Tag: michigan

Michigan Department Of Education Provided Educators With Materials On How To Create A ‘Gay Straight Alliance’ Club

The Michigan Department of Education (MDOE) promoted resources for educators on how to start a “Gay Straight Alliance” (GSA) club in their schools, according to training materials.

The MDOE’s LGBTQ Students Project includes trainings and resources for LGBTQ students as well as educators on getting a GSA club “up and running,” according to the materials. For starting a GSA club, the department promoted a GSA resource list and brainstorming activity for educators to teach them how to advertise the club and insure student confidentiality.

An activity titled “what are some best practices to help your GSA be successful?” encourages educators to find a “safe space” for a club by reaching out to a school counselor or band director. To advertise the club, the activity suggests school announcements and putting the information in school newsletters.

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Why Are Media Ignoring This Muslim Mayor’s Racism And Alleged Election Fraud In Michigan?

The mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan, Ameer Haiderah Ghalib, was recently exposed for mocking black political demonstrations and endorsing comments that referred to African Americans as “animal” and “inhuman.” He also accused Arab world leaders of being secret Jews and “liked” a Facebook post calling Jews “monkeys” who tax “the air we breathe.”

Ghalib, the first Muslim mayor in Hamtramck’s 100-year history, even admitted to committing a potential case of voter fraud by filling out absentee ballots for about 20 families during the 2020 presidential primary. Both the FBI and the Michigan secretary of state’s office have looked into the allegation.

Yet, in the era of “cancel culture,” when activist reporters have all but abandoned investigative reporting in favor of opinionated call-outs, not a column inch has been devoted to documenting the misdeeds of an internationally known public official. Black political activists have failed to march a single city block in opposition to Ghalib’s anti-black racism, and Jewish rights organizations are silent in the face of antisemitic dog whistles.

Ghalib’s ability to escape consequences for statements that would ruin another elected official — or for that matter, a private citizen — is indicative of a broader societal trend that privileges Islamists and lets them off the hook for bad behavior.

Recent history presents many examples. Islamists who slander Jews or call for their extermination are offered jobs on government anti-racism commissions. Muslim extremists whose social media accounts are littered with anti-black commentary have been invited to speak at Black Lives Matter rallies or selected to host discussions on Muslim-black solidarity.

Ghalib is no exception. The 42-year-old Caribbean medical school student shared an offensive meme on Facebook that is frequently traded in white supremacist chat rooms and racist message boards. The image portrayed an African American overloaded with liquor bottles after presumably looting stores during the George Floyd protests.

Ghalib captioned the meme to suggest that the black man, whom he calls “Mr. Heineken,” considered looting alcohol a “duty” to acquire “essential nutrition.” He endorsed comments in the same thread describing African Americans as alcoholics who “will never behave unless they are governed by law, force, and the police who know them very well.”

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Michigan Judge Orders GOP Candidate for Governor to Surrender Guns

Michigan Republican candidate for governor Ryan Kelley will have to surrender his guns while he awaits trial on misdemeanor criminal charges in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol breach, a judge ruled on June 16.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Robin Meriweather made the ruling even as Kelley’s attorney argued he needs to carry a concealed weapon for self-defense as he makes campaign appearances in Michigan, local media reported. The judge also said Kelley can’t leave the state while awaiting trial and must surrender his passport.

Kelley is “a bit of a high-profile candidate in Michigan” as recent polls showed that he was the front-runner among GOP gubernatorial candidates, his lawyer, Gary Springstead, said. Kelley, who has a license to carry a concealed weapon, “asked that he be permitted to carry his firearm for his own self-defense, during the campaign,” Springstead added.

About a week ago, Kelley was arrested in Michigan and charged with participating in the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol, federal prosecutors said in a court filing in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The complaint noted that Kelley didn’t actually enter the Capitol building on Jan. 6, and instead is being charged with entering and remaining within a “restricted building or grounds without lawful authority,” disorderly conduct in a restricted building or grounds, knowingly engaging in an act of physical violence against a person or property on restricted grounds, and willfully injuring or committing any depredation against any property of the United States government.

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FBI Raids Home Of Michigan GOP Gubernatorial Candidate And Whitmer Challenger, Takes Him Into Custody

The FBI raided the home of Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley Thursday morning and reportedly took him into custody. 

Video reviewed by news outlet Bridge Michigan showed a man resembling Kelley being taken into a gray SUV, according to a report. 

“Chris Kelley, a relative and campaign treasurer for the Kelley campaign, said he was ‘aware’ of the Thursday morning law enforcement raid but declined further comment,” Bridge News reported. 

Reporter David Eggert of Crain’s Detroit Business also reported that Kelley had been arrested at his home.

Bridge News reporter Jonathan Oosting provided an update to the reported raid and arrest, writing, “Ryan Kelley is facing multiple charges related to January 6, 2021. He has admitted he was at the riots but claims he did not go inside the U.S. Capitol.”

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Michigan election official is charged with voter fraud and misconduct after she ‘purposely broke a seal on a ballot container’ that prevented a recount in her re-election campaign

A former township clerk and current county elections supervisor in Michigan has been charged with ballot tampering in the state’s August 2020 primary.

Kathy Funk is also charged with misconduct in office, the Michigan attorney general’s office announced late Friday. 

State prosecutors say Funk was Flint Township’s clerk when she purposely broke a seal on a ballot container. In doing so, they allege, she prevented votes inside from being counted in an anticipated recount, under Michigan law. 

Funk was seeking re-election as clerk at the time, and won with 2,698 votes compared to 2,619 challenger Manya Triplett, MLive.com-The Flint Journal reported. 

She ran as a Democrat, and held onto her position until November, when she announced she was taking a job as elections supervisor in the Genesee County Clerk-Register John Gleason’s office. 

Funk has kept her job at the county despite a Michigan State Police investigation into her conduct in August 2020.

She is due back in Genesee District Court on Monday, when her attorney Matthew Norwood said she will plead not guilty to the charges against her.

If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison. 

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Ex-Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield Accused of Sexually Assaulting Teen for Years

State police in northern Michigan were investigating Thursday after a woman accused former state House Speaker Lee Chatfield of sexually assaulting her multiple times, beginning when she was 14 or 15 years old.

The accuser, now 26, filed a criminal complaint with the Lansing Police Department, which referred it to state police earlier this week. Her lawyer, Jamie White, confirmed the nature of the allegations first reported by Lansing City Pulse, including that Chatfield began molesting her more than a decade ago and the sexual contact continued until last year.

State police spokesperson Shanon Banner declined to provide additional information.

The alleged assaults began when the then-14 or 15-year-old girl attended Northern Michigan Baptist Bible Church and Northern Michigan Christian Academy near Burt Lake, about 60 miles northeast of Traverse City, White said.

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they choose to come forward publicly.

Chatfield taught and coached at the school and was the athletic director between 2010 and 2014, according to his LinkedIn profile. His father is pastor of the church, the school superintendent and a teacher.

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Epstein reportedly had secret ‘lair’ at famed Michigan art school

Pedo-perv Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell didn’t just allegedly troll the streets of London, Arizona and New York for their victims. The dastardly duo had a secret lair on the Michigan grounds of Interlochen Centre for the Arts — the famed fine arts boarding school for children, according to one alleged victim.

In exchange for donations and hosting fundraisers at his New York mansion, the school allowed Epstein to build The Jeffrey Epstein Scholarship Lodge (now available to rent as The Green Lake Lodge).

According to the Daily Beast, one alleged victim who is suing the pedophile’s estate for $22 million alleges she was recruited at the school in 1994 while a 13-year-old music student, and was abused over a period of four years by Epstein and that Maxwell “regularly facilitated” the abuse and was “frequently present.”

The school, which cut ties with Epstein in 2007 after his child sex conviction, told the paper it cut contact with him,  but Epstein “was permitted to use the lodge for up to two weeks per year” under a funding agreement. It added it “has no record of any other use by him beyond one week in August 2000”.

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Judge rules Michigan’s storing of babies blood, use for research is unconstitutional

It happens when every baby is born in Michigan, blood sample is taken from the newborn.

But a judge has ruled the way the state of Michigan does this, is most likely unconstitutional.

Its a complicated legal ruling, but it may pave the way for changes in the newborn health screening process.

“They don’t tell the parents, they don’t explain it to the parents, they just do it,” says Saginaw County attorney Phil Ellison.

He is talking about the state of Michigan’s program where it takes a sample of blood from every newborn shortly after birth.

The blood is taken to test for diseases. He represents four parents and nine children, who claim the parents didn’t consent to have those blood samples stored and used in research.

A lawsuit was filed in 2018, claiming their constitutional rights were violated and recently a federal judge, in part, agreed.

“He ruled that the two parents of the two children who were born before May 1st 2010, had their constitutional substantive due process rights violated, basically your right to be a parent was violated when the government, being the state of Michigan, kept, retained without permission or consent the blood spots or blood samples of children that they had taken during the newborn screening process,” says Ellison.

The judge also ruled the process for blood taken from babies born after that May 2010 date, when consent forms for storage and research were in put in place, may also be unconstitutional, but wants to hear from the state on why blood samples are stored and exactly how many.

Millions of blood samples are stored in bio banks in Detroit and Lansing. Ellison says the health screening is important and should be done, but parents should be better informed about the whole process, including how the blood is stored and who has access to it.

“What starts out as a good, probably noble public policy idea of testing children early for diseases, now has turned into, we are going to keep the data, we are going to keep the blood samples , we are going to sell the blood samples, we are going to trade the blood samples, now law enforcement is accessing these samples, we have found out,” says Ellison.

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Morgue worker arrested after giving birth to a dead man’s baby

A 26-year-old morgue worker was arrested this morning after a DNA test revealed that her newborn child was the result of a necrophiliac intercourse with a man she was supposed to autopsy.

Jennifer Burrows, an assistant pathologist with the Jackson County medical examiner services, is accused of having sex with dozens of corpses over the course of the last two years, a behavior which led the birth of a baby boy on January 7.

According to the Kansas City Missouri Police Department, her baby is the son of a man who died in a car accident in March 2017, and whose body she was supposed to autopsy. They allege that Ms. Burrows sexually abused more than 60 other dead bodies, belonging to males aged from 17 to 71 years of age.

“We opened an investigation into this case in October after we were informed that the suspect may have been sexually abusing corpses,” Police Chief Forté told reporters. “We accumulated enough evidence over the last few months to obtain a warrant for a paternity test on her newborn son. It confirmed our suspicions, that the father of her child was, indeed, a 57-year old veterinarian from Texas who was driving through the county when he had a fatal car accident. All the evidence that we have gathered suggests that he had never met Ms. Burrows before his demise and that he was already dead when the baby was conceived.”

There are currently no laws (state or federal) governing or explicitly outlawing the practice of necrophilia since the corpse is considered human remains and no longer living. Therefore, it is technically legal in the state of Missouri, and Ms. Burrows’ actions are judged as an indecent treatment of a corpse.

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Gov. Whitmer Pushes MIOSHA to Establish Permanent COVID-19 Rules

On May 15, following the new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer authorized the state’s health department to modify its gatherings and face mask mandate to exempt people who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Meanwhile, the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA)—currently attempting to establish indefinite COVID-19 rules—announced on Monday that it plans to update COVID-19 workplace regulations to match the CDC while it strives to implement permanent restrictions. 

The CDC’s sudden change in policy disrupts Whitmer’s recent mask update, as reported by UncoverDC, which declared that once her state reaches a 70 percent vaccination rate, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) extensive gatherings and face mask mandate will be lifted—unless unforeseen circumstances appear, such as vaccine-resistant variants.

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