As Big Labor-bought President Joe Biden made his trip to Detroit on Tuesday for a photo-op stop on the United Auto Workers (UAW) picket lines, a worker freedom organization reminded those swept up in the UAW action that there are protections for workers who don’t want to strike. Nearly two…
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A new report found the funding disparity between traditional public schools and their public charter school counterparts in Detroit is $6,202 per pupil or 35.3%.
Meanwhile, the average disparity in per-pupil funding between traditional public schools and their public charter school counterparts across 18 cities is $7,147 per pupil.
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The city of Detroit is targeting $95 million of federal money to take care of blight.
That’s in addition to the city’s $250 million bond that voters approved in 2020 to also address blight remediation. The city estimates it has 16,000 vacant homes in the city limits.
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A federal bankruptcy judge approved Detroit’s plan to push the city’s pension payments for the Police and Fire Retirement System over 30 years instead of 20.
Judge Thomas Tucker ruled that “a 30-year amortization is indeed part of the confirmed [Plan of Adjustment], and the PFRS cannot change it.”
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Chicago recorded 697 total homicides in 2022, far more than any other city in the United States, but New Orleans had the highest murder rate per capita, according to a new report from a nonprofit research group.
Chicago had more total homicides in 2022 than Philadelphia (516), New York City (438), Houston (435) and Los Angeles (382), which rounded out the top five, according to a report from Wirepoints, an Illinois-based research and news organization that surveyed 2022 crime data from 75 of the largest U.S. cities.
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Taxpayers’ potential cost is unknown for Detroit’s commissioning of 200 murals to be painted by local artists.
The commissions are part of Mayor Mike Duggan’s 2022 Blight to Beauty campaign and will be funded by the city’s Public Art Fund as well as potentially by the Ford and Kresge foundations.
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The city of Detroit will receive $24.8 million to redesign existing transportation infrastructure in high crash areas to reduce traffic fatalities.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the money is part of $800 million in grant awards for 510 projects through the Safe Streets and Roads for All Grant Program.
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Prominent free-market proponents in Michigan are speaking out against the $85 million appropriation approved Thursday to fund Detroit’s QLine trolley over the next 17 years.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has indicated she will sign the $5 million annual QLine subsidy passed by the Legislature during its last session of 2022 – before Democrats exercise their newly-elected majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives. The free trolley service transports riders along 12 stops on Woodward Avenue from Motor City’s cultural center to downtown Detroit.
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Drug raids in Detroit have fallen 95% since a peak in 2012, largely as a result of voters’ decision to legalize recreational marijuana and shifting other police priorities.
Detroit police conducted 3,462 drug raids in fiscal year 2012. Nearly every year since then, that number has declined. Last year, police conducted 186 drug raids, according to the city’s annual financial report.
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The city of Detroit plans to spend federal COVID relief to pay groups to identify qualified individuals to enroll in training and return them to the workforce.
Applications are now open through early November for the new “In Detroit Organizations” program to identify long-term unemployed residents and enroll them in a JumpStart education or training program. The Center Square has asked for the total program cost but has not yet received an answer.
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The administration of Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer proposed a contract for a child foster care consultant on gender identity and sexual orientation, according to documents made public by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Children’s Services Agency, which “oversees all child welfare services for children,” is seeking a “Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) Consultant” as of Sept. 12, according to documents made public by the Washington Free Beacon. The consultant would be a part of the “Diversity Equity and Inclusion Unit” and would focus on determining the “needs and concerns of LGBTQ staff, families and children.”
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“In the 1950s,” writes J. Eric Wise in “The French Exit: A Detroit Love Story,” Detroit was “outwardly living well, a very healthy city, technologically advanced, with economic diversity, prosperity, peace, and civil life supporting the arts and sciences.” That is no exaggeration, as this writer can testify.
As Wise explains, Detroit prospered enormously from World War II and attracted workers from far and wide. My father, a mechanical engineer, was among them. In 1952, he moved our family from Alliance, Ohio, to Detroit, Michigan. The Big Three automakers gave him all the work he could handle.
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The ridership of the two largest Detroit Metro public transit systems has plummeted post-pandemic and one expert says it might not return this decade.
In 2020, the Detroit Department of Transportation and the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation provided free fares and reduced operations during some of COVID. The systems later revived fares and added more routes, but many people didn’t return.
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Michigan won a $105 million federal grant to replace the I-375 freeway in Detroit with an accessible boulevard. Work is expected to start in 2025.
Almost 60 years ago, government officials approved a plan that bulldozed through the mostly minority-populated neighborhoods Black Bottom and Paradise Valley in order to build I-375, displacing more than 130,000 people. The new project will replace it with a boulevard to reconnect the split communities.
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The Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD) plans to spend $1.2 billion of federal COVID-19 relief to recover from learning loss and revamp its buildings.
The spending plans aim to repair learning loss detailed by test data the state and federal government released this week showing a drop in test scores, and for some students, decades of learning loss.
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Facing a $131 million annual pension bill due in July 2023, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s administration filed a lawsuit to request city pension funds extend by 10 years its repayment schedule from 20 to 30 years.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court says a more extended payment plan would cost the city less over an additional decade as it approaches the “pension cliff” when it must resume payments.
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The Detroit City Council postponed for a second time a vote on whether to give billionaire Dan Gilbert a $60 million tax break over 10 years after heavy resident pushback.
Gilbert, who Forbes says is worth $15.6 billion, says he needs taxpayers to fund a 10-year tax break to renovate real estate firm Bedrock’s Hudson building, which they claim will support 2,000 permanent jobs once finished.
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About 53,406 kids attending Detroit Public Schools Community District still must wear a mask through the end of the regular school year because of an agreement with a teacher’s union.
The last day of the regular school year is June 27. The union agreement ends June 30.
DPSCD Superintendent Dr. Nikolai Vitti said the Detroit Federation of Teachers still wants a mask mandate. In February, the state and counties dropped the requirement but left local decisions to each school.
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Three video clips from drop box locations in Detroit released this week reveal multiple issues that occurred with absentee ballots during the November 2020 election.
The absentee ballot drop box video evidence was shared Thursday in a series of three tweets by 45th President Donald Trump’s spokeswoman, Liz Harrington.
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Thursday morning on War Room Pandemic, host Bannon welcomed The Michigan Star Report Pete D’Abrasco discuss his recent article which addresses how the Canadian freedom convoy of truckers has spread to Windsor creating standstill traffic on heavily traveled Ambassador Bridge dispelling falsehoods by left-wing media outlets.
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Michigan’s independent redistricting commission voted to adopt the state’s new congressional map Tuesday afternoon, with five of the 13 new districts being potentially competitive as both parties fight for control of the House.
The new map creates competitive seats along Lake Michigan, around the state capital and in metro Detroit. President Joe Biden would have won seven of the districts in 2020, while former President Donald Trump would have won six, according to David Wasserman, a senior editor at the Cook Political Report.
Despite Biden’s narrow edge on the new map, incumbent Democratic Reps. Elissa Slotkin, Dan Kildee and Andy Levin could be forced to run in very competitive seats as their party faces political headwinds ahead of the 2022 midterms. Republican Rep. Peter Meijer may also face a contentious race in 2022, as his current Grand Rapids-based 3rd district was put into a new district that Biden would have won by nine points in 2020, Wasserman said.
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Three students were killed Tuesday in a shooting at Oxford High School in Oakland, Detroit. A suspected teen shooter has been taken into custody, and officials have recovered a handgun. Several others also have been injured in the attack, according to authorities.
Oakland County Undersheriff Michael McCabe said in addition to the three deceased, eight people were shot, including a teacher. He estimated that 15 to 20 shots were fired in total. Officers conducted a third search of the high school to ensure there were no other victims.
The students who lost their lives have been identified as 14 and 17-year-old girls, in addition to a 16-year-old boy.
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Homicides in Michigan rose a dramatic 31 percent in 2020, above the national average, amid Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D) coronavirus lockdowns that forced residents out of work and children out of schools.
The numbers posted both statewide and in Detroit are above national averages.
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A new poll conducted by the Trafalgar Group shows Republican James Craig leading Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer in a potential general election contest.
The survey, released on Tuesday, demonstrated the former Detroit police chief leading Whitmer 50 percent to 44 percent, a six point advantage.
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After the U.S. Conference of Mayors adopted a resolution in favor of teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) last week, the mayors of Michigan’s largest cities won’t say whether they support the resolution.
The Conference of Mayors defines CRT as a “malleable practice [that] critiques how the social construction of race and institutionalized racism perpetuate a racial caste system that relegates people of color to the bottom tiers and recognizes that race intersects with other identities, including sexuality and gender identity.”
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The Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce conference later this month will require attendees to be vaccinated and offer them interaction “comfort level” wristbands to wear.
The Chamber event, which will take place September 20-23 on Mackinac Island, will also require masking in certain areas, despite the vaccination mandate.
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Former Detroit Police Chief James Craig registered as a Democrat when he moved to Ohio in 2012, after previously claiming that he converted to becoming a Republican three years earlier.
James has said he became a Republican in 2009 when he moved from Los Angeles to Portland, Maine. In May, the Detroit News reported:
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A Detroit firearms instructor is planning this weekend the largest gun training for women ever in the state.
Rick Ector, who runs Legally Armed in Detroit — or LAID — has held similar events in the past, including one last year that attracted 1,938 participants, but nothing this ambitious.
The two-day mass training will be held Saturday and Sunday, August 21-22 at two gun ranges in Taylor, Michigan: Top Gun Shooting Sports and Recoil Firearms from 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. This is the tenth annual event, with Ector seeing growth each year. The press release stated that the first year of training in 2011 had only 50 participants, which grew to nearly two thousand at the 2020 training.
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Ned Staebler, the university administrator who notoriously spouted a furious tirade against two Wayne County Republican election officials in a public meeting last November, is also treasurer of an entity promoted by Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) for “nonpartisan voter education.”
On November 17, 2020, Staebler, vice president for economic development at Wayne State University and head of the business-development organization TechTown Detroit, blasted county Board of Canvassers’ members Monica Palmer and William Hartmann for initially voting to block the certification of votes in Wayne County.
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Leftists in Detroit, Michigan were dealt a blow at the ballot box Tuesday with the defeat of Proposal P, which received under 33 percent of voters’ support.
Over 69,000 Motor City residents cast ballots in this week’s primary election, of which nearly 47,000 voted to reject the progressive rewriting of the city charter offered by the Detroit Charter Revision Commission.
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Used car prices keep climbing in Detroit.
According to iSeeCars’ newest study, used car prices in June increased by 31.4% or $7,179, in Detroit year over year as a result of the microchip shortage and the COVID-19 pandemic.
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U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Stafford entered a not-guilty plea for a silent Detroit City Councilman André L. Spivey in U.S. District Court in Detroit Tuesday to accepting over $35,000 in exchange for council votes.
Spivey was released on a $10,000 unsecured bond. Stafford reportedly agreed to the release under the conditions that Spivey to give up his enhanced driver’s license, his passport and his expired concealed-carry permit.
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When Detroit, Michigan voters head to the polls for next Tuesday’s primary, they will decide on a referendum concerning a major proposed revision of the city charter which would institute numerous left-wing programs and reforms.
The ballot item, known as “Proposal P,” provides for the creation of a new “Task Force on Reparations and African American Justice,” an “Office of Economic Justice and Consumer Empowerment,” a “Department of Environmental Justice and Sustainability” and an “Office of Immigrant Affairs,” among other new government offices.
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Former Detroit, Michigan police chief and Republican gubernatorial candidate James Craig, speaking on Fox News on Monday, denounced progressive public officials who retain security professionals while bashing police and firearm owners.
Craig expressed his reprehension in response to reports of campaign-finance documents showing Representative Cori Bush (D-MO-1) has spent $70,000 on private security professionals.
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James Craig, who served as chief of Police in Detroit, MI, since 2013 and retired this spring, is running for governor of the Great Lake State, he announced to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Wednesday night.
Craig has formed a gubernatorial exploratory committee to begin his run against Democratic incumbent Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is once again under fire for a Florida trip she took months ago.
The trip was partially paid for by a 501(c)4 group, which critics say presents legal questions.
Whitmer used funds from an inauguration-related nonprofit to pay for a $27,521 trip to Florida to visit her ailing father in March, MIRS News reported. “She continued to carry out her duties as governor while she assisted her father [in Florida] with household duties like cooking and cleaning,” JoAnne Huls, the governor’s chief of staff, wrote in a memo. “The governor’s flight was not a gift, not paid for at taxpayer expense, and was done in compliance with the law.”
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The Center for Tech and Civil Life (CTCL), a voter advocacy group funded by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, donated $7.4 million last year to Detroit to, among other things, “dramatically expand strategic voter education and outreach” in a blue city key to Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, according to memos obtained by Just the News under an open records request.
Detroit received three grants in 2020 from CTCL for $200,000, $3,512,000, and $3,724,450, according to the records released under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
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Officials in Detroit sued a prominent activist group and several Black Lives Matter demonstrators for damages following allegations of riots, violence and a “civil conspiracy” to defame local authorities.
The suit was filed against multiple individuals and an organization called Detroit Will Breathe, which indicates on its webpage that it plans to use “militant resistance” to enact “meaningful change” for people of color. City leaders allege that the group was part of a conspiracy to damage property, attack law enforcement and incite riot activity, the lawsuit read.
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Many people, including some good friends, believe that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election fair and square.
Many others – and I place myself among them – believe that something is rotten in the state of Denmark, or, to be more specific, in the cities of Milwaukee, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Detroit, not to mention Maricopa County, Arizona. I think what happened was so rotten that I regard the election as illegitimate.
What proof, you might ask, do I have?
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Attorney Sidney Powell delivered on her promise to file massive election fraud lawsuits in Georgia and Michigan. The Georgia lawsuit was the weightier of the two, totaling 104 pages, with the Michigan lawsuit reaching 75 pages. Both lawsuits and all evidence are included on Powell’s legal defense fund website.
Thanksgiving Eve was an action-packed day for Powell – she followed up the presidential pardoning of her client, General Michael Flynn, by filing both lawsuits just before midnight.
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According to a press release, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has confirmed about 12,000 incident reports and over 400 affidavits filed concerning potential voter fraud.
McDaniel appeared on Fox Business to provide the brief update. The chairwoman shared that the campaign has issued nine lawsuits currently nationwide.
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A Detroiter filed a class-action lawsuit against Wayne County on Thursday, claiming officials foreclosed on her home, sold it at less than half the market value, and then pocketed the proceeds.
Philip L. Ellison, an attorney at Hemlock-based Outside Legal Counsel, and others filed the lawsuit Thursday in the U.S. Eastern District Court on behalf of Tonya Bowles, who lost her East State property to foreclosure in 2017.
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The Detroit City Council on Tuesday approved a contract supporting facial recognition in Detroit, even after a vast majority of public comments were in opposition to the measure.
The measure, approved by a 6-3 vote, approves spending $219,984 to cover costs associated with upgrades and maintenance. The council’s vote was preceded by a morning protest and an hour of public comment from residents opposing facial recognition, arguing the technology is “racist.”
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The Michigan Strategic Fund has agreed to subsidize a major portion of a proposed $19.7 million redevelopment of the former Lincoln Motor Co. headquarters in the Northwest Goldberg neighborhood of Detroit.
More than half of those funds will derive from public taxpayer assistance, including a $5 million state grant, $2.7 million in additional tax transfers, and another $3.4 million in tax breaks.
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Election integrity advocates believe something fishy is going on in Wayne County with absentee ballots, and they say Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is undermining the security of the process there and across Michigan.
Glen Sitek of the Election Integrity Fund provided an exclusive statement to The Michigan Star.
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The Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT) voted Wednesday to authorize a strike if an agreement can’t be reached over COVID-19 concerns.
The vote, with 91 percent in favor, authorizes DFT leadership to call a strike if the union and the Detroit Public School Community District (DPSCD) don’t reach an agreement.
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Amazon plans to create 3,500 new tech and corporate jobs in six cities nationwide, the company announced Tuesday.
Most of the company’s new hires will be located in Amazon’s New York office with the rest being added in Dallas, Detroit, Denver, Phoenix and San Diego, according to a press release. Amazon also announced plans to expand the six offices to accommodate the new hires.
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The state of Michigan Thursday announced a plan to explore the viability of developing a 40-mile corridor for connected and autonomous vehicles between Downtown Detroit and Ann Arbor.
The state selected Cavnue, a subsidiary of Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP) that partners with Alphabet, Google’s parent company, to develop the project.
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As the automotive industry fills the demand for electric cars, the country – and the world – will need thousands more plug-in charging stations for vehicles powered by batteries alone. And because they’re being asked to invest before that demand arrives, automakers and charging companies are struggling to raise the numbers.
Currently electric vehicles make up only about 1.3% of total new vehicle sales in the U.S., according to the Edmunds.com auto site. Electrics are much bigger in other countries, accounting for 2.6% of global new vehicle sales last year, the International Energy Agency says. There are now 26,000 electric vehicle charging stations open to the public in the U.S., with more than 84,000 plugs.
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Detroit Police Chief James Craig credited the city’s success in remaining peaceful during nationwide protests and riots with having a city that has stood together and a police force that refuses to give up “the ground to the radicals.”
In an appearance on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight on Tuesday, Craig told Carlson that “we don’t retreat here in Detroit.”
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