Will make our lives WORSE

Mike Rogers (MI)

Running for Senator in Michigan

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Will make our lives WORSE

Backed Tariffs That Raised Costs for Michigan Families and Farmers

Trump's tariffs hammered Michigan auto workers, farmers, and families. Mike Rogers praised them — and mocked Michiganders who were worried about higher prices.
  • Rogers has defended the tariffs, saying Michigan workers "rate the tariffs higher than Wall Street and the legacy media," and told Punchbowl News that Michiganders were "fairly optimistic" about Trump's tariff regime.
  • When Trump's tariffs were struck down in February 2026, Rogers pushed for more of them. Trump "can't" protect domestic manufacturing "alone," he said in a statement, and should have "every tool in his toolkit to save American manufacturing and to do it urgently — before we lose the jobs and billions of dollars of investments that have reshored to the United States."
  • At a September 2025 town hall in Metamora, Rogers justified the tariffs by claiming manufacturing jobs were coming back — the opposite of what the Bureau of Labor Statistics was recording, with roughly 78,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs lost over the year — and mocked those worried about prices: "And when the Democrats start getting at us, oh my gosh, coffee went up. You know, horror… Costs are up but I'm telling you what. I'd rather have good manufacturing jobs here."
  • The tariffs hit small Michigan retailers hard, and the Detroit Regional Chamber and MichAuto warned Trump that his 25% auto tariffs would mean "profound" pain for working-class Michiganders in a state where one in five jobs is automotive-related. Michigan is projected to lose $167 million in agricultural exports in 2025.
  • When Trump threatened to block the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge between Detroit and Windsor as "leverage" in his trade war with Canada, Rogers backed the threat — saying "I give him all the leash he needs" and "I think this is probably the right thing to do."

Mike Rogers backed tariffs that raised prices for Michigan families and farmers — and mocked them for worrying about it. We deserve better.
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Supported Trump's War with Iran That Raised Gas Prices for Michiganders

Trump's war with Iran sent Michigan gas prices to a three-year high and drove up costs for Michigan farmers. Mike Rogers backed the war — and brushed off Michiganders worried about what it was costing them.

Mike Rogers backed Trump's war with Iran even as it raised gas and fertilizer prices for Michiganders — and told a worried constituent "you'll get your oil." We deserve better.
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Cheered a Bill Projected to Raise Michigan Energy Bills and Cost the State 19,000 Jobs

Michiganders are already struggling with their utility bills. Mike Rogers celebrated the federal law that is set to make them worse.
  • The day the House passed the "Big Beautiful Bill," Rogers celebrated it as "historic tax cuts for hard-working families" and "a great day to be an American." Michigan AFL-CIO President Ron Bieber noted at a July 2026 press conference that Rogers had called the law "a monumental victory for working families."
  • That law repealed the tax credits for wind, solar, and battery storage that had underwritten almost all of Michigan's recent clean energy construction. According to an Energy Innovation analysis reported by Planet Detroit, it will drive an 8%–15% spike in energy rates for residential, commercial, and industrial customers, costing the average Michigan utility customer $320 more every year by 2035, with wholesale power costs up 33%.
  • The same law will cut Michigan's new energy production by 4.4 gigawatts by 2035 — roughly four nuclear power plants' worth — at a time when electricity demand is rising. Michigan is projected to lose 19,000 jobs and $3.3 billion in annual GDP by 2035, with the heaviest blow landing on the manufacturing sector that makes up about 16% of the state's economic output. "Manufacturers are going to see the greatest impact on their power prices of any consumer," said Dan O'Brien, the senior modeling analyst who ran the numbers.

Mike Rogers called it a monumental victory for working families — while the analysts say it is set to raise their power bills and cost Michigan 19,000 jobs. We deserve better.
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Opposed Health Care for Michiganders at Every Turn

Mike Rogers fought against health care for Michiganders throughout his congressional career — and cheered for more cuts in 2026.

Mike Rogers has spent his career fighting against health care access for Michiganders. We deserve better.
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Voted to Cut Medicare and Privatize Social Security

Michiganders depend on Medicare and Social Security. Mike Rogers voted to cut one and has put the other on the table.

Mike Rogers repeatedly voted to gut Medicare and put Social Security benefits on the chopping block. We deserve better.
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Spent 14 Years Trying to Ban Abortion — and Has Never Taken Any of It Back

Michigan voters wrote reproductive freedom into the state constitution in 2022, and Mike Rogers now tells voters he respects that. But he has never disavowed a single bill or vote from the fourteen years he spent trying to ban abortion nationwide — and the last time he was asked about it directly, he said he does not walk away from any of it.
  • Rogers cosponsored four separate bills that would have defined legal personhood as beginning at the moment of fertilization: the Right to Life Act in 2005, 2008, and 2009, and the Life at Conception Act in 2013. PolitiFact found that such laws would restrict IVF — a Drexel University law professor said they would "be the death of the IVF industry," because "destroying the embryos, which is a normal part of IVF, would be illegal" — and that emergency contraception "could be banned."
  • Rogers now says he opposes any restrictions on IVF. Mary Ziegler, a reproductive rights historian and law professor at the University of California Davis, told the Michigan Independent that the two positions cannot coexist: "either you can be for IVF or you can be for fetal personhood, but you can't be for both. So either they're lying about the IVF part or they're lying about the fetal personhood part."
  • On June 18, 2013, Rogers voted for a nationwide ban on abortion after 20 weeks, H.R. 1797, which passed the House 228–196 and died in the Senate. In 2003 and again in 2005, he cosponsored the RU-486 Suspension and Review Acts, which would have stripped the FDA's approval of mifepristone, the drug used in medication abortions.
  • Asked on Michigan Public Television's "Off the Record" in March 2023 whether he would have voted for Proposal 3, Rogers said he probably would not have — falsely claiming it allowed abortion "right up to the day of birth" — and added: "I'm a pro-life guy, I've voted pro-life, and I don't walk away from that." At a New Hampshire town hall two months later he said "I've been a pro-life candidate my entire career," and when asked whether he would veto a national abortion ban, he answered only, "I'd have to look at it." Across his 14 years in the House, NARAL Pro-Choice America scored him as opposing reproductive rights 100% of the time.
  • In a September 2024 ad, Rogers told Michiganders: "Michigan voters have already decided the issue, and I respect that decision. In the Senate, I won't do anything to change it." Michigan had passed Proposal 3 by 57%–43%. One year later, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and its Women Speak Out PAC announced a $4.5 million field campaign and 1 million voter visits to win this seat — to "defend and grow our pro-life majority in the U.S. Senate," said group president Marjorie Dannenfelser, who added that whichever Democrat wins the primary "is going to be an abortion extremist."

Mike Rogers spent his career in Congress trying to ban abortion nationwide, has never taken back a word of it, and is being bankrolled by the movement that wants him to finish the job. We deserve better.
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Said He 'Loved' the DOGE Cuts That Gutted Services for Michiganders

Elon Musk's DOGE went after services Michiganders rely on. DOGE's own site claimed $390 million clawed back from Michigan's health department in a single round of cuts; Michigan's attorney general sued, and a federal judge ordered $379.3 million of it reinstated. Mike Rogers cheered the cuts on anyway.
  • At an April 13, 2026 Saginaw County Republican Party meet and greet, Rogers said of the DOGE cuts: "I kept saying, you're going to cut it, and that's great, and I love it." His only complaint was that they hadn't been made permanent — "if you don't legislate that they can't grow after this, then we're going to be right back in the same boat."
  • At a February 12, 2026 CD-10 Republican meeting, Rogers celebrated Trump cutting "10% less federal employees, 10% in one year," telling the crowd: "People said it couldn't be done, It's — he did it! Right? If we're going to protect that, he needs help in the United States Senate."
  • At a March 17, 2026 Oakland University College Republicans meeting, Rogers said he had personally coached DOGE on how to make the firings stick: "I tried to tell the DOGE people, been here, done that, here's what you got to do, you got to actually tell them limit the number of people… you have to use technology to counter it, and you can't have 100 people anymore, you got to have 60 or whatever it is."
  • The cuts Rogers loved were aimed at specific Michigan programs. State health officials say Michigan could lose $93 million in federal grants for drug treatment and recovery — almost a third of what the state spends fighting the opioid epidemic. Another $15 million in AmeriCorps grants for senior services and for teaching children to read was cancelled outright, and it took a lawsuit and a court order to get those programs back. And in April 2025 the entire federal staff of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program was fired, leaving the fate of the program "entirely uncertain" for the more than 430,000 Michigan households that rely on it to help cover their energy bills.

Mike Rogers loved the cuts aimed at Michiganders' health care, addiction treatment and heating bills — and his only regret was that they weren't made permanent. We deserve better.
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Championed Big Pharma and Helping Fuel the Opioid Crisis

While Michigan communities were devastated by the opioid crisis, Mike Rogers was a leading advocate in Congress for greater access to prescription opioids — and was bankrolled by the industry that made them. Rogers acknowledged in 2006 that drug companies considered him "a champion" of their industry.

Mike Rogers was bankrolled by Big Pharma and voted their way while Michigan communities paid the price. We deserve better.
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Used His Congressional Office to Enrich Himself and His Wife

Mike Rogers left Congress in 2015 and walked straight through the revolving door. His net worth has since ballooned to nearly $12 million.

Mike Rogers used his congressional office to benefit his family and walked through the revolving door to cash in. We deserve better.
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Is a Florida Carpetbagger Who Claims Michigan Is His Home

Mike Rogers left Michigan after leaving Congress, lived in a $1.7 million Florida mansion, and registered to vote in Florida — then decided to run for Michigan's Senate seat.

Mike Rogers abandoned Michigan for a Florida mansion and now wants a Senate seat. We deserve better.
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Lost the 2024 Election, Then Falsely Claimed It Was Stolen

Mike Rogers lost the 2024 Michigan Senate race. Rather than accepting the result, he fabricated a story about a mysterious van delivering ballots in Detroit — without a shred of evidence.
  • A full year after conceding, Rogers began telling Republican audiences that ballots delivered by a single van in Detroit at about 5:30 a.m. had "swung" his 2024 race. He said it at two October 2025 events, and on video he made an air-quote gesture with his hand as he said the word "ballots": "Now, there were some ballots that showed up at 5:30 — I wish I were kidding — in a van. And that swung the election on us."
  • Chris Thomas, Michigan's former elections director, who now helps run Detroit's elections, said a morning batch of drop-box and Election Day registration ballots is entirely routine — he believes those ballots reached the counting center around 3 or 4 a.m. — and called Rogers' suggestion ridiculous, perhaps even more so than the claims made after the 2020 election. None of the poll challengers in Detroit, he said, had any issue with how ballots were being processed.
  • The facts don't match. Michigan's official certified results put Slotkin at 2,712,686 and Rogers at 2,693,680 — he lost by 19,006 votes, not the "about 17,000" he claimed. On that same ballot Trump carried Michigan with 2,816,636 votes, meaning Rogers ran almost 123,000 votes behind the president at the top of his own ticket. Rogers had conceded quickly in 2024 without alleging any fraud, and asked what evidence he had, his spokeswoman did not respond.
  • Rogers knows better. One day before the January 6th attack, he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that the 2020 election was "free and fair" and that to imply otherwise "is self-serving and stokes further discord in our country." Today his campaign's county co-chairs include Meshawn Maddock in Oakland County and Kenneth Thompson in Ionia County — both pardoned by Trump for their alleged roles in the false-electors scheme to cast Michigan's 2020 electoral votes for him despite the state voting for Biden.
  • In April 2026, Rogers told a Kalamazoo County GOP meeting he was recruiting retired and off-duty police officers to serve as poll watchers in Detroit: "Because, go ahead: Try to intimidate them. Please... all you got to do is open your jacket and you see the badge on the belt, right?" It is a federal crime to intimidate voters.

Mike Rogers lost a fair election and responded by spreading lies about it. We deserve better.
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Takes Millions From the Banks He Wants to Regulate

Our elected officials should work for us, the people.

Mike Rogers has spent thirty years taking money from the banking industry, and now he wants the job of regulating it. He has said he would like a seat on the Senate Banking Committee - the panel that writes the rules for banks, insurers and financial markets, and that oversees both the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Over his House career he collected $1.25 million from the securities and investment industry alone, putting him in the top 11% of all lawmakers who served between 1990 and 2024 for banking and financial-sector cash. The money has not stopped.

And his campaign is not really funded by Michigan at all. Only 42% of his traceable individual money came from Michigan - Florida, California, Texas and New York together supplied nearly as much. Nearly 30% of what his campaign took in was not donor money at all, but $3,166,695 transferred from committees he controls. Meanwhile outside groups have already spent $29,021,979 getting him elected - 2.7 times everything his own campaign has raised - one super PAC has promised $45 million more, and a pro-Israel lobby is weighing tens of millions on top of that.

Asked whether all that banking money might shape his votes, his campaign's answer was that "anyone who donates to Mike's campaign does so because they want to support his mission, not the other way around."

Look at who is funding him:
  • The industry he wants to regulate. In the last quarter of 2025 alone, his campaign and joint fundraising committee took $62,000 from banking donors - including the American Express PAC ($5,000) and the Mortgage Bankers Association PAC ($4,500), plus $12,000 each from Thomas W. Smith of Prescott Investors and Andrew McKnight of Fortress Investment Group.
  • Wall Street's biggest names. Paul Singer of Elliott Management and John W. Childs each put $50,000 into the super PAC backing him. Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of Blackstone, and Marc Rowan, chief executive of Apollo Global, each gave his campaign directly - and Blackstone employees have given $34,500 between them.
  • GLCF, Inc. - $16,853,829 in outside spending supporting him, more than his entire campaign has raised. This is the Great Lakes Conservative Fund, the super PAC that Texas oil billionaire Tim Dunn seeded with $5 million - see Built His Campaign on Extremists below.
  • The Koch network - $8,679,985. Americans for Prosperity Action, the Koch brothers' super PAC, has spent nearly nine million dollars supporting him, and Koch Inc.'s own PAC wrote his campaign another $10,000.
  • The Senate Leadership Fund - $45,000,000 promised. On April 6, 2026 the super PAC aligned with Senate Republican leadership committed $45 million to his race, with advertising to begin in September. That single promise is four times what his campaign has raised in the entire cycle.
  • AIPAC is weighing tens of millions to elect him. Its super PAC, the United Democracy Project, spent $32 million trying to pick Michigan's Democratic nominee - and lost. Within a day of that defeat, the New York Times reported that AIPAC was considering a major campaign to elect Rogers instead, with people who have spoken to its leadership expecting the figure to run into the tens of millions. The group's super PAC had roughly $80 million in the bank at the end of June. Read the full story.
  • The Sentinel Action Fund ($1,366,302), the National Association of Realtors ($131,015) and the National Rifle Association's Political Victory Fund ($86,970) - three more outside groups spending to put him in the Senate.
  • And he has delivered for these donors before. In the Michigan Senate, Rogers wrote the parts of the 1995 Credit Reform Act that deleted the 18% cap on second mortgages and scrapped the 16.5% and 22% limits on car financing. In Congress he voted twice against the Dodd-Frank financial reforms, and for a 2013 bill to roll them back that the New York Times reported was written by Citigroup's lobbyists.

Mike Rogers wants to write the rules for an industry that has bankrolled him for three decades. We deserve better.
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Built His Campaign on Extremists and $5 Million from a Christian Nationalist

Mike Rogers staffed his 2026 campaign with election deniers and anti-LGBTQ+ activists, put students who defended an "I love Hitler" group chat on his outreach team, and let a Texas billionaire who says only Christians should hold leadership positions bankroll his super PAC.
  • Rogers created a "Faith Coalition Leadership Team" stocked with election deniers and anti-LGBTQ+ activists. Linda Lee Tarver petitioned the Michigan Supreme Court to seize Detroit ballots and block certification of Biden's win, and called federal LGBTQ+ protections a "godless, demonic, satanic and wicked agenda of the devil." Attorney Alexandria Taylor was sanctioned by a Wayne County judge over a 2022 election lawsuit the judge found "devoid of arguable legal merit" and "rife with speculation," which cited the debunked film "2000 Mules." Pastor Lorenzo Sewell told a state House committee that "we don't have fair elections; we're like China."
  • Rogers said the coalition would spread "Mike's America First vision." When Metro Times asked about the members' records, his campaign responded: "There's no way for him to know every view of every volunteer — no candidate does."
  • His "Students for Mike Rogers" outreach team included Cameron Dundas, who replied "Send them to North Korea?" to a post asking what should be done about "these people" — an apparent reference to Jews — and who repeatedly promoted a far-right internet figure the Southern Poverty Law Center ties to Nick Fuentes' Groyper movement, quoting him to argue women do not belong in politics. Rogers' University of Michigan campus coordinator, Alexander Richmond, defended the participants in the leaked Young Republicans group chat that featured "I love Hitler," gas chamber jokes, and racial slurs: "Loyalty is the only political virtue that matters."
  • Texas oil billionaire Tim Dunn gave $5 million to the Great Lakes Conservative Fund, a super PAC backing Rogers — two $2.5 million installments that made up more than 98% of everything the PAC raised in the first half of 2025. Dunn told former Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, who is Jewish, that "only Christians should hold leadership positions." A top official at one of Dunn's Texas PACs met with white nationalist Nick Fuentes in 2023. Rogers has never publicly addressed Dunn's involvement, and his campaign did not respond when Michigan Advance asked about it.

Mike Rogers surrounded himself with election deniers and bigots and took $5 million from a Christian nationalist — then said he could not be expected to know who was on his own team. We deserve better.
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