The DFL-controlled Minnesota House passed an expansive, 473-page environment and natural resources bill that would increase spending in this area by $670 million while raising fees on outdoor activities like fishing and boating.
With about a month remaining in the legislative session, omnibus policy and spending bills are making their way to the floor, including HF2310, which passed late Monday night.
Read the full story
A bipartisan plan in Lansing seeks to allow Michigan universities to sell alcohol at certain on-campus sporting events.
Rep. Graham Filler, R-Clinton County, and Sen. Sean McCann, D-Kalamazoo, introduced measures in the House and Senate that would allow university governing boards to apply for liquor licenses to sell alcohol at basketball, football, and hockey games.
Read the full story
U.S. Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI-06) led a congressional hearing this week seeking answers on how the Biden Administration could lose track of more than 85,000 unaccompanied children it allowed to illegally enter the U.S.
Robin Dunn Marcos, director of the Offie of Refugee Resettlement, had a hard time answering basic questions, highlighting the administrative nightmare behind President Joe Biden’s disastrous border policies.
Read the full story
A Michigan bill aims to make it easier for state agencies to adopt or promulgate rules more stringent than federal standards.
Bill sponsor Sen. Sean McCann, D-Kalamazoo, said Senate Bill 14 aims to repeal the no stricter than federal law signed into law in 2018. The law prohibited state agencies from setting rules more stringent than federal law, in most cases.
Read the full story
With under six weeks remaining in the 2023 legislative session, budget bills are making their way to the floors of the House and Senate. And so is a way to pay for them.
House DFLers who unveiled their tax bill on Monday said it represents the largest tax cut in state history and is aimed at helping those who need it most. Senate Republicans returned serve and claimed that provisions Democrats have touted — if approved without any concessions — would add up to nearly $10 billion in tax hikes on Minnesotans over the next four years.
Read the full story
A Michigan Senate bill currently under consideration aims to require employers to share employees’ name, home address, cell phone number, work address location, and personal email address with labor representatives every 90 days.
Sen. John Cherry, D-Flint, sponsored Senate Bill 169.
Read the full story
Republican lawmakers at the Wisconsin Capitol want to stop local governments from paying people just because.
A plan at the Capitol, AB 146, would ban local governments across Wisconsin from using public dollars to pay for a guaranteed income program.
Read the full story
Minneapolis has become the first major city in the United States to allow the Muslim call to prayer to be broadcast over speakers five times per day, year-round, including in the early mornings and late evenings.
The Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously Thursday – during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan – to approve an amendment to the city’s noise ordinance that would allow the “adhan” – “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” call to prayer to be sounded every day, year-round, five times daily.
Read the full story
How did a Swiss billionaire who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to left-leaning American nonprofit political advocacy groups become a topic of debate over an elections bill on the floor of the Minnesota House of Representatives?
Republican legislators allege that Hansjörg Wyss, a former medical device industry executive turned political activist, has his fingerprints on a provision included in a sweeping elections reform bill the DFL House majority passed on a party-line vote late Thursday night.
Read the full story
There was one group at Wisconsin’s budget hearing pushing for less. Americans for Prosperity warned Wisconsin lawmakers about spending too much of the state’s record $7.1 billion surplus.
Americans For Prosperity Wisconsin this week waited through hours of requests for more money at the legislature’s public budget hearings to make the simple case to spend less.
Read the full story
Nearly every U.S. state recognized increased backlogs for new Social Security disability benefit applications since 2019, And the Great Lakes states were no different.
In fact, Wisconsin’s backlog more than doubled, ranking in fifth nationwide for increased backlogs. From 2019 to 2023, Wisconsin’s backlog grew 130 percent, with an increase of 11,500 backlogged applications. It has the fifth highest backlog increase in the nation.
Read the full story
Michigan Senate Democrats introduced on Thursday a clean energy plan to force a 100% clean energy standard by 2035.
The plan includes forcing the end of coal-fired electricity generating plants by 2030, requiring utilities to move toward eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from power generation by 2035, and developing a 100% clean energy standard by 2035.
Read the full story
Two Wisconsin lawmakers, looking to stop school shooters before they have a chance to take more innocent lives, have introduced a bill that would allow teachers and staff members to carry firearms on school grounds.
State Representatives Scott Allen (R-Waukesha) and Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee) recently introduced a bill that would create an exception to the state’s prohibition on guns at schools.
Read the full story
The Minneapolis City Council voted Thursday to grant more than $8 million in settlements for two people who sued over 2017 incidents in which George Floyd’s convicted killer allegedly kneeled on their necks, according to CNN.
Former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty in April 2021 of murdering Floyd the previous May, having knelt on Floyd’s neck during an arrest until he died. The city is settling with John Pope and Zoya Code for $7.5 million and $1.375 million respectively, resolving their separate lawsuits over Chauvin’s alleged treatment of them long before Floyd’s death, CNN reported.
Read the full story
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed gun restriction bills that will establish universal background checks for all firearm purchases as well as require safe firearm storage.
The gun package follows a February shooting at Michigan State University that killed three students and wounded five others. However, none of the bills would have stopped the shooting if enacted beforehand.
Read the full story
A proposed 75-cent delivery fee on most retail goods sent to homes and businesses that DFLers in the House and Senate have included in their $8 billion transportation budget appears to have lost momentum.
Democrat legislators in a Senate committee on Thursday voted to remove the highly controversial provision from SF3157 that has been opposed by a number of small business associations since it was introduced last month. Those organizations opposing the delivery fee include: the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, Hospitality Minnesota, Minnesota Retailers Association, Minnesota Grocers Association, Minnesota Service Station & Convenience Store Association, National Federation of Independent Business, Minnesota Licensed Beverage Association, and Minnesota Municipal Beverage Association.
Read the full story
The U.S. State Department’s sluggish passport processing system is making applicants wait months for their passports. U.S. Representative Bryan Steil (R-WI-01) is demanding answers — and action.
Citing increased demand, the State Department has expanded processing times for passport applications and renewals. It’s now taking agents about three months to process routine passports, and seven to nine weeks for expedited international travel permits.
Read the full story
A new report from the Education Law Center and the Michigan Education Association says Michigan needs $4.5 billion annually so students can achieve state academic standards.
School funding adequacy refers to the funding necessary to provide students with reasonable opportunities to achieve state standards.
Read the full story
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed an unlawfully present foreign fugitive from St. Paul last week who was wanted in Mexico for drug trafficking.
According to ICE, Benito Sanchez-Jimenez illegally entered the U.S. in 2001 and then again in 2007. He then legally entered in 2021 but failed to comply with the terms of his admission, ICE said.
Read the full story
Subsidiaries of behemoth concert promoter Live Nation Entertainment received $20 million in federal COVID grants that they were not entitled to, according to a Wisconsin Daily Star review of documents.
Madison-based Frank Productions Concerts, LLC and National Shows 2, LLC of Delaware, each received $10 million from the Small Business Administration’s Shuttered Venues Operator Grant (SVOG) program — funding that was clearly marked for independent operators, not subsidiaries of publicly traded companies.
Read the full story
Since being elected, I have become increasingly passionate about investigating ways government keeps people from reaching their full potential. As the former chair of the Senate Public Benefit Reform Committee, I became aware of many situations in which our current government benefit programs are doing just that.
Read the full story
Green Township trustee Dale Jernstadt could recognize a tidy personal profit if Gotion Inc. moves forward with building a portion of its controversial battery manufacturing plant on land he owns.
Mecosta County property records show Jernstadt took out a $180,000 mortgage on the 72-acre parcel in 2012. In September 2021, he sold the development rights for the property to the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development through December 2027. As a result, he must receive a waiver to sell the property for any use other than agricultural.
Read the full story
In an effort to whip up more support from legislators in his own party — and perhaps a vote or two from across the political aisle — Attorney General Keith Ellison held a press conference Tuesday imploring bipartisan support for two controversial gun restriction bills with just six weeks left in the session.
While a number of gun control bills have been introduced at the Capitol in 2023, Democrats have narrowed their focus in the last few weeks on two: universal background checks and Extreme Risk Prevention Order (ERPO) legislation.
Read the full story
Liberal Wisconsin U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin made it official Wednesday, announcing her quest for a third term.
The Madison Democrat insists “Wisconsinites need someone who can fight and win,” but Baldwin has shown during her time in D.C. that she’s a very dependable vote for the far left agenda — an agenda that’s out of touch with many voters in the politically purple Badger State.
Read the full story
More than 1 million Michiganders should receive automatic expungements today for their criminal records, thanks to Clean Slate legislation enacted in 2020 and effective Tuesday.
The Michigan State Police launched its new automatic program to search the state’s Criminal Historical Record database system daily for eligible convictions to expunge automatically.
Read the full story
The push for a universal free school lunch program in Wisconsin is running into opposition at the State Capitol.
Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction on Monday shared the testimony it plans to deliver to the legislature’s budget-writing Joint Finance Committee about its Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids initiative.
Read the full story
A well-funded push to make Minnesota a ranked choice voting state appears to have run out of steam — at least this session at the Minnesota Legislature.
On Monday, State Sen. Jim Carlson, DFL-Eagan, told his colleagues in the Senate Elections Committee that a bill introduced last month that would implement ranked choice voting for statewide and legislative races by 2026 “is much more complicated than we originally thought.”
Read the full story
In a video released Monday morning, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer touted Democrat’s accomplishments in their first 100 days of office.
She again claimed that she “secured” 35,000 auto jobs since 2019.
Read the full story
Republican lawmakers are ripping Gov. Evers after a new audit shows many former inmates are not being sent back to prison for new crimes.
The Legislative Audit Bureau released its report into the state’s Community Corrections Program on Friday. It says the Department of Corrections is not following-up on former inmates well enough, and says Department of Corrections agents are not reporting crimes that could send ex-convicts back to prison.
Read the full story
The Wisconsin Department of Justice on Monday identified the two northern Wisconsin police officers killed over the weekend during a traffic stop, as two small communities continued to mourn.
Chetek Officer Emily Breidenbach, 32, and Cameron Officer Hunter Scheel, 23, were fatally shot early Saturday morning by Glenn Douglas Perry, 50 in the Village of Cameron, according to the DOJ.
Read the full story
Former House Speaker Rick Johnson and three others were charged in connection with a bribery scheme related to the state’s medical marijuana licensing board.
At a press conference in downtown Lansing, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan Mark Totten said Johnson took more than $100,000 in bribes after then-Republican Gov. Rick Snyder appointed Johnson chairman of the state’s medical marijuana licensing board, where he served from May 2017 through April 2019.
Read the full story
Minnesota had the sixth lowest decrease in unemployment claims since last week, WalletHub reported Thursday.
Across the country, new unemployment claims decreased 7.3% week-over-week March 27 amid high inflation and threat of a recession, the report said.
Read the full story
Jail guards in Wisconsin can now buy into a better pension.
Gov. Tony Evers on Thursday signed a new law that includes jail guards into Wisconsin’s “protective occupation participants” in the Wisconsin Retirement System.
Read the full story
A Wisconsin lawmaker is questioning whether it was legal for a political action committee to pay people to encourage others to vote for liberal Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Protasiewicz in the state Supreme Court election in the latest mobilization tactic to raise integrity concerns in the battleground state.
Wisconsin Takes Action, a project of Organizing Empowerment PAC, held live Zoom training sessions during the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, instructing potential “community mobilizers” on how to reach out to people to encourage them to vote and get paid hundreds of dollars for their outreach efforts.
Read the full story
A Christian pro-life group filed a lawsuit against the city of Minneapolis Wednesday over an ordinance that prohibits any protests or demonstrations outside of abortion clinics, according to the lawsuit.
Pro-Life Action Ministries (PLAM), an “interdenominational” organization, has been doing sidewalk ministry and sit-ins at abortion clinics for decades, but an ordinance adopted by the city in November 2022 banned “disrupting access to reproductive healthcare facilities” from the driveway or “sidewalk or bikeway, that provides vehicular access from a street to a reproductive healthcare facility.” As a result, PLAM could not hold any sort of protest or sidewalk counseling around or nearby the clinic, prompting the group to file a lawsuit Wednesday.
Read the full story
It’s no secret that Wisconsin’s taxpayer-funded colleges and universities are dominated by liberal thought and dogma. A University of Wisconsin System survey released earlier this year showed free speech under assault at the Badger State’s institutions of higher education.
The question is, what are lawmakers going to do about it?
Read the full story
Friday morning on the Vicki McKenna Show– weekdays on News/Talk 1130 WISN, Matt Kittle welcomed former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson to the show to discuss his recent announcement for the 2024 presidential candidacy and his top issues for the country.
Read the full story
Michigan’s still among 20 states that haven’t reported on a public dashboard what Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funding was used to purchase or provide, a recent report found.
However, the state is adding more details soon, a state official said Wednesday.
Read the full story
In Green Bay, you can bug city hall and still be elected mayor.
Such is the case of Mayor Eric Genrich, a highly partisan Democrat who won a second term in Tuesday’s spring elections despite facing a lawsuit over his involvement in the secret installation of audio recording devices in city hall — among other political controversies.
Read the full story
General Motors says it bought out 5,000 salaried positions to avert layoffs as it pivots to electric vehicles and others that require less human labor.
In March, The Center Square reported that the automaker is looking to cut $2 billion in fixed costs by 2024 as the company transitions its manufacturing operations to produce electric vehicles.
Read the full story
Honor the Earth founder and executive director Winona LaDuke announced her resignation Wednesday after a jury ordered her organization to pay $750,000 in damages to a former employee in a sexual harassment lawsuit.
LaDuke is a prominent environmental activist who ran for vice president twice on the Green Party ticket and led the protests against the Line 3 pipeline replacement project.
Read the full story
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis visited Michigan on Thursday, claiming his state’s “freedom” is the antithesis of Michigan.
Headlining the stage at Hillsdale College’s Searle Center, DeSantis touted Florida laws that he said empower parents to object to items that violate their standards such as pornographic material in school libraries.
Read the full story
Most of Gov. Tony Evers’ building plan is earmarked for the University of Wisconsin System, but a new report says there are also millions of dollars dedicated to non-state agency “pork-barrel” projects.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty released its report on the governor’s capital budget on Thursday. It details how Gov. Evers plans to spend $3.8 billion for construction, remodeling, maintenance, and renovation in the next two-year state budget.
Read the full story
After a Texas federal judge voided the Affordable Care Act requirement for health care insurers to cover some preventive care services without additional cost, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer directed state government to inform Michiganders which preventative care services are affected.
Whitmer called on the state legislature and Congress to pass laws to help ensure that Michiganders can access services cost-free such as early detection of colon and skin cancer, high blood pressure, and hepatitis.
Read the full story
A first-term legislator is carrying a bill that would require and provide funding for every public school building in Minnesota to eventually provide single-user gender-neutral bathrooms to accommodate the needs of transgender students.
HF2925, sponsored by Rep. Alicia Kozlowski, DFL-Duluth, would also require all local districts and charters schools to include in any new construction or significant remodeling projects their plans to ensure those upgrades or new buildings include gender-neutral bathrooms.
Read the full story
Julaine Appling rejoiced in June when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a decision she had been praying for a long time. The victory for the unborn in Wisconsin, though, looks to be short-lived.
Appling, president of pro-life Wisconsin Family Action, says the shifting of power from right to left on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court will put life — and liberty — in peril in the Badger State.
Read the full story
The Detroit city council approved a $12.69M opioid settlement on Tuesday against four companies they say contributed to the opioid epidemic.
Detroit was one of about 4,000 local governments that sued opioid manufacturers and distributors. The funds will flow to local governments and the state.
Read the full story
It wasn’t all bad news for conservatives in Tuesday’s election. While the right lost control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Republicans gained two-thirds — or supermajority power— in the state Senate.
State Representative Dan Knodl (R-Germantown) narrowly defeated environmental lawyer Jodi Habush Sinykin in the race for Wisconsin’s 8th Senate District Seat.
Read the full story
Hamline University President Fayneese Miller announced on Monday that she will retire months after she walked back an administrator’s claim that a professor’s lecture was “Islamophobic” for showing an unveiled portrait of the prophet Muhammad.
Miller will officially step down on June 30, 2024, according to the announcement sent to the Daily Caller News Foundation. Faculty members demanded she resign following a controversy that involved Professor Erika López Prater’s contract not being renewed for the spring semester after a student complained that she showed an unveiled portrait of the prophet Muhammad during a lecture on Islamic art.
Read the full story
The city of Gaylord revoked the retail marijuana license of an Exclusive Brands dispensary last week for violating city ordinance violations.
Since Wednesday, 25 employees are out of a job while the dispensary exercises the option to appeal to the city within 30 days.
Read the full story