Michigan lawmakers passed a $82 billion Fiscal Year 2024 budget Wednesday, with $24.3 billion of those funds dedicated to the state’s school budget.
Author: Michigan Advance
Since The Fledge began offering free Narcan about eight months ago, Jerry Norris, The Fledge founder, has witnessed an increased demand for the spray that’s helping to address an opioid epidemic that in 2022 killed close to 83,000 people in the United States and at least 2,532 people in Michigan.
“This is a suicide prevention bill, period,” Equality Michigan Executive Director Erin Knott said in a prepared statement. “With 15% of Michigan’s LGBTQ+ youth reporting being threatened with or subjected to conversion therapy, this historic effort to end conversion therapy is literally life-saving for LGBTQ+ young people in our state.”
Michigan will receive about $1.5 billion in federal grants to expand high-speed internet to approximately 210,000 homes in unserved and underserved areas, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced Monday.
The committee heard from election officials and experts on the eight bills that would, among other things, create a minimum of nine days of early voting, provide prepaid postage for certain election documents and require absent voter drop boxes.
More than 500,000 people across 11 states have lost their Medicaid coverage since the unwinding of a policy that allowed people to stay in the program throughout the pandemic.
HB 4596, sponsored by state Rep. Betsy Coffia (D-Traverse City), seeks to improve youth voter turnout by pre-registering at a younger age.
The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted to overturn the Biden administration’s one-time student debt relief plan that is on hold due to a pending Supreme Court decision.
Currently only Maryland and New York have statewide bans on declawing cats, with various cities around the U.S. banning the practice on a local level. More than a dozen states currently have bans introduced in their legislatures.
Drug overdose rates in the U.S. have risen fivefold in the past two decades. The CDC tracked a record 107,622 overdose deaths in 2021 — 71,238 of them due to manmade, illegal fentanyl substances.
As the U.S. Supreme Court approaches a ruling on President Joe Biden’s proposal to forgive a portion of student loan debt, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has instructed various state agencies to explore cost-cutting mechanisms for borrowers in Michigan.
As much as two thirds of North America could face shortages of electricity this summer in the event of severe and protracted heat, according to the regulator in charge of setting and enforcing standards for the electric grid.
In bipartisan fashion, the state Senate on Wednesday approved legislation to make Juneteenth, a holiday widely celebrated by Black Americans for years, an official holiday in Michigan.
Jeff Timmer, the one-time executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, told the Advance that he and other former Republicans will petition the Board of State Canvassers at their May 19 meeting to form the Michigan Common Sense Party.
The coalition wants the state to build on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s MI Healthy Climate Plan, which was developed in 2022 with stakeholders from across the state. Among other priorities, it calls for achieving 100% economy-wide carbon neutrality by 2050.
Such a boost would also allow the Food Bank Council to increase the amount of produce purchased from Michigan farmers, officials say.
Mark Totten, U.S. attorney for Michigan’s Western District, on Thursday announced that four people were charged in federal court for participating in the bribery of Rick Johnson, former chair of the Michigan Marijuana Licensing Board.
Despite supply-chain problems amid the lingering effects of the pandemic, 2022 saw major increases in solar and wind power in the United States, though that growth varied by state, according to a report released last month by a nonprofit focused on climate change.