After a massive early morning bombing raid of the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and capture of President Maduro, Trump says that the US is going to "run" Venezuela until a transfer of power is made.

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According to multiple reports, 79-year-old Donald Trump has pressed his staff for an easier schedule and required coaching to stay alert during appearances after repeated moments of apparent dozing.

She was sworn in at 10 a.m. with her husband by her side. One of her first stops after the ceremony: serving lunch to Detroiters experiencing homelessness—underscoring her message that housing is a top priority. Detroit turns a page today.

Alarm bells are going off in Highland Park. State Sen. Stephanie Chang says she’s urgently investigating rumors that ICE may try to place a massive detention “warehouse” in the city, after a Washington Post report listed Highland Park as a potential site under plan to expand deportation centers.

When GOP state Rep. Jim DeSana gleefully voted along to slash $645m in spending, he managed to do something comically incompetent, he also cut about $2 million in state funds meant to fix the roof on the James R. DeSana Center for Arts and Culture, a building literally named after his own dad.

The U.S. dollar is on track for one of its worst annual performances in more than half a century in 2025, having lost roughly 10% of its value against of major currencies as of late December, a decline not seen on this scale since the early 1970s when the currency’s gold backing was abandoned.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a pair of bipartisan “Taylor Swift bills” into law, banning automated programs from scooping up large quantities of concert, sports & show tickets and authorizing the Michigan attorney general to seek up to $5,000 in civil penalties per bot-purchased ticket.

In the rural town of Capac, Michigan, the disconnect between Washington rhetoric and everyday reality is becoming harder to ignore. Food pantry lines are lengthening and families are struggling to afford groceries, even as the Trump administration continues to claim its economic agenda is working.

The latest batch of Epstein files turned into a story about what the Justice Department didn’t reveal, as former President Clinton demanded that every document bearing his name be released without redactions. A move that would certainly reveal names beyond his own and potentially Donald Trump's.

Michigan's GOP Senate hopeful Mike Rogers is selling Michiganders a fantasy while they’re paying the bill. Rogers claims manufacturing jobs are “coming back,” even as the data shows the opposite: manufacturing employment is shrinking, Michigan has lost thousands of jobs since the tariffs kicked in.

As the affordability crisis worsens, Trump's base voters in Michigan are amongst the hardest Americans hit. open.substack.com/pub/distills...

Consumers Energy has filed yet another request with the Michigan Public Service Commission to raise natural gas rates by about $240 million — roughly a 10 percent hit to customers — even though regulators just approved a substantial increase earlier this year.

The Epstein “release” was a farce. Pages dropped on December 19th were almost entirely blacked out — names erased, truth buried under redaction bars. This wasn’t transparency. It was theater. We got another government-approved cover-up in PDF form. Cheers 🍻

Despite a law signed by Donald Trump that was supposed to force full transparency on the Justice Department’s trove of Jeffrey Epstein files, the DOJ has rolled out only a partial, highly managed dump of documents, burying the most explosive material under redactions.

The death of 56-year-old Nenko Stanev Gantchev at the newly reopened North Lake ICE detention center in Baldwin, Michigan exposes the dangerous lack of transparency and oversight ICE's detention system, where conditions have long been criticized for inadequate medical care.

President Trump’s rollout of the "Patriot Games". The games will serve as the crown jewel of the "Freedom 250" initiative, drafting one "young man and young woman" from every state and territory to compete in a four-day athletic exhibition on the National Mall.

Michigan’s utility regulator just rubber-stamped DTE Energy’s sweetheart deal to power a mammoth 1.4-gigawatt Saline Township data center — a project so huge it will draw more electricity than many towns — without public scrutiny.

State Rep. Steve Carra just introduced legislation that would blow a hole in public school funding by eliminating school-based property taxes for people without children enrolled in public schools. Public schools are a public good. They’re not a subscription service.

Michigan GOP Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt is out here proudly playing budget arsonist, voting against restoring funding for affordable housing, health care, schools, mental health care—and yes, even wigs for kids with cancer—after House GOP torched hundreds of millions in state projects.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is refusing to allow a House vote on extending Affordable Care Act tax credits, even as a discharge petition is in place that should force the issue. When the credits expire, millions of Americans will see their health insurance premiums rise.

Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater and brother to Betsy DeVos, made comments pining for “American colonialism” sound exactly like what you’d expect from a billionaire mercenary who made his fortune turning war into a private business.

On Thursday, December 11th, in a 237–140 vote, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to dismiss a Democratic impeachment resolution against President Donald Trump, introduced by Rep. Al Green of Texas, effectively blocking consideration of the measure before it could advance.

Congressman John James’ gubernatorial bid is starting to look less like a bid for leadership and more like a magic trick where he keeps disappearing whenever voters expect him to show up. James habit of skipping debates has irritated everyone from grassroots Republicans to the GOP’s donor class.

RNC Chair, Joe Gruters, feels like the Republicans are facing an "unmitigated disaster" and "certain defeat" in the midterms. Let's make that a reality in 2026!

Trump’s latest executive order screams established Department of Justice "AI Litigation Task Force" specifically designed to sue jurisdictions that attempt to enforce their own artificial intelligence safety laws. The tech bros pumping millions into Trump's campaign is paying off ten fold.

DNC Chair Ken Martin’s outlook for the upcoming midterms offers a grounded reason for hope, framing the path to a House majority as a statistical probability fueled by real-world urgency. With only three seats needed to flip control, Dems face a hurdle far lower than the historical average.

The collapse of the ACA subsidy extension is a damning indictment of a Washington paralyzed by GOP cruelty and Democratic incompetence. Republicans explicitly voted to let premiums skyrocket for millions of families.

DHS Secretary, Kristi Nome, caught in a lie. Rep. Magaziner: How many veterans have you deported? Noem: We have not deported military veterans. Rep. Magaziner: We are joined on Zoom by a combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient. Earlier this year, you deported him to Korea.

In the middle of the Holiday season, Matt Hall and the Michigan GOP cut over $600 million in social programs. And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the political news this week in the state. open.substack.com/pub/distills...

Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow has aggressively attacked her primary opponent, U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, for filing articles of impeachment against HHS Secretary RFK Jr., calling the move a desperate, "performative" stunt by a Washington insider rather than a serious legislative strategy.

MI House Speaker Matt Hall and his GOP colleagues exploited an obscure legal loophole to unilaterally cancel nearly $645 million in state funding, bypassing the Senate entirely. The cuts hit programs for expectant mothers, cancer patients, and even funding for Holocaust Museums.

In a move that blurs the line between foreign policy and high-seas piracy, the Trump administration has decided the best way to conduct diplomacy with Venezuela is to simply steal their boats. President Trump, treating the seizure of a massive oil tanker that was headed to Cuba like a game of GTA.

Congress just signed off on a massive $900B defense package. While it gives raises to soldiers and mandates that Hegseth's drone strikes on Venezuelan boats be unsealed it also cancels a number of DEI and climate changeinitiatives and cancels IVF for military families.

GOP Senate candidate, Mike Rogers, has effectively torpedoed any claim to moderate governance by assembling a campaign "Faith Coalition". Far from a standard advisory board, Rogers’ hand-picked team includes radicals like Linda Lee Tarver, who has smeared LGBTQ+ rights as "demonic".

A new bill under consideration in Michigan, House Bill 4388, would mandate parental consent for social media users under 18 on major platforms, granting parents significant oversight including access to private messages and the ability to set usage curfews.

According to Donald Trump. If you're concerned about rising prices this holiday you're "being dramatic". Just another example of this man being completely out of touch, callous and cruel to the very real affordability crisis plaguing America.

27-year-old white nationalist and professional misogynist Nick Fuentes admitted to Piers Morgan that he has never slept with a woman, effectively crowning himself the incel king of the far-right.

Rep. Debbie Dingell delivered a scorching indictment of the GOP, bluntly declaring that Republicans “don’t give a shit about Americans” as they willingly allow vital ACA tax credits to expire. Dingell, a Medicare for All supporter, exposed the callousness of conservative inaction.

In a significant victory for local conservationists, the rezoning request for the controversial data center in Howell Township was abruptly pulled from consideration by developers on Monday, halting plans to convert over 1,000 acres of prime farmland into a massive industrial complex.

Love swept through Detroit over the weekend as Mayor-elect Mary Sheffield celebrated tying the knot with Rickey Jackson Jr. in a vibrant, private ceremony in Corktown. The atmosphere at The Godfrey hotel is blooming with romance, as hundreds of lush roses arrive to set the stage for the nuptials.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib is sounding the alarm on something the banking industry hopes the public forgets: for more than 15 years, Wall Street helped Jeffrey Epstein run his international sex trafficking operation by looking the other way.

A new report from Amnesty International, found that the Everglades detention facility known as Alligator Alcatraz punished detainees in "The Box"—a 2x2 foot outdoor cage where victims are shackled, exposed to sweltering heat and swarms of insects, and denied water in a calculated act of torture.

MI House Speaker Matt Hall seems to have stumbled upon the reality that for-profit hospitals are fleecing patients. But don't mistake his sudden clarity for genuine leadership. Instead of embracing the Medicare for All, Hall offers the pathetic, small-ball regulation of "fee schedules."

Republican congressman: You have a lot of hardworking people who gave up a lot of things to be here in Congress, only to find out that all they get to do is come here and rubber stamp whatever Donald Trump wants. You can get a monkey to do this job.

🚨 BREAKING: The MPSC just pulled the Saline DTE/Oracle/OpenAI data center vote from tomorrow’s agenda — a clear sign that public pressure is working. 🚨 Don’t get comfortable. This doesn’t kill the project. It just means they’ll try again when they think we’re not looking, another day this month.

Pete Hoekstra, the former MI GOP chair, and now Trump's ambassador to Canada, spent years in Congress representing Michigan's furniture manufacturers and warning that tariffs would devastate his district. Fast forward to today: Hoekstra has become a top defender of Trump's aggressive tariff regime.

Big things are happening in Michigan that could change the face of immigration enforcement and the cost of electricity in the entire state. open.substack.com/pub/distills...

Michigan legislators including State Sen. Sue Shink, Rep. Dylan Wygela, Sen. Stephanie Chang, Rep. Natalie Price and others are demanding the Michigan Public Service Commission reject DTE's attempt to ram through approval of a massive Saline Township data center without public hearings.

Hmong community leader Lue Yang was freed this afternoon after months in ICE custody, following an unusual bipartisan effort led quietly by State Rep. Mai Xiong and Congressman Tom Barrett. Yang’s release marking a rare moment of cross-party cooperation in a contentious immigration landscape.