State Rep. Angela Rigas on Thursday voted against the Democrat fiscal year 2025 budget which would spend taxpayer dollars to take guns away from law-abiding citizens, gut school security provisions, and create grant carve-outs designed for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. The budget was passed in the middle of the night to avoid public scrutiny.

“First, Democrats rammed unconstitutional gun laws down our throats. Now, they’re forcing taxpayers to foot the bill as they teach our judges and law enforcement how to best violate our constitutional rights,” said Rigas, R-Caledonia. “Red flag laws are so confusing that Democrats are now clamoring to find enough money to pay for the extensive training that law enforcement will need to understand how they work. Someone needs to tell my liberal colleagues that they’ll never have enough money to make it make sense. It’s simply unconstitutional to seize someone’s property before they’re even convicted of a crime.”

The budget includes $1.8 million for programming to implement red flag laws, which authorize law enforcement to seize firearms from law-abiding citizens. Second Amendment activists say the laws are a direct infringement of the constitutional right to bear arms.

Democrats also created a $5.6 million “family planning” grant program that is essentially a designated carve out for Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers. They also designated an unspecified amount of future funding for a broad expansion of abortion services.

“This so-called ‘family planning’ grant program is nothing more than Democrats putting lipstick on an especially ugly pig,” Rigas said. “When you know who the grant recipient is going to be before the grant program is even created, it never really was an actual grant program, was it? It’s disgusting that Democrats think it’s okay to spend taxpayer dollars to help abortion doctors kill babies. Taxpayers expect us to use their dollars wisely, not wipe out future generations.”

The $300 million cut in school safety resources reflects a reduction in school safety funding or more than 90%. Meanwhile, the Democrat budget left $300 million sitting untouched in the state coffers. The budget also includes hundreds of millions in funding for special projects. These projects include $17 million for zoos in Lansing and metro Detroit, $2 million for a boxing gym, $5 million for a movie theater, and more than $18 million for sports complexes and fieldhouses.

“Without a historic surplus this year, Democrats had to raid somewhere in the state budget to find the funding they needed for their pet projects,” Rigas said. “I’m guessing the fact that kids aren’t old enough to vote played into their decision to gut school safety funding. Michigan students have terrible test scores and face devastating mental health struggles, but Democrats still chose to take away the mental health resources we worked so hard to secure, and instead pay for state-funded tampons.”

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