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Friday July 25, 2025

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Michigan faces $890M bill looming for food stamp program

President Donald Trump signed a spending bill into law on July 4 that will shift responsibility for about $890 million of food stamps to Michigan. The state can’t pay the bill, according to Michigan’s top executive.

A change Congress could make to the program that feeds about 1.5 million Michiganders would be “unacceptable,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a June 4 post.

"In Michigan, we will fight to make sure our kids and families are fed, but we need Republicans in our congressional delegation to step up for their own constituents who need SNAP and Medicaid to survive," Whitmer said in a statement made public June 4. “If these cuts are signed into law, more Michiganders will go to bed with a pit in their stomach. That’s unacceptable.”

The federal government funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which the state administers. Click here to read more.

A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem

These days, everyone seems to have an opinion about A.I. companions. Last year, I found myself joining the debate, publishing a paper—co-written with two fellow psychology professors and a philosopher—called “In Praise of Empathic A.I.” Our argument was that, in certain ways, the latest crop of A.I.s might make for better company than many real people do, and that, rather than recoiling in horror, we ought to consider what A.I. companions could offer to those who are lonely.

This, perhaps unsurprisingly, did not go over especially well in my corner of academia. In the social sciences and the humanities, A.I. tends to be greeted less as a technological advance than as a harbinger of decline. There are the familiar worries about jobs—ours and our students’—and about the ease with which A.I. can be used for cheating. The technology is widely seen as the soulless project of Silicon Valley billionaires whose creativity consists mostly of appropriating other people’s. But what really rankles is the idea that these digital interlocutors are a plausible substitute for real friends or family. You have to be either credulous or coldhearted, many people believe, to think so. Click here to read more.

First US Rare Earth Minerals Mine in 70 Years Will Lessen Dependence on China

Last week on the Senate floor, I hailed the opening in Sheridan, Wyoming, of the Brook Mine—the first rare earth elements mine to break ground in the U.S. in 70 years.

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright recently joined me in Sheridan for its opening and deemed it a “landmark moment” for America’s energy independence.

Here’s what I said on the Senate floor about it:

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Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed into law a historic economic plan. This new law unleashes American energy—and with it, American prosperity. It makes it easier to produce oil, natural gas, and coal here at home. It opens up energy production onshore, offshore, and in Alaska. It means lower prices and more savings for the American people. Click here to read more.

Publicly owned grocery stores are a bad idea

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani recently made headlines by proposing five government-owned grocery stores — one in each borough — as a kind of “public option” for food. His pitch echoes familiar progressive talking points: the stores wouldn’t pay rent or taxes, they wouldn’t aim for profit, and their mission would be to offer lower prices in a market supposedly dominated by greed.

But the idea of publicly owned grocery stores isn’t just flawed for New York City. It’s flawed everywhere. While Mamdani’s plan might be the most high-profile example, experiments with government-run food retail have taken place in rural towns and small cities across the country. They’ve all failed. The results are overwhelmingly clear: public grocery stores are inefficient, unsustainable, and ultimately counterproductive especially when the private sector is already doing the job.

Take Baldwin, Florida. When the town’s only grocery store shut down, the city stepped in to fill the gap with a government run-store. It was hailed as a bold solution to a food desert. But less than five years later, the store closed. The store was unable to break even despite being owned outright by the city and subsidized with public dollars. Click here to read more.

Troy Likely Violating First Amendment with City Council Commentary Rules

TROY, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – The city of Troy is violating the First Amendment with its restrictive policies it has in place for commentary during city council meetings, according to a free speech watchdog group.

Troy’s commentary rules state: “Please direct your comments to the City Council as a whole rather than to any individual. Please do not use expletives or make derogatory or disparaging comments about any individual or group. If you do, there may be immediate consequences, including being muted and having your comments omitted from any re-broadcast of the meeting. Please abide by these rules in order to minimize the possibility of disrupting the meeting.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free speech watchdog, said Troy’s rules have Constitutional issues.

“Bans on derogatory/disparaging comments violate the First Amendment because they discriminate based on viewpoint, allowing praise but not criticism,” said Stephanie Jablonsky, a senior program counsel with FIRE. “As for Troy’s requirement that comments be directed to the council ‘as a whole rather than to any individual,’ a similar policy was invalidated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Ison v. Madison Local School District Board of Education, which banned ‘antagonistic,’ ‘abusive,’ and ‘personally directed’ comments at public meetings.” Click here to read more.