Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wants to expand how Michigan uses federal unemployment funds to incentivize Michiganders to return to work after the COVID-19 pandemic, she announced Monday.

The plan involves providing a bonus of $300 per week to specific employees returning to their previous jobs through the week of Sept. 4, Whitmer said during a wide-ranging news conference.

She did not say when the program would start, how many people are expected to be eligible or any eligibility dates for those returning to work.

The payments are currently available only to employers participating in the state workshare program who bring back people previously employed, Whitmer spokesman Bobby Leddy said.

But the governor is working with the Legislature to change the law to provide bonuses for any new employee hired by a business through a workshare program, not just those previously employed who are brought back. Leddy said additional details would be available later this week.

"We're going to use the federal $300 per week in unemployment benefits to our advantage, so we can incentivize people to get back to work, maximize a family's income and help employers fully build up their businesses and staff," Whitmer said.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Two more groups sued Florida over its new restrictive elections laws Monday, adding to a growing chorus of voter rights advocates who say the rules could keep some people from casting ballots.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Tallahassee by the Fair Elections Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of Head Count and the Harriet Tubman Freedom Fighters.

The suit argues that the new law foments distrust against civic organizations that work to register voters by suggesting that residents use the government's website instead.

The lawsuit is designed to “protect our clients’ right to organize through voter registration activities, communicating their message that our democracy works better when all our voices are heard,” Michelle Kanter Cohen, policy director and senior counsel at Fair Elections Center, said in a statement.

“Voter registration organizations serve their communities by building trusted relationships with Floridians for whom voting and participation may not otherwise be accessible,” she added.

At the core of the complaint is a requirement under the law that third-party voter registration groups use specific language to tell all residents who work with them that they might not submit a voter's application documents in a timely fashion.

The lawsuit contends that the groups are being forced to provide an “inaccurate warning” that is "self-denigrating, misleading, and contradictory" to the mission of the groups.

Enough with the Obama excuse, Florida Legislature.

In the past 14 months of this pandemic, we’ve seen that access to healthcare and decent insurance is critical. We’ve seen the virus disproportionately hurt minority and low-income communities, and those inequities have been worsened by the systematic kneecapping of Florida’s own public-health system through years of cuts.

But Republican state lawmakers — who control the Legislature — are continuing to flat-out refuse to help some 964,000 Floridians get insurance by broadening who qualifies for Medicaid because that would mean accepting federal money associated with the Obama administration and its Affordable Care Act.

A financial sweetener offered by the Biden administration this spring as part of the COVID-19 relief package would defray the cost to the state for two years, but the Legislature wouldn’t even consider the idea.

Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are continuing negotiations this week on a big spending package for roads, green energy and other supposed Biden priorities. Ten senators—five from each party—reportedly agreed on a $1.2 trillion plan and will now attempt to sell it to their colleagues, so that it can gain the 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster.

But this effort is as doomed as the last bipartisan infrastructure push. What, you don’t remember the last bipartisan infrastructure push? That was when talks between the White House and Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia broke down in early June, with both sides accusing the other of intransigence. That’s the natural outcome when two parties fundamentally disagree, and it’s why the ongoing effort at a bipartisan deal is a smoke screen.

The Bipartisan 10 haven’t published their plan—assuming there really is one—but it reportedly includes poison pills that guarantee Democrats won’t go for it and President Biden would probably veto it if it arrived on his desk. One poison pill is a measure that would index the federal gas tax to inflation. This is a sensible idea Congress should have passed long ago. The gas tax has been stuck at 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993, with inflation eroding its ability to raise needed funding for highways.

The Governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands has asked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to carve out an exception for the cruise industry in the state’s new law banning businesses in Florida from asking customers their vaccination status.

USVI Governor Albert Bryan Jr. says the Florida legislation, set to take effect July 1, could impact the health and wellbeing of millions of Caribbean residents when cruises to the region resume.



“The bill you signed into law may negatively impact the United States Virgin Islands and other port of call destinations in the Caribbean region,” said Bryan, who highlighted CDC approvals for cruise ships to begin sailing this summer from U.S. ports with strict health and safety guidelines, such as the vaccination of 95 percent of passengers and 98 percent of crew members.

Bryan says reopening the cruise industry with vaccinated passengers is essential to the tourism economies of the USVI and the broader Caribbean.

(Reuters) -The Biden administration late on Thursday restored a $929 million grant for California's high-speed rail that former President Donald Trump revoked in 2019.

The parties, which also include the California High-Speed Rail Authority and the U.S. Transportation Department, agreed to restore the grant within three days, according to the settlement agreement: https://hsr.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/California-v.-DOT-Settlement-Agreement-Final-May-26.pdf.

Talks began in March, around two months after Biden became president, to settle a suit filed in 2019 after Trump had pulled funding for a high-speed train project in the state hobbled by extensive delays and rising costs. Trump had repeatedly clashed as president with California on a number of fronts.

California's lawsuit claimed the Transportation Department lacked legal authority to withhold the $929 million the administration of former President Barrack Obama allocated a decade ago but had remained untapped.

Verda Tetteh earned a standing ovation as the class speaker at her Massachusetts high school graduation. But what she did next had the crowd in awe.

The Fitchburg High School student, who will be attending Harvard College in the fall on a full scholarship, won an additional $40,000 scholarship from her high school at last week's graduation ceremony. She could have used the scholarship for expenses, but instead, the 17-year-old gave it away shortly after it was awarded.

"I am so very grateful for this but I also know that I am not the one who needs this the most," she told graduation attendees.

A federal appeals court panel on Wednesday blocked Missouri from enforcing a sweeping state abortion law that bans the procedures at or after eight weeks of pregnancy.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis heard arguments in September in the legal battle over the 2019 law. The measure also would prohibit a woman from having an abortion because the fetus has Down syndrome.

Yamelsie Rodríguez, president and CEO of Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, called the ruling “a critical victory for Missourians.”

For four years, former President Donald Trump ignored a campaign promise to reduce the federal debt, and the COVID-19 pandemic spurred enormous amounts of government spending under Trump and President Joe Biden.

Now, with Republicans out of power, Florida Sen. Rick Scott says he wants to zone in on reducing the debt, a rallying cry of Tea Party Republicans a decade ago.

And he’s attempting to use an upcoming deadline where Congress must increase the amount of money the U.S. government can borrow as leverage for his cause.

After nearly six weeks of back and forth between President Joe Biden and West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito on infrastructure, Biden ended the negotiations on Tuesday after failing to come to an agreement.

Capito said in a Fox News interview on Wednesday that the White House "kept moving the goalposts" on the Republican group, and she was "frustrated" with how things turned out.

"I'm a bit disappointed and frustrated that the White House kept moving the ball on me and then finally just brought me negotiations that were untenable and then ended the negotiations altogether," Capito said. It's unclear exactly what Capito was referring to, but the public statements from both sides indicate the White House kept coming down on the cost of the package and the GOP was inflexible.

https://twitter.com/SenCapito/status/1402423104496881670
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Capito and the group of Republicans first brought Biden a $568 billion infrastructure offer, which was significantly smaller than the $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan he proposed. He then offered the group $1.7 trillion, and even suggested going as low as $1 trillion, but the GOP only came back to him with a $928 billion offer, which included only $150 billion in new spending.
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