Michigan
Michigan Democratic lawmakers decry proposed Department of Education changes
Democrats blocked from entering Dept. of Education, says congressman
Congressman Maxwell Frost shared videos on X of him, and other elected officials, being blocked from entering the Department of Education building.
A group of Democratic state lawmakers, joining a chorus of education advocates, decried the Trump administration’s whirlwind sweep of the U.S. Department of Education in a news conference Friday.
State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, D-Royal Oak; state Rep. Kelly Breen, D-Novi, and state Rep. Matt Koleszar, D-Plymouth, said they were raising the alarm about federal education funding at stake in Michigan during the news conference at a union hall in Southfield.
The Democrats were reacting to a slew of changes and the Trump administration’s proposed elimination of the federal Education Department. In recent days, the department under Trump has moved to slash nearly $1 billion in research contracts, a court has temporarily barred the department from allowing Elon Musk’s government efficiency team from accessing sensitive student data and civil rights investigations have stalled. The state lawmakers also criticized Trump’s pick to lead the Education Department, Linda McMahon, the subject of U.S. Senate confirmation hearings this week.
“What we heard confirmed our worst fears,” McMorrow said. “McMahon is grossly unqualified and fundamentally out of touch with the needs of students.”
Only Congress can eliminate the department with a supermajority of votes, so advocates are skeptical that will happen. Instead, critics say they are fearful that the institution will be weakened, particularly in areas such as education research and support for students with disabilities. McMorrow said she hopes that an outcry from constituents will put pressure on the administration to minimize the impact.
“If your child is in a special needs program, if your child has an IEP, if you want that program protected, call your local official, your state official, and your federal official because at the end of the day, they work for us,” she said.
McMorrow and Koleszar, in an interview with the Detroit Free Press, said they were particularly concerned about the major funding streams that support students with disabilities and other vulnerable children.
“These are our most vulnerable kids,” Koleszar said. “What happens to those kids? This is something that could legitimately harm the kids who need support the most.”
Breen said the most recent move to axe federal research grants will hurt local schools by clouding efforts to understand whether children are effectively learning.
“We are not talking about a hypothetical worst case scenario here,” she said. “The damage has already started. … It has taken a meat cleaver to the entire educational system when they should be using a scalpel.”
The lawmakers said they felt Trump’s administration has misled constituents into thinking federal officials help set school curricula, which actually falls on local school boards in Michigan.
Federal funding accounts for about 10% of the money, about $2.3 billion, that goes to state public education. The largest chunk of that federal money is Title 1 funding, meant to boost schools that serve the highest proportions of disadvantaged students, according to the Michigan League for Public Policy.
The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act is federal law. Funding for it, and the law itself, would not be eliminated through an executive action eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, according to the School Superintendents Association. Michigan schools received about $460 million in federal funding for special education in 2024, about 15% of the funding for special education services, according to the Michigan League for Public Policy.
While the lawmakers outlined what’s at stake, they said minimizing funding cuts at the state levels would be difficult, with $2.5 billion in the state’s rainy day fund.
“If some of what Trump is calling for were to go through that would be wiped out immediately and would only cover us for one year,” McMorrow said.
Contact Lily Altavena: laltavena@freepress.com.
Sterling Stamping Plant is the largest in the world
Ed Daniels, vice president of North America injection and stamping operations, discusses the process of producing metal parts for Stellantis models.
Warren — Hulking metal presses line one wall of Stellantis NV’s cavernous stamping plant here, punching out the raw shapes of Jeep doors, Dodge hoods and Ram tailgates in rapid succession.
Nearby, swinging yellow robots continue the tightly choreographed work, gluing and pressing and welding smaller components to the sheet metal that eventually will start to resemble the shape of a truck or SUV.
Seven miles north, in Sterling Heights, Stellantis operates an even larger stamping plant — the biggest in the world, at 2.7 million square feet — that does much of the same work, churning out various shapes of steel and aluminum 24 hours a day.
Together, these lesser-known links in the manufacturing supply chain support all of Stellantis’ big North American assembly plants — from next-door Warren Truck Assembly Plant, where the Jeep Grand Wagoneer SUV is built, to facilities in Windsor and Mexico that make minivans and pickups.
Inside Stellantis’ Huge Detroit Stamping Plants
The Detroit News recently got a rare look inside the automaker’s Sterling and Warren stamping plants, which are key to the company’s turnaround plan.
The Metro Detroit stamping plants, the automaker’s only two such facilities in the United States, have at times struggled in recent years, facing major job cuts and worker morale issues amid slowing sales and shifting production plans. But under Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa, the facilities are expected to cram in more workload — and add staff — as Stellantis begins a new five-year strategic turnaround plan, which includes a heavy focus on its most profitable North American market.
The carmaker’s goal: grow sales by more than a third to 1.9 million annually by 2030 as it launches 23 vehicles, including 11 all-new models. The company also is directing billions of dollars of investment into its U.S. manufacturing footprint due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
“Stamping has never really been viewed as the sexy side of automotive manufacturing, we’re relatively invisible,” said Ed Daniels Jr., vice president of North America injection and stamping operations. “Because when you look at the commercials and advertisements, it’s always a beautiful Ram rolling off the assembly line or climbing the side of a mountain.
“But we’re the inception of that vehicle,” he said. “This is where raw materials are turned into commodities and parts.”
The Detroit News recently got a rare look inside the two plants that combined employ about 3,000 people. The automaker wanted to show off a newly-installed blanking press at Warren Stamping and other machinery like a high-speed transfer press and a robot that spots flaws in the metal.
Hiring expected
The blanking press unspools long coils of metal and chops them up into pieces that can then be shaped into roofs, fenders and floor pans. Stellantis shipped the massive machine to Warren from its idled Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois last year.
After upgrades to the machine, executives said it’s able to produce as many as 120,000 metal blanks per week. It will save Stellantis money since the plant will no longer need to pay a supplier to break down the coils before the metal arrives there.
The blanker addition is a big deal for the plant and signals that the company wants to bring more work in-house and invest in the facility over the coming years, said Romaine McKinney III, president of United Auto Workers Local 869, which represents workers at the factory.
The plant has already brought back all of its laid-off UAW workers, and McKinney said he anticipates more hiring to get underway if sales grow and new Stellantis vehicles come to market.
In another corner of the Warren facility, one of the fastest press lines in the world — known internally as the Hellcat — pushes as many as 15 pieces of metal through per minute. Dies that weigh up to 50 tons apiece squish the material into the shapes of doors and hoods before robotic arms snatch them out and place them on conveyor belts. Midway through a shift, workers can reconfigure the machine to make a different component, a process that takes just five minutes.
Robots check for quality
Curtis Booth, who manages Warren Stamping, said manual processes inside the plant have become increasingly automated, and safer, over the last couple decades, even as the automaker’s two stamping factories still utilize some presses that were installed in the 1960s.
The latest high-tech addition is the Automated Body Inspection System, or ABIS. It’s a camera system mounted on a robot that automatically checks the quality of components and flags anything in need of repair.
Auto plants of all kinds are increasingly turning to these types of camera systems, infused with artificial intelligence, to catch flaws in sheet metal and other components before they are shipped. Booth said worker visual inspections are still used. But in some cases the human eye has too much subjectivity, and the ABIS removes the guesswork.
Greg Bauer, who manages Sterling Stamping, said his plant has added staff over the past year, and expects to continue hiring as more work is assigned to the facility. There is no space at the plant to add more presses, but officials have figured out how to increase efficiency — quickly toggling back and forth between making doors for a Chrysler Pacifica and Dodge Charger on on a single machine, for example.
“We want to bring high-volume parts into the plant, and we want to maximize the capacity of the equipment,” Daniels said.
lramseth@detroitnews.com
MENOMINEE, Mich. (WLUK) — 24-year-old Ethan Raymond Masters of Menominee was arrested on sexual assault charges June 30th, according to the Menominee County Sheriff’s Office.
According to a news release from the Sheriff’s Office, deputies learned of an incident involving a 24-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl which happened in Menominee June 22nd. Following a sexual assault investigation, police charged Masters.
Masters was arraigned July 2nd on 2 counts of Criminal Sexual Conduct First Degree. He remains in the Menominee County Jail on a $250,000 cash bond.
Menominee City Police and the Michigan State Police Crime Laboratory of Marquette assisted with the investigation.
Michigan
Michigan immigration advocates react after Supreme Court ruling on Temporary Protected Status
Twenty-four thousand immigrants in Michigan have Temporary Protected Status (TPS), but a recent Supreme Court decision could put their protection in jeopardy.
TPS is a humanitarian protection granted to U.S. immigrants fleeing dangerous situations in their home countries, often from natural disasters or political instability. The status allows immigrants from the designated countries to live and work in the U.S.
The Supreme Court overturned those for 356,000 Haitians and Syrians in a recent decision. While the court’s decision directly impacted Haitian and Syrian immigrants, it also established that the Secretary of Homeland Security has the authority to determine TPS status without judicial review or input from the courts.
That means that the Secretary of Homeland Security can eliminate TPS for any immigrant group that is currently in the U.S. under protection. That puts 1.3 million immigrants in the U.S. at risk of deportation. In Florida, 113,000 healthcare workers with TPS are at risk of deportation. The Haitian population in Philadelphia is also expressing concerns about what comes next for them.
“The Supreme Court turned its back on our moral and legal commitments to people seeking safety,” said Christine Sauvé, manager of Policy and Communication at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center. “The decision eliminates legal protections for people fleeing danger and allows the Trump Administration to really advance its mass deportation agenda.”
Left without the ability to live or work in the U.S., these Haitian and Syrian immigrants with TPS now face deportation. But going back home could still be incredibly dangerous.
“It’s not really an option to go back to their home country,” said Melanie Goldberg, immigration attorney with the Institute of Metro Detroit. “In the case of Haiti, they don’t even have an airport in Port-au-Prince that’s operational. Yet they say it’s safe for these citizens to go back.”
In Michigan, immigrants with TPS have contributed $349 million to the state’s economy, a sign that they are deeply embedded in the community, according to Sauvé.
“Many TPS holders have been in our communities for a very long time,” Sauvé said. “They’ve really spent decades building their lives here in Michigan. We welcomed them here, only to see that completely ripped away with the stroke of a pen.”
The Michigan Immigrant Rights Center encourages Haitian and Syrian immigrants with TPS, as well as any immigrants in the U.S. with a TPS designation, to seek out a qualified legal service provider and review the “Know Your Rights” Materials on the MIRC’s website
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