Latest news with #GaryPeters
Yahoo
a day ago
- General
- Yahoo
Lakes a priority for Sen. Peters before retirement
MACKINAC ISLAND, Mich. (WOOD) — Now in his final term in the U.S. Senate and even in increasingly difficult circumstances in Washington, Gary Peters says he has things he would like to do before he leaves office. One priority is the environment. 'I'll still be working to get more Great Lakes legislation done. We have to do more work in that area. We've got to have more Great Lakes restoration funding. That's under challenge right now,' Sen. Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, said. 'I want to keep that as strong as possible for years to come cause it's essential to keep … all the places across our great state clean and vibrant for future generations.' Sen. Gary Peters says successor should 'find common ground' Peters announced in January that he would not seek a third term in the Senate. The election to fill his seat is more than a year away, in November 2026. A number of Democrats including state Sen. Mallory McMorrow of Royal Oak, former public health official Abdul El-Sayed of Ann Arbor, U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens of Birmingham and former state House Speaker Joe Tate of Detroit, have announced they will seek their party's nomination. On the Republican side, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, who lost in a tight election against Sen. Elissa Slotkin last year, is running again. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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The Independent
20-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
Housing migrants at Guantanamo Bay costs $100,000 per day per inmate, senator says
Housing migrants at Guantanamo Bay costs as much as $100,000 per inmate, per day, a U.S. senator has claimed, describing the set-up as 'outrageous.' The astonishing figure may mean that President Donald Trump 's use of the naval base in Cuba costs almost 1,000 times more than housing people in U.S. immigration facilities – which is $165. The claims were made by Senator Gary Peters of Michigan during a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday, in which he and other members grilled Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Peters, the top Democrat on the committee, decried the use of the facility as a prime example of wasteful government spending, highlighting that the Trump administration's irrational shuttling of prisoners back and forth had also been at U.S. taxpayer expense. "We're spending $100,000 a day to keep someone at Guantanamo," Peters complained. "We keep them there awhile, then we fly them back to the United States, or we could keep them here for $165 a day. I think that's kind of outrageous." It comes after the White House requested a huge increase in funding for immigration enforcement as it continues its attempt to further Trump's goal of mass deportations. Earlier this month the administration asked Congress to boost the Department of Homeland Security budget by nearly $44 billion for the 2026 fiscal year, which begins on October 1. Noem, who appeared before the committee on Tuesday to defend the budget request, said she did not know the daily cost to house migrants at Guantanamo Bay. At another point during Tuesday's hearing, Noem stunned members of the committee by appearing not to understand the fundamental American right of habeas corpus – which the White House is threatening to suspend. Habeas corpus allows people to challenge the legality of their detention, and has been a constitutional right in the United States since 1789. Noem claimed the opposite, saying that habeas corpus 'is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country.' New Hampshire Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan, who had asked Noem to define the concept, responded flatly: 'That is incorrect.' She added: 'Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people ... [it] separates free societies like American from police states like North Korea.' Roughly 70 migrants are currently detained at the infamous Cuban facility at Guantanamo Bay, according to a U.S. official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, The Guantanamo Bay detention camp, established in 2002 at the US Naval Station in Cuba, was created to detain terrorism suspects and "illegal enemy combatants" as part of the post-9/11 "war on terror." The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in March to prevent 10 migrants from being transferred to the base. In the suit, ACLU alleged that migrants at Guantanamo had been held in windowless rooms for at least 23 hours per day, subjected to invasive strip searches, and unable to contact family members.
Globe and Mail
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Globe and Mail
Trump migrant detentions at Guantanamo Bay cost $100,000 per person daily, senator says
President Donald Trump's use of the Guantanamo Bay naval base to house migrants appears to cost $100,000 per day for each detainee, U.S. Senator Gary Peters said during a hearing on Tuesday, decrying what he described as a prime example of wasteful government spending. Peters, the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, questioned Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about the high cost, far more than the $165 per day in U.S. immigration detention facilities. Peters also asked why detainees have been sent to the American naval base in Cuba but then shuttled back to the United States at taxpayer expense. 'We're spending $100,000 a day to keep someone at Guantanamo,' Peters said. 'We keep them there awhile, then we fly them back to the United States, or we could keep them here for $165 a day. I think that's kind of outrageous.' The White House has requested a huge increase in funding for immigration enforcement as it tries to achieve Trump's goal of mass deportations. The administration asked Congress this month for an additional $44-billion for the Department of Homeland Security in fiscal year 2026, which begins on Oct. 1. Noem, appearing before the committee to defend the budget request, said she did not know the daily cost to house migrants at Guantanamo Bay. Her department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were roughly 70 migrants currently detained there. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in March to prevent 10 migrants from being transferred to the base. In the suit, ACLU alleged that migrants at Guantanamo had been held in windowless rooms for at least 23 hours per day, subjected to invasive strip searches, and unable to contact family members. Some had attempted suicide, the ACLU said. Senator Rand Paul, the Republican chairman of the committee, also raised concerns with spending for additional barriers at the U.S.-Mexico border since the number of migrants caught crossing illegally has plummeted since Trump took office. A sweeping U.S. House of Representatives budget plan would devote $46.5-billion to the border wall alone. 'I'm not saying no new money is needed,' Paul said. 'I think you need more Border Patrol, and you're going to need more money for that, but I think it should be within reason.'
Reuters
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Trump migrant detentions at Guantanamo Bay cost $100,000 per person daily, senator says
WASHINGTON, May 20 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's use of the Guantanamo Bay naval base to house migrants appears to cost $100,000 per day for each detainee, U.S. Senator Gary Peters said during a hearing on Tuesday, decrying what he described as a prime example of wasteful government spending. Peters, the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, questioned Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about the high cost, far more than the $165 per day in U.S. immigration detention facilities. Peters also asked why detainees have been sent to the American naval base in Cuba but then shuttled back to the United States at taxpayer expense. "We're spending $100,000 a day to keep someone at Guantanamo," Peters said. "We keep them there awhile, then we fly them back to the United States, or we could keep them here for $165 a day. I think that's kind of outrageous." The White House has requested a huge increase in funding for immigration enforcement as it tries to achieve Trump's goal of mass deportations. The administration asked Congress, opens new tab this month for an additional $44 billion for the Department of Homeland Security in fiscal year 2026, which begins on Oct. 1. Noem, appearing before the committee to defend the budget request, said she did not know the daily cost to house migrants at Guantanamo Bay. Her department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there were roughly 70 migrants currently detained there. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in March to prevent 10 migrants from being transferred to the base. In the suit, ACLU alleged that migrants at Guantanamo had been held in windowless rooms for at least 23 hours per day, subjected to invasive strip searches, and unable to contact family members. Some had attempted suicide, the ACLU said. Senator Rand Paul, the Republican chairman of the committee, also raised concerns with spending for additional barriers at the U.S.-Mexico border since the number of migrants caught crossing illegally has plummeted since Trump took office. A sweeping U.S. House of Representatives budget plan would devote $46.5 billion to the border wall alone. "I'm not saying no new money is needed," Paul said. "I think you need more Border Patrol, and you're going to need more money for that, but I think it should be within reason."
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Redlining shaped the power grid. Communities of color are still paying the price.
As an ice storm slicked roads across eastern Michigan on Feb. 6, representatives from four houses of worship arrived at the offices of Democratic U.S. Sen. Gary Peters. They wanted Peters to pressure the Trump administration to lift the funding freeze on $20 million in 'community change grants' promised by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to houses of worship across Detroit to create community resilience hubs powered by renewable energy — offering shelter during weather emergencies and utility outages. More than three months later, spring has come to Michigan — and yet the expected $2 million in funding for the St. Suzanne Cody Rouge Community Resource Center in Detroit remains on ice. St. Suzanne Executive Director Steve Wasko says his organization — which provides meals, clothing, day care and other programs for residents of this predominantly Black neighborhood — has "received conflicting and sometimes contradictory communication about the grant." Wasko had been promised funding to install heat pumps, solar panels and a generator, among other upgrades. The retrofit would allow St. Suzanne to help more people while cutting an energy bill that can run up to $15,000 a month in the winter. The funding freeze is just the latest setback for poor communities of color across the United States — including in Detroit, Los Angeles and Philadelphia — that are being left behind in the transition to cleaner, cheaper power. Neighborhoods like Cody Rouge suffer from underpowered electrical service, more frequent power outages and high energy bills — a legacy of the once-legal practice of redlining that robbed communities of color of financial and public services, Floodlight found. In formerly redlined neighborhoods like Cody Rouge, shutoffs for non-payment are more likely. And poverty limits access to renewable energy: Aging roofs can't support solar panels, outdated wiring can't handle new heaters, and old electrical infrastructure struggles to accommodate electric vehicle charging and solar arrays. 'It's now very clear that energy services, ranging from quality of service to price of service, are disproportionately poor if you are a minority, a woman or of low income,' said Daniel Kammen, professor of energy at the University of California-Berkeley. High energy costs are a burden across Detroit. A quarter of the metro area's poorest households spend at least 15% of their income to power and heat their homes, according to a Floodlight analysis of data from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). Across the United States, a quarter of all low-income households — roughly 23 million people — struggle to pay their energy bills. In most major U.S. cities including Detroit and Philadelphia, these one out-of-four low-income households pay 15% or more of their incomes on average on electricity, cooling and heat. In Los Angeles, this group pays just over 14% of their household income on utility bills. These energy burdens have persisted for decades despite billions of dollars from federal and state governments subsidizing electricity bills in low-income communities. And now, Trump has gutted the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which provides heating and cooling subsidies for 6 million U.S. households. Other policy solutions face significant challenges. Energy subsidy programs suffer from low enrollment. Collective 'community solar' efforts capable of bringing cheap renewable power to renters and the urban poor are stymied by utilities or not made available to folks with lower incomes. During the Biden administration, tens of billions of dollars were allocated by Congress to help socially vulnerable groups participate in the energy transition. Trump froze much of that funding. Repeated court orders to resume the funding have been ignored or only partially honored. The chaos has only deepened advocates' concern that the disparities in America's electric grid will persist — and perhaps even deepen. 'The current energy system has this imbalance, but if we don't fix that, we'll continue down that path, even as we transition to a cleaner, greener energy system,' said Tony Reames, professor of environmental justice at the University of Michigan. In some states, minority communities are more likely to lose power. And in others, Black and brown residents are more likely to have their power shut off for nonpayment. Because of gaps in data collection, a clear national picture of energy inequality is difficult to see. Across the United States, counties with high minority populations in Arkansas, Louisiana and Michigan are disproportionately prone to having long blackouts, according to a 2023 study in Nature Communications. At least 3 million Americans face disconnection each year because they can't afford utility bills, with Hispanic and Black households being four and three times more likely to be disconnected, respectively, according to the Energy Justice Lab, which tracks disconnections. That number could be much higher, though, since only 28 states require their utilities to disclose disconnections, meaning no data is available for 44% of the country, according to Selah Goodson Bell, an energy justice campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity. And in certain cities, the inequality extends to the very structure of the grid itself. In Detroit and California, advocates and scientists have found that outdated utility infrastructure is concentrated in predominantly minority areas. This barrier may limit those neighborhoods' ability to access renewable energy technologies such as rooftop solar, battery storage and electric-vehicle charging, which can lower energy costs. When the lights flicker or go out in Detroit's poorest neighborhoods, it's often because of the electrical distribution grid. Today in Motor City, many low-income residents get their power through DTE Energy's 4.8-kilovolt (kV) electric system, which struggles to keep up with the changing climate. Whiter, wealthier suburbs of Detroit are serviced by a more modern 13.8-kV grid. In rate cases, activists have accused DTE of prioritizing infrastructure upgrades in wealthier, whiter communities while leaving Black and brown neighborhoods with outdated and unreliable service. Across the city, power lines and transformers are decades past their intended lifespan, leading to frequent outages and prolonged blackouts. Aging infrastructure, beset by summer heat waves and winter storms, led to almost 45% of customers suffering eight or more hours of service disruptions in 2023. A company spokesperson notes it improved reliability by 70% between 2023 and 2024. 'I know after three days without power, the strands of civilization get tested,' said Jeff Jones, Detroit resident and executive director of Hope Village Revitalization, a nonprofit community development corporation. 'It can get really frightening.' DTE says it has committed to improving the grid, citing a $1.2 billion investment in downtown Detroit's infrastructure and a push to prioritize grid upgrades in vulnerable communities. Lauren Sarnacki, a senior communications strategist at DTE, said the company also helped connect customers to nearly $144 million in energy assistance last year. And the utility runs a pilot program for households earning up to 200% of the federal poverty level, capping their energy costs at 6% of their income. One Black church in Metro Detroit did not wait for the grid to improve. Last fall, New Mount Hermon Missionary Baptist Church weatherized, upgraded its heating system and installed solar panels and a battery with the assistance of the nonprofit Michigan Interfaith Power & Light and a state grant. The solar array and battery give community members a chance to warm up or cool down in the building when the power is out in the neighborhood, said the church's deacon, Wilson Moore. 'For the church itself, we've cut costs as far as energy consumption almost 40, 45% — and that's without even solar panels up,' he said. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power also operates a 4.8-kV distribution grid in certain neighborhoods, including in Boyle Heights, a predominantly hispanic East LA enclave that was once redlined and has now begun to gentrify. There, aging transformers and outdated service lines mean that businesses installing EV fast-charging stations or anyone trying to plug in a large solar array may have to pay for grid upgrades, according to an NREL study. 'Grid limitations could limit the success of other clean energy equity programs,' the study concluded. Old roofs also are a major barrier to rooftop solar adoption across Los Angeles, according to Alex Turek, deputy director at GRID Alternatives Greater Los Angeles, a nonprofit that deploys renewable energy in low-income neighborhoods. 'I think 70% or more of our folks who we build trust with, who are ready to move forward, can't then adopt solar because their roofs are old and can't support the weight,' Turek said. Floodlight spoke to 18 organizations attempting to deploy renewable energy in low-income communities across the country. All of them said that poor housing stock, which is often concentrated in formerly redlined neighborhoods, was a major barrier to their work. For renters and apartment dwellers, community solar may be a solution by allowing low-income residents 'a way of dividing up an array and sharing it among multiple people,' said Alan Drew, a regional organizer with the Climate Witness project, a faith-based climate nonprofit. Programs in 24 states and Washington, D.C., support this form of collective solar energy, which generates enough energy to power more than million homes, according to a yearly survey from the NREL. Most of the locations also offer financial assistance for low-income households to access this form of energy, according to the NREL study. However, in Michigan and Pennsylvania, investor-owned utilities have stymied the adoption of community solar. California has 13 solar projects built on the community solar model, but only one — the Anza community solar project in Santa Rosa — is dedicated to low- and medium income customers. The state does have the Solar on Multifamily Housing (SOMAH) program that has subsidized over 700 solar arrays on multifamily affordable housing units, bringing costs down for some 50,000 apartments. The program makes sure that the cost savings don't just go to the landlord. 'The smart policy design feature of the SOMAH program is that at least 50% of the system has to benefit the tenants,' said Turek, of GRID Alternatives. On sweltering afternoons in Hunting Park, the heat rises in waves from the asphalt, baking the brick rowhouses. The Philadelphia neighborhood's sparse tree cover offers little relief — only 9% of it is shaded, compared to 20% of the city overall. The effect is brutal. With much of its land covered in concrete, brick and blacktop, temperatures in Hunting Park can soar as much as 22 degrees higher than in other parts of Philadelphia. That difference translates directly into higher electricity bills as residents struggle to cool aging homes never built for such extreme heat. Charles Lanier, executive director of the Hunting Park Community Revitalization Corp., said some residents pay as much as 40% of their incomes just to heat and cool their homes. 'I've seen bills as high as $5,000,' Lanier said. 'It's a problem across the board in marginalized communities here in the city of Philadelphia.' In Hunting Park and in low-income neighborhoods across the City of Brotherly Love, the Philadelphia Energy Authority has braided together several grant and funding streams to repair, weatherize, electrify and add solar power to some 200 low-income homes across the city in a state where community solar is not allowed. The agency also runs Solarize Philly, a program that has helped install solar on some 3,300 homes, including low- to moderate income households. 'We think low-income solar is the best way to create long-term affordable housing,' said Emily Shapira, CEO of Philadelphia's Energy Authority. Lanier has seen the value of solar firsthand. 'Here at our office we have installed rooftop solar panels. Our electric bill has gone from $100,' he added, 'to almost zero.' Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. Ethan Bakuli reported from Detroit for Planet Detroit, an independent nonprofit local news organization designed to inform residents about the environment and public health in Detroit and Michigan. This story was supported by a grant from the Fund for Environmental Journalism.
