Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is fighting against porch pirates with Christmas lights and holiday music. The top cop in the Great Lakes State offered advice to Michiganders on Wednesday to help them avoid package thefts in the leadup to Christmas, one element of a Holiday Scams Campaign run by her Consumer Protection Team that launched on Black Friday.
“Whether it’s a package or a piece of mail, unattended deliveries are easy targets for porch pirates,” Nessel said in a statement. “By planning ahead and taking security measures, you can make sure your sell-deserved gifts and packages reach you safely while keeping thieves from stealing your holiday cheer.”
Much of the advice from the AG includes obvious anti-theft measures, such as shipping packages to secure locations like Amazon Lockers, FedEx offices, and workplaces. Porch cameras, motion detectors, and keeping porches well lit are also good ideas, according to Nessel’s office. But there’s also nuggets of sage advice that will help residents “create the illusion of presence.” “Even when you’re not home, make it look like someone is present by leaving lights or music on,” the AG suggests.
In a surprise to nobody, a new poll reveals what the public thinks about the government coerced transition to electric vehicles: most don’t like it. Napolitan News Service this week posed a couple simple questions to 1,000 registered voters with the polling help of Scott Rasmussen. “Should the federal government encourage people to buy electric vehicles rather than gas powered vehicles by using regulations and financial incentives? Or, should the government simply let consumers decide what cars best meet their needs?” the online survey read.
Just 26% backed the government incentives, while 67% opposed, preferring instead to allow customers to decide. Another 7% said they’re not sure.
“Currently, the federal government provides a $7,500 subsidy for those purchasing Electric Vehicles,” the news service reports. “Sixty-one percent (61%) of voters favor a proposal to eliminate those subsidies. That support comes from 76% of Republicans and 53% of Democrats.” The results, while not shocking, are bad news for Democratic lawmakers in both Washington DC and Lansing, both of whom are staking the future on an electric vehicle industry that’s growing far slower than many had hoped. The survey comes as sources close to Trump’s transition team contend the 47th POTUS is crafting plans to kill the $7,500 consumer tax credit for EVs as part of a broader tax reform package, a move backed by the world’s largest EV producer, Reuters reports.
Teri Singleton is still waiting for answers. It’s been nearly three weeks since her husband, beloved 72-year-old Detroit-area pastor Stephen Singleton, was struck and killed by an illegal immigrant motorist as he crossed Rochester Road in Rochester Hills. A “gravely injured” Singleton, who was wearing a lighted reflective vest and using a crosswalk at the time, was rushed to the hospital. The illegal immigrant behind the wheel of the 2013 Ford Focus that sent him there was questioned by police, then released. “I had to sit and watch my husband of 53 years die in front of me and then to know that the person who did this is walking around is very difficult to deal with,” Teri Singleton told WJBK.
For several days, the Singleton family was left with little more than time to reflect on the pastor’s dedication to serving his community and others in need. Among the memories are the former medic’s efforts to search for survivors and offer spiritual guidance in New York City in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, mission trips to Africa, and driving supplies to survivors of Hurricane Katrina and a deadly Alabama tornado.
The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office told WXYZ the driver of the vehicle is an illegal immigrant from Columbia who held a valid foreign driver’s license that’s recognized in Michigan. Officials did not release the immigrant’s name, but said neither speed nor alcohol are believed to be factors in the crash, which occurred in a commercial area with a 45 mph speed limit. U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed the 28-year-old driver is in the country illegally, and is now free while awaiting a federal court date, WJBK reports. “He’s dead and they’re walking around,” Teri Singleton said. “That’s bothering me.”
The Michigan Supreme Court expanded its liberal majority in 2024, with the help of massive cash infusions from billionaires including George Soros, dark money groups, and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
Dark money groups not required to disclose donors contributed more than $5 million to help elect incumbent Justice Kyra Harris Bolden and law professor Kimberly Ann Thomas to the state’s highest court, an amount that exceeds the total raised by all four candidates for the two seats by more than $1 million, Bridge Michigan reports. The donations included nearly $4.4 million through mid-October from a shady Massachusetts-based nonprofit called The Justice Project Action, the largest donor to Supreme Court candidates this year.
Those donations went to a Justice For All super PAC backing Bolden and Thomas that has spent nearly $10.7 million on Democratic nominees to the high court since 2020. In 2024, $5.25 million out of $7.9 million raised by Justice For All came from dark money groups, which also included the Michigan Civic Action Fund and the Strategic Victory Fund. Other funding included $1 million from former billionaire New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and $560,000 from the George Soros funded super PAC State Victory Action, according to Bridge’s review of campaign finance records through mid-October.
Just two months ago, a beaming Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson appeared on a “Defending Democracy” podcast with Democratic attorney Marc Elias to discuss concerns about certifying the 2024 election. “We’ll get the results certified,” Benson told Elias, the man best known as the mastermind behind the “Steele dossier” that fueled the Russia collusion hoax against Donald Trump. “What will happen, also, is there will be legal consequences” for local officials who refuse.
“I think it’s going to be much harder legally, practically, realistically for anyone to not certify and get away with it,” Benson, a former hate crimes investigator for the disgraced Southern Poverty Law Center, told Elias. “If they don’t like the election results, we’ll be there the minute, the second it happens.”
Fast forward to now, and Elias is leading an effort to overturn the election results in Pennsylvania, where The Associated Press has already called the U.S. Senate race for Republican Dave McCormick.
“The Pennsylvania Senate race is not over,” Elias posted to X on Thursday. “More soon.” “Election day has past (sic), but the fight for democracy continues. Here is some of what my firm has been up to:” Elias posed in a follow up on Saturday. “Thursday: Intervened against rightwing lawsuit in Pennsylvania.” In other posts, Elias pointed to a statement from the Pennsylvania Department of State that shows “at least 100,000 ballots remaining to be adjudicated” and Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick’s 32,000 vote lead over Democrat Bob Casey.
A review of business incentive deals approved by Michigan’s Democratic government trifecta reveals the party’s rhetoric on corporate welfare doesn’t match reality.
“Taxes are much higher than they need to be because Michigan politicians continue to finance one of the most expensive corporate welfare programs in the country. Lawmakers could afford to cut the state income tax significantly if they would just stop lavishing select businesses with taxpayer subsidies,” the Mackinac Center for Public Policy noted in its October 2024 “Blueprint for a Brighter Future.” “Instead of authorizing $4.5 billion in corporate incentives during a single legislative term, Michigan could have eliminated businesses taxes for everyone. Taxing all businesses to redistribute the proceeds to just a few is unfair and ineffective,” the MCPP reported.
In 2023, the year Democrats took over majority control of the Michigan Legislature, taxpayer funded corporate subsidies skyrocketed from less than $1 billion the year prior to well over $4 billion. The total has since swelled to about $4.6 billion in the current term that runs through Jan. 8, 2025, with additional bills pending in the lame duck session that could push that figure to $11 billion, the Mackinac Center reports. A breakdown of lawmakers who have voted in favor of the spending between 2001 and this year shows 61 Democrats approved 100% of business incentive deals, while a dozen Republicans have approved none.
A Democratic majority in the Michigan House flipped on Tuesday to an even bigger majority for Republicans, setting the table for the GOP to investigate Democratic malfeasance next year. Michigan Republicans broke a two-year Democratic government trifecta on Election Day by holding on to seats occupied by vulnerable House Republicans and flipping four seats held by Democrats.
In Michigan House District 27, Republican Rylee Linting leads Democratic incumbent Jamie Churches 51.6%-48.4% with 95% of votes counted, while Republican Ron Robinson holds a seven-point lead over Democratic incumbent Nate Shannon in District 58 with 91.83% of the vote in, the Detroit Free Press reports. Republican Steve Frisbie leads Democratic incumbent Jim Haadsma by 19.4% with just 25.81% of the vote counted in District 44. Democratic incumbent Jenn Hill is also poised to fall to Republican Karl Bohnak in District 109, where Bohnak leads 51.3%-48.7% with 99% of the vote in.
The situation is expected to shift Democrats’ 56-54 majority in the lower chamber to a 58-52 majority for Republicans, according to projections by The Detroit News.
Is U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg angling to replace Gov. Gretchen Whitmer? It’s a question the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., has repeatedly faced since moving to Michigan with his husband in 2020, two years before Democrats secured a government trifecta for the first time in 40 years.
So far, his silence is speaking louder than his words. “Pete Buttigieg refuses to rule out running for Michigan governor in 2026 – AP,” NewsWire recently posted to X. The move to Michigan transpired a year after Buttigieg and his husband Chasten adopted newborn twins, with a Buttigieg spokesperson telling the Detroit Free Press “moving to Chasten’s hometown of Traverse City allowed them to be closer to his parents, which became especially important to them after they adopted their twins, often relying on Chasten’s parents for help with child care.”
But there’s other political benefits in the battleground state of Michigan that simply aren’t available to a liberal Democrat in Indiana. After a failed presidential run in 2020, the Intelligencer noted Buttigieg had few options in The Hoosier State. “Whatever the personal benefits and the spousal connection, moving to Michigan also happens to place Buttigieg in a red-hot battleground state whose current Democratic governor and two U.S. senators may not stay in their current jobs forever,” the Intelligencer’s Ed Kilgore opined in 2022. “In deep-red Indiana, there was no obvious avenue for higher office for a guy like Buttigieg, which is probably a major reason he ran for president in 2020 instead of climbing a ladder that really wasn’t there.”
Detroit auto shop owner Michael Murphy supports former President Donald Trump, and he thinks someone with the city has a problem with that. In recent weeks, Murphy told WJBK, political signs he put up outside Pointe Auto Tech on Detroit’s east side have been repeatedly removed, while signs promoting Vice President Kamala Harris nearby have been left untouched.
“A white City of Detroit truck pulling up and taking them,” he said. After the first time the signs were swiped on Oct. 21, “I got some more,” Murphy said, only to have those removed, as well. “They said I was not allowed to put them between the sidewalk and the curb,” he said. “I have put them there, but I’ve put them against the building and they’ve taken those as well.”
Detroit General Services Director Crystal Perkins confirmed Murphy’s signs were taken down because she claimed they violate the Detroit Sign Ordinance that requires them to be at least five feet back from the sidewalk. When confronted with Harris signs a few blocks from Murphy’s shop that appear to violate the ordinance, Perkins agreed the signs were in violation but denied any double standard.
Lavora Barnes, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, was confronted by Forbes about the bitter opposition from voters concerned about Hamas’ war against Israel and the party’s reluctance to meet demands to call for a permanent ceasefire and halt all military aid to the nation’s closest ally.
Barnes made it clear Democrats have no actual solution, and rely instead on painting Trump as a racist in a misleading comparative analysis. “We talk a lot about the truth of who Donald Trump is. We use his own words a lot of the time to remind folks about the things he’s said about immigrants, the things he said specifically about Muslims, the things he said about he would encourage Netanyahu to double and triple down on the work, the hateful work, that he’s already doing in the region,” Barnes said.
The focus, she said, is “just to let them know that while you may not be happy with where the Biden administration is and you may not yet be comfortable with where a Harris administration would be, either of those are much better for this community and for the world than Donald Trump.”
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