That spending comes even as real estate values are dropping For Detroit homeowners over 65 who overwhelmingly live on fixed incomes, unexpected costs – increases in grocery prices, rising health care premiums or an emergency repair – heighten their risk of financial instability and can even lead to them falling into poverty. I am a policy researcher at Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan. Our initiative uses action-based research, an approach that seeks to understand real-world problems and inform policy changes that could make life work better for people…
Posts published in “Home”
The future of many of Donald Trump’s tariffs are up in the air, with the Supreme Court expected to hand down a ruling on the administration’s global trade barriers any day now. But the question of whether a policy is legal or constitutional – which the justices are entertaining now – isn’t the same as whether it’s wise. And as a trade economist, I worry that Trump’s tariffs also pose a threat to “economic democracy” – that is, the process of decision-making that incorporates the viewpoints of everyone affected by…
The whole story of Barbra Streisand and the sturgeon began a few months ago on a Thursday when I was at my regular spot at the fish counter. A very pleasant, attractive woman ordered a pound of Nova and, before Slim, my long sharp slicing knife, and I started our journey through the salmon, she said, “I’m buying this for Barbra Streisand.” I was skeptical, so I asked her what her relationship was with Barbra. She told me her name was Christine and that she was Barbra’s editor and had…
President Donald Trump’s threat this week to stop federal funding to both so-called “sanctuary” cities and the states where they’re located was greeted with disbelief by many states and cities since the administration has fared poorly on that issue in court. “We will go to court within seconds, and we will win if he does this. It’s already proven unlawful. We’ve already won multiple times,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta told ABC News7 in San Francisco on Wednesday. “Those are funds that belong to the people of Chicago, not the…
A South Bay business owner who was convicted of fraud, sentenced to prison, and pardoned on the final day of President Donald Trump’s first term – then convicted in 2024 of another fraud scheme hatched after her release and sent to prison again – was pardoned a second time by Trump Thursday. Adriana Camberos was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison in April after a jury convicted her and her brother, Andres, of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud charges. Court records show Camberos…
The U.S. Department of Education, for now, is backtracking on plans to garnish wages and seize tax refunds of student loan borrowers in default, the department announced Friday. Less than a month after the agency said it would begin garnishing wages by sending notices to roughly 1,000 borrowers in default the first full week of January, the department said that the temporary delay would allow it to implement “major student loan repayment reforms” under Republicans’ tax and spending cut bill that President Donald Trump signed into law in 2025. The delay…
When Washington, D.C., agreed to hand over billions in land and tax breaks for a new Commanders football stadium, experts thought it would long remain an outlier in sweetheart deals for sports teams. But just months later, attention turned to Kansas, where officials in December announced plans to fund 60% of a new stadium for the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs. The state committed to spending up to $1.8 billion — the largest-ever professional sports subsidy. Geoffrey Propheter, who studies stadium deals as an associate professor in the School of Public…
Preliminary injunction prevents federal agents from retaliating against demonstrators, using tear gas on peaceable assemblies. A federal judge gave a significant victory to Minnesota protesters and observers of federal officers Friday, granting a preliminary injunction preventing the officers from retaliating against demonstrators. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez prevents the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement from arresting or detaining people who are engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest including observing Operation Metro Surge, which is the feds’ name for the incursion of 3,000…
The U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall Collection contains 100 sculptures: two luminaries from each state. They include many familiar figures, such as Helen Keller, Johnny Cash, Ronald Reagan and Amelia Earhart. There are a few from the Colonial era, including founders such as Samuel Adams and George Washington. Some will also be represented in the Garden of American Heroes that the Trump administration plans to build. The monument will eventually have 250 statues, and the administration has proposed a list of names. Among the figures in the Capitol who did not…
The outcome of two trials in the coming weeks could shape what it will look like when voters overturn state abortion bans through future ballot initiatives. Arizona and Missouri voters in November 2024 struck down their respective near-total abortion bans. Both states added abortion access up to fetal viability as a right in their constitutions, although Arizonans approved the amendment by a much wider margin than Missouri voters. That was just the beginning of protracted legal battles. Amy Myrick, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said ballot measures…