Free Republic

As Michigan Democrats enter the thick of a competitive Senate primary campaign, one candidate is trying to position himself as an outsider who wants to fix a broken system and take on the oligarchy. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is a Bernie Sanders-endorsed former public health director who has been compared to New York City’s recently elected democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani. He wants Medicare for all, believes big corporations are to blame for the problems in government and the economy, and insists that Immigration and Customs Enforcement must be abolished. But El-Sayed doesn’t want to be labeled a leftist or a...

President Donald Trump spent years promising to make Mexico pay for a wall at the US southern border. Mexico did not. In a strange twist, Trump is now threatening to block the opening of a bridge at the northern border that Canada actually already paid for. This is either next-level negotiation or a misunderstanding of the facts, or both, but an ultimatum Trump made on social media is the latest in a string of erratic moves that have confused his fellow world leaders. The Gordie Howe International Bridge is basically completed Trump should have previously known that the brand-new Gordie...

Top Trump border official Rodney Scott said, 'I'm very proud of the service that I provide' Progressive Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Mich., exploded on U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott, calling federal immigration officers "thugs" and telling the commissioner he "better hope" for a presidential pardon during a particularly heated House hearing on Tuesday.Thanedar, who is originally from India and immigrated to the U.S. in the 1980’s, drilled into Scott, saying, "You better hope you get pardoned because you will be held accountable for the absolute disregard of the law your agencies have shown over the past year."The exchange...

President Donald Trump threatened to block the opening of the newly constructed Gordie Howe International Bridge connecting Detroit and Canada in a post to social media on Monday. The Gordie Howe is owned by Michigan and Canada, but is being paid for almost entirely by Canada. The bridge does not have an official opening date, though it is expected to open to traffic this year. Construction started in 2018. Trump took to Truth Social on Monday, slamming Canada for what he called unfair trade deals, and threatened to block the opening of the bridge until “the United States is fully...

FOX 2 - A sitting judge and Detroit area attorney were among four suspects charged in an embezzling scheme victimizing incapacitated individuals' estates. Dig deeper: The US Attorney's Office said Nancy Williams, 59, Avery Bradley, 72, Judge Andrea Bradley-Baskin, 46, and Dwight Rashad, 69, were charged via indictment with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The indictment also charges Bradley with one count of wire fraud, Bradley, Bradley-Baskin, and Rashad with several counts of money laundering, and Bradley-Baskin with a single count of making a false statement to federal law enforcement agent. Bradley-Baskin is a district judge on Michigan’s 36th District...

A top Democrat fundraising boss in Michigan shared a picture honoring her grandfather, who fought for Nazi Germany in World War II, on Veterans Day. Kelly Neumann, a fundraising co-chair for several Democratic candidates, shared images of her late grandfather, Albert Neumann, on Facebook in 2024. The unearthed post was a tribute to all of her family and friends who served in the miliary, including Albert, who she said was on the 'German side in WWI & WWII.' In her post, Neumann, who is also a principal attorney at Neumann Law Group, shared images of her grandfather in his military...

America's problem with imported swindlers is not limited to Minnesota. Minnesota is hardly the only state whose kindness to migrants from the third world has been abused. Michiganders, too, have apparently opened their arms to foreign-born fraudsters who are more than happy to steal from their host state's most vulnerable residents. Nkechy Ezeh, a woke Nigerian who served as a professor at Aquinas College until 2023, has pleaded guilty to wire fraud in a scheme that bled taxpayers for $1 million and forced an organization that funded early learning initiatives for poor kids to close. Ezeh could face up to...

A car plowed into a terminal at the Detroit Metro Airport in Michigan Friday night – and the driver bellowed nonsense as he was dragged away from the scene, according to shocking footage and reports. Wild footage captured the black sedan sitting in the middle of the McNamara Terminal, where startled Delta Airlines employees were working as it smashed through the glass doors of the Romulus, Mich. around 7:30 p.m., according to WXYZ. The driver immediately exited the vehicle with his hands raised and speaking in a daze as security and airport officials rushed to the debris-ridden area. “The response...

A highly acclaimed Nigerian professor at Aquinas College is facing two decades in prison after she admitted to swindling more than $1 million from taxpayers and poor minority children in West Michigan. Nkechy Ezeh, founder and CEO of the Early Learning Neighborhood Collaborative, pleaded guilty last week to wire fraud and tax evasion in a scheme that forced the nonprofit to shut down after a dozen years preparing about 8,000 preschoolers for kindergarten in Kent County, Battle Creek and Kalamazoo, WOOD reports. Ezeh worked with ELNC bookkeeper Sharon Killebrew to create nearly $500,000 in fake invoices, as well as created...

Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan is outperforming Republican Congressman John James among likely voters in Michigan who “Lean GOP,” according to a new poll on the 2026 governor’s race. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who is overseeing her own election for governor, maintains a majority of Democrats, with 74.2% of those who identified as “Strong Dem” and 52.1% of those who “Lean Dem” backing her campaign. Duggan, who ditched the Democratic party in December 2024 to run as an Independent, has the support of 19.2% of Michiganders who identify as strong Democrats, 29.2% that lean Democrat, 47.3% of Independents,...

A gunman randomly shot three tourists in a neighborhood near Florida's Disney World over the weekend, cops said. Ahmad Jihad Bojeh, 29, was arrested after the 'cold-blooded' killing of three men in Kissimmee, a small city just outside of Orlando, after they got stuck at a rental property next his home when their car broke down. A motive for the shooting is unclear, as Bojeh reportedly did not know the murdered men.

Democratic Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib went on an emotional rant about the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recruitment posts on social media during a Friday shadow hearing in Minnesota. The hearing, chaired by Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Democratic Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, discussed the recent heightened presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in Minnesota and the fatal shooting of Renee Good. When it was Tlaib’s turn to speak, she used her time to passionately suggest that recent DHS social media posts evoked “neo-Nazi” and “white nationalist” imagery. Tlaib held up a printed Jan. 9 social media...

Two people have been charged in connection with a shooting that occurred at Ballenger Fieldhouse on the campus of Mott Community College in Flint. The incident took place Saturday, Jan. 10. Malik Zamir Henderson, 23, of Flint, faces three felony charges: gang membership, which carries up to 20 years in prison; assault with intent to rob while unarmed, a 15-year felony; and assault with intent to do great bodily harm, less than murder or by strangulation, a 10-year felony. Christopher Gill, 23, also from Flint, is charged with carrying a concealed handgun in a sports arena. This is a civil...

Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) revealed that he was going to be introducing a bill that would abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), claiming that ICE was “beyond reform.”

A Michigan county clerk alleged that the jury pool for a circuit court has recently included non-citizens who are ineligible for jury duty. “Non-citizens are coming through at an alarming rate,” Macomb County Clerk Anthony G. Forlini said in a press release. “Our jury service summonses are based on random draws from the driver’s license bank. Frequently non-citizens slip through because citizenship was not flagged in the Secretary of State database.” Why It Matters Citizenship is a key requirement for jury service at the state and federal levels. Michigan law states that in order to qualify as a juror, an...

A preschool teacher was arrested on camera as she finished a TV interview about Donald Trump’s raid on Venezuela to seize Nicolás Maduro... Jessica Plichta, 22, said she was the only person arrested among roughly 200 demonstrators at an anti-war protest in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday, hours after Maduro was detained in Caracas... In the broadcast footage, two officers could be seen approaching from behind as she wrapped her interview with WZZM, the city’s ABC affiliate, then escorted her away as she told them, “I am not resisting arrest.” WZZM said an officer cited “obstructing a roadway and failure...

SANDUSKY, Ohio (WJW) – Video captured along Lake Erie on Monday showcases a dramatic shift in water levels near Sandusky as powerful wind gusts sweep through Northeast Ohio. As seen in the video below, the levels are significantly low on some of the western edges of the lake in what the FOX 8 weather team describes as a seiche. The unique weather phenomenon exposes the usually covered floors of Lake Erie, thanks in part to strong winds and atmospheric pressure. “It’s like sloshing the water in your bathtub,” FXO 8 Meteorologist Scott Sabol explained during a previous occurrence. ‘The water...

Ryan Kennedy, the Detroit Lions fan involved in the altercation with Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver DK Metcalf on Sunday, "categorically denies using the 'N-word,' the 'C-word' or any racial, misogynistic, or hate-based language during the incident," according to a statement released by a Michigan law firm Monday afternoon. "These allegations are completely false," the statement released by Shawn Head and Sean Murphy of Head Murphy Law Firm reads. The statement also said that Kennedy has experienced "harassment, threats and messages advocating violence" since reports began circulating on social media that Kennedy used a racial slur toward Metcalf and called Metcalf's...

WESTLAND, Mich. – A suspect has been taken into custody after a Salvation Army bell ringer was shot and killed at a Kroger store in Westland on Thursday, police said. The shooting happened at about 6:10 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, at the Kroger at 36430 Ford Road, according to a release from the Westland Police Department. When officers arrived, they found a Salvation Army bell ringer dead inside the store, with multiple gunshot wounds. Police said the suspect fled the store immediately after the shooting, but investigators identified and arrested the suspect early Friday. The suspect’s identity is...

DETROIT — A professor at Ferris State University was arrested in Detroit on Tuesday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, the agency said. Sumith Gunasekera was living in the U.S. illegally, according to ICE. He also was convicted of sex crimes in Canada and Nevada, per a release by the agency. In 1998, Gunasekera was arrested twice over a three day period: first for allegedly uttering death threats on August 28, 1998; then again on August 31 for allegedly inviting a minor to sexual touching. He was convicted of both charges that November and spent 1 month behind...