Are House Republicans really plotting to shut down state government?

And new polling numbers on Donald Trump in Michigan.

It's a correspondence edition of OTR with Jonathan Oosting, Clara Hendrickson, Beth LeBlanc, and Zachary Gorchow.

You're invited to sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the record.

Production of Off the Record as made possible in part by Bellwether Public Relations, a full servic strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much.

Welcome to Studio C. Off the record continues an we have new polling data on Mr. Trump in Michigan.

And according to Bernie, Porn doesn't look good.

When Donald Trum won the popular vote in Michigan last November, the hopes were high among his supporters that he would fulfill their wishes.

Well, if pollste Bernie Porn's data is correct.

So in a battleground state like Michigan, he is doing very poorly at this juncture, although he does have support among Republicans.

No defections among his most ardent supporters, but independent voters who did support him back the are defecting now.

Did very well among independents, voters and independents based on this survey turned on him.

Another key component of Mr. Trump's victory were young men.

Younger men are a leaving him.

Older men are sticking with him and non-college educated men are sticking with him as well.

In the race, the Democrats failed to convince enough voter that they could fix the economy.

Now, only 38% of the voters feel the president is fulfilling his promise to do just that, including 53% who opposes tariffs that have auto executives losing sleep overnight.

On the immigration issue.

However, Mr. Trump does the best.

48% say yes to his policies, 48% say no.

In compariso now, Governor Gretchen Whitmer has a favorability factor of 54 plus and 38 negative.

But it appears that the political flak she suffered through as a result of that visit to the Oval Office didn't hurt her all.

They knew that she was going to Washington.

And I'm not sure the really caught the importance of being shown in the Oval Office at the same time that other things are happening.

The White House argues about all this.

It doesn't care much about the polls.

And in the long run, they argue the voters will get what they voted for.

So let me suggest to the jury that the Trump people don't give a hoot about this poll, but if you you're a Republican with Trump support sitting on the ballot in 2026, are you concerned, Mr. Gorechow?

Yes.

And the proof of that is all the Republican big names seem to be gravitating into the governor's race which is kind of its own world.

There's only one in the US Senate race which is going to be totally tied to the president's popularity and how people are feeling about Washington.

I think there is a lot of concern.

Yeah, I mean, we saw it, you know, back in Trump's first term that, you know, the midterm was not great for him.

You know, we saw this Michigan poll.

It's pretty consistent with some federal numbers which have shown that the two most unpopula presidents through their first 100 days or terms anyways, or both Donald Trump in 2016 and now in 2025 or 2017 and 2025.

So, I mean, I don't think this is super surprising.

Trum made a huge number of promises to voters in Michigan specifically.

We spent a lot of time promisin to do things like lower prices quickly, immediately, we'r going to get it done very fast.

And here we are at 100 days.

And a lot of those same issues are still out there.

So I think it's inevitable that there's going to be some buyer's remorse.

Yeah, like Jonathan just said you know, inflation's not down significantly despite Trump' campaign promises on that front.

And we're hearing from voters who are disaffecting from Trump on the economy, an issue on which he's getting really poor marks on.

We did a project at the Free Press interviewing 100 voter in 100 days on Trump's first few months in office.

And it was it was a heavy lift.

But one story sticks with me, a Trump supporter who really liked him until the tariffs came in.

She sells tarot cards on the tik tok shop and Chinese imports.

And now she's she's really upset.

And so we're probably going to see some more defections, especially as you know, depending on what happens with the tariffs.

Yeah.

I mean, I think state economists are quick to remind us that when the rest of the natio sneezes, Michigan gets a fever.

Right.

And I think the tariff are no exception in that sense.

Michigan is goin to get a bigger hit from those, especially from the auto industry, but in other sectors and manufacturing as well.

And that appears to be bearing out in the numbers as well that that the support that he had is as recently as November is is deteriorating on an economic message.

So I feel like there's still time for him to turn it around before 2026 depending on where these tariffs go or if he concedes it all.

But if it stays this course, he I think Republicans heading into 2026 have reason to be nervous.

All right.

So if they are nervous, do they start to put distance between themselves and the president?

Your 0.0% chance to show another self survival is not an important thing that it is all about primaries and the base.

And Republicans who break from this president are ex-communicated.

They are history.

There are maybe a couple narrow exceptions who represent really, really competitive areas that might put some distance.

But look, this is someone who' been on the political scene now for, what, almost a decade?

A decade.

And at some point, you just have to accept, like this is the guy the Republicans believe in.

And no, I don't believe we'll see any distance.

And I mean, thing would really have to tank like massive unemployment, stagflation and none of these global conflicts.

And I mean, just draw up a long list and then maybe I don't I haven't seen it yet.

I don't think we'll see it.

Yeah, a lot of folks who broke with the president in his first term in office were quickly ushered out the door, either left voluntaril or were essentially forced out.

So, you know, politicians have seen what happens if you cross Donald Trump, Republicans specifically, and it's not been great for them.

So, yeah, they're sort of tied to that boat.

But if he loses some of his mojo, you know, you can break with somebody without breaking with somebody you simply ignore him.

And, you know, I mean, if you want to be not look, we've got an open seat race for governor in 2026.

We've got an open seat race for U.S. Senate.

There are likely to b competitive primaries for both.

You know, whoeve has the president's endorsement, if he does endorse is going to have a huge leg up.

I mean, there will probably b people who get out of the race if they don't get his endorsement.

It's just you can't get to Novembe if you can't get through August.

But can you get past November if you do that in August?

That's the question.

Can you do that pivot?

Everybody kept waiting for Mr. Trump to pivot.

He never pivoted.

No one has done that so far.

And you see Republican after Republican in the state win in the primary with Trump's endorsement.

But no Trump endorsed candidate has ever won statewide office in Michigan.

I rest my case, so it's a tough needle to thread and no one has thread it yet.

So it'll be really fascinating.

And so far to a candidate, Republicans who have entered these open races in 2026 have so far echoed Trump's rhetoric and even named him specifically in talking about why they're wanting to launch their own bids.

All right.

So House Republicans, are they plotting to shut down the government, Mr. O?

State House Republicans here.

Maybe We know that Matt Hall, the new speaker of the House, likes to play hardball.

I mean, last year he led a little walkout during lame duck that essentially shut down the legislature for a little while, at least.

So, I mean, I think is clearly giving all indications that he is goin to use the budget as leverage.

It is the single biggest point of leverage Republicans have.

They control one chamber of, you know, one leg of the three legged stool if they want to get any of their big priorities done, that's how they're going to do it using that as leverage.

And Matt Hall is making clear he's willing to do that.

I also think we we still haven't seen some of the budgets coming out of committee from the House.

I think when we see those there, there are likely to be some significant cuts to those budgets.

And I think that may be more of a tell of how how late this goes in terms of passing a budget and whether they're prepared to stick to those cuts to to make goo on their promises to the voters.

Let me throw into the pile here the risk of shutting down the government, if you get blamed for it, comes back to bite you in the next election cycle for House seats.

Maybe.

I got two maybes over here.

I see.

I don't think so.

I, I think I think voters are used to seeing it at the federal level so often continuing resolutions and, you know, last minute plans, I think at the state level, I don't know that they'r that concerned about it either.

I bet you a Democrat consultant could write a commercial that makes the Republicans look pretty bad.

Depends on what kind or what kind of a shutdown.

Well a shutdown of government is nobody gets anything.

But 2007 and 2008 we had partial government shutdowns that lasted hours.

And in the end, like while, you know, people were annoyed that Lansing didn't have its act together, it didn't mean anything.

Didn't mean anything at all.

But, I mean, if we're talking about like state government actually goes into a partial shutdown for weeks and they're not able to make constitutionally obligated payments to schools, state police are not in the car writing tickets.

You know, I mean, the thing is the governor would have a lot of power to keep things right.

They're not just going to close down all the prisons and send 30,000 prisoners into the wind.

Okay.

They're going to pay the corrections officers to make it happen.

So I don't it's just hard for me to imagine Matt Hall would basically encourage what, like a month of state government not functioning, then I think there would be some significant price to be paid.

I think he's made it clear he wants less spending.

He wants reduction in from what state government has spent in the past.

What is that number?

If it's a couple percentage points, they can probably get there without much of a problem.

If he wants to go into like a DOGE mode of what Trump is doing with the federal government and try to take out ten, 15, 20%, that's going to be a problem.

The governor and the Democratic Senate are not going to go alon with that.

Well, they want it.

Hall has said repeatedly he wants a tax cut, so he wants to work that into the budget and they want to fund this $3 billion roads plan in the budget.

So both of those cuts are going to have to come from other parts of the budget, even if you don't cut it overall.

I mean, we'll see where they land on that.

But I thin as far as a government shutdown, if the Republicans take the blame, I mean, it's all going to b an exercise in finger pointing.

Right.

We know this already that the House Republicans have passed what they call a government shutdown prevention plan, which would fund very basic government services.

There's no chanc the Senate Democrats pass this, but it was an exercise in saying, look, this isn't our fault.

Hands are clean.

Yeah, we we passed the plan to keep the government open.

So what does the governor, jaw bone here, does she call up Matt Hall and say, Mr. Speaker, knock it off and negotiate?

Usually at this point, the House has begun to move bills out of subcommittee.

Okay.

If you're a superintendent sitting down wherever you're saying you know, July 1st, I got my watch set here.

And the Republican don't seem moved by that at all.

I think you reach out to Matt Hall and you say, remember when you voted for the law that sets a July one deadline for passing the budget.

That's one way of getting at it.

I mean, there are a lot of ornaments that are being hun on this budget Christmas tree.

Like Jonathan mentioned, you got the tax cut, you got the road funding and a bunch of other stuff.

You have Matt Hall talking about BOGE, Bollin DOGE, a reference to the House appropriations chair.

She's on the show next week, by the way.

Wonderful.

And I think one thing to look back to is is just the fact that this divided government has already prove that it's capable of working up until the last minute to meet a deadline.

They did that with minimum wage and sick leave.

I think the budget's going to be the next big test for that.

Do you who breaks the logjam here?

Who blinks?

I think the Senate at the end of the day.

But I think it would have to be done with encouragement from the governor.

And I don't know if there's enough encourage to to do that at the end of the day.

And I think I think Matt Hall for for all he promises of of a tax cut and roads plan I think also he's opened in negotiations at the end of the day and and I think he's setting you know a do not cross line now but it could be moved back progressively as is budget negotiations go forward.

You're not you're nodding your head.

Yeah.

I mean I think we saw with the minimum wage and sick leave negotiations that were mentioned before Matt Hall put his, you know, line down and then he took a step back from it and he got a deal done.

So I think he is willing to negotiate and of course, has been saying publicly some nice things about the governor, although, you know, angered some House Democrats by criticizing some individual lawmakers.

But he certainly is willin to play ball with the governor.

We'll see.

And I think that's important because if you think bac to the last shutdowns, you know, the Senate majority leader at the time, Mike Bishop, and the governor, Jennifer Granholm, that was not a mutual admiration society, to put it politely.

But clearly, we've talked about ad nauseum the governor, Gretchen Whitmer and Speaker Matt Hall are trying they're really trying to work things out.

And obviously there's been some tension with the Senate and so forth.

But, you know, we've seen Senator Brinks, the majority leader, she has worked out a lot of deals with the minority leader, Aric Nesbitt, over there.

And they don't agree on a lot philosophically, but they when push has com to shove, they've worked it out.

So it seems like the personalities would favor that's getting done.

It's not that sort of I don't see the toxic stew that we've had in the past.

I tend to agree with that and there's plenty of time.

Okay, There's plenty of time to get this thing done.

And so I think Mr. Hall will play his cards as hard as he can and then, you know, okay, let's so let's just step back a little bit.

I think.

I don't think he wants on his record the Republicans shutting down the government.

Sorry that you guys don't see that.

But it's that's he's been a creature of Lansing for 20 years.

I mean it's not like he's just coming in here thinking, I'm going to burn this place down.

I mean, I think he respects state government as an institution.

I don't think I woul be surprised if that's his angle that he wants some protracted shutdown that wrecks state services for an extended period.

I would think before that happens, there would be a conversation between him and a former governo by the initials of Rick Snyder just between us folks.

All right.

But I've been wrong before.

Let's take a look at the governor dancing around the issue of bringing state workers back downtown Lansing.

Enough already.

That's the word from the House Republican speaker Matt Hall, who wants to force state workers back into their downtown Lansing offices.

And he wants to make sure the taxpayers are not being shortchanged by, well, having another gig on the side.

Well, working at home, supposedly.

We want to know if the state workers are working at home.

Meanwhile, Governor Gretchen Whitmer says this about the state's civil service workforce.

I I'm proud of the state workforce.

So I match ours against any in the country.

The governor says she is analyzing and grappling with this problem of in-home versus in office.

Downtown Lansing.

We're always analyzing where there are opportunities to be efficient and without compromising the work that needs to be done for the people of Michiga companies, states, governments, we're all grappling with what is the right balance.

But while she is analyzing and grappling, the central question remains and she does not answer yes or no to this one, it remains unanswered.

We want to get all the workers back downtown.

You know, I Tim, I want state government to work for the people in Michigan.

Well, I'm not sure that was an answer to my question.

Well, a lot of state workers are downtown.

There are state workers who work in other parts of the state.

We've got offices all across the county, all across the state.

So and they're showing up.

They're doing the work.

And I think that we should be thanking them.

Mr. Hall contends this is a taxpayer accountability issue, which is why he want the workers in downtown Lansing.

Well, what do you make of that?

Well, what do you make of that?

Well, the governor didn't wan to answer your question, really.

I hadn't noticed.

I feel like we should pivot to Beth here, because Beth has done a lot of great reporting on what's going on.

You had a FOIA request.

What happened?

Yeah.

So I thought it was interesting that the governor said she's analyzing this issue because if she is, she's not sharing the information publicly about what that analysis is showing.

You can analyze privately.

You don't have to share.

You can.

But shouldn't taxpayers who are funding buildings with few employees inside know how many employees are, in fact working inside those buildings?

And and getting back to, we submitted a public records request earlier this year for data on how many workers were in state buildings on five random days last yea based on their keycard access.

And the state denied that public records request, saying it was a security risk to release that information from last year.

So I think I think this is a question obviously, from your interview as well, that the state doesn't want to answer and perhaps doesn' know how to answer this point.

But I think it could benefit everybody in this debate to release those numbers.

Couldn't she say, look at the hybrid system is working a little bit at home, a little bit of this?

Yeah, she could.

It's funny.

Speaker Hall's response sort of we want to kno if state employees are working ... at home.

Right.

And it had echoes of Presiden Trump's 100 day rally in Warren when he said, I don't kno how anyone can work from home.

So there's this debate about how people can continue to do their jobs regardless of whether they're in office or at home.

But there's also the economic development piece of this where you don't have employees in these central business corridors The downtowns are hollowed out.

And so what obligation does the state have to maybe bring back that source of local economic activity.

Also raises the possibility that working home with a gig on the side while the taxpayers are paying your check and you're not making additional money.

I think what's on what is what is the hybrid plan the state has?

And we don't know because if it's three days a week at home, three days a week at work, you know, if it's three days a week in the office and two at home, that's kind of consistent with a lot of places.

But I've heard from some stat employees, it's two days a month that they're supposed to be in the office.

Now, that's from a couple departments.

So it's not necessarily all 18 of them.

But that's I think that would ruffle a lot of voters to hear.

State employees only have to b in the office two days a month.

And I mean, I think that's something the state clearly doesn't want to talk about.

You know, Tim, too, I think the state they've made the case in in a recent committee hearing tha they have to attract employees.

And right now a state gig is in isn't as attractive as it once was.

So this is something they can offer them to to keep pace with private employers who are offering the same.

If they want to make that argument and they've also made the argument that they're just as productive, that's fine.

But why not show the data of how many days a week employees are working in office or how many people are working in a given state building and there hasn't been an explanation as to why they won't be more transparent with that information.

All right.

We had a report from the administration.

They were talking this week about the potential of 700,000 people who are o Medicaid insurance, losing it.

Now, this is an if come story.

This is not a fait accompli.

Please.

Yeah.

And I think it's also really important to note that that release of the report sort of coincided with the US House speaker, noting that the Republican plan is shifting, taking basically the federal contribution to the Medicaid expansion off the table, not ruling out the possibility of work requirement.

So this is very much in flux and also noting that it's pretty unusual for a governor to write or put forward an executive directive asking a department to do an analysis.

Please write me a bad report.

Clearly, this underscores that among some of the issues that have been most controversial coming out of the change in the administration an Republican control in Washington Besides tariffs, Medicaid is probably the thing that the governor has been the most vocal in criticizin and sort of banging the drum on.

She joins a lot of Democrats in sort of sounding the alarm here.

Yeah, two things can be true at the same time.

A. Democrats think this is a pretty good issue for them.

B, it would be pretty bad for the state if there were huge cuts to Medicaid.

I mean, 2.7 million people had Medicaid health insurance through the through largely paid by the federal government in Michigan last year.

That's lik one in four folks in the state.

So it'd be a huge issue to to Clare's point we don't know exactly what the, you know, plan out of Congress is actually going to be.

But Congress, congressional Republicans kind of boxed themselves in a corner by requiring themselve essentially to cut $808 million from this chunk of the budget, where Medicaid is likely the only, you know, target there.

And so, you know, this idea that simply waste, fraud and abuse is going to amount to $800 million is not realistic.

There are going to be cuts.

We don't know exactly what they are, but potentially could have a very large impact on the state, the economy, if people have medical debt because they're not insured hospital systems, medical providers, it's a really big deal.

So if the poison pill, you've got to work in order to get the money.

Michigan is familiar with that issue.

Yes, that's right.

During the the Snyder era, there was statute and budgetary changes put in place that put in some work requirements.

But then they faltered, I think, through a mix of court rulings.

It never came to be.

I think they were successful in beating back in court, if if memory serves.

And then Joe Biden took office, and I believe the legislature, once Democrats had control, repealed the last vestiges of that, you know, I'm sure there would be another court fight over it if it was attempted.

You know, it went back to this old idea of, you know, with cash assistance in the you know, human services sector, the idea of like let's set work requirements for that and that the work requiremen for the health insurance piece didn't sit well with some people because they're saying like, look, you're talking about like people are going to get the health care one way or the other in a show up in the emergency room, or maybe they get this preventative care.

Why are you maybe erecting these barriers t people who you know, in general, if you're on Medicaid, you are lower income, you're a child, you're maybe a new mother.

You know, generally more vulnerable populations.

Let's put all this stuff in context.

These clouds, these dark clouds, the tariffs and the Medicaid are all hanging over this budget process.

And so what do you do?

Do you draft two budgets?

Do you do the doomsday budge and this one over here or what?

Yeah that's a really great question.

Thank you.

Yeah.

You know, the impact on the economy, the state tax collections, but also just direct funding from the federal government is very much in question right now.

So maybe House Republican waiting to reveal their budgets.

There's some merit to that, I don't know.

But, you know, one of my colleagues talked to Attorney General Dana Nessel yesterday and she made that point.

You know, she said, I don't think the the legislature should be finalizing health department budgets.

Right now.

And we don't know what's going to come down from the federal government.

Well, this will all set up for a very interesting revenue estimating conference, which is next Friday.

What are those numbers going to be?

One of the forecasts going to be.

What does your crystal ball say?

I am not sure.

I mean, to Jonathan's point, like, you can have not just a plan B, budget, you could probably have like 100 different contingencies.

There's so much, so much uncertainty.

So I don't envy the task of having to create any kind of revenue estimate at this point.

Just very quickly, the Senate passed a cell ban sort of in to the House, which is not going to go anywhere?

This is school districts have to set a policy on cell phones in schools.

This is the 99% of the state agrees with this idea bill, I say this is a parent of two teenagers.

You know, this problem is cell phones in schools have become insidious, a big distraction.

And this is sort of a light touch way of saying we're not going to tell you what to do exactly other than you have to have a policy on how to do it.

But the House wants to put some specific language in that is universal and there is the rub.

It's not gonna get out of the House.

I think they've got a lot of work to do.

All right.

Filled another 28 minutes.

How do we do it?

Thanks to all of you for showing up.

Thank you for tuning in.

See more off the record right here next week.

Production of Off the Record is made possible in part by Bellwether Public Relations, a full servic strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com For more off the record, visit wkar.org Michigan public television stations have contributed to the production costs of off the record.