.
Quinn Klinefelter, WDET News: The Michigan Public Service Commission says the agreement between the data center and DTE includes strong protections against a big rate increase for customers. I’ve also heard that some utilities require owners of data centers to pay what’s called a “large load tariff.” Just what is that?
LS: The word tariff is a bit misleading, especially since tariffs have been in the news so much. But when a utility talks about a large load tariff, they’re talking about a set of terms and conditions that data centers have to agree to in order to be provided with electric service.
And there are a lot of really good and positive things in those tariffs that utilities are proposing, like minimum contract terms, minimum monthly billing amounts. The challenge is that, especially in Michigan, especially with the DTE data center that was just approved, there’s just not enough detail that has been made public from these large load tariffs and from the applications that the data centers themselves are submitting for the public to have assurance that the costs are actually going to be covered.
QK: Is there a point where you finally find that out one way or the other? Does it have to be when the centers are operating or can it be determined while they’re constructed?
LS: There’s several points in the process at which that needs to be done. Obviously the large load tariff needs to be in place when that contract between the data center and the utility is signed. There has to be transparency. A lot of that information, though not all of it, should be public so that it can be reviewed. And there should be regular reporting on at least an annual basis. The utility and the data center should be providing information back to the regulators to say, here’s how much energy was provided, here’s how much it cost, here’s how it was paid for. And at the same time, look at how the billing of other customers changed over that same time period.
QK: Does it take until the things are actually up and going before you can really find that out? Or can you tell that during the construction process?
LS: You need both pieces. You’re not going to get assurance that it happened properly until after things are up and running. But if you don’t have a good framework in place at the beginning to collect and share that data, you would never get any reassurance that it’s been done properly.
QK: Beyond purely financial considerations, I’ve heard some concerns about the possible health or other costs that could be associated with these massive data centers. In your view, is it reasonable to be worried about some of those effects?
LS: Absolutely. What we know today is that any new data centers coming in the near term are going to result in more fossil fuels being burned to provide them with power. And when we burn fossil fuels, there’s emissions of heat trapping carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide and other pollutants that have measurable health impacts. Our report found that due to data centers being built over the next 5-10 years, there’s close to $20 billion worth of health damages that would be caused from air pollution, most of which would happen directly in Michigan. And the global climate damages are estimated to be over $400 billion across the 2026-2050 timeframe.
QK: Having analyzed the issue, what, in your view, is the best strategy for a state like Michigan to follow in regards to where or how many data centers are allowed in?
LS: We didn’t speak to whether or not specific data centers should be allowed to operate, but we do make a couple of recommendations from the policy side.
In addition to the steps that need to be taken to ensure that data centers pay for their own costs, we also recommend what we’re calling a CO2 reduction policy. We found that’s necessary because, while Michigan does have some really progressive clean energy and renewable energy standards, with the growth in data centers, those standards are not enough to continue Michigan on the path to reaching net zero carbon emissions. A CO2 reduction policy would essentially set a limit on how much fossil fuel can be burned in the state of Michigan. And by enacting that limit, over time combustion of fossil fuels will be reduced and all of those negative health impacts would diminish.
QK: Considering the current makeup of Congress and the White House, in your view, how realistic is it that such prohibitions could actually get through?
LS: Our recommendation is actually at the state level, for exactly that reason. And our modeling shows that regardless of policies elsewhere, if Michigan were to enact a CO2 reduction policy, it would have significant impacts on reducing emissions in Michigan.
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