The Michigan Senate passed on Tuesday a new $2.3 billion supplemental funding bill for COVID-19 relief that also contains what Democrats referred to as a “political poison pill.”
Category Archive: State
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced Monday that Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP), Head Start, adult education and young adult special education classroom teachers are now eligible to receive up to $500 grants under a new expansion of the MI Classroom Heroes COVID-19 grant program.
In Michigan, the seven Democrats in the U.S. House voted for and all seven Republicans voted against President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package early Saturday, in a rush to both boost COVID-19 vaccine funding and get legislation to the president’s desk before unemployment benefits expire in mid-March. The package, dubbed the American Rescue Plan, passed 219-212.
The governors of Michigan and Maryland, as well as the mayor of Denver, Colo., debated who gets to control who should oversee new federal transportation money — states or city governments — and how it should be used at a mostly cordial hearing Wednesday with members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
“Discrimination based on hairstyles has long served as a thinly-veiled excuse to discriminate based on race,” Rep. Sarah Anthony (D-Lansing) said. “This form of prejudice is a real problem, one that countless men, women and children are forced to face every day.”
For decades, scientists have studied the effects that livestock farms with large animal concentrations in Iowa and other states have on regional water quality, as increasing amounts of waste flow into rivers and groundwater. Now activists and some lawmakers say emergency measures are needed to stop toxic algae blooms in Lake Erie, dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay, and threats to drinking water in rural communities. In some states, lawmakers worry about the future of smaller family farms.
White House officials said Monday that thawing temperatures and a weekend of around-the-clock work has begun to clear a backlog of 6 million COVID-19 vaccines that were delayed due to last week’s devastating winter storms.
President Joe Biden and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer joined Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on Friday afternoon for a tour of the pharmaceutical company’s Portage facility — home to the first COVID-19 vaccine doses that were shipped in December.
Julianne Pastula, general counsel for Michigan’s new Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission (ICRC), said during a meeting Thursday that the current timeline for drawing new district lines is “an untenable situation.”
To better support the millions of Michiganders struggling to make ends meet, the state should expand apprenticeship opportunities for inmates while they are incarcerated, end asset tests for food assistance, and increase affordable housing for low-income families and people without housing, among a series of other initiatives, according to a newly released report from the Michigan Poverty Task Force.
A coalition of organizations is calling on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to increase its COVID-19 vaccination efforts for the 33,000 people incarcerated in state prisons.
The 2020 census had a challenging year with the COVID-19 pandemic. Now a delay in census data from the U.S. Census Bureau will likely throw a wrench in the plans of the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission (ICRC), which needs the data to draw new legislative and congressional districts.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer told the Michigan Advance Thursday that her Fiscal Year 2022 budget plan will include a provision to end the Michigan sales tax on menstrual products, commonly referred to as the “tampon tax.”
Unconscious bias in medical care and a history of experimentation and exploitation of Blacks for medical knowledge has left many in the Black community questioning everything about the vaccines — from the racial demographics of who has been inoculated already, to whether people of color were studied in the safety and efficacy trials and whether the vaccines even work. State officials hope to ease those concerns and erase racial disparities in COVID vaccination rates.
States will see another increase in the COVID-19 vaccine doses they receive, with the Biden administration announcing Tuesday that the federal government will distribute 11 million doses next week.
Transparency and accountability have been buzzwords on both sides of the aisle in Michigan. Michigan scored an F in the Center for Public Integrity’s 2015 State Integrity Investigation and ranked worst in the country for state government accountability and transparency. Since then, dozens of measures have been introduced, but many haven’t been signed into law.
During their first month in office, members of the 101st Michigan Legislature have introduced 275 bills, and several more resolutions, addressing topics ranging from gun control to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A new trend of favorable COVID-19 metrics in Michigan has led the state to allow youth contact sports to resume, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced Thursday.