Heartland Signal: Rogers’ proposal “places another hurdle between people and the help they need”

LANSING — New reporting from Heartland Signal reveals corrupt multimillionaire Mike Rogers has repeatedly proposed requiring Michiganders who apply for government assistance to “demonstrate that they can read before receiving help,” suggesting “literacy requirements” as “conditions” for accessing programs like SNAP and Medicaid. 

According to the report, “Rogers has not publicly established that literacy requirements would reduce poverty, increase employment or improve children’s reading outcomes,” “[n]or has he explained how the government would assess applicants, accommodate people with disabilities or limited English proficiency, or prevent eligible recipients from losing food or health coverage.”

Rogers’ proposal, which he has admitted is “controversial,” would place “another hurdle between people and the help they need” and is also tied to “intangible racial racial history in Michigan,” as “Black residents are disproportionately represented” among the state’s Medicaid and SNAP enrollees.

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Heartland Signal: Mike Rogers’ literacy test plan for government assistance

• When Robert L. Green was a child growing up in Detroit, his family moved into a white ethnic neighborhood. A white mob responded by throwing stones at their home. Green, who went on to become a prominent civil rights activist and Michigan State University professor, recalled the experience in a 2004 oral history preserved by The HistoryMakers.

• Green’s childhood was shaped by a truth that has followed Black Americans across generations. Access to opportunity has never depended on ability alone. It has also depended on who is allowed to belong, who is presumed capable and who must prove they deserve what others receive.

• Now, Michigan Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers is proposing that people receiving government assistance demonstrate that they can read before receiving help. His remarks, made in both 2025 and 2026, have described reading assessments and courses lasting several weeks as conditions for accessing programs including food assistance.

• The Rogers campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Rogers’ proposal is not the same as a Jim Crow-era literacy test for voting. But its premise deserves scrutiny in a state where racial inequality has long been enforced through institutions and public policy, even without the formal segregation laws associated with the South.

• Rogers’ proposal risks equating receiving SNAP or Medicaid with a person’s intelligence, education or literacy, which is not true, according to U.S. Census data. It also risks singling out people who need assistance, treating literacy as a personal failing among the poor rather than a skill that Americans should help everyone develop.

• Rogers has not publicly established that literacy requirements would reduce poverty, increase employment or improve children’s reading outcomes. (Income and literacy levels are correlated, however.) Nor has he explained how the government would assess applicants, accommodate people with disabilities or limited English proficiency, or prevent eligible recipients from losing food or health coverage because they failed to complete a course.

• But research on existing benefit requirements offers a warning. A 2026 analysis by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan says new Medicaid work requirements are likely to reduce enrollment, even as Michigan could take steps to limit coverage losses.

• There is also intangible racial history in Michigan. Black residents are disproportionately represented among Michigan Medicaid enrollees, according to state-by-state data by the health policy nonprofit KFF on Medicaid enrollment by race and ethnicity. Yet public assistance is not simply a story about one racial group. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2023 SNAP household report shows that white, non-Hispanic people are the largest racial group receiving SNAP nationally, and white people also make up the largest share of recipients in Michigan. Poverty and food insecurity cross racial lines, but racial disparities in access and outcomes still matter.

• Green’s family knew what it meant to be denied the promise of opportunity. Rogers’ proposal is different from Jim Crow literacy tests, but it places another hurdle between people and the help they need.

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