Michigan is facing a serious housing shortage, with experts estimating the state needs to build nearly 100,000 homes.

Outdated zoning laws hinder the creation of diverse, mixed-use neighborhoods, and lengthy permitting processes slow new developments. Additionally, ongoing shortages of construction workers and building materials make it even harder to add new housing units. As a result, many new developments cater to wealthier residents, leaving residents struggling to find affordable options.

Joe Agostinelli, founder of Miller Johnson Growth Advisors, believes better financing and strong partnerships between local leaders and developers are key to expanding Michigan’s housing supply. His team is developing a new riverfront project in Grand Rapids featuring a mix of offices, apartments, and condos. Agostinelli says that city and the broader Kent County area have been able to develop homes faster than places in metro Detroit.

The Metro’s Sam Corey spoke with Agostinelli at the annual Mackinac Policy Conference to discuss how his group is trying to build homes quickly in an environment that often moves slow. 

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

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A recent Gallup poll shows 86% of Americans surveyed think Congress is not doing a good job on behalf of the country. That’s not necessarily surprising in a fractious election year. But lawmakers say they can work in a bipartisan fashion.

Kristen McDonald Rivet is the U.S. representative for Michigan’s 8th Congressional District. She spoke with WDET’s Jerome Vaughn at last month’s Mackinac Policy Conference. McDonald Rivet says there’s a formula to get lawmakers from different sides of the aisle working together.

She says Ohio Congresswoman Nancy Kaptur gave her some invaluable advice along that line.

“Find the people that are close to your district in terms of median income. Seeking out other members whose districts look like mine, who are worried about the same things that I am worried about.”

McDonald Rivet says there’s a gap between many voters’ perception of Congress and how things really are.

“The reality that you don’t hear on the 24-hour news channels is that most people in Congress are there because they are serious about making things better. Not all of them. Definitely not all of them, but most people are.”

McDonald Rivet is in her first term as a congresswoman. The 8th District includes Flint, Saginaw and Midland. The Democrat is running for a second term in office.

New tariffs and threats to annex Canada were the concerns small businesses at the last Mackinac Policy Conference. This year, those concerns persist, plus you can tack on the high cost of gas.

However, CEO of the Small Business Association of Michigan, Brian Calley, says the rising cost of employee healthcare is the looming giant for employers. He spoke to WDET about the issues surrounding small businesses and his views on how to support them.  

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity

McNamara: Last year when we talked, we were absorbing a fight with Canada and tariffs. This year it’s high oil prices, high gas prices. How are small businesses doing after one year of uncertainty? 

Calley: Uncertainty is always hard for small businesses to fight through, but I would add something to that list, which I think even eclipses the collective impact, and that is the rising cost of health care. If you’re to talk to a person who has employees and provides benefits to those employees, which is most small businesses, they are buckling under this year over year over year increased costs. We just did a survey with our members to ask, what does that mean, where are they at? They tell us it’s hindering their ability to grow and to add to their team. They put all their capital growth and their margin toward paying next year’s increases. The increase is on the order of what it would cost to bring on a new employee or two, and so that’s huge. But then now we’re finding 42% of our members in our last survey said that at the current rates they’re one to three years away from being able to offer it at all, and that’s a massive, massive change, and so we’re trying to raise the alarm on this. This is the most talked about thing by small business owners, at least those with employees that gets very little attention or discussion out there in the landscape. These other issues are difficult to deal with, but this one is widespread across this across the board. 

McNamara: Two questions: What can the state do, and what do you need from the federal level? 

Calley: At the state level, which seems to be the more realistic place to make something happen, at least at the moment. Couple of things: when insurance companies file for their rate increases, you can look under the hood, you can see exactly what’s driving the cost, and we know it’s utilization and the cost per service, so we need to look upstream from there. What is driving that? We need to be able to look under the hood of upstream costs, and we’ve seen definitely more consolidation among the health systems, where you have a handful of huge conglomerates that control most of the health care system, and vertical integration, so from your local doctor all the way through to very complex surgical cases, it’s all controlled by a very small number of entities, and with that consolidation, you’ve seen costs rise a lot faster than regular inflation, and so that’s something that we really need to get a handle on.

A lot of states have transparency rules, so they can make the appropriate adjustments and policy to deal with these cost increases. We need something like that here. The other thing that could be changed is to allow small businesses of multiple industries to band together to create their own insurance risk pools, like a big company does. So, if you have a large company, they might use an insurance company to manage their claims, but their employee base is their own risk pool. Small businesses are too small to do that. And so the law could be changed to allow unrelated businesses to pool together, and at least at that point they could have more control over plan design and cost containment and wellness initiatives and negotiation power with networks. This would be an important change that we’re hoping the state will consider. 

McNamara: Will Matt Hall listen? Will Governor Whitmer listen? Are you already planting the seeds for this with the current gubernatorial candidates? 

Calley: We’ve been talking to all the leadership about these issues, and there are things that are happening. We know that on the transparency side, Speaker Hall has indicated and talked a lot about moving forward with something in this arena. With the Senate Democrats, who are in control of that part of the legislature, have introduced legislation to allow that multi-industry pooling of small businesses. So, we do think that there’s good bipartisan support for this.

Small businesses is of those constituencies that, across the political spectrum, Republicans and Democrats appreciate in their community, and I think generally and genuinely want to be successful. We’re hopeful that even during these partisan times that initiatives that can help small businesses move forward and to grow and to sustain will be embraced by all of them. 

McNamara: What kind of feedback are you getting from Michigan’s congresspeople like Moolenaar, Dingle, McClain, Huizenga? What are they telling you? They listen to you. They know you. 

Calley: And I served with some of them in the state legislature, and this is an issue that I know they care deeply about, and there is legislation that same small business pooling, they call them association health plans at the state level, would be called a MEWA, or Multiple Employer Welfare Arrangement, those bodies of work enjoy support among our delegation. In fact, Congressman Walberg from Michigan has introduced legislation to do it at the federal level. It’s not a lack of will, it’s a lack of the ability of that system to move forward to make big changes in the health care arena. It just seems to be difficult to get it off the ground with the broader group, and that’s why our main focuses are at the state level, can kind of get your arms around that, and you can visit the capital, and all of those people represent folks in Michigan, and our delegation, they do a lot of great work, and they care a lot about small businesses, but there’s such a small fraction of the entire body that makes those decisions, and so it’s much harder to move things through that. I think if we are going to make changes that, in the short term, that impact small businesses is more likely to be at the state level. 

McNamara: Is there something else on the state level that can be done, at least in the short term to help these small businesses to deal with the transportation costs and the like? 

Calley: In terms of transportation costs specifically, it’s difficult to establish a state policy to reduce gasoline prices, for example, just because we’re talking about a global marketplace of commodities. But there is also bipartisan work that’s happening in the House and the Senate to move the Michigan Strategic Fund, which is the fund that does incentives for these big deals, to move the focus of that more to support for small businesses, and we think that that’s a smart bet. It’s one thing to try to convince somebody from someplace else to come in here and save us, but what we say is we don’t need that.

What we need is for those that are already here to do well. That’s our best bet, and people that have already made their lives here, they’ve already put their name and reputation and their mortgage of their house on the line in order to make this business go, they’re fully vested, and so their success is our best bet. Our entrepreneurship scorecard report showed yet again this year that when it comes to job growth, that the most reliable and dependable and consistent job creators are small and medium-sized businesses, and it makes a lot of sense, because in a lot of cases, they don’t even have options to go other places. This is where they’re at, this where they’re known, where they have their contacts and their customer base, and it’s not easily transferable to someplace else. If they’re successful, our communities will be successful, workers will be successful, the state will be successful. 

McNamara: So, instead of swinging for the fences, maybe settling for some singles and some doubles. 

Calley: I think that the small business support is the home run, because it’s more of a sure bet when you put the support and the resources here, when you create an environment of success around the people that are already here, it’s gardening. When you go out hunting, you may or may not see something, you may or may not get something, but when you’re gardening, if at least if you know what you’re doing, that’s going to pay dividends over the long term.

And by the way, even the big companies all started out as small companies. When you think about the corporate names that are known all over the world from Michigan, we’re so thankful to have them. Companies that started here, like Dow or Meijer or Kellogg or Gerber or Ford, Striker. These are huge corporate names around the world, but to us here in Michigan, those are family names. In many cases, the family’s still around and involved, which is incredible.

And so, at the Small Business Association of Michigan, we think of those companies as part of our heritage. They didn’t start out big, they made it big, and they changed the world. If you support small businesses, then the next one that makes it big is going to be somewhere in that group, and you can’t predict who it’s going to be, so you might as well just make the environment of success around all of them, instead of trying to pick which one, which industry. The government’s never been successful in knowing where the economy is going to go. 

McNamara: Too slow to react.  

Calley: Yeah, that’s the thing. When things move, they do move fast, and it’s about being well positioned to support people as they grow and they innovate and they change, as opposed to trying to decide ahead of time which one is going to grow and innovate and change in a way that makes a big difference in the economy. There’s so much research and data around economic gardening. When you create the environment of success around the entrepreneur, you will have more economic success collectively. 

Michiganders have been taking their pop bottles and cans back to grocery stores for nearly half a century to collect a deposit.  But that’s changing.

A recent study shows fewer people are returning those bottles and cans—even though the containers are still being recycled.

Bill Wild is the president of the Midwest Independent Retailers Association (MIRA). He spoke with WDET’s Jerome Vaughn last week at the Mackinac Policy Conference.

Wild says his organization is working to take retailers out of the recycling chain.   He says stores don’t want the hassle of having to process bottles and cans.  And he says they have concerns about contaminants that used containers can bring into their retail space.

Wild says there are several models that Michigan could use to more efficiently recycle cans and bottles. That includes using curbside recycling, or transitioning to central drop-off centers.

Focus: Hope was founded in 1968 as a way to bring Black and white Detroiters together in the aftermath of the 1967 rebellion.  The organization has grown and changed in the last six decades, but still faces challenges.

Portia Roberson is the President and CEO of Focus: Hope.  She spoke with WDET’s Jerome Vaughn at the Mackinac Policy Conference last week.

Roberson says changes in federal funding priorities have made it harder for the non-profit to achieve its goals.  The organization had its federal funding slashed for Head Start.  She says those funding cuts endangered early learning opportunities for more than 200 families.

At the same time, Roberson says the Focus: Hope food program is growing because more people across the state are dealing with food insecurity.  The non-profit is feeding between 45,000 and 50,000 Michigan seniors every month.

James Tate is the latest in a long line of Detroit city council presidents as of January.  He attended the Mackinac Policy Conference on Mackinac Island last week and sat down to speak with WDET’s Jerome Vaughn.  

Tate has been on the city council for years, but now he’s learning how to perform in his new role as president. He’s had conversations with current Mayor Mary Sheffield about her transition from council member to council president.

The city council president says he looks forward to working closely with Sheffield on an issue that he sees as Detroit’s biggest challenge: poverty.  Tate hopes potential opportunities posed by transit could help ease some of the effects of Detroit’s income gap.

For the past few years, Michigan Republicans have been fractured between the historically small government variety and the Trump fanatics who lean into conspiracy theories.

State GOP conventions have been a flashpoint for controversy and fighting.

“We have had fisticuffs, kicking in the groin—you name it, all videotaped and spread all over the nation,” said Jim Runestad, Michigan Republican Party Chair.

“When I first went to the RNC, they said ‘you’re the groin kickers’ and I was saying, ‘well, this isn’t really a good reputation for a state party to have,’ particularly when people decide where they’re going to put their donations.”

In an interview at the Mackinac Policy Conference, Runestad—who is also a state senator—tells WDET’s Russ McNamara that he feels like the in-fighting has largely stopped.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Russ McNamara: What brought about this change from fighting to relative peace?

Jim Runestad: I said I’m not going to engage in (factional infighting), I won’t tolerate it. We’re going to run a unified party, and the people who want to have drama and fights are going to get thrown out or ostracized. Everybody liked that message. They’d seen what it was like in the past, and it was, it was very unifying. So I’ve been really pleased. That’s what I ran on. This is what I’ve been able to accomplish when I’ve been in front of the convention or the state committee.

McNamara: You’re fairly prolific in getting bills passed through the state legislature. Do you think you brought some of those skills of negotiation to bring everybody together within the Republican party?

Runestad: You’re the first person that I’ve talked to who mentioned that. The last year Republicans were in control (of the state legislature) with the Democrat in control (of the governor’s office), I had the second most number of bills signed into office.

Frankly, I wasn’t exactly the favorite of the majority leader Republican (Mike Shirkey) at the time. That adds to the complication, but a lot of it was reaching out to members of committees, chairs of committees and explaining why this is a good bill.

Sometimes it’d have 20 to 30 people in a meeting, all stakeholders to get them to either yes or neutral. And when a chair sees you have a very complex bill that’s a great idea, and you have no opposition, that’s how you get a bill through. And that’s what I really specialized in doing over the last 10 years in office.

McNamara: You don’t have a lot of control over what happens nationally, but the national perception of the Republican Party, of President Trump, can affect how people vote in the state of Michigan. What are you kind of doing to overcome some of that, because these are the worst poll numbers that we’ve seen for the president since his second term started.

Runestad: A lot of it comes down to the candidates you have running for these particular offices. I’ve never been more excited for what we have in terms of the candidates coming out of our convention. We have just such a great cadre of candidates. Mike Rogers is running by himself, and they’re (Democrats) beating themselves up in their primary. Our primary is going to be a tough one on the gubernatorial side, but we’re going to have a fabulous candidate come out of there.

On the national level, I think what we’re seeing is just a result of price of gas. I believe that that can be reversed relatively quickly.

So I think we’re going to be very, very good going into the November elections. We have fabulous candidates, we’ve raised way more money. If you look at the Democrats, (their) party polling is the lowest it’s ever been in its history, so it’s not like, ‘oh, they have some frustration over gas prices, therefore they love the Democrats’. Oh no. The woke policies that they ran on that were they were destroyed by in 2024 is exactly the same policies they are going run again.

McNamara: Can you explain what you mean by woke policies?

Runestad: I love their policy of having boys playing girls sports, it’s a good one for them. They need to continue running on open borders.

Their Attorney General (candidate and current Washtenaw County Prosecutor) Eli Savit was constantly speaking to the Michigan Senate Judiciary committee when the Democrats are in control. (He was in there) with the most woke leftists, ‘free the criminals’, ‘get the criminals out into society’ as anyone I’ve seen coming through the Judiciary Committee.

I think it’s wonderful that they’re doubling down on those woke policies that I just described. I don’t know how they describe them, but that’s how we describe them.

McNamara: In the race for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat who do you want to face Mike Rogers?

Runestad: Well, Abdul El-Sayed performs the worst in in the polling (head to head vs Rogers), but you know that’s temporary.

I know Haley Stevens was booed by 7,400 people going into the (Democratic) convention. You turn on the TV and all you see is Haley Stevens to try to overcome the negativity within the base of the party, They’re (AIPAC) pumping millions into it.

Listen to the full interview using the media player above.

Democrats control the state senate and the governorship. The squeaky wheel is the Michigan House – controlled not just by Republicans but by Speaker Matt Hall who has often taken an antagonistic stance toward Democrats. 

House Democratic Leader Ranjeev Puri spoke to WDET about previous budget problems and Speaker Matt Hall.  

Puri: It’s going better than last year. Unfortunately, last year, noticeably, the speaker dragged the budget out well past the constitutional deadline into September, October. This year, I think there is a motivation to try to get it done on time. 

McNamara: So, what’s the difference there in the motivation? Is it embarrassment after last year, or is it more familiar with the process, or is there better communication? 

Puri: I think it’s a little bit more the former. I think he’s understood the pitfalls of trying to play political games with so much of the state’s resources, and resources that so many institutions count on, and so it’s hard for these groups to budget for the year, not knowing and having so much uncertainty of that money is actually coming through, and so I think they got an earful around the state about that, and then noticeably there is a big election around the corner, and it’s time to get out of Lansing and into your districts. 

McNamara: Right, so everybody can go out and campaign a little bit. So, what are the main priorities for Democrats in the state budget? 

Puri: We want to continue to fight for critical programs and making sure that the investment happens again. We have a pretty large state budget relative to other states, and we want to make sure that we’re funding programs that millions of Michiganders count on, so making sure that we’re continuing to do our best from a state standpoint to work against H.R.1 federally, the Big Beautiful Bill, and so just making sure that health care access is as strong as possible in the state of Michigan, making sure we’re funding our schools and doing whatever we can to put programs out there making sure that Michiganders can succeed around the state. 

McNamara: Speaker Hall likes to rail against waste, fraud and abuse. I’m guessing that your definition of waste, fraud and abuse is maybe a little bit different. Is there some compromise to be had, where you can see some pork to trim, as it were. 

Puri: I think every elected official, Republican or Democrat, wants to be stewards of the taxpayers’ dollars. I think that is an immense responsibility given to us, and no one wants to see government money spent inefficiently. I think the reality is to these conversations is that you can’t just take a sledgehammer to the budget and call it all waste, fraud and abuse. He took money away from newborns. If we’ve gotten to a place in our political discourse that’s saying that newborns are waste, fraud and abuse, we’re just not going to agree. And I think, unfortunately, the reality of the conversation is that there are so many non-negotiables out there of things that we need to be doing to make life easier for Michiganders, and if you just call everything in the budget waste, fraud and abuse, it doesn’t magically become true. And I think he learned the lesson the hard way last year, and so that’s why you’re seeing a little bit different of an approach—but of course, you know he loves the political gimmicks, and being able to call everything waste, fraud and abuse, and then just throws everything into that bucket as if it’s magically some cure-all. But the reality is that the budget is $80 some billion. That should be scrutinized where we spend it, but we don’t need to call every program waste, fraud and abuse. 

McNamara: Is there a hard line, something you refuse to go back down if the budget line on this is staying where it is? 

Puri: Again, same thing as last year, it’s the school meals. I think Michigan has set a standard around the country in terms of what we can do to provide access to making sure that a Michigan student in all corners of the state is guaranteed a meal, both breakfast and lunch, at their local public institution, and I think that’s something we should take a lot of pride in, just being able to make sure that kids are learning on a full belly. The speaker wanted to make that a political fight last year, and fortunately, we were able to come out on top, and that’s going to be another priority this year as well.  

McNamara: Part of that is addressing food insecurity for a lot of kids. The cost of living is going back up again. Gas prices have gone up considerably. The Trump administration and Congress have taken millions of people off of SNAP benefits. So, what is the state of Michigan doing to kind of help address that, even outside of the school meal program? 

Puri: It’s been a priority for the House Democrats. We introduced legislation to try to backfill some of that, but the reality is that the state’s treasury is never going to fill the government coffers, the federal government coffers, when they decide to do something, and a substantial amount of our state budget, I believe roughly 40, 41% of our state budget comes back from federal funds coming back to back to Michigan, so when the feds decide to decide to do something, it does have a very material impact to the way the state can operate, and so cutting SNAP benefits has affected millions of people in Michigan, and it is again one of those critical programs that I’m speaking of that we need to be doing whatever we can, and so I’m glad you brought that up. I tell people we need to be Trump-proofing our state. It’s a time when we need to put the Democrat-Republican hat down and making sure we’re fighting for Michigan. Unfortunately, Speaker and House leadership right now on the Republican side, we’ve seen them rubber-stamp everything out of DC, even when those policies can disproportionately affect Michigan. When they get into those economic trade policies, we have an auto industry that relies on foreign trade, so those things disproportionately affect Michigan. Those things might poll great in Oklahoma or Alabama, but Michigan, we take a lot of pride in who we are and what the state means, and so it’s about time we have people that are standing up for our state of Michigan. 

McNamara: How is your relationship with Matt Hall? I realize the Matt Hall you might get behind closed doors is a little bit different than the one that has his press conference, and he does tend to go on. However, can you go to him and just talk with him? 

Puri: I cannot. To his credit, he is the same, both on and off camera. Our relationship is largely nonexistent. 

McNamara: Gotcha. So, I know we’re at a place, and it seems like the theme of the Mackinac Policy Conference is always bridging a better tomorrow. Where can we find compromise in all that? Do you find sometimes the rhetoric that just kind of overlooks the reality of the current political climate? 

Puri: Yes, I think you can’t lose sight of civility and the need for things to get done in a better way. The voters in Michigan last year wanted split government, in ‘24 they voted for split government, and so we should be acting as such. The reality is that the House Democrats have a majority of 58-52 but our world and politics shouldn’t be binary. That shouldn’t give them exclusive control to dictate every single thing we do. They shouldn’t bring a lens, as if they are in some sort of Republican trifecta, to how they approach their work. There just hasn’t been a willingness from House leadership to work in a bipartisan manner, like I said, our relationship is largely nonexistent. I’ve from the start extended my hand trying to find a way to work for Michigan, team Michigan, and that hasn’t been the dynamic that the speaker has wanted, and so unfortunately we’re all human, and so you can pick up on that at some point, and we’ve been fighting again as House Democrats, we have been standing up for those values that we hold dear, like making sure that everyone has access to food and health care and education, and bringing down the affordability crisis, and being able to stand up against the federal administration when we think that it’s not acting in Michigan’s best interest, but the other reality is that we do have a pretty monumental election around the corner here in November, and as we get closer, more and more eyeballs are turning to November and looking for the dynamic to change in just a few months. 

McNamara: Does it seem like the political winds are blowing in a way they are nationally?  

Puri: As crazy as our political discourse becomes, I think one thing that we can all agree, you don’t mess with is gas prices. I don’t know how you defend $5 gas in Michigan, that’s just not me. Again, two or three weeks ago, there was a special election in Senate District 35. There was a 20-point correction from November just a couple months ago, and a 20-point swing in the Democrats’ favor. If you apply that statewide, that’s going to be massive, massive wins for Democrats up and down the ballot. So, I think there’s tremendous amount of tailwinds right now, and there’s a lot of excitement for trying to send a mandate out to Washington that again, the policies have just not been Michigan first. 

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer turned heads this week when she said she will not run for president in 2028.

Speaking with Fox 2’s Roop Raj at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference, Whitmer said she plans to take time off after her tenure as governor ends.

“I’m looking forward to taking a break…there is time until 2028. There will be a robust group running for president. I will not be one of them.”

Later in the day, during a conversation with Tricia A. Keith, president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Whitmer clarified her remarks.

“I never knew I would run for governor. I should know better. Never say never.”

Whitmer said she does not want to be distracted by speculation about future political plans and remains focused on governing through the end of her term in November.

Additional headlines for May 29, 2026

Whitmer signs $152 million Selfridge funding bill

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed legislation on Mackinac Island earmarking $152 million in state funding for improvements at Selfridge Air National Guard Base.

The funding is intended to prepare the base for new F-15EX fighter aircraft announced by President Donald Trump in 2025.

Whitmer said the investment was made possible through bipartisan cooperation.

“We secured the KC-46 tanker mission thanks to President Biden…last year we secured the F-15EX fighter mission thanks to President Trump. Together these missions will lock in Selfridge’s future.”

The governor said the base supports 5,000 families through jobs and emphasized the economic impact of the investment.

Detroit sports roundup

Tigers open series against White Sox

The Detroit Tigers begin a three-game series against the Chicago White Sox this weekend.

The Tigers remain near the bottom of the American League Central standings and are looking to gain ground with a strong showing in Chicago.

First pitch is scheduled for 7:40 p.m. ET Friday at Guaranteed Rate Field.

Detroit City FC faces Charleston Battery

Detroit City FC travels to South Carolina this weekend for a USL Championship Eastern Conference matchup against the Charleston Battery.

The clubs last met March 28, when Detroit earned a 1-0 victory at Keyworth Stadium behind a strong defensive performance.

Saturday’s match will be played at Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.

Detroit to host transportation technology conference

Detroit will host transportation leaders from across the country during the Intelligent Transportation Society of America Conference and Expo, taking place June 9-12 at Huntington Place.

Organizers expect more than 3,000 public- and private-sector transportation professionals and 170 exhibitors to attend the annual event.

The conference will feature more than 100 sessions focused on real-world deployment of intelligent transportation systems, including artificial intelligence, automated vehicles and connected mobility solutions.

More information is available at ITSAmericaEvents.com.

Listen to the latest episode of the “Detroit Evening Report” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode:

• Why did Michigan State University President Kevin Guskiewicz leave to go to Clemson?
• What was the general theme of this year’s policy conference?
• Who gave standout speeches during the conference?

Subscribe to MichMash on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Mackinac Policy Conference had a couple of surprising moments from lawmakers, leaders, and political candidates. This week on WDET’s MichMash, Gongwer News Service’s Zach Gorchow and Alethia Kasben give a glimpse of some of the news happening on the island. Gongwer reporter Liz Nass joins the conversation from the conference to share her coverage of the annual meeting. 

Unlike other years, the conference was focused more on where Michigan ranked in comparison to the rest of the nation. “It’s very stat heavy. Everybody is really focused on numbers, specifically Michigan’s rankings. There isn’t specific legislation being spoken about, but more so about competition with the rest of the country,” said Nass. 

The conference had its fair share of news-breaking moments. One of the biggest was Michigan State University President Kevin Guskiewicz leaving his position to become the 16th president of Clemson University. Nass said his departure points to a larger story.

“It follows what the MSU Board of Trustees have been dealing with for a while. A while ago, they had a special emergency meeting discussing [possibly] changing the code of ethics because of rogue trustees writing op-eds, which they expressed created a bad environment for our president.”

There is a conversation about changing how these positions are nominated. 

• More from WDET:

  2026 Mackinac Policy Conference

  ‘No!’ Whitmer shoots down presidential run, looks back at career at Mackinac Policy Conference

  Mackinac Policy Conference: Sen. Peters comments on Iran, state Rep. Puri on budgeting and DTE announces battery storage for data centers

It is one of the older and more uncomfortable patterns in working life: women in power sometimes pull the ladder up behind them, leaving the women coming after stranded.

Research shows it’s less about gender than about scarcity — about what happens when there are only so many seats at the table.

Danielle North has lived it. She’s a Detroit entrepreneur who’s spent the last decade building what the world didn’t give her: a childcare center, a college program for first-generation students, a women’s leadership network with 11,000 members.

North founded that network in 2014 after some of the hardest setbacks of her career came not from men, but from other women.

Fast forward to this moment, when Michigan has more women in power than ever: a woman governor, a woman secretary of state who has a good chance to be the next governor, a woman attorney general, a woman leading Detroit for the first ever. Many of them are here at the Mackinac Policy Conference this week. So today we’re asking: when women finally get power, how do they keep the door open for others?

North joined Robyn Vincent to discuss.

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Democrats are locked in a three-way primary battle in the race for US Senate. The candidates are Abdul El-Sayed, Congresswoman Haley Stevens and Senator Mallory McMorrow.  

McMorrow spoke to WDET about how she is campaigning across Michigan, talking with voters about their frustration with the current administration. 

McMorrow: The campaign is going great. I feel really excited about all of the events that we’re doing. We stopped in Saginaw and Bay City on the way up here, and people are really starting to tune into this race. Once you get past the politicos and the people who’ve been paying attention for the last year, the only thing that’s been consistent in this race is the number of people who are undecided. So, we are reaching out to those people every single day. The response is amazing, and it is our ninth oil change on the campaign, so we’re putting in a lot of miles, meeting a lot of people, and it feels awesome.  

McNamara: You’re a car lady, so are we doing the 3,000 mile oil change or the 5,000 mile? 

McMorrow: Oh gosh, we’re probably somewhere in between, we’re not trying to burn it out. 

McNamara: Earlier today, I talked with Jim Runestad, the Michigan GOP chair. I asked him who he wanted to face in the general election. He brought up Abdul Elsayed. He brought up Haley Stevens. You did not get mentioned. How do you receive that news? 

McMorrow: Well, Jim knows me better than anybody else as his colleague every day, and I take that as a compliment. 

McNamara: So, you’ve seen the latest round of polling. There’s always new polls coming out. I hate polls, honestly, because they’re just a snapshot of that particular day, right? What are you seeing, and what are you hearing from the community when it comes to this polling? Is it matching up with what you’ve been getting back from the people you’ve been talking to? 

McMorrow: Like I said, the only thing that’s been consistent is the number of voters who are undecided. So, we have been out on doors all across the state, we have been doing dozens of events. Our brewery tour is still ongoing, and what we hear from voters is people are nervous, they are scared, they are pissed off at this president, who apparently can just tell us that the war with Iran is over, when it isn’t. That’s not how it works, and they want somebody who’s going to fight for them. So, once I’m able to have a conversation and say, “I get it, I Googled how to run for office in 2018 on my very first try, I defeated a Republican incumbent helped build real power, and look at what we’ve been able to get done in Michigan.” Once they hear that, they’re excited, and they’re in. 

McNamara: What’s your base? Because I was talking with Congresswoman Stevens, she’s drawn quite a bit of support from the Black community. Abdul El-Sayed has the built-in Arab American and Muslim community, but what’s your community? 

McMorrow: Michiganders. As many people as possible who want a good life for their family, and the one thing that is a good note in the polling is I am up with independent voters against Mike Rogers by 12 points. 

McNamara: Mike Rogers, he doesn’t have the benefit of a primary. So, how do you go after somebody like that? Because you have to take aim at him, and you have to take some aim at your opponents. 

McMorrow: You do, and it’s a good point on how we frame all of this, because it is a Democratic primary to decide who will face Mike Rogers in November. All eyes are on this race. The Republicans know that control of the U.S. Senate runs through Michigan. If they can get Mike Rogers into the Senate, they block any path that Democrats have of flipping the Senate, and there is a real path. So, they are dumping tens of millions of dollars into this race.

And this is a moment where any Republican in the Congress or the Senate who has decided to stand up to Donald Trump has now lost their seat. Donald Trump has taken on retribution to primary any Republican who doesn’t bend the knee, and that’s how we’re going to go against Mike Rogers, because he’s making a bet right now. He’s got Donald Trump’s full backing. Is he going to stand up for Trump, or is he going to stand up for Michiganders? 

McNamara: The overall theme of the Mackinac Policy Conference is about unity, it’s about two sides coming together, bipartisanship. When you have a president that asks nothing but fealty from the people that are members of his party, how do you do that? Do you buy into slogans like that? Is bipartisanship always necessary?  

McMorrow: It has to be the goal. I sat down with seven Trump voters in Macomb County a few weeks ago and wanted to just get to know them as people first. Everybody wants to put everybody in boxes. You just asked me who’s your base, and I think it is true. It’s Michiganders. I went around the table and I asked, tell me in one word, how you feel about this moment. One woman said great. The others said scared, angry, anxious, pissed, and they are pointing at the president as a lot of the reason why. That he promised to end wars, he has started a number of wars and keeps us in wars, while telling us we can’t afford daycare, we can’t afford Medicare, we can’t afford Medicaid, and to your point has completely remade the Republican Party in his image, and if you don’t have loyalty to Trump, you’re out of the party. 

For us, I think it is critical that Michigan starts to show the way forward. I talk all the time about relationships that I have on the other side of the aisle that I really admire, whether it’s John Damoose or Roger Victory, Senator Bumstead in the Appropriations Committee. We’ve shown that we don’t have to agree on every issue, and we will debate each other passionately, but on areas where we can and want to work together, we do, and we do for the benefit of Michiganders.

Now, that is a rebuke in and of itself of what Trump is selling. Trump is selling a burn it all down, build up a party that is power above anything else to do what he wants to do, and what he wants to do is enrich himself and his family, and “who cares what it does to regular people?” So, yeah, I do believe in bipartisanship, and we have to get there with a Republican party that is not loyal to Donald Trump, and that means anybody who is bending the knee to Trump, we got to defeat. So hopefully we start to get Republicans who recognize that their constituents are the ones that matter and not this president. 

McNamara: To make it to the general election, there’s been some mudslinging. It comes with the territory. How comfortable are you with that? Because your opponent, Haley Stevens completely avoided the question, and, she says she wasn’t overly comfortable with it, essentially when pressed. So, I’m just wondering, does it come with the territory, and you get to move on, you guys can all be friends? Because as I was talking with somebody who follows Michigan politics quite a bit, there’s not a huge gap between yourself and your opponents. 

McMorrow: That’s exactly right. We’re going to have a debate tomorrow, and when you have three Democrats on stage, the policy differences are pretty minimal. Every single one of us wants Michiganders to have health care and wants that to be a guarantee, every single one of us wants to get out of the war with Iran. We have differences of opinions in how we do those things, but there is a stark contrast between the three people on stage and Mike Rogers, who is praising everything Donald Trump does, whether Trump attacks the Gordie Howe Bridge and threatens it to open, and Mike Rogers said, “Good, the President needs that for leverage against Canada.” When he threatened to annihilate all of the people of Iran, Mike Rogers said, “Good, peace through strength.” And that is the thing that I make want to make sure none of us lose sight of. I think that the primary does come with the territory. We should expect that the Republicans are going to unleash everything they have on any of us, so we’re all being put through our paces right now. Every detail about our lives, how we present ourselves, is going to be criticized. The voters will decide, and I believe that makes any of us much better positioned to win in November, because we will have been put through our paces, and the most important thing is that no matter what happens on August 4, we all come together on August 5 to defeat Mike Rogers. 

Democrats are locked in a three-way primary battle in the race for US Senate. The candidates are Abdul El-Sayed, Congresswoman Haley Stevens and Senator Mallory McMorrow.   

El-Sayed spoke with WDET about how he sees himself reaching key demographics among Democratic voters. He says his experience leading health departments in Wayne County and Detroit steers his views on policy.

El-Sayed: Well, you have to ask Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons about the MD they gave me. I might have have gotten duped. Maybe it was just a fake one, but I did put in the work. And then there was also the matter of the doctorate from Oxford University. But honestly, I don’t really care as much what people think about my education. I care that people in Michigan get a good education. I don’t care if you think I’m a doctor, I want you to be able to see a doctor. And those are the issues that we really ought to be talking about. 

McNamara: Stevens, yourself, McMorrow, you’re all very polite in person. Everybody’s really, really nice. It seems like there’s a lot of dirty work being done in the media right now. Every once in a while, stories will appear in Politico. Are we gonna actually take some of this mudslinging to each other, or are we just going to work through the media? 

El-Sayed: I will tell you this, I’m not here to sling mud, and when you see those stories, they’re not coming from our team. We’re a lot more focused on getting our message out to the people. I’ve been to 96 different cities now. On the way up here, we were in Cheboygan and Gaylord, and I want folks to understand what I’m about. I want to get money out of politics, put money in your pocket, pass Medicare for all. I think part of what people hate about the politics is that too many politicians run with no message at all, so instead their message is about how the other candidate is so much worse. You don’t have to do that when you actually have a message about what you want for people in our state. 

I’ve known exactly what I want for people, because I took the time to listen through my 10 years in public service, leading Detroit’s health department, running for governor back in 2018, leading Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human, and Veteran Services. People tell me it shouldn’t be this hard to afford a second bag of groceries, shouldn’t be this hard to send your kid to a dignified school, should not be this hard to see a doctor in the richest, most powerful country in the world, and I agree.

And so our politics is not about slinging mud at other people, our politics is about trying to bring ease to the 10 million people in this state who have had a bad go of things as a function—frankly, of deals that are being cut right behind us on that porch between corporations and corporate ball politicians. I don’t play that game. I don’t think anybody should. I’d like to make it illegal, and that’s a big reason why I’m running for U.S. Senate. 

McNamara: Your message has been resonating with younger voters, according to polling. What are you doing to reach out to Gen Xers, boomers who are hesitant? 

El-Sayed: Look, we’ve been talking to everyone, going everywhere, and I think what we’re seeing is overwhelming support among young people and very strong support among millennials, Gen X and baby boomers, and I think what’s always interesting to me is when I was in Cheboygan, I had this older woman come up to me. She said “You’re the first candidate about whom my granddaughter has been excited, and she turned me on to you.”

I think the most important thing any of us do every single day is care for our future that gets manifested in the in the bodies of our kids and our grandkids. We spend so much time taking care of them, and I think when young people are inspired by something, by a movement to actually bring politics back to the problems that we want to solve with them, I think what happens is you start to see older folks take note and take heed, and we’ve been seeing that up and down the state. 

McNamara: Black women make up the base of the Democratic Party, the most consistent voting bloc. What are you doing to reach out to them specifically? 

El-Sayed: I think the most important thing you can do is have listened, and as I said, we spend a lot of time in local communities, whether it’s Bible study, whether it is church on Sunday, whether it’s block clubs, whether it’s local democratic groups listening and learning. I think the most important thing is a message that is resonant. You think about the challenges facing Black women in our state, there are many of the same challenges everybody faces—the affordability of housing, the affordability of groceries, whether or not you could see a doctor, but those problems are exacerbated by structural racism in our state. The fact that too often Black women are left to Medicaid, which reimburses at half the rate, which is part and parcel why we continue to have the kind of maternal and child health epidemics that we see in our state, issues that I worked on.

My background is as health director for the city of Detroit, health director for Wayne County. Our work has been about trying to care for Black moms and babies. We led the single biggest expansion of Rx Kids in state history, built a program called Sister Friends back when I was in the City of Detroit that did things like provide free lift rides for prenatal care, so these are communities that I’ve been thinking about, listening to and delivering for for most of my career in public service, and you see that reflected in what we’re running on.

When I talk about Medicare for all, everybody focuses on the “all” part, because I want everyone in, nobody out. But ask yourself, for whom that Medicare for all is going to be the most important. Yes, it’s going to be in rural communities, very close to here, but it’s also going to be in urban communities, where too often, even if you are covered on Medicaid, your Medicaid reimbursement is so low that you can’t actually find a primary care doc, and you know that you’re going to be discriminated against at the point of care. These are all issues that come up when I’m in communities, and issues that we’re talking about and bringing to the fore in this campaign. 

McNamara: Do you have TV ads? Because the only ones I’m getting are for Haley Stevens and for Shri Thanedar. Those make up most of my TV watching experience right now. 

El-Sayed: I’m sorry to hear that, and I’ve seen those ads. They are very boring, but I will also tell you this: I don’t have AIPAC behind me, and AIPAC moves its money through a whole system of shell PACs, and those are the ads you’re seeing. So, we’ve seen what $7 (million), $8 million are spending already on behalf of Congresswoman Stevens by AIPAC–not telling you about her record on sending your tax dollars to a foreign government, but instead talking about, I don’t know what they’re talking about now, but, but that’s exactly how they work.

They flood the airwaves with ads, disinforming you about a particular record, because what they really care about is making sure that our foreign policy is driven by the interests of a foreign government, rather than for you. And I am going to be the biggest opponent that they have in the 2026 cycle, and they’ve already said I’m the single biggest danger to the U.S.-Israel relationship, and it has nothing to do with my position on any one group of people, because frankly, I don’t think we should be sending foreign military aid to Egypt either, where my family came from.

It has everything to do with the fact that I was the health director in a city, Detroit, watching kids try to go to school in classrooms with icicles hanging off of them, trying to provide kids glasses, trying to make sure that people didn’t fall into medical debt, and I happen to think that we should be using our tax dollars here to invest in health care here and education here, rather than sending it over there to buy bombs and tanks that get used to drive apartheid and genocide there. That should not be a difficult opinion to hold, but that kind of money is what gets spent on you when you say things like I just said. 

Democrats are locked in a three-way primary battle in the race for U.S. Senate. The candidates are Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Congresswoman Haley Stevens and Mallory McMorrow.

Stevens spoke to WDET about her plans for Michigan’s issues and her campaign for Senator.

Stevens: Oh my gosh, I’m writing a love letter to Michigan, and I’m having a blast, so something must be going well. But it’s obviously also a serious moment. We’re talking about the future of Michigan after kind of getting hammered these last couple years under the Trump administration, and we all know that Michigan needs a fighter and also someone who’s going to win for Michigan, and that has been me every step of the way. I’m frustrated by what I’m hearing from Michiganders, what we’re experiencing: rising gas prices, job insecurity, job loss in some instances, rising health care costs because of cuts coming down from Donald Trump. But then we can also look at how we’re going to create the economy of the future. I’ve got a vision for that, around 21st century industrial policy, things that I want to do for Michigan’s supply chain, ways in which I believe we can immediately lower costs like no tariffs on groceries and taking on the utility companies who are raising rates.

McNamara: DTE Energy had an announcement today talking about how they’re putting over a billion dollars into battery energy storage. Is that part of the clean energy future that you’re talking about? Because they’re promising to not raise rates or at least ask for a rate hike for two years.

Stevens: Well, one of my deep frustrations, and something that Mike Rogers, who’s also running for US Senate as a Republican, will go along with is the bad tax policy that is coming out of this administration. They got rid of the clean energy tax credit that left the consumers holding the bag. I’m deeply frustrated that rates continue to go up, and I don’t appreciate when Michigan taxpayers dollars are going to federal agencies that then give money to companies like DTE or consumers, and then they turn around and raise our rates. That’s actually a double tax. So I have written legislation to say, hey, if you’re going to get federal funds, then you’re going to either have to lower rates or cut executive pay, that is written legislation that I put forward as a House member that I will take to the United States Senate. I have also written legislation from the 118th session of Congress into this session of Congress focused on power outages and power outage relief, because what happens is power goes out, and consumers are again left holding the bag on the cost. There’s no insurance that’s going to bail them out. The utility company will send them maybe $35 when they’ve been out of house and home, their food has been spoiled. Small businesses have also been deeply impacted, and that’s where I started with my legislative solution, but I will just tell you that the tax bill that Trump and Co. passed last year, they called it the big beautiful bill, we called it the big ugly bill. It was voted on on party lines that didn’t work for Michigan consumers, that did not work for our energy future. In terms of battery storage, I’ve been proud to pass bipartisan legislation, actually going back to my first term in Congress as a member of the Science Committee on that front, and that was picked up by the legacy of the previous administration in terms of how we do a clean energy future.

McNamara: I want to talk about polling. You, so far, have been polling very well among African Americans in the state of Michigan. You had a couple of events in Detroit the other day. If the whole Senate thing doesn’t work out, would you consider running for Detroit mayor?

Stevens: Well, I love Detroit, and it’s been kind of going down memory lane. I was on the Avenue of Fashion on Memorial Day for the 100 men fashion event put on by the Bartells, and I was talking to my mom about it, and she’s like, your aunt, who I’m really close to, it’s my mom’s sister, she lived right off of Stoepel, and my aunt had a business for years in Detroit, and she loved the Avenue of Fashion, and there’s incredible history, obviously. There’s Motown, Motor City, the sports, all that, and I very much believe Michigan deserves a hands-on senator, and that means Detroit needs a hands-on senator.

McNamara: A couple years ago, you had a tough primary battle with Andy Levin, you’re in another tough primary battle. How does that differ from something like the general election? Because you’ve won contested general elections before, now it’s back to back tough primaries. How do you like some of the sort of mudslinging that comes along with that?

Stevens: Well, look. The deliberation of our democracy, the process of putting your name on the ballot and being out there, as you know, in our 250th year of existence as a nation, is still one of the purest forms of civilian service, right? You put up your hand to run, and I love it. I love campaigning. I’m grateful to be up there for Michigan. I’m proud of my record. I’m proud that I put up my hand to fight for Michigan, and I win for Michigan. I’ve been recognized as one of the most effective Democrats in the Congress, the most effective for Michigan, and this is something we need to think about. When Mike Rogers says that he wants to rubber stamp Donald Trump, well, then that means he’s not going to stand up to him when he’s saying that he’s going to keep the Gordie Howe Bridge permanently closed, or he’s going to put into place all these erratic tariffs, a different tariff announcement every day that has serious impacts on jobs and continuity, and of course costs, and so I’m just Michigan’s workhorse, doing the best I can to fight for us and to deliver for us, and that’s why I’m putting out my hand in this moment, and look, at the end of the day, we all know that there has been a rise and an uptick in extremes in politics, I mean, even with the senators from Minnesota, the state representatives getting ambushed, and just the governor – they were going to kidnap her—and that’s in some respects been sobering for people, and I go back to a lesson that my dad taught me, he was a small business owner, but he was also a kindergarten and first grade teacher, and his mantra, when he taught in Detroit Public Schools, was “Give out love and love comes back.” And you know, I do want to exude this love of Michigan, this love of community, something that we see all around us. I’m certainly not going to be giving a rubber stamp to an administration that’s hurting our state and hurting people who I care about, and that’s another reason why I’m standing up in this moment.

McNamara: So, as someone who likes to give love, you sound like someone who’s not overly comfortable with the whole primary process.

Stevens: Oh gosh, I knew we were going to have a tough race. I’m no stranger to them, and that’s what I’m getting at. It’s actually an amazing thing to be up there. I had a six way primary when I first ran for Congress, and I remember at the end I just thought, hey, we need to nominate the person who will get the nomination, whoever gets it, and then we got to go and win, and I’m in my heart of hearts a dedicated public servant. I will say, I do love nerding out and walking out for Michigan, and you gotta campaign too, and so I put my messages out there, just like the best of them.

Michigan picks its next governor in November, and the Democratic frontrunner is Jocelyn Benson.

Benson made her name as Secretary of State when she refused to overturn Michigan’s 2020 election — even when armed protesters showed up at her Detroit home while she decorated a Christmas tree with her four-year-old son. The John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award followed. So did the Presidential Citizens Medal.

Now she wants to replace Gretchen Whitmer in a state that voted for Donald Trump just 18 months ago.

Her path got easier last week when independent Mike Duggan dropped out, citing low poll numbers and fundraising struggles. She has also faced scrutiny along the way: her own Democratic attorney general ruled she’d broken state campaign-finance law launching her bid, and the Trump Justice Department sued her for Michigan’s voter rolls — a suit a federal judge dismissed in February.

The Metro’s Robyn Vincent had 15 minutes to find out what this all means.

This article has been updated to note that the U.S. Justice Department lawsuit against Michigan over voter rolls was dismissed in February 2026.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on demand.

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More stories from The Metro

There’s a lot going on in the state of Michigan, and compounding that there’s a big election that assures new leadership in the top three offices. At the helm is Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who has led the state over seven uneven years. 

Whitmer spoke to WDET about her plans after she leaves office and reflected on her time as governor. 

McNamara: I don’t want to focus on looking back but what was the weirdest thing you had to navigate?

Whitmer: A pandemic, we’ve had incredible weather challenges from floods to tornadoes that have taken the lives of Michiganders and taken their homes. We’ve had a plot to kidnap and to kill me. We have had to navigate righteous demonstrations for racial justice that played out and a number of communities across Michigan during the George Floyd year, and I think we’ve had incredible challenges that that we’ve had to navigate, and yet, I’m always reminding myself, my oath is to the people of Michigan. I’ve got to show up and fight to make sure that we deliver for people and stay focused on fixing things like roads and helping people keep money in their pockets, and that’s always kind of centered me, even with all the chaos in our environment right now. 

McNamara: And you know, providing for the people of Michigan. To that end, I have to give you some credit. You might not remember this, but last year at this time, people were talking about you holding the blue folder over your face in the Oval Office. You cracked the code, because in Trump’s second term, flattery will get you everywhere, I guess. So, is there more milk to be gotten from that bell cow? Can you bring more money to the state? What can we do to get more federal money flowing into the state of Michigan via the federal government? 

Whitmer: Well, I’m going to continue to work at it. The Trump administration, we’ve got a litany of differences, right? But at the end of the day, my job is to show up for the people of Michigan. And while that was a moment in the Oval Office, I was there to advocate for a new fighter mission at Selfridge, and yesterday I signed a bill that ensured that Michigan’s aerospace and defense sector is solid and is growing, but the linchpin is this fighter mission.

So the fact that we got this done with Donald Trump in the White House and me as the governor I think is a testament to the fact that if I stay focused on delivering for Michigan, I can find common ground with just about anybody on some really important things for our state, and that’s what this job is all about.

McNamara: Last year it was difficult finding common ground with Matt Hall, House Speaker, getting a budget deal done. It’s an election year this year, somehow the budget process is moving more smoothly. From your perspective, how is it shaping up? 

Whitmer: Well, it’s not unusual in an election year for the legislature to want to get home and campaign, so budgets sometimes do move faster in election years. I think there are lots of things that are difficult for Michiganders in the Michigan economy right now—the tariff chaos, and coupled with the Iran war, it’s tough—and so I think it’s very important that we deliver a budget on time that actually helps people keep money in their pockets and makes the critical investments in our workforce and our infrastructure, the things that impact Michiganders every day, and help them get ahead. So I can’t open up the Strait of Hormuz unilaterally, but I can deliver a budget on time that helps Michiganders get ahead and defray some of the costs that we’re all bearing, because of the chaos coming out of DC right now.

McNamara: Because of that chaos, there are federal cuts looming for your time out of office. Does Michigan need more revenue, aka taxes? 

Whitmer: I don’t think that there’s really a great hope of getting anything on that front done with a split legislature in an election year. That will be a question for the next set of leaders that come in January 1. 

McNamara: You tried. 

Whitmer: Yeah, and we were successful. We raised $2 billion for our road infrastructure, so I ran on fixing the damn roads. We can say yes, we actually got the biggest investment in that infrastructure in 40 years in the state. But I do think that it is going to be incumbent on the next set of leaders to deal with all the cuts that are coming from the Trump administration and the Republicans in DC, with that house bill one, the Big Beautiful Bill, whatever the hell you want to call it, we know that there is more stress coming on all those fronts because of the actions that they took last year. 

McNamara: You spent a lot of time and effort trying to build the state’s population and build the economic base for people to come here. How are you feeling about that? 

Whitmer: We have seen more people move into Michigan than out for the first time in decades. We see Detroit’s population growing three years in a row. There are a lot of good things happening. Yes, there’s more to do. There’s always more to do, but to make Michigan a place where our young people want to stay, where businesses can find the workforce that they need, where we have a growth mentality, is going to be a continuing effort, needs to be a continuing effort, no matter who follows me in this role. 

McNamara: Two years ago, at the Democratic National Convention, you told me, kind of talking post plans, you wanted to go visit some national parks. Are those plans made?  

Whitmer: They’re not made yet. I leave office January 1, so I’m gonna take a little break, but yeah, I think maybe next spring, summer, my husband and I and our two dogs will hit the road, and I’m looking forward to that. Although I have not driven in eight years, so state police are gonna have to take me out to the state police drag and teach me how to drive again. 

McNamara: There are no national parks in Iowa. Will you visit anyway? 

Whitmer: No! 

Editor’s Note: Iowa is the traditional first stop for any potential presidential candidate. The early nature of the Iowa caucuses make an early success there a springboard to a successful run.

Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin is one of the most closely watched politicians in her party right now.

A former CIA analyst, she took three tours in Iraq alongside the military, and spent years in national security under both Republican and Democratic administrations before she ran for office. Then she won a House seat in a Trump-led district, followed by a Senate seat in a state President Trump carried. When her party needed someone to deliver the Democratic response to President Trump’s address to Congress, they picked her.

She’s been called a centrist. A pragmatist. A rising star. She’s also been called too cautious — not progressive enough, not tough enough — at a moment when many Democrats argue the party must get louder. The Metro‘s Robyn Vincent spoke with her at the Mackinac Policy Conference.

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With war brewing abroad, Michigan is looking at bolstering defenses close to home.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a bill Wednesday that provides $150 million in state money to support upgrades to Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Southeast Michigan. 

Michigan U.S. Senator Gary Peters spoke to WDET about how the bill will strengthen the National Guard Base and his views on the war with Iran, as well as his upcoming retirement after almost two decades in office.

Peters: We’re looking forward to having that signing and you know this is a key element. We needed to have the state make this investment, $150-plus million dollars. But for your listeners, the really important exciting thing about it is that because of the seed money, we’re going to bring in nearly $800 million from the federal government, so we’re going to have the best Air National Guard base in the country. In fact, I had the general part of the Joint Chiefs say on the record that Selfridge will now be the finest Air National Guard base in the entire country, and I said, ‘thank you, that’s right. It will be.’

McNamara: Explain, for people who don’t really follow it, the strategic importance of Selfridge. 

Peters: It is absolutely strategic for national security, our geographic location, for one,  and when we think about INDOPACOM (Indo-Pacific Command), a lot of the ways to get there is over the Arctic, and so having a base in the northern area is why a lot of the strategic bombers back in the day were in Michigan. We had two major air force bases for that, so it continues to be important.

But from a training aspect, we’re going to have the KC-46, which is the next generation tanker, replacing a very old platform out there, now. They’re going to be around for 40, 50, years. We’re going to have the F-15EX, which is the advanced fighter jet that will be working off that platform, and then most people don’t realize, but in Northern Michigan, when you head up into the Grayling area and over in the Alpena area, we have the largest training area for the military east of the Mississippi. So it’s a very large area, we got aircraft coming in from [all] around. We’ll team up with our aircraft from Selfridge and train, it just puts Michigan in a key location. When people think of national security, we’re going to be one of the places people think about in terms of bases in the United States. 

McNamara: How important is the national defense industry to the economy of southeast Michigan?  

Peters: Incredibly important. It’s getting more important and this helps actually drive that, too. So, there’s the economic driver. You have the driver of the fact the base is there, you have a lot of people there… we may even potentially have some active-duty folks that will be coming into that base as well. So, that’s an economic driver, but it’s really about advanced technology. Where are things going?

When people think of national security, we’re going to be one of the places people think about in terms of bases in the United States. 

Everybody knows we’re the place for manufacturing cars, but the aerospace industry is realizing if you know how to make cars, you can make aerospace components as well. In fact, one area that I’ve been spending a lot of time on now is trying to think of another aircraft squadron we can bring there, and those are called collaborative combat aircraft. Those are not crewed, there’s no person in it, but they’re controlled by an operator somewhere else, and actually those KC-46 tankers, they have capability, not just as a gas tank, they also have command and control capabilities. And you could see them commanding a squadron of collaborative aircraft, and then launching those aircraft forward. That’s another mission I think Selfridge could win, and that would definitely put us at the very cutting edge of advanced aerospace research. 

McNamara: We’re talking about this like it’s the future and eventuality. We’re also at war currently with Iran. What are the impacts on that for the average Michigander? 

Peters: Significant from an economic standpoint. We’re seeing it at the gas pump right now, but that inflation is all through because of energy prices that we’re paying higher prices at the stores and groceries because the Strait of Hormuz is closed, and it’s pretty outrageous that that was not secured at the beginning of this war, it tells me it was rushed, that we needed to secure. Everybody has known that, this is not a secret. The Strait of Hormuz is a strategic place.

I served in the Navy. I was in that area. I remember standing on the shores of the United Arab Emirates. You could look across, you could just see a line of tankers going through a very tight area, choke point. The Navy knew how critical it was. They had plans to deal with it, and this is the question I asked. You know, they have plans. You have very detailed plans about how you deal with strategic places like that, but you need to prepare to actually execute that plan before you go to war. That didn’t happen, and in fact, I’ve raised this issue to folks in hearings. 

I’m on the Armed Services Committee. I said, I know you probably had plans. I learned how to do those plans in War College, and yet you had things like mine sweepers, which are essential. Your mine sweepers were in Japan when the war started. If you were prepared, the mine sweepers would have been near the straits, ready to go into action immediately. It takes weeks for them to get over there. That didn’t happen. I’m sure the president was advised by his military advisors that we’re not quite ready to do what you want us to do, and he pulled the trigger, literally pulled the trigger beforehand, and now we’re in a mess. 

McNamara: How do we get out of it? 

Peters: If you look at it from a military perspective, it’s difficult. It’s hard to clear mines unless you have a secure environment. You’re putting navy ships in a very constrained area. It’s a high-risk operation. So, militarily, it’s a lot easier to do that at the outset, the beginning, than trying to come back into it right now. And during this ceasefire, which is really a stalemate, the Iranians have been able to position more of their drone aircraft in the area, they’re going to be leases are public sources, they have more missile capabilities as well, so military, it’s tough, so it’s going to be negotiation, but President Trump put himself with his war of choice in a very difficult situation, and who’s actually paying for it? The American people are. People here in Michigan. We’re paying high prices. Just the war itself has been estimated, just from a military standpoint, so far well over $30 billion, and I think that’s underestimating it. That’s all the taxpayers are paying.

But then look at the impact of the entire global economy, and just our economy here in Michigan. What people are paying, you’ve got a third of the fertilizer goes through the Strait of Hormuz. That’s why food prices are going up dramatically. Farmers are scrambling to try to get fertilizer, and it’s a whole lot more expensive. The ripples through the economy are something that we’re going to be paying for for a long time, and so far, it’s a stalemate.

The nuclear material is still there, even though the president told the country he destroyed everything. Clearly, that wasn’t the case, and that material is still there. And now we have an economic crisis because of the Strait of Hormuz. So that’s where we are. The President created this mess. It’s not going to be easy to get out of it. 

The ripples through the economy are something that we’re going to be paying for for a long time.

McNamara: I mentioned you’ve been in public service for 35 plus years. You’re not yet 70, you’re not running for reelection, are you allowed to do that? 

Peters: Yes, I think so, and it’s a good thing. When I leave here in seven months, it’ll be 18 years in Congress, both in the House and Senate. I believe in what our founders said, that Congress was a place where you would go and serve, and then you go back to your private life, not spend your life in Congress. So, I don’t believe in spending my life in Congress, so I’ll go back to private life. I’m not going to retire, going to still stay very active and be part of public policy, but I don’t need to be in the Senate. I think it’s time to pass the torch to the next generation. 

McNamara: So, this time next year, when it’s time for a motorcycle tour, are you going to have the entourage or is it just going to be you and the road? 

Peters: I am going to have one more entourage this summer, so in August we’re riding. My Harley’s getting ready to go, and we’re going to go to places all around the state, the places that I worked on. But I think… when you ride together, those are long-term friendships. So, I’m sure I’ll still have friends that I can ride with. 

McNamara: What’s your white whale? What’s something that you didn’t get done that you really wanted to during your time in Congress? 

Peters: Well, this has evolved over that time that I’m there, but I think this is the biggest thing that we’ve got to figure out, and that’s how we deal with AI, with what’s happening with artificial intelligence that I’ve been engaged in. 

I’ve engaged in cybersecurity for a long time. I chaired, and now am the ranking member, Homeland Security. So, cybersecurity is a big threat that I’ve been working on for all these years. That threat has just gotten a whole lot bigger with AI. I’m sure many of your listeners know about Mythos, the AI system that Anthropic put out, that could basically attack systems all across the country, make them vulnerable to cyber attack. It is absolutely frightening the power that this technology has. And Mythos is the first, but it’s not the last. And we’re going to see others coming out that we’ve got to stay ahead of, and the whole AI system, we’ve got to be thinking about how do we put guardrails, understand the power of AI to do incredibly wonderful things, but also know that there’s a downside to it, dual use, both from a military perspective and just cultural and economic, it’s going to be incredibly disruptive. How do we work that?

So, I’ve been working through that over the last few years, we got a lot more years to go to try to figure it out, but the problem is time is not on our side, because it’s moving so rapidly that if we don’t have a full court press on this, it’s going to get ahead of us, and it’ll be tough to put any kind of genie back in the bottle. 

McNamara: You said you’re not going to endorse essentially in the primary for your replacement in the Democratic Senate side, so I’m not going to impress you on it, but I’m going to ask you, what are the qualities that are needed, and let people read the tea leaves from there. 

Peters: I don’t know if you read the tea leaves, I think you should just be asking this question of all the candidates. Something that I’ve prided myself on is that I work across the aisle and find common ground, and you know the last three congresses I’ve passed more bills signed into law than any US senator. In fact, I even passed more laws signed into law when Donald Trump, in his second part of his first term. The Center for Effective Lawmaking, that really evaluates us on getting stuff done, which has said I’m the most effective senator. Trump actually signed more of my bills into law than any Republican senator. They said that’s never happened in the 50 years that they’ve been following this, and I think that’s the way you need to govern, especially a purple state like Michigan.

Michigan, we have the broad spectrum of politics and it can swing back and forth, and I’m blessed as a US senator to represent all of Michigan, not just the blue parts of it, the red parts too. And so, you’ve got to figure out ways to work and just solve the problems that we face as a country. And what I’ve seen over the years is that people can’t get out of campaign mode. Campaign mode is about hyper partisanship. I ran the Democratic Senate campaign committee for two cycles. I know what that’s about, and it’s bare fisted, and you got to fight. But once you get elected, you have to govern now, and you have to figure out how do we solve problems that the American people want to see solved. They want to see their democracy actually working to help them each and every day, and if we don’t do that, then we start losing something very special. When I’m in campaigns, I’m campaign Gary, then I turn off the campaign Gary, and now I’m governing Gary. 

I’m not in a campaign right now, so I can totally focus on trying to deal with these big issues like AI and Great Lakes protection and all the other things I care about, but that’s what we’re going to need, someone who’s willing to turn off the partisanship and turn on the problem solving in a common sense way. 

Detroit’s population has grown by several thousand residents over the past three years. MoveDetroit is one organization that hopes to continue this trend.

According to their website, MoveDetroit is “a historic, city-wide effort to grow Detroit’s population, build shared prosperity, foster thriving communities, and create even brighter futures for all Detroiters.” 

Previous Chief Growth Officer for the state of Michigan and current President of MoveDetroit Hilary Doe spoke to WDET about what has been driving Detroit’s population increase.  

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Doe: Detroit has so much going for it, but we’re seeing more and more folks choose to stay. First and foremost, I think that’s really important to mention. When people think about growth, they just think about folks moving in. What it starts with is the folks that are in Detroit choosing to stay and build their futures there. But we’re also seeing more area young people choosing to come to Detroit. That tends to be because we have more job opportunities.

We have a fast-growing startup ecosystem, one of the fastest in the world here in Detroit. It also means that we have more walkable, transit-rich communities in the city, and more and more of those, and really great housing opportunities. So, where there’s a housing crisis across the country, Detroit actually has relatively more accessible and affordable housing options. 

McNamara: Where is that?  

Doe: Where in the city? For Detroiters and for Michiganders, everything can feel expensive, for sure. But if you’re from Texas, or if you’re from other parts of the country, Michigan’s housing is just relatively more affordable.  

McNamara: Alright, so, and is it popping up in certain neighborhoods? Because we hear typically about Midtown, News Center, downtown. 

Doe: There’s been a lot of focus on downtown, and downtown helps us from a retail perspective, lots of walkability, but all different kinds of neighborhoods are really seeing a lot of wonderful investment and growth. The East Village area, for example, where the Shepherd has been getting a lot of coverage, has tons of new builds, actually single-family homes. We’re talking $300,000 kind of builds, but also the Corktown area has seen a lot of investment, as you mentioned, [and] small neighborhoods too.

Northwest Goldberg, if folks haven’t been there, you should head out. Communities really taking it upon themselves to make place-based investments, and there’s tons of wonderful activity and new builds, as well as renovation happening out there. 

McNamara: Okay, so where do you come in? Where does MoveDetroit come in? 

Doe: We launched in early April alongside the mayor and over 50 organizations, from the private sector to our community partners, and the intention is really to do the research as well as to launch programs and pilots to help ensure we’re doing whatever it takes to get folks to choose to stay or choose to move. 

We launched a program called Make Detroit Home, for example, that offers support for folks that are choosing to stay in the form of down payments or investments in their business, as well as cohort programming, relocation support, those kinds of things, and that’s just the first program of many. 

McNamara: There’s more to a neighborhood than just housing. What are you doing to support grocery stores, corner shops, barber shops? 

Doe: All kinds of things. The mayor, for example, launched a program to turn folks out to different retail establishments around the city, and to support more folks who are starting stores across the city. MoveDetroit will be their marketing and amplification partner, but there’s a lot more to do as well. Education is a critical part. We need great schools around the city, and we need to continue investing in those. We’ll work with our partners on MoveDetroit to help with that as well. 

McNamara: So, what are you doing at a place like this? 

Doe: We’re going to meet with lots of folks here this week actually, to talk about entrepreneurship, increasing investment in our small business owners and our entrepreneurs. Like I mentioned, we need more jobs and higher median incomes in the city, and frankly, across the state. So, we have lots of new business starts. We want to keep those folks when they’re about to hire the first 100 employees. We don’t want to see capital flight, that means we need more capital to invest in Detroiters. So, we’re going to be chatting with lots of folks about that here. 

McNamara: Detroit’s typically been a blue-collar town. Everybody wants tech jobs, but is there a kind of an underground specialty that Detroit hasn’t really tapped into yet when it comes to creating new jobs? 

Doe: When we talk about more investment in small businesses and venture, we’re also for sure talking about investing in our blue collar heritage, because one of the things we’re great at is making things. And so when we talk about these new businesses, often it’s, ‘I have an innovation, an invention, and it’s the distinctive competency, and I’m creating a product, and I need to make it, so I’m going to do it here instead of doing it anywhere else in the country.’ We’re actually seeing folks from across the country with a new business come to Detroit in order to build it. 

So, these kinds of jobs are really diverse. It’s not just a typical kind of app, we’re talking about also making things. 

McNamara: So, what is it about Detroit that might attract somebody instead of just living in Oak Park or living in Chesterfield Township, something like that? 

Doe: I think Detroit has this unique blend of the three things folks are looking for. They’re looking for great opportunities, great places, and welcoming communities. That’s what we found. We talked to over 20,000 Michiganders, asked them what they love and what’s between them and building their future here, and those were the three things that came to mind.

So, that means you need great economic opportunities, you need great walkable, transit-rich, amenity-rich communities, and you need welcoming community. I think Detroit does have those things in spades, and I also think Detroiters are willing to fight to make their communities even better. That’s exactly what’s required.

We know that we can get better in a variety of places, but we also have a really wonderful place to start. 

McNamara: As the state’s chief growth officer, you get to see how the state of Michigan interacts with the city of Detroit, and vice versa. What could have been done better? 

Doe: I think that there’s a lot that we can always get better at, but there was also a lot of good coordination, frankly. One of the things I think Michiganders are pretty good at, relative to the rest of the country—I had the chance to live in New York City, to live in Chicago, to live in California, I’m what they call a boomerang. We have a number of those here in Michigan. Honestly, we’re probably better at coordination than the average place.

It doesn’t always feel that way. I know when partisanship can feel quite heightened, but generally, between our small towns, between our counties and our communities and our state, there is—I’d argue—relatively good coordination, and especially in recent decades between Detroit and the state. I think folks recognize that as Detroit goes, so goes the state. We’ll continue to really work to make it clear what those connections are, but I think we’re doing all right. 

McNamara: But you want an urbanized future, and so much of Michigan is rural, outside of southeast Michigan, Grand Rapids, Flint, Saginaw. 

Doe: We recognize that Traverse City, for example, is incredibly beautiful, and the opportunity that it affords folks is just different… than the opportunity that Detroit affords folks. There’s a place for everybody, and the growth plan for Traverse City, or the UP, or Saginaw, it just looks different than what it looks like for Detroit. And so we really need programs that allow communities to invest in talent retention and attraction that’s unique to their place. In some places that will look like conservation, it’ll look like single family builds, in other places it’ll look like density… Detroit just has a different path than some of these other locations.