Michigan Advance

In the wake of the announcement that SNAP benefits would be paused in November amid the ongoing federal government shutdown, recipients like Symone Wilkes, a Detroit mother of two, began to question how to weather this storm. 

One of the biggest changes in this year's education budget was a $100 million cut to Michigan Public School Employees’ Retirement System, or MPSERS, which provides pension and health care benefits to public school teachers. Last year, that money offset a portion of the money that individual districts were required to pay into the system for pension and health care benefits of retired public school employees. 

More than 100 communities, from southeast Michigan to the westernmost part of the U.P. joined in the show of might to advocate for civil rights, democracy and the rule of law. The protests were expected to attract millions of people nationwide to speak out against the Trump administration since he took office this year for a second term.

Judge Rosemarie Aquilina, in a lawsuit where the city of Lansing is seeking to shut down a homeless encampment on the north side of the city, will allow the lawyer for defendant JAJ Property LLC, Stephen Ogilvie, to present evidence that he claims the city both pushed unhoused residents from other areas of the city onto property owned by the defendant and refused to provide assistance to clear the area. 

“We are welcoming you here. Please come back, please visit, bring your friends,” Danielle Atkinson, the executive director of Mothering Justice, said in an opening speech. “This space is living with all of the energy of all the movements and all of the causes that we are working for, for the liberation that we will see in our lifetime.”

Hours before a budget deadline that if missed would shut down the state government — and three months after the statutory July 1 deadline to fund the state’s public schools — educators, activists, and lawmakers gathered on the steps of the Michigan Capitol to demand a budget that fully funded schools. 

Annmarie Zaremba, the Director of Food Sourcing at Forgotten Harvest in Oak Park, said that her organization had lost about $750,000 worth of food in these cancelled deliveries. Much of that was protein like chicken and pork — food items that other donations tend not to include, but that are important for recipients to have in their diets. 

In a late-night Senate and House session, Michigan state legislators agreed to a state aid package spanning K-12 schools, community colleges and higher education. This came as a part of a larger budget debate that had drawn on for months. 

In the press conference, held just after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed an $81 billion budget for Fiscal Year 2026, Hall blamed the hours-long shutdown on Oct. 1, prior to the passage of a continuation budget, on Democrats, who he called “a very dishonest group of people.”