Michigan
These are the storylines to watch in Michigan in 2025
This year could be a year of achieved resolutions. A Lions Super Bowl? Possible. A completed Gordie Howe bridge? That’s the plan. Increased minimum wage? Set for Feb. 21. Detroit’s next mayor? We’ll know after polls close on Nov. 4.
But there are also many unknowns we’ll be covering, from the impact of the Trump administration as it takes control in January to whether a divided government in Lansing can work together closer to home.
Those and others are among the 10 storylines we’re watching in 2025.
Super season?
The Detroit Lions have a lot to look forward to in 2025, starting with trying to finish what they started in 2024. After coming oh-so-close to their first Super Bowl appearance a season ago, the Lions have the goods to finish the job this time. Staff and roster turnover awaits on the other side of this season — with general manager Brad Holmes and head coach Dan Campbell at the helm, it’s not crazy to think this team keeps getting better — but right now, there’s a ton of excitement in store for a fanbase dying to see their team lift the Lombardi Trophy for the first time.
Duggan’s successor
A new mayor is set to be elected in 2025 after Mayor Mike Duggan decided to run for governor in 2026, creating a wide-open race that political analysts said will attract a large number of candidates.
City Council President Mary Sheffield has already declared her candidacy, while former City Council President Saunteel Jenkins’ campaign said she is expected to announce her candidacy in mid-January. Michigan state Rep. Joe Tate, City Council member Fred Durhal III and businessman Joel Haashiim have formed exploratory committees. Businessman Dennis Archer Jr., the son of former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer, and former Detroit Police Chief James Craig have expressed their consideration for running for mayor.
“This is a new day for future political leaders in Detroit,” political analyst Mario Morrow Sr. told The Detroit News. The August primary will narrow the field to the two top vote-getters.
Future of the RenCen up in the air
Big changes are coming to the Renaissance Center in 2025, as General Motors Co. plans to move its headquarters to Hudson’s Detroit by January 2026. Along with that shift, the iconic complex is in line for a major makeover.
GM, partnering with Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock Detroit, has proposed a $1.6 billion renovation plan that includes tearing down two of the towers — 300 and 400 — and repurposing underutilized spaces. Part of the plan is to create new public spaces, including outdoor entertainment areas along the riverfront. The central tower, which houses a Marriott hotel, will also get a makeover. The number of hotel rooms will drop from 1,200 to 850, with the top floors being turned into luxury condos. The office spaces at the RenCen will also be updated for modern office space and for residential use.
Requests for public funding for the project are expected in 2025. GM and Bedrock have said they’re looking for $350 million in public support, with $250 million from the state and $100 million from the Downtown Development Authority.
Howdy, Gordie
A second span between Detroit and Windsor is finally set to debut in September when the mile-and-a-half-long Gordie Howe International Bridge opens to commercial and other traffic. The six-lane structure across the Detroit River, which will include a path for pedestrians and cyclists, will be the longest cable-stayed bridge in North America at 2,798 feet, bridge officials said. The expected opening will close a long, contentious history after the owners of the private Ambassador Bridge tried to scuttle the Gordie Howe project through lawsuits and other venues. The border crossing between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, is the busiest commercial point on the U.S.-Canada border.
Divided government in Michigan
Michigan will enter a period of divided government for the first time since 2010 in the new year, with a 58-52 Republican majority in the House, a 20-18 Democratic majority in the Senate and a Democratic governor.
Any legislation that moves through the chambers and onto Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s desk will first need to be negotiated between the governor, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks of Grand Rapids and Republican House Speaker-elect Matt Hall of Richland Township. Hall has voiced a willingness to negotiate with his Democratic counterparts on a permanent road funding solution and immediate fixes to the paid sick leave and tipped wage laws set to take effect Feb. 21. Beyond those priorities and the annual state budget, it is unlikely Hall and Democratic leaders will find common ground on the more progressive issues Democrats struggled to pass in their waning days of power at the end of 2024.
Immigration impact on Michigan
Michigan agencies and nonprofits that work with immigrants and the state’s law enforcement agencies are among the groups in 2025 that will be bracing for President-elect Donald Trump’s promised plan to deport thousands of people who are in the United States illegally. Among the concerns expressed by law enforcement included one from Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who said she feared the deportation effort would pull federal agents from joint task forces, leaving local agencies shorthanded on other crime-fighting efforts. Nonprofits and other agencies that work with immigrants have been preparing for the deportations by hosting events to educate the public about their rights.
Major court cases
Two murder trials on opposite sides of Michigan are expected to be among the highest-profile cases decided by juries in the New Year.
Former Grand Rapids police officer Christopher Schurr, who is accused of killing a Black man as he laid face down on the ground in April 2022 after fleeing a traffic stop, is set to stand trial April 21 in Kent County Circuit Court for second-degree murder in connection with the fatal shooting of Patrick Lyoya, 26. Body camera video appears to show Lyoya trying to take Schurr’s Taser while the two were wrestling on the ground. Schurr is heard shouting, “Let go of the Taser,” before shooting and killing Lyoya. Matt Borgula, Schurr’s attorney, has said his client was protected by the Fleeing Felon Rule, which permits police to use deadly force on someone believed to have committed a felony and is fleeing.
Marshella Chidester, 67, who is accused of drunken driving and crashing into a child’s birthday party in April at a local boat club, killing two children and injuring 13 other children and adults, has a trial date set for March 3 in Monroe County. Chidester allegedly had a blood alcohol content of double the legal limit when she crashed into the Swan Boat Club, killing siblings Alanah Phillips, 8, and Zayn Phillips, 4. Her attorney, Bill Colovos, has said Chidester believes she had a seizure at the wheel and does not remember entering the boat club’s parking lot or anything that happened leading up to the crash. Chidester has asked that her trial be moved to another county.
Changes in how autos are governed?
Donald Trump’s second term as president portends enormous potential changes for an auto industry that prefers stability. Trump said he’ll put 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, which could be devastating in cost for Detroit’s automakers. Renegotiations for the United Sates-Mexico-Canada trade agreement — officially set for 2026 but already brewing with social media posts and visits to Mar-a-Lago —– could bring about transformational policies. Trump has also vowed to be tough on China. If his previous administration is any indication, tariffs will be his tool of choice. There will be cascading impacts like increases in materials costs, reshuffling of supply chains and retaliatory measures that could impact U.S. exports.
Trump also has criticized government incentives for electric vehicle purchases and called emissions and fuel economy regulations an “EV mandate.” Some EV buyers already have moved up their purchases in anticipation that Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress will revoke an up to $7,500 federal tax credit on electric models. There are expectations Trump will ease emissions and fuel economy standards, too. All of that will likely cause slower EV adoption in the U.S. auto market, backsliding on pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, and more room for China to grow its global EV dominance. Hybrid and internal combustion engine vehicles are more profitable in the U.S. for now, but industry experts widely agree that EVs are the future.
There is also, of course, Trump’s close relationship with Elon Musk. The influence of the Tesla Inc. CEO could stretch into regulations and safety investigations around self-driving vehicles just as the Texas-based EV maker is looking to get into the robotaxi business. Meanwhile, competitors like General Motors Co.’s Cruise LLC are taking a step back in favor of autonomous applications on personal vehicles over the cost of investing in the technology.
Detroit’s new skyscraper
Hudson’s Detroit is likely to open in 2025, as at least one tenant, General Motors Co., is expected to move in by January 2026, occupying the top four floors of the 12-story mixed-use office, retail and event space building next to the 685.4-foot-tall skyscraper. Bedrock has not provided an updated timeline for the project’s completion.
The highly anticipated project at 1208 Woodward Ave. led by billionaire Dan Gilbert and his real estate firm is set to transform the city’s skyline and redefine the downtown area. In addition to office space, plans include ground-floor retail shops, restaurants, an Edition hotel, event spaces and pedestrian-friendly areas. Hudson’s Detroit will also include luxury condos in the 45-story skyscraper.
Tipped wage, sick leave laws set to take effect
An increase in Michigan’s minimum wage, the elimination of the tipped wage for restaurant workers and new rules requiring at least 72 hours of paid sick leave for employees are set to take effect Feb. 21 if the Legislature doesn’t intervene to curb them.
Businesses and wait staff have been urging lawmakers to mitigate the changes to the statute — which were ordered by the Michigan Supreme Court in July — and have warned that the laws would drive up diners’ costs, result in less takeaway pay for wait staff and create a tangled web of administrative duties for small businesses seeking to comply with the sick leave policy. But unions and labor advocates have pushed for the changes, saying they will improve economic conditions for workers.
Republicans pushed for changes during lame duck, and some Democrats were willing to pitch in their votes, but the issue was never put on the vote board in the House or Senate. The unwillingness to take a vote on the matter prompted House Republicans to boycott the final days of session. When lawmakers return, they’ll have a short window to make changes or allow the new law to take effect.
Lansing — Jocelyn Benson, the front runner for the Democratic Party’s nomination for governor, said she believes her work in eight years as secretary of state will help convince voters to promote her this fall.
On Sunday, during a convention in Detroit, Democrats will pick a new secretary of state nominee. And on Thursday, Benson’s campaign for governor submitted about 30,000 petition signatures to get her name on the Aug. 4 primary ballot.
Amid those key moments in the 2026 election cycle, Benson, a former law school dean, sat down Thursday afternoon for an interview with The Detroit News about her time as secretary of state.
“I think that’s what people are looking for: A government that saves them time, saves them money and makes their life easier,” Benson contended. “I’ve done that as secretary of state, and I’ll do that as governor.”
The following interview was edited for length and clarity.
Question: You just dropped off your signatures this weekend. The Democrats are going to be gathering to nominate a new person for secretary of state. I was just looking over your campaign promises from 2017, do you feel like you hit them?
Benson: I had two goals when I came into office: wait times down and voter turnout up. And we did both, and I’m really proud of that.
When I started, we did a strategic planning session every January, and during our first strategic planning session in 2019, we filled the whiteboard on every wall in the office. And in our most recent one, the final one, we had just sort of one, just one little to-do list item left, which was really gratifying. Because we have not just increased turnout, but we’ve transformed our elections, eliminated gerrymandering, implemented the state’s first-ever citizens redistricting commission, which was no easy task, and then also implemented a number of new election procedures and options, educated voters about them and took Michigan’s elections from being ranked 31st in the country to No. 2.
We also did that while reducing those wait times (in Secretary of State offices), transforming our customer service experience. … Wait times are consistently 20 minutes or less, which was my No. 1 campaign goal.
Q: What were some of the strategies you used to get the wait times down for people?
A: No. 1, we listened to our employees, and No. 2, we collected data about what wasn’t working. You can’t fix what you can’t measure. And No. 3, we actually went around the country and looked at what states that actually had low wait times were doing. There weren’t many, but there were a few. Indiana and Illinois, had some interesting things that they did, and we took best practices that were working in other states and replicated them here.
But that first piece was key, listening to our employees. Early on in the process, we brought everyone in, all the branch office directors. I was expecting a daylong retreat where we would be discussing ideas, and I sat down with the director of branch office services. He had a whole PowerPoint presentation that went through everything we needed to do, from filling 900 vacant positions that were just vacant and not filled, to creating internally this opportunity for people to schedule the visit ahead of time.
We didn’t pay someone else to build that. That was built by our employees.
Q: When you ran in 2018, one of the big things you were talking about was election security. Do you feel like you’ve achieved that: improving election security? And what do you think about more people probably having faith in the results of elections then than they do now?
A: I am really proud of the fact that in this era of misinformation, we were able to protect our elections and ensure they remained secure.
While withstanding this unprecedented scrutiny and an unprecedented level of frivolous lawsuits, sham legislative hearings and falsehoods spread about our elections in the eye of the storm, we not only met the moment, but we built a better election system through it. That’s evidenced by the fact that we now have choices on how to vote in our state, we’ve modernized how you can register to vote and have increased the registration numbers we have.
Q: If one of these current candidates for secretary of state came to you and said, “I believe that the election is secure and everything is fine, but obviously there’s a lot of voters who don’t. How do we improve that?” What would you say to them?
A: Transparency is our friend.
Q: Just continue to open the process up as much as possible?
A: Well, the facts are on our side. The process is secure. So one of the most important things we need to do first is just continue to give people the tools that they need to get their questions answered and work with folks across the aisle, like we worked with Sen. Ed McBroom in 2021 to invite them into the process as well as answer questions that they have, while also, of course, maintaining any necessary confidence or security about the information that we’re providing.
But the through line is just transparency.
Q: What do you say to some of your opponents who will say, “Yeah, you decreased wait times. But what about the campaign finance website?” It’s not functioning, as they would hope it would.
A: Well, it’s certainly better than what we’ve had in the past. I think it’s important to remember that when I first ran for office, one of the things I heard most on the trail was actually, when are you going to get rid of MERTS (the former campaign finance disclosure system)?
Q: But that’s from people who are on the back end of it?
A: Right. Yeah. So I didn’t want to leave office without taking on that behemoth, knowing that it wasn’t going to be a smooth process, but it’s a necessary one if we were actually going to have a more transparent system, which I would argue also is something that the next secretary of state really needs to lean into more: getting money out of politics. I’ll be an ally for that as governor.
But when it comes to MITN and that process, one, what it really underscores is that I’m not afraid to take on big behemoths that others, frankly, past secretaries of state, refused to do, because it was too hard. And it does invite criticism. Whenever you try to transform a massive system that’s broken, yes, there are going to be hiccups along the way.
Q: Do you think voters are interested in that message: “I’ve improved these systems. I’m in government. I’ve succeeded in government. I can make it work.” Or are they looking for someone to just change everything?
A: People see a broken system that needs fixing, and they know I have transformed and fixed a system that every single one of our residents has interacted with. The other day, I was picking up food for my son and husband, and walking out with bags of food, and this gentleman in a pickup truck pulled up next to me in the parking lot and said, “Excuse me, are you the secretary of state?”
I was like, “I am.” And he said, “You know, I’m not political or anything. But I just was driving down this road the other day and realized when I passed the secretary of state’s office that it’s been years since I’ve had to go in there. Thank you for everything you’ve done to make that possible for me.” And I said, “Yeah, now imagine if all of government worked that well.”
Q: Do you think all three of the Democratic candidates running for secretary of state would be a good secretary of state? I know you’re not endorsing.
A: I’m committed to working with whoever comes through the convention and making sure they’re prepared to build on what we’ve done and achieve even more success.
cmauger@detroitnews.com
Before-and-after images of homes on Black Lake near Onaway provide perspectives on how the community was affected by April flooding.
Snowmelt and rain have stressed dams and caused lakes to flood in northern Michigan.
The Cheboygan County Sheriff’s Office shared on social media photos and videos that the agency captured of Cheboygan County floods on Friday, April 17 from both the ground and air.
Deputies “observed a level of destruction that simply cannot be understood from ground level,” the sheriff’s office said in the post.
Google Maps images taken from two locations on Black Lake in 2024, compared with the Friday images, show how the floodwater has changed the landscape.
On North Black River Road and Taylor Road, the water has overflowed to North Black River Road.
In the 400 block of South Black River Road, water has also flooded homes and lakeside property.
“Black Lake, Black River, Cheboygan River, Burt Lake, Mullet Lake, the Sturgeon River − and nearly every waterway in the county have overflowed beyond their banks, swallowing docks, roads, yards, and in far too many cases, homes,” the sheriff’s office post said. “What should be familiar shorelines are now unrecognizable expanses of water.”
“Our hearts are with every family affected by this flooding,” Cheboygan County Sheriff Todd Ross said in the post. “We know many of you are facing significant damage to your homes and property, and the emotional toll that comes with it. Please know you are not alone. We are working around the clock with our partners to ensure safety, provide support, and begin the process of recovery. Stay strong, stay connected, and don’t hesitate to reach out for help, we will get through this together.”
Nearby, the UAW Black Lake Conference Center shared images on social media of floodwater threatening its Old Lodge.
The conference center is located at 2000 Maxon Road in Waverly Township.
The Cheboygan County Road Commission and the Cheboygan County Office of Emergency Management closed the bridge at Five Mile Point Road on Saturday, April 18 due to significant road washout in the area of South Black River Road and Red Bridge Road.
The sheriff’s office had encouraged residents in parts of the area to evacuate earlier in the week and said Saturday it had completed evacuation efforts on the west side of the lake.
TEXAS TOWNSHIP, Mich. — A 20-year-old Kalamazoo man is dead after crashing his vehicle into a tree Friday evening in Texas Township, according to Michigan State Police (MSP).
It happened on South 3rd Street and West PQ Avenue around 6:50 p.m., troopers said.
While he was driving in a no-passing zone, the Kalamazoo man swerved off the road to avoid an oncoming vehicle and subsequently crashed into the tree, according to MSP.
The 20-year-old died at the scene. A passenger was hurt, but police said their injuries were non-life threatening.
Troopers do not believe alcohol or drugs were a factor, and the two were reportedly wearing seatbelts.
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This incident remains under investigation by MSP.
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