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Trump is threatening to block a new bridge between Detroit and Canada
State Law Issues |
2026/02/12 16:51
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President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to block the opening of a new Canadian-built bridge across the Detroit River, demanding that Canada turn over at least half of the ownership of the bridge and agree to other unspecified demands in his latest salvo over cross-border trade issues.
“We will start negotiations, IMMEDIATELY. With all that we have given them, we should own, perhaps, at least one half of this asset,” Trump said in a lengthy social media post, complaining that the United States would get nothing from the bridge and that Canada did not use U.S. steel to built it.
The Gordie Howe International Bridge, named after a Canadian hockey star who played for the Detroit Red Wings for 25 seasons, had been expected to open in early 2026, according to information on the project’s website. The project was negotiated by former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder — a Republican — and paid for by the Canadian government to help ease congestion over the existing Ambassador Bridge and Detroit-Windsor tunnel. Work has been underway since 2018.
It’s unclear how Trump would seek to block the bridge from being opened, and the White House did not immediately return a request for comment on more details. The Canadian Embassy in Washington also did not immediately return a request for comment.
Trump’s threat comes as the relationship between the U.S. and Canada increasingly sours during the U.S. president’s second term. The United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement is up for review this year, and Trump has been taking a hard-line position ahead of those talks, including by issuing new tariff threats.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, meanwhile, has spoken out on the world stage against economic coercion by the United States.
“So to shoot yourself in the foot and threaten the Gordie Howe Bridge means that this guy has completely lost the plot on what’s good for us versus just what’s spite against the Canadians,” Slotkin said.
Michigan, a swing state that Trump carried in both 2016 and 2024, has so far largely avoided the brunt of his second-term crackdown, which has targeted blue states with aggressive immigration raids and cuts to federal funding for major infrastructure projects.
Trump and Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer have also maintained an unusually cordial relationship, with the president publicly praising her during an Oval Office appearance last April. The two also shared a hug last year ahead of Trump’s announcement of a new fighter jet mission for an Air National Guard base in Michigan.
While Canada paid for the project, the bridge will be operated under a joint ownership agreement between Michigan and Canada, said Stacey LaRouche, press secretary to Whitmer.
Rep. Shri Thanedar, the Democratic House representative of Detroit, said blocking the bridge would be “crazy” and said Trump’s attacks on Canada weren’t good for business or jobs. “The bridge is going to help Michigan’s economy. There’s so much commerce between Michigan and Canada. They’re one of our biggest partners,” Thanedar said.
Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell of Ann Arbor brushed aside the president’s threat, saying she’s looking forward to the bridge’s opening later in the spring. “And I’ll be there,” Dingell said. |
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Trump administration rolls out rural health funding, with strings attached
State Law Issues |
2025/12/30 08:15
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States will share $10 billion for rural health care next year in a program that aims to offset the Trump administration’s massive budget cuts to rural hospitals, federal officials announced Monday.
But while every state applied for money from the Rural Health Transformation Program, it won’t be distributed equally. And critics worry that the funding might be pulled back if a state’s policies don’t match up with the administration’s.
Officials said the average award for 2026 is $200 million, and the fund puts a total of $50 billion into rural health programs over five years. States propose how to spend their awards, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services assigns project officers to support each state, said agency administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz.
“This fund was crafted as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, signed only six months ago now into law, in order to push states to be creative,” Oz said in a call with reporters Monday.
Under the program, half of the money is equally distributed to each state. The other half is allocated based on a formula developed by CMS that considered rural population size, the financial health of a state’s medical facilities and health outcomes for a state’s population.
The formula also ties $12 billion of the five-year funding to whether states are implementing health policies prioritized by the Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative. Examples include requiring nutrition education for health care providers, having schools participate in the Presidential Fitness Test or banning the use of SNAP benefits for so-called junk foods, Oz said.
Several Republican-led states — including Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas — have already adopted rules banning the purchase of foods like candy and soda with SNAP benefits.
The money that the states get will be recalculated annually, Oz said, allowing the administration to “claw back” funds if, for example, state leaders don’t pass promised policies. Oz said the clawbacks are not punishments, but leverage governors can use to push policies by pointing to the potential loss of millions.
“I’ve already heard governors express that sentiment that this is not a threat, that this is actually an empowering element of the One Big Beautiful Bill,” he said.
Carrie Cochran-McClain, chief policy officer with the National Rural Health Association, said she’s heard from a number of Democratic-led states that refused to include such restrictions on SNAP benefits even though it could hurt their chance to get more money from the fund.
“It’s not where their state leadership is,” she said. Oz and other federal officials have touted the program as a 50% increase in Medicaid investments in rural health care. Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska who has been critical of many of the administration’s policies but voted for the budget bill that slashed Medicaid, pointed to the fund when recently questioned about how the cuts would hurt rural hospitals.
“That’s why we added a $50 billion rural hospital fund, to help any hospital that’s struggling,” Bacon said. “This money is meant to keep hospitals afloat.”
But experts say it won’t nearly offset the losses that struggling rural hospitals will face from the federal spending law’s $1.2 trillion cut from the federal budget over the next decade, primarily from Medicaid. Millions of people are also expected to lose Medicaid benefits.
Estimates suggest rural hospitals could lose around $137 billion over the next decade because of the budget measure. As many as 300 rural hospitals were at risk for closure because of the GOP’s spending package, according to an analysis by The Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“When you put that up against the $50 billion for the Rural Health Transformation Fund, you know — that math does not add up,” Cochran-McClain said.
She also said there’s no guarantee that the funding will go to rural hospitals in need. For example, she noted, one state’s application included a proposal for healthier, locally sourced school lunch options in rural areas.
And even though innovation is a goal of the program, Cochran-McClain said it’s tough for rural hospitals to innovate when they were struggling to break even before Congress’ Medicaid cuts.
“We talk to rural providers every day that say, ‘I would really love to do x, y, z, but I’m concerned about, you know, meeting payroll at the end of the month,’” she said. “So when you’re in that kind of crisis mode, it is, I would argue, almost impossible to do true innovation.” |
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Government shutdown nears, congressional leaders to meet at White House
State Law Issues |
2025/09/29 12:58
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Democratic and Republican congressional leaders are heading to the White House for a meeting with President Donald Trump on Monday in a late effort to avoid a government shutdown, but both sides have shown hardly any willingness to budge from their entrenched positions.
If government funding legislation isn’t passed by Congress and signed by Trump on Tuesday night, many government offices across the nation will be temporarily shuttered and nonexempt federal employees will be furloughed, adding to the strain on workers and the nation’s economy.
Trump, ahead of the meeting, made it clear he had no intention to negotiate on Democrats’ current terms.
“They’re going to have to do some things because their ideas are not very good ones,” the president said Monday.
Republicans are daring Democrats to vote against legislation that would keep government funding mostly at current levels, but Democrats have held firm. They’re using one of their few points of leverage to demand Congress take up legislation to extend health care benefits.
“We finally got our meeting. We hope they’re serious about getting something real done on health care,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said as he departed the Capitol for the White House.
Trump has shown little interest in entertaining Democrats’ demands on health care, even as he agreed to hold a sit-down meeting Monday with Schumer, along with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries. The Republican president has said repeatedly he fully expects the government to enter a shutdown this week.
“If it has to shut down, it’ll have to shut down,” Trump said Friday. “But they’re the ones that are shutting down government.”
The Trump administration has tried to pressure Democratic lawmakers into backing away from their demands, warning that federal employees could be permanently laid off in a funding lapse.
“Chuck Schumer said a few months ago that a government shutdown would be chaotic, harmful and painful. He’s right, and that’s why we shouldn’t do it,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Still, Democrats argued Trump’s agreement to hold a meeting shows he’s feeling the pressure to negotiate. They say that because Republicans control the White House and Congress, Americans will mostly blame them for any government shutdown.
Democrats are pushing for an extension to Affordable Care Act tax credits that have subsidized health insurance for millions of people since the COVID-19 pandemic. The credits, which are designed to expand coverage for low- and middle-income people, are set to expire at the end of the year.
At a Monday news conference, Jeffries, a New York Democrat, called health care cuts a “five-alarm fire” that is rippling across communities nationwide.
“We’re not going to simply go along to get along with a Republican bill that continues to gut the health care of everyday Americans who are already living with this Trump economy, where costs aren’t going down but they’re going up,” he said.
The pandemic-era ACA subsidies are set to expire in a matter of months if Congress fails to act.
Some Republicans are open to extending the tax credits but want changes. Thune said Sunday that the program is “desperately in need of reform” and Republicans want to address “waste, fraud and abuse.” He has pressed Democrats to vote for the funding bill and take up the debate on tax credits later.
It remains to be seen whether the White House meeting will help or hurt the chances for a resolution. Negotiations between Trump and Democratic congressional leaders have rarely gone well, and Trump has had little contact with the opposing party during his second term.
The most recent negotiation in August between Schumer and the president to speed the pace of Senate confirmation votes for administration officials ended with Trump telling Schumer to “go to hell” in a social media post.
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Former FBI Director Comey indicted on charges of making false statement
State Law Issues |
2025/09/25 12:59
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Former FBI Director James Comey was charged Thursday with crimes connected to his Senate testimony in 2020 about an investigation, a major strike against a high-profile figure who has long been the target of President Donald Trump’s anger.
“No one is above the law,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said.
The indictment accuses Comey of making a false statement to Congress and obstruction of a criminal proceeding. He declared his innocence Thursday night and said, “Let’s have a trial.”
“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump,” Comey said in a video posted to Substack.
Comey, who was FBI director from 2013 to 2017, was fired by Trump during the president’s first term amid the government’s probe into allegations of ties between Russian officials and Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Trump mentioned Comey last weekend in a social media post in which he complained that no charges had been filed against him yet.
Prosecutors led by special counsel Robert Mueller did not establish that Trump or his associates criminally colluded with Russia in 2016, but they found that Trump’s campaign had welcomed Moscow’s assistance.
Trump and his supporters have called the investigation a “hoax” despite multiple government reviews showing Moscow interfered on behalf of the campaign.
The indictment against Comey accuses him of having lied to a Senate committee when he said he never authorized anyone to serve as an anonymous source to a reporter about an investigation.
Before the charges emerged Thursday, Trump told reporters that Comey was a “bad person.” He later reveled in news of the indictment.
“He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation,” Trump said on his social media platform.
Comey’s disgust for Trump was laid out in his 2018 memoir, “A Higher Loyalty.”
“This president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values,” Comey wrote. “His leadership is transactional, ego driven and about personal loyalty.”
He recalled a private meeting with Trump early in his first presidency in which Trump demanded allegiance. Comey likened it to a Mafia induction.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration said it was investigating a social media post by Comey that Trump and his allies interpreted as a call for violence against the president.
In an Instagram post, Comey wrote “cool shell formation on my beach walk” under a picture of seashells that appeared to form the shapes for “86 47.” The Merriam-Webster dictionary says 86 is slang meaning “to throw out,” “get rid of” or “refuse service to.”
Comey deleted the post and said he didn’t know “some folks associate those numbers with violence.”
Comey’s daughter was a federal prosecutor for 10 years until she was fired in July by the Justice Department. Maurene Comey is suing to get her job back, saying her dismissal was unconstitutional and connected to Trump’s hostility toward her father.
“If a career prosecutor can be fired without reason, fear may seep into the decisions of those who remain,” Maurene Comey said in a note to her colleagues. “Do not let that happen. Fear is the tool of a tyrant, wielded to suppress independent thought.”
The White House said the decision came from Justice Department officials.
Separately, James Comey’s son-in-law, Troy Edwards, resigned Thursday as a federal prosecutor, minutes after the former FBI director was indicted.
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