The Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia is home to over 14,000 items that showcase the nation's racist past. Those items are getting a new home, thanks to a planned $18.5 million expansion.

The museum is currently housed in a campus library at Ferris State University in Big Rapids. The planned expansion would make the museum a standalone building, and would address limitations like "lack of visibility and tight configuration."

Governor Gretchen Whitmer has toured much of the state this week to build support for using American Rescue Plan funds for affordable housing.

Whitmer’s stops included Detroit, Jackson, and Kalamazoo. She’s hoping to win legislative approval to commit $100 million from the federal government for housing.

She says that could leverage another $380 million dollars in private sector investment.

“Right now, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to give thousands of Michiganders a safe place to call home,” she said at the Detroit event.

Under revised guidance released by the CDC Tuesday, residents in six Michigan counties should resume wearing masks indoors, even if they’re fully vaccinated. That’s according to state data released Wednesday, which uses CDC criteria to determine where community transmission is currently “substantial” (Alpena, Hillsdale, Gogebic, Kalkaska, and Mason counties) or “high” (Branch County.) 

A Detroit city councilman has been charged with conspiracy to commit bribery and accused of accepting $1,000 from an undercover law enforcement agent.

Andre Spivey was named late Tuesday in an indictment filed in federal court in Detroit.

The indictment says the bribe allegedly was accepted on October 26, 2018.

Federal prosecutors and attorneys for an armed anti-government militia continue to lay groundwork for a trial set for later this year.

The group of mostly-Michigan men, the so-called Wolverine Watchmen, are accused of plotting last year to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The defense has indicated it will show jurors that the plot never would have happened, had FBI informants not drawn the militia members in.

The ACLU of Michigan is asking state regulators to examine a Catholic health system’s policy of not providing tubal ligations.

The ACLU filed the complaint with the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) against Ascension.  It’s on behalf of a pregnant woman whose doctor, affiliated with Ascension Providence Hospital in Southfield, advised her to get a tubal ligation in conjunction with a planned C-section.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer says she’s not about to announce new mask mandates in Michigan.

That’s despite new guidance from the CDC that people should mask up while indoors in areas that are COVID-19 hotspots.

Whitmer says she’s very concerned about how variants may develop, but she thinks there are better options right now than new state orders.