Michigan’s attorney general is co-leading a letter to Congress asking it to pass a law to keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from hiding their identity while in the field.

ICE officers have received scrutiny in recent months for wearing plainclothes and masks and allegedly not identifying themselves as law enforcement during raids.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said that’s alarming.

“Often times is that ICE is not even coordinating with local or county law enforcement. So, when people have a question, say, ‘Oh my God, are these really ICE officers or not? Are they out here executing search warrants or conducting operations?’ Locals don’t even know about it,” she said.

Nessel said cases of people impersonating ICE officers to commit crimes have accompanied agents covering their faces.

The Trump administration has ramped up immigration enforcement as it reportedly set a 3,000 arrests per day target.

A handful of local law enforcement agencies in Michigan have already signed agreements to help ICE, according to Department of Homeland Security data. Other agencies not listed as having a 287(g) agreement, like Michigan State Police, may still be assisting ICE in the field.

Nessel said the masked tactics could make it difficult for Michigan law enforcement agencies working alongside their federal counterparts, noting Michigan law enforcement generally isn’t allowed to cover their faces while on duty.

“My agents? You know, we execute search warrants all the time. But they’re not masked when they do it and they’re absolutely identified as being special agents of the Department of the Attorney General. We should expect no less from ICE or any other federal agency,” Nessel said.

Despite the concerns, it’s unlikely the letter signed by 21 state attorneys general will spur any action by the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress.

Earlier this month, lawmakers approved a spending bill that included funding increases for a ramp up in immigration enforcement and hiring of more staff.

ICE has not responded to a request for a comment.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans on Tuesday advanced President Donald Trump’s request to cancel some $9 billion in previously approved spending, overcoming concerns from some lawmakers about what the rescissions could mean for impoverished people around the globe and for public radio and television stations in their home states.

The Senate vote was 50-50, with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie.

A final vote in the Senate could occur as early as Wednesday. The bill would then return to the House for another vote before it would go to Trump’s desk for his signature before a Friday deadline.

Republicans winnowed down the president’s request by taking out his proposed $400 million cut to a program known as PEPFAR. That change increased the prospects for the bill’s passage. The politically popular program is credited with saving millions of lives since its creation under then-President George W. Bush to combat HIV/AIDS.

The president is also looking to claw back money for foreign aid programs targeted by his Department of Government Efficiency and for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

“When you’ve got a $36 trillion debt, we have to do something to get spending under control,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.

The White House tries to win over skeptics

Republicans met with Russ Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, during their weekly conference luncheon as the White House worked to address their concerns. He fielded about 20 questions from senators.

The White House campaign to win over potential holdouts had some success. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., tweeted that he would vote to support the measure after working with the administration to “find Green New Deal money that could be reallocated to continue grants to tribal radio stations without interruption.”

Some senators worried that the cuts to public media could decimate many of the 1,500 local radio and television stations around the country that rely on some federal funding to operate. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting distributes more than 70% of its funding to those stations.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the Republican chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said she was particularly concerned about a lack of specifics from the White House.

“The rescissions package has a big problem — nobody really knows what program reductions are in it,” Collins said. “That isn’t because we haven’t had time to review the bill. Instead, the problem is that OMB has never provided the details that would normally be part of this process.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said she didn’t want the Senate to be going through numerous rounds of rescissions.

“We are lawmakers. We should be legislating,” Murkowski said. “What we’re getting now is a direction from the White House and being told: ‘This is the priority and we want you to execute on it. We’ll be back with you with another round.’ I don’t accept that.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Collins and Murkowski joined with Democrats in voting against the Senate taking up the measure.

McConnell said he wanted to make clear he didn’t have any problem with reducing spending, but agreed with Collins that lawmakers didn’t have enough details from the White House.

“They would like a blank check is what they would like. And I don’t think that’s appropriate,” McConnell said.

But the large majority of Republicans were supportive of Trump’s request.

“This bill is a first step in a long but necessary fight to put our nation’s fiscal house in order,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo.

Democrats warn of the consequences

Democrats warned that it’s absurd to expect them to work with Republicans on bipartisan spending measures if Republicans turn around a few months later and use their majority to cut the parts they don’t like.

“It shreds the appropriations process,” said Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with Democrats. “The Appropriations Committee, and indeed this body, becomes a rubber stamp for whatever the administration wants.”

Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that tens of millions of Americans rely on local public radio and television stations for local news, weather alerts and educational programs. He warned that many could lose access to that information because of the rescissions.

“And these cuts couldn’t come at a worse time,” Schumer said. “The floods in Texas remind us that speedy alerts and up-to-the-minute forecasts can mean the difference between life and death.”

Democrats also scoffed at the GOP’s stated motivation for taking up the bill. The amount of savings pales compared to the $3.4 trillion in projected deficits over the next decade that Republicans put in motion in passing Trump’s big tax and spending cut bill two weeks ago.

“Now, Republicans are pretending they are concerned about the debt,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. “So concerned that they need to shut down local radio stations, so concerned they are going to cut off ‘Sesame Street.’ … The idea that that is about balancing the debt is laughable.”

What’s ahead in the Senate

With Republicans providing enough votes to take up the bill, it sets up the potential for 10 hours of debate plus votes on scores of potentially thorny amendments in what is known as a vote-a-rama. The House has already shown its support for the president’s request with a mostly party line 214-212 vote, but since the Senate is amending the bill, it will have to go back to the House for another vote.

Republicans who vote against the measure also face the prospect of incurring Trump’s wrath. He has issued a warning on his social media site directly aimed at individual Senate Republicans who may be considering voting against the rescissions package. He said it was important that all Republicans adhere to the bill and in particular defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

“Any Republican that votes to allow this monstrosity to continue broadcasting will not have my support or Endorsement,” he said.

–Reporting by Kevin Freking, The Associated Press. Congressional correspondent Lisa Mascaro and staff writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Stephen Groves contributed.

By AP’s Kevin Freking, Lisa Mascaro, with additional reporting from WDET’s Russ McNamara

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans muscled President Donald Trump’s tax and spending cut bill through the House on Thursday, the final step necessary to get the bill to his desk by the GOP’s self-imposed deadline of July 4.

At nearly 900 pages, the legislation is a sprawling collection of tax breaks, spending cuts and other Republican priorities, including new money for national defense and deportations.

Democrats united against the legislation, but were powerless to stop it as long as Republicans stayed united. The Senate passed the bill, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tiebreaking vote. The House passed an earlier iteration of the bill in May with just one vote to spare. It passed the final version 218-214.

Here’s the latest on what’s in the bill.

Tax cuts are the priority

Republicans say the bill is crucial because there would be a massive tax increase after December when tax breaks from Trump’s first term expire. The legislation contains about $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.

The existing tax rates and brackets would become permanent under the bill, solidifying the tax cuts approved in Trump’s first term.

It temporarily would add new tax deductions on tip, overtime and auto loans. There’s also a $6,000 deduction for older adults who earn no more than $75,000 a year, a nod to his pledge to end taxes on Social Security benefits.

“It delivers on promises made to hardworking families and businesses in Michigan: no tax on tips or overtime, permanent tax relief, an expanded Child Tax Credit, and more,” said Rep. Tom Barrett (R-MI), who voted in favor of the bill.

It would boost the $2,000 child tax credit to $2,200. Millions of families at lower income levels would not get the full credit.

A cap on state and local deductions, called SALT, would quadruple to $40,000 for five years. It’s a provision important to New York and other high tax states, though the House wanted it to last for 10 years.

There are scores of business-related tax cuts, including allowing businesses to immediately write off 100% of the cost of equipment and research. Proponents say this will boost economic growth.

The wealthiest households would see a $12,000 increase from the legislation, and the bill would cost the poorest people $1,600 a year, mainly due to reductions in Medicaid and food aid, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House’s version.

Money for deportations, a border wall and the Golden Dome

The bill would provide some $350 billion for Trump’s border and national security agenda, including for the U.S.-Mexico border wall and for 100,000 migrant detention facility beds, as he aims to fulfill his promise of the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history.

Money would go for hiring 10,000 new Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, with $10,000 signing bonuses and a surge of Border Patrol officers, as well. The goal is to deport some 1 million people per year.

Barrett praised the provision, calling it “the largest border security investment in American history,” and highlighting its funding for “701 miles of wall” and “next-generation surveillance technology.”

To help pay for it, immigrants would face various new fees, including when seeking asylum protections.

For the Pentagon, the bill would provide billions for ship building, munitions systems, and quality of life measures for servicemen and women, as well as $25 billion for the development of the Golden Dome missile defense system. The Defense Department would have $1 billion for border security.

How to pay for it? Cuts to Medicaid and other programs

To help partly offset the lost tax revenue and new spending, Republicans aim to cut back on Medicaid and food assistance for people below the poverty line.

Republicans argue they are trying to rightsize the safety net programs for the population they were initially designed to serve, mainly pregnant women, the disabled and children, and root out what they describe as waste, fraud and abuse.

The package includes new 80-hour-a-month work requirements for many adults receiving Medicaid and food stamps, including older people up to age 65. Parents of children 14 and older would have to meet the program’s work requirements.

There’s also a proposed new $35 co-payment that can be charged to patients using Medicaid services.

More than 71 million people rely on Medicaid, which expanded under Obama’s Affordable Care Act, and 40 million use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Most already work, according to analysts.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law and 3 million more would not qualify for food stamps, also known as SNAP benefits.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) called the bill “an act of violence against our communities,” warning that it would kick “over 450,000 people in Michigan” off health care coverage and result in “over 50,000 people” dying unnecessarily each year.

Republicans are looking to have states pick up some of the cost for SNAP benefits. Currently, the federal government funds all benefit costs. Under the bill, states beginning in 2028 will be required to contribute a set percentage of those costs if their payment error rate exceeds 6%. Payment errors include both underpayments and overpayments.

But the Senate bill temporarily delays the start date of that cost-sharing for states with the highest SNAP error rates. Alaska has the highest error rate in the nation at nearly 25%, according to Department of Agriculture data. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, had fought for the exception. She was a decisive vote in getting the bill through the Senate.

Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) echoed those concerns of Tlaib, saying, “Hospitals are going to close. Children, people with disabilities, seniors, veterans — all are going to lose their health care. It’s going to make premiums and deductibles and co-pays increase for millions.”

A ‘death sentence’ for clean energy?

Republicans are proposing to dramatically roll back tax breaks designed to boost clean energy projects fueled by renewable sources such as energy and wind. The tax breaks were a central component of President Joe Biden’s 2022 landmark bill focused on addressing climate change and lowering health care costs.

Democratic Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden went so far as to call the GOP provisions a “death sentence for America’s wind and solar industries and an inevitable hike in utility bills.”

A tax break for people who buy new or used electric vehicles would expire on Sept. 30 of this year, instead of at the end of 2032 under current law.

Dingell, whose district includes major auto industry hubs, warned the change would damage the state’s economy. “They have eliminated the EV tax credit effective in September. That’s going to hurt the domestic auto industry,” she said.

Meanwhile, a tax credit for the production of critical materials will be expanded to include metallurgical coal used in steelmaking.

Trump savings accounts and so, so much more

A number of extra provisions reflect other GOP priorities.

The bill creates a new children’s savings program, called Trump Accounts, with a potential $1,000 deposit from the Treasury.

The Senate provided $40 million to establish Trump’s long-sought “National Garden of American Heroes.”

There’s a new excise tax on university endowments and a new tax on remittances, or transfers of money that people in the U.S. send abroad. The tax is equal to 1% of the transfer.

A $200 tax on gun silencers and short-barreled rifles and shotguns was eliminated.

One provision bars for one year Medicaid payments to family planning providers that provide abortions, namely Planned Parenthood.

Another section expands the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, a hard-fought provision from GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, for those impacted by nuclear development and testing.

Billions would go for the Artemis moon mission and for the exploration of Mars, while $88 million is earmarked for a pandemic response accountability committee.

Additionally, a provision would increase the nation’s debt limit, by $5 trillion, to allow continued borrowing to pay already accrued bills.

Last-minute changes

The Senate overwhelmingly revolted against a proposal meant to deter states from regulating artificial intelligence. Republican governors across the country asked for the moratorium to be removed and the Senate voted to do so with a resounding 99-1 vote.

A provision was thrown in at the final hours that will provide $10 billion annually to rural hospitals for five years, or $50 billion in total. The Senate bill had originally provided $25 billion for the program, but that number was upped to win over holdout GOP senators and a coalition of House Republicans warning that reduced Medicaid provider taxes would hurt rural hospitals.

The amended bill also stripped out a new tax on wind and solar projects that use a certain percentage of components from China.

What’s the final cost?

Altogether, the Congressional Budget Office projects that the bill would increase federal deficits over the next 10 years by nearly $3.3 trillion from 2025 to 2034.

Or not, depending on how one does the math.

Senate Republicans are proposing a unique strategy of not counting the existing tax breaks as a new cost because those breaks are already “current policy.” Republican senators say the Senate Budget Committee chairman has the authority to set the baseline for the preferred approach.

Under the alternative Senate GOP view, the bill would reduce deficits by almost half a trillion dollars over the coming decade, the CBO said.

Democrats say this is “magic math” that obscures the true costs of the tax breaks. Some nonpartisan groups worried about the country’s fiscal trajectory are siding with Democrats in that regard. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says Senate Republicans were employing an “accounting gimmick that would make Enron executives blush.”

Tlaib described the approach as “a gift to Trump’s billionaire donors” and said, “Every member who voted to pass this disastrous budget betrayed the people they represent to serve the rich and powerful.”

Last week, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin gave a speech at a progressive think tank where she gave a stern warning about America’s shrinking middle class.

She says the middle class has been shrinking since the ’70s, making it more challenging for young Americans to become as affluent as their parents. Part of the reason for that, she says, is how much the economy has changed structurally, and the failure of government to change along with it.

“We were already taking on water as the middle class, and now we’re about to hit a Category 5 hurricane in the form of artificial intelligence,” she said. “We gotta reset on how we do the basics of government and of our lives and focus on those essential things.”

Slotkin says part of the solution is to build more housing, expand access to health care, invest more resources in small businesses and to ban donations from corporate Political Action Committees. 

Metro Producer Sam Corey spoke with the senator about her “economic war plan” to build up the middle class, and why she says Democrats should be on the offense right now. 

—WDET’s Jenny Sherman contributed to this report.

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Today on The Metro, we continue our coverage on the fight over public media funding and what’s at stake for local news and music stations across the country.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order to eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) due to alleged bias. Now, in the House Rescissions Act of 2025 — which narrowly passed the House last month — he’s asking Congress to claw back CPB funding that has already been approved.

The Senate Appropriations committee held a hearing on the bill last month, and the Senate will need to vote on the package by July 18.

If passed, local stations — including WDET and the programs you love — would face profound impacts. At WDET, about 6% of our annual budget comes from CPB.

Kelly McBride, senior vice president at the Poynter Institute, serves as NPR’s public editor. She says in her role with NPR, she serves as an independent critic of NPR reporting, engaging with listeners and critiquing public media stations when appropriate.

McBride spoke with Metro co-host Robyn Vincent about how public editors at major media outlets help hold journalists accountable, and how NPR could improve its coverage of federal funding cuts to public media and allegations of bias.

Use the media player above to hear the full conversation.

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Federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is the focus of a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday. 

The publicly-funded nonprofit, which provides funding to PBS, NPR and its affiliates like WDET, would lose $1.1 billion — two years’ worth of funding that has already been approved by Congress — if the bill passed by the House earlier this month gets Senate approval. It would also rescind more than $8 billion in funding for foreign aid programs addressing global public health, international disaster assistance and hunger relief.

That bill passed in the House by a margin of 214 to 212, with four Republicans crossing the aisle to vote against the package. There were also four Democrats and two Republicans who did not vote on the bill at all.

President Donald Trump has already signed an executive order to eliminate CPB funding, claiming all public media is biased, but the Rescissions Act of 2025 would go beyond that, revoking funding already approved by Congress.

Today on The Metro, we break down what it would mean for public media organizations like WDET if the legislation gets Congressional approval.

Use the media player above to hear the full conversation.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.

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