Many residents in metro Detroit — home to the nation’s largest Lebanese community — are mourning as the war between Israel and Hezbollah brings devastation to Lebanon.

Since March, relentless fighting has left southern towns and villages in ruins. By May, at least 62,000 buildings were destroyed, more than 1 million people were displaced, and over 4,000 have been killed.

In Israel, four civilians have died and 32 soldiers have been killed in the conflict.

There’s a shaky ceasefire now, but it’s only days old, and Israeli forces still occupy parts of southern Lebanon.

For many in metro Detroit, the pain is personal.

What does it look like to be forced from home, only to return to rubble? How does all the violence and instability ricochet among friends and loved ones here in metro Detroit, where many have family and community ties to Lebanon?

Mirvet Makki is the owner of Divine Dine Detroit, a catering business in Dearborn. She immigrated to Michigan from Lebanon in 1990, and she’s been using earnings from her business to make donations to folks in Lebanon. She says she’s constantly reflecting on the devastation in the country where she was born. 

“Seeing the rubble on the side of the road, I was thinking to myself, ‘whose son was lost here, whose father was here, whose child died on this road?’” she says. 

Makki joined host Robyn Vincent on The Metro to reflect on the heartbreak unfolding in Lebanon and how it reverberates through metro Detroit’s Lebanese community.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

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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Outdated zoning laws hinder the creation of diverse, mixed-use neighborhoods, and lengthy permitting processes slow new developments.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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In Michigan, we have many needs: higher-paying jobs, better educational outcomes, and more public transit. Above all, we need more people. 

A lot is at stake. Even if your neighborhood feels bustling, when Michigan’s population stops growing, the state actually shrinks in all the ways that matter. Since 1970, we’ve lost a seat in Congress after every census, and those same population counts decide how hundreds of billions in federal funding are divided. That means less money for roads, water systems, housing, and more. As baby boomers retire, our workforce is shrinking, and Michigan has lost 93,000 workers just since last spring. Fewer people here means less political power, fewer resources, and a smaller tax base to pay the bills.

Michigan’s leaders agree — we need to attract more people to our state. Yet one central question remains: how do we make it happen, and who is responsible for leading the way? Some are trying to answer that question. The state of Michigan has a growth office. The City of Detroit has an initiative to grow its population. 

Jeff Donofrio is a leader in the population growth space. He’s the president and chief executive officer of Business Leaders For Michigan. He’s written about this topic in several reports, and he’s worked for the City of Detroit and the State of Michigan to resolve the problem.

He believes we need to reform teaching.“It’s about making sure that [students are] engaged and can do stuff besides passing a standardized test,” says Donofrio.

He joined host Robyn Vincent on The Metro to explore how government culture needs to change to build more housing, create better regional transit, and to ultimately attract more people to the state.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

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The Gordie Howe International Bridge is widely interpreted as strengthening the connection between Canada and the United States, making travel easier and cheaper. It’s seen as a win-win project that Canada paid for and jointly owns with the Michigan.

But President Donald Trump has tried to block the bridge’s opening until Canada meets certain trade-related demands with the U.S. and compensates America for it, even though Canada already paid for the bridge. 

The upcoming opening of the bridge has now been delayed. In an email statement Thursday morning, Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens said, “Although we would all like the Gordie Howe International Bridge to open, Canada need not fall on bent knee to make it happen.”

Producer Sam Corey spoke with Dilkens yesterday before the ribbon cutting was canceled. He says the bridge is “the ultimate symbol of connection” and friendship.

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Affordability is the buzzword of the moment — you can watch it climb in how often people google the word itself. But the harder measure is what it actually costs to live: the prices we’re all paying for gas and groceries.

Nearly half of Americans — 49% — don’t have the resources to cover their essential expenses, according to the Urban Institute, and gas prices alone are up about $1 per gallon since late February. More people are going hungry now than at the height of the pandemic. And in Detroit, where many residents were already struggling with food insecurity, that squeeze lands even harder.

“When the economy catches a cold, Detroit gets pneumonia,” said Cass Tretyak, an outreach navigator at Community and Home Supports in Detroit.

She joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to unpack how economic instability keeps failing people living in poverty — and to describe the daily reality of helping her clients find food, shelter, and benefits, at a moment when new federal rules are making public assistance harder to get.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

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For about three years, Detroit’s Right to Counsel program has given free legal representation to low-income tenants facing eviction. The share of tenants who walk in with a lawyer has gone from almost none to nearly all. Research credits the program with keeping families housed and saving the city money.

But this program is running low on money, and its future depends on the state, the federal government, or philanthropy to step in. What happens to tenants — and to the court itself — if it disappears? And how has it changed what justice actually looks like in that courtroom?

William McConico is the Chief Judge of Detroit’s 36th District Court. He spoke about why he’s hoping to keep the program with The Metro’s Robyn Vincent.

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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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How much has politics changed in the last 20 years?

That was a different time — a time before President Trump and MAGA, before the wealth gap continued to expand, before the country became as polarized as it is today, and before algorithm-driven media took hold.

But how different were things, really? What can we learn from that era of politics? And what should we be glad we’ve left behind?

Jennifer Granholm was Michigan’s governor from 2003 to 2011. She also served as energy secretary under the Biden administration. Granholm is on Mackinac Island for this year’s Mackinac Policy Conference, where she spoke with The Metro’s Robyn Vincent.

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Life is becoming less affordable for Michiganders. And in Lansing, despite the constraints they face, many believe lawmakers are not doing enough to change that for residents. 

With state Senator Erika Geiss term limited out of her seat, two Democrats are now vying to improve life for residents in parts of Detroit and Downriver.

Justin Onwenu is running as a Democrat for District 1’s state Senate. He spoke about what he wants to change with The Metro‘s Robyn Vincent.

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Money is getting tighter.

The cost of life can be even more daunting if you have a kids. Children are expensive — diapers, food, clothing, and so much more. 

We don’t have paid family leave in Michigan, but a public-private partnership has tried to ease the cost burden. Rx Kids provides unrestricted cash to mothers who are at least 16 weeks pregnant or to guardians who have a child who is six months or younger. 

It began in Flint two years ago. Now, Rx Kids has expanded to dozens of communities across Michigan. 

What have the impacts been for moms and kids? And, why is Rx Kids popular among people and places across the political spectrum?

Nushrat Rahman is the Economic Mobility Reporter at the Detroit Free Press and BridgeDetroit. She spoke with The Metro‘s Robyn Vincent.

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Partisanship isn’t just a Washington problem. 

This year, Michigan’s Legislature has been one of the slowest in recent memory as only a few bills passed since January. This is happening as costs keep climbing and families keep stretching. Life is getting really expensive and people want their leaders to take action.

With state Senator Erika Geiss, who is overseeing parts of Detroit and Downriver, unable to run for re-election, two Democrats are now vying to fix the problem of rising costs.

One of them is former state House representative Abraham Aiyash. He spoke about his campaign and his plans with The Metro‘s Robyn Vincent.

Editor’s note: this conversation discussed the possibility of data centers recycling water. Water sprayed or circulated in evaporative cooling systems can be recycled at data centers. But the recycling process requires significant on-site treatment to manage high concentrations of salts and other contaminants.

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Five years ago drug overdoses were killing more than 3,000 people a year in Michigan. It was the worst the state had seen. Behind that number were parents, sons and daughters — people who’d been trying to get well for years.

That number is coming down. By the state’s early count, last year had the fewest overdose deaths in more than a decade.

But the people who do this work are cautious about it. Fewer deaths may not mean fewer people in danger. 

Addiction touches lives in different ways. For many of us, it might be indirectly. One analysis put the cost to Michigan last year at $38 billion: lost work, lost wages, courts, treatment. 

Now there’s money to fight this—millions from the settlement with the maker of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma. Detroit gets a share, and it’s deciding how to spend it now.

Ali Abazeed leads Detroit’s health department, and founded Dearborn’s before that. He spoke to The Metro‘s Robyn Vincent about what the city is doing to reduce overdose deaths and help residents be healthier.

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If you’re a leader in Detroit, your attention is trained on a big task: attract more people to the city. 

That’s for good reason — with more people comes more tax revenue. With more revenue, Detroit can provide better social services, quicker Detroit Department of Transit buses, more paved roads, and working streetlights.

But the city is running into a problem when it comes to increasing its population: High property taxes. 

Because property taxes are capped until a property is sold, homebuyers in Detroit neighborhoods that have become more desirable bear the burden of potentially very high taxes. As an example, hundreds of homes will see their taxes climb above $10,000. That’s according to an Outlier Media estimate of the city’s 2026 tax roll. 

So what does it mean when the system rewards staying still and punishes moving in? What does that do to a city trying to grow?

Kevin Bain is the chief financial officer for Public Sector Consultants, and a former debt manager for the city of Detroit. He spoke with The Metro‘s Robyn Vincent.

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The 13th district state Senate seat is open as Democrat Rosemary Bayer is stepping down after one term. There are several people running to represent the district that spans Northville, Plymouth, and West Bloomfield.

One of those individuals is Cecil George. The owner of a landscaping company, George has never before held public office. 

The Metro’s Sam Corey spoke to him about why he’s running.

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A common assumption shapes American crime policy: that the people most exposed to crime — victims, and the officers who respond to it — want the harshest punishment in return. 

The evidence says otherwise. 

Crime victims, in survey after survey, favor rehabilitation over punishment, roughly two to one. And now officers are saying something similar. In a new survey from the Alliance for Safety and Justice, 8 in 10 officers said things like community violence intervention would make their jobs safer. 

Officers want neighborhood programs. They want clinicians on certain 911 calls. They want job training, therapy, and addiction treatment instead of long prison sentences. Why is that the view from inside law enforcement? And if it is, why haven’t we built the systems to match?

Harvey Santana is the Michigan director for the Alliance for Safety and Justice. He’s based in Detroit. He spoke about all this with The Metro’s Robyn Vincent.

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High fuel costs are impacting everyone. One industry is being hit particularly hard. 

Truckers are seeing costs skyrocket as diesel costs have risen 41% since the start of America and Israel’s wars with Iran. 

Jim Burg is the President of the James Burg Trucking Company in Warren. He’s been moving steel in the trucking business for decades. While he says costs are rising really fast, at this point, he’s only been modestly impacted by them.

He talks about how he made his start in trucking and what he envisions for the future of the business with The Metro’s Sam Corey.

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Many look at our politics and feel powerless. But they often skip over the decisions that are happening in their backyard, and turn to the actions in Washington. 

For many, that’s not the story in Oakland County. 

On April 8, hundreds of people showed up to protest surveillance technology. And because of the way that meeting was conducted, a number of people decided to organize to try to recall Oakland County Chair Dave Woodward. 

What happened at that April 8 meeting? What would it mean to recall the legislative leader of Oakland County? What might come of all this local political organizing?

Justine Galbraith is a leader of the I Am Oakland County campaign. Justine joined Robyn Vincent to discuss her attempt to recall Chair Woodward.

The Metro called and emailed Oakland County Commissioner Dave Woodward prior to this segment. He later responded and appeared on The Metro on Thursday, May 7, 2026.

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Progressives won big at the recent Democratic nominating convention. Eli Savit for attorney general, and Amir Mackled for University of Michigan Board of Regents. 

There were cheers for progressive Senate candidate Abdul El Sayed, and there were boos for more moderate speakers like Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who is also running for Senate.

Progressives organized well, and now there’s a lot of energy at their backs. But some are concerned that they will struggle to win general elections. 

Adrian J. Hemond is one of those people. He’s a longtime Democrat and the CEO of Grassroots Midwest, a bipartisan grassroots advocacy firm. 

Producer Sam Corey spoke with him about the promises of progressive organizing, and the challenges that could await them come November

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In November, voters will choose a new governor.

On the Republican side, the race is shaping up around Congressman John James and businessman Perry Johnson, who’s spending heavily out of his own pocket. 

Last week, one of their competitors became the first to drop out: former House Speaker Tom Leonard. He was running what most observers considered the most substantive policy campaign in the field.

As Speaker of the House, he ended Michigan’s driver responsibility fees, he worked with former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan on auto insurance reform, and he pushed to expand Michigan’s open records law to the governor’s office.

He says he left the governor’s race because it had gotten too negative — that he wasn’t willing to compromise who he was to win. It’s a striking claim. It’s also one worth examining. Leonard spoke about all that and more with The Metro‘s Robyn Vincent.

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