Woman who sent threats to a Detroit-area election official in 2020 gets 30 days in jail

January 18, 2024

DETROIT (AP) — A New Hampshire woman was sentenced to 30 days in federal jail Tuesday for texting threats to a Detroit-area election official after a November 2020 meeting to certify local results in that year’s presidential race. Katelyn Jones, 26, formerly of Olivet, Michigan, and now living in Epping, New Hampshire, targeted Monica Palmer, the Republican chairwoman of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, and her family, the FBI said in a court filing. Investigators say Jones sent photos of a dead body and threatened Palmer on Nov. 18, 2020, apparently because she was upset ...

States with big climate goals strip local power to block green projects

January 16, 2024

LANSING (AP) — Clean energy developers had planned a 75-turbine wind farm in mid-Michigan’s Montcalm County before local voters shot down the idea in 2022 and recalled seven local officials who had supported it. About 150 miles (240 kilometers) southeast, Clara Ostrander in Monroe County found herself at the center of a similar conflict as rising medical costs forced her and her husband to consider selling land her family has owned for 150 years. Leasing a parcel to an incoming solar farm could save the property, but neighboring residents complained so vehemently that Ostrander ...

State to pay $1.7M to innocent man after 35 years in prison

January 13, 2024

LANSING — The state of Michigan has agreed to pay $1.75 million to an innocent man who spent 35 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of sexual assault. Louis Wright was released in November after authorities said DNA tests ruled him out as the perpetrator in an attack on an 11-year-old girl in Albion, a small town in southwestern Michigan, in 1988. People who are exonerated based on new evidence are eligible for $50,000 for each year spent in a Michigan prison. The attorney general’s office sometimes resists paying, based on strict criteria in the law, but quickly agreed ...

State Republicans vote to remove chair Karamo, after she promises not to accept election result

January 8, 2024

By JOEY CAPPELLETTI and COREY WILLIAMS Associated Press COMMERCE TOWNSHIP — Michigan Republicans have voted to remove election denier and state GOP Chairwoman Kristina Karamo during a meeting Saturday after many of the party’s leaders called for her resignation following a year of ...

Michigan state lawmaker joins crowded U.S. House race

January 6, 2024

(AP) — Michigan state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet on Wednesday became the fifth candidate to enter a competitive race for a U.S. House seat that Democrats are being forced to defend without an incumbent because of U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee’s retirement this year. Defending the seat could be vital for Democrats in a year in which they need to gain at least five seats to win a majority control of the U.S. House. The party will also need to defend a vulnerable mid-Michigan seat left vacant after U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin opted to run for an open U.S. Senate seat this year. While the state ...

New vehicle sales in US rise 12%

January 5, 2024

DETROIT (AP) — Undeterred by high prices, rising interest rates, autoworker strikes and a computer-chip shortage that slowed assembly lines, American consumers still bought 15.6 million new vehicles last year, 12% more than in 2022, the biggest increase in more than a decade. Yet sales still haven’t returned to the 17 million rate in the years before the pandemic, and there are signs of a cooling market as buyers aren’t as willing to pay astronomical prices that dealers and manufacturers were charging just months ago. “You see the consumer making a concerted effort to ensure ...