The budget fight playing out in Lansing is more than a dispute over fiscal numbers. It is a clash over the future of Michigan’s schools, hospitals, cultural institutions, and civil rights infrastructure. Weeks late and released just minutes before being rushed through, House Republicans unveiled a proposal that slashes deeply into the very programs millions of Michiganders rely on. With the new fiscal year beginning in weeks, the question becomes: whose values are reflected in this document, and whose lives are being written off?
The cuts are sweeping and deliberate. Public safety funding is gutted. Schools lose critical support. Health care, already strained by federal policy changes, takes another hit. Equity programs are stripped altogether. Sec. 228 bans the use of state funds for diversity, equity, and inclusion work as defined in recent federal executive orders. Sec. 244 deletes requirements tied to the Justice40 Initiative, an environmental justice program specifically designed to direct federal funds into Black and Brown communities. Sec. 621 removes accountability measures that encouraged audits by minority- and women-owned firms. And perhaps most tellingly, the Department of Civil Rights sees its funding slashed by 50 percent, hobbling the agency tasked with investigating discrimination in housing, employment, and education.
The cuts also target cultural preservation. House Republicans stripped $1.5 million in General Fund dollars that had been designated to support the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, and the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills. At $500,000 each, the amounts are symbolic compared to the size of Michigan’s overall budget. But their removal sends a message: these stories, these communities, are expendable.
Senate Appropriations Chair Sarah Anthony made plain the stakes. “At the eleventh hour, House Republicans passed budgets that in no way reflect the priorities I hear uplifted by residents across the state every single day,” she said. “Budgets are moral documents that should reflect our values, vision, and commitment to the people we serve. Instead, this budget leaves behind the people, families, and workers who rely on public services to survive—abandoning the progress we’ve made and the promises we intended to keep.”
Anthony went further, calling the proposal “fiscally reckless” and “an all-out assault on all Michiganders,” particularly in its treatment of diversity and programs aimed at marginalized communities. She pointed to the parallel with Donald Trump’s federal agenda. “It’s something that we have seen at the federal level,” she said. “A systemic unraveling of programs designed to just level the playing field for women, for people of color, for anyone who has not had an equal shot at the American dream. What we have seen is that these Republicans have just taken exactly what Donald Trump has done at the federal level and tried to enact the same irresponsible actions here in the state of Michigan.”
Her concern goes beyond fiscal prudence. One is led to wonder: is this Project 2025 showing itself here in the state of Michigan? When asked, Anthony resisted speculating on motives, recalling her mother’s Missouri roots. “At the end of the day, when people show you, you have to take what they have done and discern their heart and their intentions,” she said. “Anytime they present a budget that prohibits DEI funding, that guts the Department of Civil Rights by 50 percent, that eliminates support for the Charles H. Wright Museum in Detroit—you can’t ignore what they’re showing you.”
The echoes are unmistakable. At the federal level, Trump has already sought to strip funding from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. In Lansing, Republicans are attempting the same with Michigan’s institutions. What does it mean when lawmakers target not just safety nets but the very spaces that preserve culture and history?
The context makes these choices all the more consequential. Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBBA), signed into law earlier this year, is expected to leave Michigan with a $1 billion budget shortfall by Fiscal Year 2026. The Citizens Research Council estimates an immediate $677 million revenue decline. Senate Democrats, anticipating the fallout, convened testimony from health providers, educators, and advocates. Their warnings were stark: hundreds of thousands could lose health coverage, thousands of health care jobs are at risk, and cuts to Medicaid and SNAP will ripple through schools, farms, and households alike.
Monique Stanton of the Michigan League for Public Policy captured the human dimension: “Over half a million people in our state are projected to lose health coverage, and tens of thousands are at risk of losing SNAP benefits. It’s sometimes said that one loss is a tragedy while one million losses is a statistic, and in this case, it’s crucial to remind ourselves that we’re not just talking about statistics and data. We’re talking about real Michiganders. Real families who won’t have access to what makes them healthy. Real communities that are going to lose hospitals. Real farmers who are going to lose income because of cuts to SNAP. And real people all over the state who will pay the price of this federal catastrophe.”
The local impacts are painfully specific. Dr. Quintin Tyler of Michigan State University Extension testified that their 30-year SNAP-Ed food program stands to lose more than $10 million, forcing them to cut nearly 100 positions. “When you eliminate a program like SNAP-Ed, you don’t just cut an item in a budget—you erase lifelines at schools, neighborhoods, and communities that already carry the weight of health disparities and economic strain,” Tyler said. “You also lose a highly trained and deeply embedded professional workforce, people whose roots were firmly planted in Michigan’s counties they served, people who reinvested their salaries into other Michigan businesses, people who help children eat better and families stretch their food dollars further.”
Even retailers and farmers sounded the alarm. Jerry Griffin of the Midwest Independent Retailers Association warned, “Reducing or eliminating benefits to the elderly, working poor, and children served by SNAP will have a domino effect in cutting the sales and tax revenue generated in our stores and force us to make hard business decisions that might further reduce food security for these needy individuals.” The evidence is clear: for every dollar in SNAP, $1.50 stays in the local economy. Stripping those benefits starves families and weakens farmers’ markets and small grocers.
Sen. John Cherry of Flint cut to the heart of the House plan’s broader implications: “While our Senate budget proposal delivers investments toward the people and places Michiganders care about, the House Republicans have chosen to do nothing more than slash and burn. Their sloppy excuse of a budget plan decimates funding for the first responders who keep us safe. It directs dollars away from our parks and natural resources, even cutting funds that safeguard our forests from the ever-increasing threat of wildfires. Their proposal undermines essential food quality and assurance programs that ensure the food we buy at the grocery store is safe to eat. And, on top of that, their plan robs local communities around the state of resources they depend on.”
The inquisitive question now becomes: what vision of Michigan is being advanced here? Is it a state where civil rights complaints go uninvestigated because the department lacks staff? Where DEI initiatives are outlawed by statute? Where cultural institutions central to Black and Arab American identity are defunded? Where food programs that stretch dollars and nourish children are slashed in the name of austerity? Or is this simply about consolidating power by shrinking the spaces where equity can take root?
Anthony is clear-eyed about what comes next. She says the Senate and Governor Whitmer will hold the line, but the fight cannot rest solely in their hands. “Now is the time for people to start being engaged,” she urged. “If they are only relying on the Senate Democrats to fight this battle for them and we don’t have the people behind us, we can’t do it all. The people need to show up. They need to tell these Republican state representatives that they are not going to stand for these drastic cuts. If the people don’t lift up their voices, I’m nervous about what the future of the state looks like, particularly for children, senior citizens, and folks who are just trying to get by.”
Her call is not abstract. Anthony listed specific ways for residents to act: call their state representatives, contact members of the appropriations committees, send voicemails and emails, reach out on social media. “Every way imaginable,” she said. “If the people are quiet, it will be a time for a lot of pain for our people, and we don’t want to see that.”
The anger in Lansing is real, but so is the danger of silence. The budget, in black and white, shows a vision that sidelines equity, starves communities, and erases cultural touchstones. The challenge for Michigan’s residents now is whether they will allow this vision to become reality, or whether they will insist that their voices, and their values, be reflected in the state’s most powerful moral document.
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