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.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather for a mock trial against the University of Michigan’s Board of Regents on the university’s campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on April 21, 2025. Photo by Jeff Kowalsky / AFP / Getty Images
At the University of Michigan’s recent commencement ceremony, history professor Derek Peterson delivered a five-minute speech in which he celebrated all those who have fought for justice at the university, my alma mater. Invoking our legendary sports-focused fight song, he asked the crowd to “sing” for suffragist Sarah Burger, who battled to get women admitted as students; for Moritz Levi, Michigan’s first Jewish professor; for all the students who fought for racial justice at Michigan as part of the Black Action Movement; and for the “pro-Palestinian student activists, who have over these past two years opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza.”
Peterson’s address was a historian’s invitation to every student and parent in the Ann Arbor stadium to recognize that the fight for Palestinian rights shares roots with our greatest movements for justice, including the struggle against antisemitism.
The backlash, predictably, was swift. The university’s president apologized; the speech was condemned by pro-Israel Jewish organizations and outlets; and I know it upset many college parents, my Gen X peers — we who were raised to believe with all our hearts that Jewish identity and Zionist identity are inextricable.
But to me, Peterson’s speech was a reminder of one of the most important lessons I took away from my time at the University of Michigan: that questioning Zionism is a necessary part of any Jewish life that aims to center justice.
I graduated from Michigan in 1989, and spent much of my last year in Ann Arbor ensconced at Hillel, where I edited a magazine for Jewish students. I’d grown up going to Young Judaea summer camps and had spent a college semester in Israel, where I’d witnessed the beginning of the first Intifada. I returned to find a shanty in the middle of campus that had been erected, a student organizer told our magazine, “to bring the uprising to the community. It is to show the conditions of the Palestinians and the brutal oppression of the Israeli army.”
The shanty evoked those then prevalent on campuses everywhere to symbolize the struggle of Black South Africans against settler colonialism and apartheid. The new shanty on our campus asserted that these words also applied to Israel.
While I was strongly against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza — where Israel would not remove any settlements until 2005 — I was distressed and confused by the shanty’s silent, everpresent message about Israel’s past and present. Is Israel an apartheid state, I wondered?
So I put that question on the cover of our magazine.
The Hillel director called me into his office and somberly expressed his concern. But Hillel International had not yet officially clamped down on student activities that question Israel and Zionism.
So our cover story ran and we dropped our magazine in bundles across campus. At the time, I thought of myself as a liberal Zionist, and I secretly rooted for the student who tried to disprove the devastating charge. But as young journalists, my fellow magazine staffers and I were committed to exploring the views of those who erected the shanty, no matter their hostility to Zionism. We didn’t code the hostility as danger. No one thought we should report our ideological opponents — the kids who fell asleep on their books in the library just like we did — to the dean or to the government for arrest or deportation.
Over my time as an undergraduate, I’d come to recognize in these kaffiyeh-clad Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students the same history-minded, righteous hope that animated me.
Decades later, in the spring of 2024, we all watched as pro-Palestinian student activists — including many Jewish students — set up campus encampments around the country to protest Israel’s assault on Gaza. At Michigan, the encampment was set up on the Diag, the university’s public square, where on the day of my own graduation I’d protested the university’s military research. As the mother of a recent college grad, I was humbled by the determination of these kids, who put up tents, organized teach-ins, and then suffered as police turned off their bodycams and used pepper spray against them. They were lawfully protesting for the university to divest from Israel as it bombed the people of Gaza, the children of Gaza — which is now home to the largest number of child amputees in modern history.
What I understand, and Professor Peterson understands, is that the student activists that he lauded at the commencement are fighting not against Jewish life but for Palestinians’ right to survive daily, as people, and as a people. These activists have asked us to understand, finally, that Zionism is what it does.
“It has been hard work to examine my own mind,” Tzvia Thier, a Jewish Israeli mother, wrote in an essay in the 2021 collection A Land With A People: Palestinians and Jews Confront Zionism. As a child, Thier immigrated to Israel from Romania in the wake of the Holocaust. In 2009, Thier accompanied her daughter to “protect” her while she joined an action to fight the evictions of Palestinians from their homes in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Thier was 65, and realized that it was the first time in her life that she had had conversations with Palestinians. She understood then that “it was not my daughter who needed to be protected, but the Palestinians.”
“Many questions leave me wondering how I could have not thought about them before,” she wrote. “My solid identity was shaken and then broken. I have been an eyewitness to the systematic oppression, humiliation, racism, cruelty, and hatred by ‘my’ people toward the ‘others.’ And what you finally see, you can no longer unsee.”
When that shanty went up on Michigan’s campus in the late ’80s, I began to question all that I’d learned about Israel’s founding. I began to question the very idea of an ethnostate — in the name of any people, anywhere — that enshrines the supremacy of one group of people over another.
By the time I became a mother, I’d become anti-Zionist. I understood — with a grief that does not abate — that, as Jews, our history of oppression has become an alibi for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people.
We must reject the bad faith accusations of antisemitism that have emptied the word of meaning and enabled authoritarian repression. When students on campuses today charge Israel with apartheid and genocide, they are echoing reports from B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights organization. I ask the parents of my generation to read these reports and do as Thier did — to allow themselves to see what we have not wanted to see.
I stand with the more than 2,000 University of Michigan faculty, staff, students and alumni who have condemned the university’s response to the commencement address heard round the world.
For the sake of all of our children, I ask that we each do all we can to open our community’s heart to Palestinian history and humanity. That we each join the urgent struggle for the liberation of the Palestinian people.
This is the way that our Jewish college kids will find the deep and true safety of community: by leaving hatred, fear, and isolation behind; by honoring Jewish history by standing in solidarity with all who are oppressed; and by roaring in a stadium for freedom and justice, along with their entire generation.
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Thumb Coast Electric has been named a 2026 Michigan 50 Companies to Watch Award recipient, according to a community announcement recognizing high‑growth, second‑stage businesses across the state.
The Port Huron‑based electrical contractor was honored April 22 during the 22nd annual Michigan Celebrates Small Business Gala, where company representatives were recognized onstage alongside other awardees before an audience of more than 800 business owners and supporters.
The award is presented by Michigan Celebrates Small Business, which annually recognizes companies that demonstrate strong growth potential, sustainable competitive advantages and a commitment to their communities. Thumb Coast Electric is listed among the 2026 honorees in the Michigan 50 Companies to Watch category.
Recognizing second‑stage growth
The Michigan 50 Companies to Watch Award honors second‑stage companies — defined as businesses with six to 99 full‑time‑equivalent employees and annual revenue or working capital between $750,000 and $50 million — that are privately held and headquartered in Michigan.
“These companies represent the future of Michigan’s economy,” said Brian Calley, president and CEO of the Small Business Association of Michigan, which partners in the awards program. He said the designation recognizes businesses that combine consistent growth with strong workplace culture and community impact.
Judges from economic and entrepreneurship development organizations across the state select winners based on employee or sales growth, sustainable competitive advantage and other indicators of long‑term success. Award finalists also undergo a due‑diligence review before final selections are made.
Community and company culture
Thumb Coast Electric representative Erica Chisholm said the recognition reflects both employee dedication and community support.
“Receiving the Michigan 50 Companies to Watch award is a huge honor because it reflects the hard work our team puts in every day and the support we’ve had from our community,” Chisholm said, according to the announcement. She said the company has focused on sustainable growth, investing in its workforce and maintaining quality standards as it expands.
Michigan Celebrates Small Business launched the 50 Companies to Watch program in 2004 and has honored more than 1,200 businesses statewide over the past two decades.
This story was created by Dave DeMille, ddemille@gannett.com, with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Journalists were involved in every step of the information gathering, review, editing and publishing process. Learn more at cm.usatoday.com/ethical-conduct.
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