Another edition of Of the Record, this time with guest progressive Democra Dylan Wegela from Garden City.

Our lead story, The Governor has another face to face with President Trump.

On the OTR panel we've got lots of good people.

So sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the Record.

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And now this edition of Off the Record, with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much.

Welcome back to Off the Record really semi busy Newsweek in our town.

The the governor in the Oval Office again with Mr.

Trump.

What do you make of this story Lily?

Well Tim, I mean none of us kne that she was going to be there.

It was certainly a surprise to hear that she was.

But, you know, she came away with a big win.

And, that was that.

She had secured this long awaited and long begge for by many folks in the state, federal assistance for Northwest Michigan to help recover, finish recovering.

Orphan is paying for the recovery of the ice storm that hit northwest Michigan.

And they're still digging.

Yeah.

I mean, it was a really, really rough tim on the infrastructure up there.

You know, you had tree that just froze and then broke and then fell on the ground and power lines.

It was a really, really rough situation for the infrastructure.

And there's a lot of financial recovery still going on.

And of course, President Trump did approve about $50 million in federal funding.

But not the whole enchilada.

No, this is for governments and nonprofits.

And so the parts that were excluded for homeowners, the damages that they took, and also for public utilities or, excuse me, private television have co-ops up there, primarily those are excluded.

And so some of these co-ops, Presque Isle, Great Lakes energy, they took hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

And it's sort of, making their financial solvency a little bit shaky.

Well, and I also want to say to, I think that we should start maybe giving up this concept of that it's a surprise that she's meeting with President Trump or that it's out of the blue.

This is her third time since President Trump has returned to office, this term, that she has met with the president.

And for the last several times that she's met with him, you know, she has come away with wins.

There's Selfridge now.

We have this FEMA funding.

You know, we also look at other places you've seen, New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani meeting with President Trump in order to help advance, his agenda over in New York and access things for his constituency there.

I mean, it's very clear that this is a you have to play the game if you want to win sort of mindset.

And I think that Whitmer's really showing her that especially if I may think back to the, the blue folder kind of incident where maybe the, the non, announcement of her visit, maybe that was a little calculated, but at the end she still di secure a huge win for Michigan.

And I think of it like this pretext of like, well, we should be maybe surprised or whatnot.

We should honestly probably expect for this to continue.

She must be fighting the urge to go “Told you so”.

Well I have to imagine that she is.

And, you know, looking at the the press releases from Republicans in Michigan in my inbox on that day, you know, not a single one made mention of the governor.

It was all, you know, this was a victory for Michigan Republicans who have been working tirelessly to secure this money for our for our region, in our state.

And, you know, I'm sure that there has been a lot going on behind the scenes.

Obviously, there's a lot of lobbying that goes on for for situations like this.

But, you know, I'm sure that had to feel vindicated for her because this is something that she's been talking about since Trump came back into office, where she was saying to members of her own party, hey, you know, let me do my thing.

I'm not coming out as the leader of the opposition this time around.

I'm going to be the person who, you know keeps my head down a little bit.

I'm going to work with him.

I'm going to be, you know, maybe not stepping out and sticking my neck out every time that there's an issue.

I really wish I could, but that's going to pay off down the line in times like this.

And like Jordyn said with situations like Selfridge.

Yeah and I mean, when you think of, you know, I think a lot of discussion has been had about sort of the ideology, the outlook and doctrines of the MAGA movement.

The bottom line is this is a president who builds himself on personal relationships.

You know, he' a New York real estate developer who's always excelled in sort of that one on one dealmaking.

And he likes people who seem like winners, who are effective political leaders and, and, you know, sort of have good contro over their own constituencies.

And Gretchen Whitmer, this is an area where she's excelled.

Sort of retail politics, the one on one meeting and sort of charming peopl that she's trying to win over.

And this is what she does.

It is and I think the one thing that I'm sure she's aware of right now is, you know, this is still one of those things, thi and also the suffrage project, because we do have to watch ou for the follow through, right?

We, you know, we see her take these meetings we see her talk to these folks, and we see her talk to the president.

But there is an element o cautious optimism here.

Right?

And I'm sure that that's something that she's very, very cognizant of.

Because what we go from the president, reportedly because we're we're getting this from her office, we haven't heard much from the white House on this.

I think we got a confirmation earlier in the week, but we just heard, you know, them agreeing to sign funding.

We haven't heard dollar amount.

We haven't heard.

You know what this is going to look like?

And I think similar to Selfridge, where we're getting kind of vague information, we need to know what down the line this is going to manifest.

The important aspect of this meeting two was about the Brand Inner Road project in Illinois.

This this series of barriers hoping to keep Asian carp out of the Great Lakes, invasive carp and, you know, after thi meeting, Trump posted on Truth Social saying I'm going to work with Gretchen Whitmer to get this done.

But, you know, the federal government is a huge Byzantine bureaucracy.

And essentially this is a promise from the president that we are just going to leap over all these administrative barriers that have slowed this project down time and time again and get this done for you.

Well if there is a person who leaps over bureaucratic barriers its Donald Trump.

Well he leaped over FEMA on this up north thing.

I mean, and that's the thing, though, if we are going to take the president at his word, which could change day to day, frankly, you know, if there is somebody who does leap over bureaucratic barriers, that has been Trump.

Well the interesting thing here.

How does she pick and choos what she's going to diss him on?

Okay.

She's talked very candidly about tariffs very upfront.

Obviously she has to it's the auto industry.

But it must be interesting how they can do the calculus.

Can I, can I go there or can I not go there?

Since you've been notably silent on another issue that's riled up a lot of her, her base constituency, which is the ICE facilit that's being built in Romulus, which I think we're going to hear about.

Crickets.

Yeah.

Well, that was something I heard from, folks at state of the state, her own fellow Democrats saying that, you know, we were really upset to hear that she had not mentioned that at all.

And you talk about how does she pick and choose these kinds of issues.

It's the issues with both either the most broadest appeal.

Who is going to say I am against getting storm relief for Michiganders?

Who is going to say that I want more invasive species in my Great Lakes, or that I don't want some kind of financial, bonus to Michigan?

Should we get ther with with the Selfridge thing?

Whos going to say we need an ICE facility down in this guy's district?

What's going on?

And that's that's the thing.

And, I mean, I did actually speak with representative Wegela and he was one of the individuals who did tell me that he was disappointed to not hear that that was something not mentioned, because we have seen elsewhere throughout the country, everyday citizens who are legally here, they are being put at risk when they go out.

And they protested.

We are seeing, just an absolute cacophony of things happening surrounding immigration.

And als speaking about disappointment.

The education lobby has to be disappointed that this petition drive to raise taxes on the rich ain't going nowhere.

If you'll pardon my bad English.

Yeah.

I mean, investing in my kids was an attempt to raise taxes on some of the wealthiest Michiganders individual making $500,000 a year, couples making more than $1 million, raising their income tax b mending the state constitution to bring that money into public schools.

Now, let me just interrupt.

Did you think i when you heard this, this is a this is a no brainer.

It'll be on the ballot.

I mean, this is, you know, certainly economic populism.

But the thing is, a policy can be, the thing is Tim, like a policy can be really popular and it can have a lo of political support behind it.

But running a ballot campaign is more than just about picking a popular.

These guys were not amateurs.

They knew what the goal was.

Okay, so I watched a lo of the Board of State Canvassers when this thing was in its infancy, and one of the issues that it ran into early on was with a 100 word summary and this is going to sound a little jargony, but you what what they had a problem with was a legal argument from the other side, the opposition, that this would constitute an illegal change of the state tax distribution and the state tax code.

And my theory, my theory, the you know, the line that we got from the organizers of the campaign yesterday when they announced it was that they weren't they didn't have a pat to collecting enough signatures.

And maybe that's true.

What what my theory is, is that maybe they saw a legal challenge off in the future a challenge to their signatures that was going to arise out of that type of issue they had earlier in the process.

So it took them 6 motnhs in the process to figure that out?

Hey, you know, attorneys attorneys are going to be attorneys to Tim.

and and, you know, my theory is that maybe they need to take some time with some tax attorneys to write a new version of this proposal and bring it back next year when they can, you know, know that it's fully, legally foolproof and and really be able to bring it before the body that's going to make sure the signatures are legit, which is the Board of State Canvassers and not have to, you know, have that extra layer of dubious ness around it at all from the business lobby, which is, you know, the primary opposition to it.

Oh, I need to say you look at what they announced, the other day, they had something around like 250,000 signatures out of a needed, almost like 445, 446,000 signatures.

So they were a little over halfway there.

If we're looking at the proposal on its face, it would have affected or at least based off of, tax returns that we were able to, not tax returns, but sort of like tax that's we're able to review fewer than 60,000 Michiganders who filed in 2021, out of the 4.9 million who filed would have been affected.

This would have hit people making $500,000 worth of income or a million for joint filers.

I mean, there's an appetite here whether or not we'll see it.

there was $1 million for joint filers.

It was $500,000 for single filers.

Yeah.

So there was, there's clearly an appetite, is what I'm saying.

You know, they said that they're going to come back in 2028.

That's presidential election.

There's going to be even more eyes on the ballot.

You know, a midterm is a bi time to get eyes on the ballot.

But if you definitely want to see something past presidential ticket is the golden standard there.

Well the interesting thing about this graduated income tax sort of thing, which is what it is sort of a you know, a theme and variation, over the past that's not that's not gotten anywhere.

And people have said, look, if you make more money, shouldn't you pay more taxes?

Right.

And it does require some subtlety of messaging.

Right.

Because it's not like the income tax is going to go from this to this.

It's still going to be flat, but there's just going to be an uptick at the very end.

And so trying to get that nuance across is difficult especially when you're probably gonna have an opposition campaign.

Who's going to say, look, they're just trying to raise taxes in general.

And that's been the argument.

That was the argument from you know, the chambers of commerce and the business groups who opposed it this year.

You know, this constitutes a graduated income tax income tax hike.

And, you know, the message we got from invest in my kids was, this is a surcharge.

And you know, whether or not that was successful I suppose remains to be seen.

But if they can message that right, I don't think that life is going to be less expensive or drastically more affordable for most Michiganders in a year and a half.

And I don't think it's, it's a tough message to sell give kids money for school instead of, you know.

We get to the amount of money to it would amount to something like less than 10% o what we currently spend on the.

It's like something like a $20 billion budget for education.

It would raise something like 1.7, I believe, billion dollars an estimation.

So it's not a huge and it sounds crazy to say out lou that's not a huge chunk of money we're talking about, but in perspective, you know, it really isn't.

And it would be a constitutionally protected revenue stream under the, if it remains the way they had it written in this iteration.

You know, and we're talking so much right now about the school aid funding, you know, holding the school aid fund harmless from, you know, skimming off the top of it.

This would be one way to contribute to that by creating a stream of revenue that you know, you can't pull away from.

Alright very quickly the speaker announced this week that he wants to take all of the green mandates that are now filtered into the Public Service Commission, which since utility rates take those off the table, get rid of them and just do affordability and reliability.

Is this DOA in the Senat and DOA at the governor's desk?

I mean, I suppose.

I hate to be like that.

It remains to be seen.

But here's what my take is on it.

He's trying to repeal something that the active sitting Democratic Senate played a hand in passing.

I don't really know or see any situation in which they bite on that or Whitmer bites on that, considering she signed off on it.

Unless there's something else that's attached to it that Hall has.

He hasn't or hasn't shown his hand out on that could make the Senate change their mind.

There' also an implied connection here, which is tha the rollout of renewable energy is the thing that's driving up rates for utility customers, and that hasn't been proven.

We haven't seen a lot of evidence in that regard.

And right now, the Trump administration is keeping open a coal plant at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to ratepayers.

And we haven't heard muc about that from the legislature.

All right.

Let's call in our guests today to talk about ICE and other stuff.

Representative welcome back to Off the Record.

I mispronounced your name in the open, and I have my first mistake this year.

My apologies.

Sir.

Pronounce your last name.

Yeah.

It's Wegela.

Close.

Okay, I was close, sorry.

ICE coming to your district.

What's going on?

Yeah.

So in my district, we have, a warehouse that's being converted by, you know, department of Homeland Security into an ICE detention center.

I think one of the things t center is where the location is, which is essentially next t several thriving neighborhoods.

the area i the city is not zoned for this.

Obviously, there was no communication with local officials or state officials or even congressiona officials on this come to town.

So it's something that we're, pretty much all unanimously opposing in the area, and hopefully we're going to be able to block it.

But I think it's going to be an uphill battle.

Through the courts or what?

You know, I think, it's it'll be interesting.

Obviously, we have federalism in the United States and there's a Supremacy Clause.

But I you know, there's a little bit of hope, I think, with public pushback, maybe we can get this administration to change their mind.

But also, you know, it's not zoned for that.

So in some sometimes, you know, maybe we can get local zoning to, to prevail there.

Who owned, who owned the property?

It's it's, so it was owned b I can't remember the exact name, but it was it was up for sale, and it was actually before it was sold, was, about to be sold to, I believe, Toyota, which would have brought good working class jobs to the, district, but instead it was sold, to ICE.

and I don't know if the details have come out about that.

So basically, you guys messed up because if you had gotten to the seller, you might have been able to convince him or or they not to do this?

I think if there was some public notice of this, that would certainly.

Well aren you supposed to know this stuff?

That's an interesting, way to phrase this.

I think if the federal government was operating in a way that was transparent to the public and to the community, yeah, we could have definitely done more push back.

And we're going to do everything we can to push back against this.

So when you and I spoke during the state Governor Gretchen Whitmer's final state of the state address, ICE and her lack of mention was something that you and several other, House Democrats did identify as something you were disappointed in.

What, I suppose would you like to se the governor do on this message?

Yeah.

I think we're at this uniqu time in American history, right?

We have this paramilitary force, ICE, that is now, we, you know, we need to remind people that they defunded food stamps and they defunded health care so that they can fund ICE.

And ICE is funded now at a level that is more than most militaries across the world.

And we are seeing this organization violat the rights of American citizens.

Since October, ICE has lost 4400 times in court.

So to me, I believe if a governor of this state should be pushing back against that and the governor should be helping us with, put it, this public pressure to make sure that IC does not open a detention center in my district, another one in the state.

Obviously, we have the one in Baldwin.

But but beyond like public statements, I guess.

Is there anything tangible that she can do?

Because when I when I spoke with, House Minority Leader Ranjeev Puri, he said just because the governor didn't necessarily mention it doesn't mean that it's not necessarily an issue, but that we shouldn't be taking swings.

And I'm very paraphrasing here, his words, but basically he shouldn't be taking swings at every and all possible messaging.

I think every idea, I think we should be taking a swing here.

I mean, we sa what was happening in Minnesota.

We saw American citizens be killed.

We saw rights repeated, rights repeatedly violated.

I think we're going to take a swing at anything.

This is one of the issues.

I mean, we are seeing in ICE detention.

Last year alone, there was a record number of deaths.

I think there's already been, at least ten deaths in ICE detention this year.

So to protect the people of Michigan, I believe this is one that anyone and everyone should be coming together on.

At the height of the sort of air the Departmen of Governmental Efficiency Doge.

You know people were talking in academia about the idea of a “Eye of Sauron” and that the idea is you keep your head down.

You don't speak up too much.

You're not too bol because you don't want to have the federal government turning its attention to yo and then bringing enforcement.

you know, his the the president's amnesty towards Tim Walz, I think, certainly played a rol in the enforcement in Minnesota.

Do you think that, you know, if she becomes too outspoken, tha that could come back to bite us?

I mean, certainly this administration could could retaliate for anything.

But I think the choice we are facing are, is when fascists are a the door, do we stand up to them or do we find ways to stay quiet, to protect our own self-interest or or somehow believe that's going to help protect the interests of the state?

Do you believe President Trump is a fascist?

Yes, I do so again, though, I gues I go back to beyond messaging.

Like what?

What specifically can or do you see Whitmer as being able to do, especially when considering, you know, just earlier this week, she was able to go to the white House and lobby for much needed storm recovery funds, perhaps because she has a less adversarial relationship with the president.

Yeah, I think that it's great.

you know, I think we have t at anytime we can come together to work for the working class.

But what I will say is, I think true power, you know, a lot of time and in some of these situations when you're facing people like Donald Trump comes from public pressure and comes from the people.

So I believe the governor should be encouraging the people of this state to be publicly pushing back.

And to stay silent on that issue, to me, is something that's unacceptable.

Representative wiggler, you know, you've got your rose lapel pin here on your lapel.

you're one of the most outspoken progressives in the state legislature.

You know, over the past few months, we've had two ballot proposals of policies that are held sort of in high esteem by progressives when taxing the rich and then instituting ranked choice voting.

Both failed to continue their ballot question campaigns to get on the ballot in 2026.

Is this a reflection of you think, where momentum is behind major progressive policies?

You know I think we are facing this time where wealth is incredibly concentrated.

Three people have more wealth in the bottom half of this country.

And, I think it is I think it is great that we are trying to pass these ballot initiatives.

and so one of the things I always try to do is push more people to get involved.

The the rose lapel pin, by the way, I'm a democratic socialist.

I don't consider myself a progressive.

and I try to drive people t places where they can organize, because the truth is, nothing's going to change unless the working class in mass gets organized.

So it it's unfortunate the ballot initiatives have failed, but I think we have to keep coming back to the table, and I'm holding out my hop that Mop Up Michigan will pass so that we can get corporate money out of, politics.

And hopefully they'll get the signatures they need.

So on that, in that vein, you know, we're talking about we talked about utility rates a little bit.

And one of the issues that you've sort of jumped on recently that other folks in the legislature have gotten involved with, and this is actually one of the areas that, you know, there is some, cross across the aisle agreement, is is data centers.

And we're seeing, you know, a lot of folks talking about it, a lot of folks starting to grapple with the idea of, you know, one of these developments coming to their community.

Can you tell us a little bi about what this is looking like?

Yeah.

So it's one of the things we've been working on, the corporate subsidies an state Investment subcommittee.

And what we saw, several years ago under the Democratic majority was passing use and sales tax exemptions for data centers, which I voted no on the time.

So I've worked with, my colleagues, Aaron Burns and Jim Dossena to introduce legislation to repeal that.

I've also worked with, Rep Wirtz and Fox to introduce a moratorium bill.

And the reason that I have introduced those pieces of legislation is because we're seeing dozens of projects pop up across the state, which I think threate not only energy cost and water utility costs going up.

You know, if you look at the Selene Township project, I believe that's estimated to power a million homes or increase its energy load by 25%.

But we also need to address that.

Data centers are what's powering AI right now.

And to me, it makes no sens for the state to be encouraging the, you know, AI technology that might lead to if you don't want it's largely unregulated, but it might lead to the replacement of just thousands of working class jobs, as well as many other environmental issues.

There's there's so many things that we should be cautious about with data centers.

And it feels like to me, the doors being just opened for them rather than, hey, let's take our time to figure out are there ways and guardrails me to put around this.

And here again, the governor's on one side, you're on the other.

And her argument is j-o-b-s.

Yeah.

Well, if you look actually at data centers, they don't create a lot of long term jobs.

They do create some good jobs, in construction.

But I think it's shortsighted because how many jobs are going to be replaced by artificial intelligence over time?

You know, my first job that I had was at Taco Bell.

If you go to Taco Bell now an you go through the drive thru, your order is largely taken by artificial intelligence.

So is the governor out of step on this one too?

I think so.

I think if you listen to the people of Michigan and you look at what's happening across the state, you have coalitions at the grassroots level forming from the right and the left coming together to block, data centers.

And did you vote for her?

I did.

Do you regret it?

No, because the alternativ choice would have been something much worse.

So the.

Oh, you first please.

These question bring up an interesting point, because you found areas of crossover with people who you might consider on the righ flank of the Republican Party, where you guys have aligned yourselves on, for lack of a better term, sort of economic populist policies.

But then there's a broad swath of lawmakers in the middl people who might be considered, say, more business friendly, both in the Republican and Democratic Party, who you disagree wit on a number of key issues here.

Why is that?

You know, I I'm willing to wor with anyone in the legislature to advance policies that help the working class.

I do think it's important that when people in power are doing things that are harmful to the working class, we call that out, such as I mentioned earlier with Donald Trump.

But I think the we're in thi weird place in politics, right?

Where, we I think some o the things are a little unclear.

Right?

I don't think the left right alignment on the issue of data centers is, has been established.

It's something new.

but I really do believe i something and some area issues.

It's really more of an, elite or working class issue.

Data centers is one of those.

I think the idea that we're goin to concentrate wealth and power to the hands of a few concerns, not only me, but some of my colleagues on the right.

When Mike Duggan said the trifecta did nothing when you had power, what did you think?

I think that that's just not true.

I mean, we repealed right to work.

We restored prevailing wage.

So why is he coming on that?

I think that Mike Duggan is trying to find himself a lane for the governorship.

But I think the truth is, there's probably no one running for governor who's going to be more pro corporate than Mike Duggan.

Do you have any concerns, though, that he could draw away votes from the whomever the Democratic nominee ends up being?

Sure.

And I think it is on, you know, the Democratic nominee, whoever that ends up being, to make the case that we we need to present the future for working class people that they want and we need to back that u with what we're actually doing.

To that end, you know, in the last presidential election, we saw deep divisions among Democrats, leftists, progressives, etc.

you know, a coalition divided, so to speak.

How do you see that being repaired, especially heading into the 2026 midterms?

Yeah I think the most important thing is that we're putting forward platforms that people actually want.

And I think one of those we need candidates that are running that aren't taking corporate, PAC money.

We also need to be making the argument, in my opinion, that we have universal health care, or at least at the bare minimum, finding ways to hold the, you know, insurance companies accountable for what they're doing to us, which is raising rates on us.

And I believe basically what I'm trying to say is that there needs to be a populist messag from the Democratic candidates that is popular, but also that is backed up by their actions, because so many times we have people run for office, they get in office and then they start doing other things.

Are you seeing that now?

I think that, yeah.

I mean, yeah, I think so.

I mean, we hear candidates all across, all over the place talk about how they want to rein in energy costs and then when they get to office, what happens?

DTE is, you know, essentially blocking anything from happening because they donate more to politics than anybody.

Very quickly, does your party spend too much time talking about social issues?

I don't think so.

I think it's important that we stand up for every.

The governor says tabletop issues.

So what I would say is, I think in order to have a working class that is together to fight against the elite class, we have to fight for each other and have solidarity.

What are you running for next, representative?

That's a good question.

I guess we'll see soon.

Give me a guess.

I mean, I think maybe the state Senate eventually.

Thank you sir.

Good to see you.

Also thanks to our panel.

Thank you for watching Off the Record.

See more of that right here next week.

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