The 2026 general election is shaping up to be a big one.

The federal election could flip the balance of power in Congress.

In Michigan, everything is set to change. Governor, Secretary of State, and Attorney General are all open.

Earlier this year, U.S. Sen. Gary Peters announced he would not seek reelection.

We’re still 16 months out from the primary, yet candidates are already seeing if they’re viable.

So far, one Democrat thinks they are.

State Sen. Mallory McMorrow’s profile has been on the rise over the past few years. Two years ago, a Republican colleague called her a “groomer” and McMorrow’s speech rebuking the comment went viral.

Last August, using a gigantic copy of the Project 2025 manifesto as a prop, McMorrow spoke at the Democratic National Convention.

In maybe the biggest tell of her national aspirations, she has a book out.

Over the weekend, McMorrow sat down with WDET to discuss her candidacy.

Listen: McMorrow talks US Senate bid, political priorities

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Russ McNamara, WDET News: So when I talked to you at the Democratic National Convention, you were unsure of what your next steps were going to be. When did you reach that clarity?

Sen. Mallory McMorrow: I think Senator Peters surprised a lot of people when he made his decision not to seek reelection. And as I thought about my next step, I was sure almost immediately, this was something I wanted to explore, but it’s a big decision to run statewide, so required a lot of conversations, a lot of reaching out to people all across the state, talking with my family, to make sure this was something we could do, and that we felt like we could be successful.

RM: Yeah, you’ve got a young kid at home. Are you sure you want to go through a full Senate campaign?

MM: She is four. She’s such a trooper. I’ve never seen a kid who loves a parade more than my daughter, and she’s excited. I got a great support system with my husband, who is the world’s best dad, and we’re ready for this.

RM: How comfortable are you in the spotlight?

MM: For me, a spotlight is only as good as what you choose to do with it, and I think it’s a strength of mine to be able to communicate to people’s rightful anger and fear and frustrations and also give voice to how we’re going to fight back and what we’re going to do with it. And that’s why I’m entering this race, to give people an avenue and a new path forward for Michiganders to get us out of all this chaos and out of the wilderness.

RM: What should Democrats be doing to push back against the Trump administration? You told Melissa Burke of the Detroit News that you are kind of unhappy with the leadership of Chuck Schumer. You think that some of the old guard Democrats need to make way for a younger generation.

“This is no longer my father’s Republican Party. This is the MAGA party. This is Donald Trump remaking the Republican Party in his own image as one that quite literally wants to tear the government down piece by piece, and in my mind, that requires leadership who came up in this time, who understands what we’re up against and knows how to fight back…”

–State Sen. Mallory McMorrow

MM: So first of all, this is not a knock on any one person, but it’s a real acknowledgement of the time. This is no longer my father’s Republican Party. This is the MAGA party. This is Donald Trump remaking the Republican Party in his own image as one that quite literally wants to tear the government down piece by piece, and in my mind, that requires leadership who came up in this time, who understands what we’re up against and knows how to fight back and accepts that it’s not enough to just stand behind a podium in front of the Capitol in Washington D.C. and say we’re fighting and we’re winning, and then turning around and asking for contributions or going in interviews and saying that, well, their polling is starting to come down, and they’ll just be more unpopular, and we’ll keep going and we’ll get them in the midterms. People are showing up in my town halls and coffee hours right now, raising their hands saying, ‘Put me in coach. I want to be a part of something. I want to fight back. And we need leaders who understand how to engage with people, not as just a number, not as a voter or a donor, but as part of the team.’

RM: So if part of that change in philosophy is getting younger. Why am I getting text messages from (80-year-old Clinton ally and Democratic strategist) James Carville?

MM: So James Carville and I have become pretty good friends over the last few years, and why I’m really proud of that friendship is there can be old guard leaders who recognize and see talent in new guard leaders and understand that we have to bring up new leadership.

RM: So what specifically separates you policy wise? Would you nuke the filibuster? Would you avoid the Senate parliamentarian like Republicans say they’re going to do — something the Biden administration refused to do — is that an area that you’re willing to explore?

MM: So right now, I think you have to look no further than what Cory Booker did this past week, standing on the (Senate) floor for 25 hours, acknowledging up front that Democrats in Washington may not have the power to move legislation or block bills right now, but that he acknowledged that his constituents wanted him to do more. So he stood there for longer than anybody in United States history, uplifting the voices of his constituents, their fears, their angers, letters from people who had lost their Medicaid and Medicare, and it felt like hope, in a weird way, to give voice to the voiceless and show people that even when Donald Trump wants us to believe we don’t have power, we actually do, and we’re going to do everything we can to use it.

RM: How would you characterize your version of politics. Would you consider yourself a centrist? Would you consider yourself more progressive on certain issues, maybe not so much on others? How would you describe yourself?

MM: I describe myself as pragmatic.

RM: (interrupting) If I hear a Democrat saying they’re being pragmatic, that immediately says they’re centrist, right? When I hear Republicans say they’re being pragmatic, there’s gonna be big cuts to some services. So, I really need you to spell that out for me.

MM: When you look at my policy priorities and how I approach things on certain issues where fundamental rights are at risk, I will be progressive and aggressive about fighting back. I introduced the first version of the Reproductive Health Act in 2019 as a primary bill sponsor, even though I was in a marginal district because protecting our fundamental reproductive rights was important to me. This was the legislation that would have codified Roe v. Wade on the state level, before we had Prop 3, and Republicans refused to take it up.

I’ve been aggressive on legislation for gun violence prevention. I’m somebody who lost the older brother of one of my best friends in the Virginia Tech shooting — it is deeply personal to me, and I will fight hard to make sure that nobody else has to go through what I went through, or what anybody who’s lost a family member to gun violence has to go through. But I’m also the chair of the Senate Economic and Community Development Committee.

I have been active on reforming our state’s approach to economic development, working across the aisle with my Republican colleagues on investing more in small businesses and entrepreneurs and downtowns and in a way that relies less on heavy corporate tax incentives to try to bring back minimum wage jobs, and more on building our economy from the ground up. So that’s what I mean when I say pragmatic is I look at the needs of my constituents, I look at what is going to be possible to push Michigan forward. And to me, that’s more important than where I fall in the political spectrum.

RM: One thing that’s on the mind to a lot of voters and a lot of people I talk to. I personally have trans friends and family. It seemed like the issue of protections for trans people — Democrats didn’t necessarily run away from it, but they did not necessarily address it in the last voting cycle. You’re protesting today (April 5) in Ferndale, the traditional heart of the LGBTQ community in Michigan, lay out your plan and your vision for LGBTQ people in the state of Michigan from here on out.

MM: So I wholly reject the idea and will never be the type of person who throws somebody under the bus because of polling. I think it’s callous, and I think it’s hurtful. What I know about my LGBTQ friends and neighbors is that just like the rest of us, they want to be left alone. They want to be left alone to live their lives as they wish. And that is why my speech in 2022 I think, resonated the way that it did was because, unlike a lot of other Democrats, I did not accept the fight that Republicans wanted me to have when I was smeared as a groomer, which, let’s be clear, is an attack usually levied on the LGBTQ community, I stood up and spoke about my own life; that I was raised Catholic, what Christian values mean to me, and said very clearly that people who are different are not the reason why your health care costs are too high or why the roads are in disrepair. And that’s what I hope to show through this campaign, is that we can protect our LGBTQ friends and neighbors by talking to the issues that 99% of Michiganders want to hear, which is their housing costs, their health care, their lifestyle, the quality of their schools and not letting anybody be a scapegoat.

RM: Are Democrats making a mistake by running away from some social issues?

MM: What I think Democrats are missing is letting Republicans paint Democrats as who Republicans want Democrats to be. The idea that Democrats spent too much time focused on social issues and culture war issues is not because that’s the Democratic policy platform. That’s because Republicans, namely Donald Trump and Elon Musk, spent millions upon millions of dollars on TV ads to try to define Democrats, and Democrats fell into the trap. So by going on offense instead of constantly being on defense, we can appeal to a majority of people to convince them, yeah, you may not be doing as well as you wanted. You may not be able to afford to buy a house, and it’s not somebody else’s fault. It’s because the system is broken, and we have to fix that system.

State Sen. Mallory McMorrow has become the first major candidate to announce a run for the U.S. Senate seat in Michigan being vacated by Sen. Gary Peters.

This week on MichMash, Gongwer News Service’s Zach Gorchow and Alethia Kasben sit down with Politico’s Deputy Editor, Zack Stanton, to discuss McMorrow’s chances of winning the race.

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

In this episode:

• McMorrow’s political career so far
• Potential Republican candidates joining the Michigan U.S. Senate race
• Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s national profile

McMorrow — a Democrat from Royal Oak — burst onto the state’s political scene in 2018, when as a first time candidate and relatively new Michigan resident, she was one of many people motivated to run for office after President Trump won in 2016.

She ran against a Republican incumbent in an area of Oakland County that never seemed likely to elect a Democrat, Gorchow noted. But, she won nonetheless, knocking out Republican Sen. Marty Knollenberg.

Now considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, McMorrow has proven herself to be a great communicator, and shows great potential in race, Stanton said.

“She is an enormously talented politician, and I think a lot of people in Washington, when they see her, they see a gifted natural athlete — there is something there that isn’t fully learned, it’s just there, it’s it. And she seems to have that,” he said. “The question now I think to a lot of people is ‘what could complicate her path,’ because she seems like far and away the strongest candidate in the field thus far.”

Stanton said that many Democrats are worried about Republicans flipping the seat after Trump won the state in 2024, and several close races in the November election led Republicans to a 53-47 majority in the Senate.

Still, he said, “When you have someone like Mallory McMorrow jumping into the race, she really represents this shift in the Democratic party’s makeup.” 

U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel have also expressed a possible interest in entering the race on the Democratic ticket, along with Dr. Abdul El-Sayed — who recently stepped down from his role as Wayne County health director as he considers a run for the seat.

On the Republican side, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers — who narrowly lost the 2024 U.S. Senate race against Democrat Elissa Slotkin, has hinted that he would run. Muskegon County businesswoman and conservative commentator Tudor Dixon has also expressed an interest in running.

–WDET’s Jenny Sherman contributed to this report.

More from WDET:

• Michigan lawmaker Mallory McMorrow announces Democratic bid for US Senate
• Mallory McMorrow on her DNC speech, future priorities for the state
• Mallory McMorrow’s response to accusations of ‘grooming’ children propels state senator to national spotlight

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — State Sen. Mallory McMorrow, a rising star in the Democratic Party, announced her bid Wednesday for Michigan’s open U.S. Senate seat, becoming the first well-known candidate to officially enter the race for what will undoubtedly be one of 2026’s most competitive and expensive contests.

McMorrow, 38, has distanced herself from national Democrats in a battleground state Trump won, saying a new generation of leaders is needed to block President Donald Trump’s overhaul of the federal government and deliver a compelling message to win back Trump voters.

“I have been so frustrated seeing really a lack of a plan and a lack of a response coming from our current party leadership,” the Democrat said in an interview with The Associated Press.

She said voters are tired of Democrats’ “gimmicks” and was critical of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who reluctantly voted in favor of Republicans’ spending bill last month.

“It’s so lacking the urgency of this moment,” said McMorrow, a second-term state lawmaker who got a speaking role at last year’s Democratic National Convention.

Democrats are desperate to hold onto the Michigan seat next year, while Republicans see an opportunity to expand their 53-47 majority in the Senate.

McMorrow quickly emerged as a possible contender for Democrats after Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat, announced in January that he would not seek reelection. U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens is also considering a run for the Democratic ticket and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has not ruled it out either.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently said he was no longer exploring a bid for the Senate seat, as did Democratic U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten. Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist II, a Democrat, announced he is running for governor in 2026, as second-term Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is term-limited.

On the Republican side, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, who narrowly lost to Democrat Elissa Slotkin in the state’s 2024 Senate race, is expected to run again.

First elected to the state legislature in 2018, McMorrow went viral in 2022 after giving a fiery floor speech criticizing a Republican lawmaker who attacked her in a campaign fundraising email over her support for LGBTQ+ rights and falsely accused her of wanting to “groom” children.

“I am a straight, white, Christian, married, suburban mom” who wants “every kid to feel seen, heard and supported — not marginalized and targeted because they are not straight, white and Christian,” McMorrow said in the speech.

The lawmaker, who represents a Detroit suburban area and serves in caucus leadership, has sponsored Democratic legislation on gun control and reproductive rights.

–Reporting by Isabella Volmert, Associated Press

FLINT, Mich. (AP) — Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin said it’s no secret Democrats don’t have their strategy figured out, but insists the “yelling” coming from some progressive Democrats has not stopped President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Slotkin was responding to a constituent who asked the freshman senator what Democrats can do besides reiterating they are against the administration while at a town hall Wednesday in Flint. The exchange highlights ongoing division in the party on how to play defense with the administration when Democrats are out of power in both chambers of Congress.

“I get it that it makes people feel good to see people yelling,” Slotkin said. “But not one of those words is stopping the actual things that Donald Trump is doing.”

A constituent, Kristin Fellows, 62, had asked Slotkin and Democratic U.S. Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet what they would do to stand up to Trump like progressive Democrats Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“We know that you are against these current awful happenings going on in the world, but it is simply not enough for you to repeatedly tell us that you are,” Fellows said.

Her question, posed at a gathering to address cuts to federal agencies made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and concerns about social services like Medicaid, was met with applause, the first of any questions asked of the congresswomen.

Slotkin responded by saying she also serves Michigan residents who voted for Trump and that she is responding to the needs of residents who are impacted by changes at the federal level and executive orders from Trump.

Sanders has gone on a national tour to rally against Trump. Ocasio-Cortez, a longtime Sanders ally, said she would join him on the road in the coming weeks.

“My job is to be more than just an activist,” Slotkin said. “It is to answer the call when there’s an immigration raid and we need to figure out where our people are. All of those things require me to be more than just an AOC.”

Slotkin’s firm response was also met with applause from the audience. Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Slotkin delivered the Democratic response to Trump’s address to Congress earlier this month. Both she and McDonald Rivet delivered key wins for the party in a battleground state that elected Trump in the November election.

They have both been looked to as potential models of the Democratic Party’s future that is closer to the center than the progressive wing.

Slotkin acknowledged to the town hall that Democrats are not united on how to handle the Republican control of Congress and Trump himself, pointing to a split vote in the U.S. Senate to foreword the GOP’s funding bill last week. Slotkin did not elect to advance the bill to a final vote while 10 other Democrats including Leader Chuck Schumer did.

When asked by The Associated Press if Schumer should retain his leadership position, Slotkin said, “Sen. Schumer is our leader, it’s a tough job.”

–Reporting by Isabella Volmert, Associated Press

President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night address to a joint session of Congress highlighted several of the initiatives he’s started in his first six weeks in office, but many of his comments included false and misleading information.

Here’s a look at the facts.

He overstated the numbers on his immigration crackdown

TRUMP: “Illegal border crossings last month were by far the lowest ever recorded. Ever.”

THE FACTS: Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Saturday that Border Patrol apprehended 8,326 people on the U.S.-Mexico border last month. But U.S. government data show that Border Patrol routinely averaged below that number in the 1960s.

While February marked the lowest arrest total in decades, Border Patrol averaged less than February 2025 for the first seven years of 1960s. The government website does not track U.S.-Mexico border totals before 1960. Border Patrol’s monthly average was 1,752 arrests in 1961.

He inflated the number of people who entered the U.S. illegally under President Joe Biden

TRUMP: “Over the past four years, 21 million people poured into the United States. Many of them were murderers, human traffickers, gang members.”

THE FACTS: That figure, which Trump cites regularly, is highly inflated. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported more than 10.8 million arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico from January 2021 through December 2024.

But that’s arrests, not people. Under asylum restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, many people crossed more than once until they succeeded because there were no legal consequences for getting turned back to Mexico. So the number of people is lower than the number of arrests.

There is no evidence other countries are sending their criminals or people with mental illness across the border, despite this frequent line from Trump.

Economists differ with Trump on tariffs

TRUMP: “Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again. And it’s happening. And it will happen rather quickly. There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that. It won’t be much.”

THE FACTS: Trump is banking on the idea that taxing imports is the road to riches for the United States. Most economists say Trump’s tariffs would hurt the country, as they’re tax increases that could raise the costs of goods in ways that could also harm economic growth. Trump suggests that the impact on inflation would be minimal.

When the Yale University Budget Lab looked at the tariffs that Trump imposed Tuesday on Canada, Mexico and China, it found that inflation would increase a full percentage point, growth would fall by half a percentage point and the average household would lose about $1,600 in disposable income.

There’s no evidence Social Security money is being paid to many people over age 100

TRUMP: “Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. … 3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129. 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them, and we are searching right now.”

THE FACTS: The databases may list those people, but that does not mean they are getting paid benefits.

Part of the confusion comes from Social Security’s software system based on the COBOL programming language, which doesn’t use a specific format for dates. This means that some entries with missing or incomplete birthdates will default to a reference point of more than 150 years ago. The news organization Wired first reported on the use of COBOL programming language at the Social Security Administration.

Additionally, a series of reports from the Social Security Administration’s inspector general in March 2023 and July 2024 state that the agency has not established a new system to properly annotate death information in its database, which included roughly 18.9 million Social Security numbers of people born in 1920 or earlier but were not marked as deceased. This does not mean, however, that these people were receiving benefits.

The agency decided not to update the database because of the cost to do so, which would run upward of $9 million. As of September 2015, the agency automatically stops payments to people who are older than 115 years old.

Trump did not inherit an ‘economic catastrophe’

TRUMP: “Among my very highest priorities is to rescue our economy and get dramatic and immediate relief to working families. As you know, we inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare.”

THE FACTS: Inflation peaked at 9.1% in 2022 under President Joe Biden, but Trump did not inherit a disastrous economy by any measure. The unemployment rate ticked down to a low 4% in January, the month he took office, while the economy expanded a healthy 2.8% in 2024. Inflation-adjusted incomes have grown steadily since mid-2023. And inflation, while showing signs of stickiness in recent months and still elevated at 3% in January, is down from its 2022 peak.

Trump’s reference to an ‘EV mandate’ is inaccurate

TRUMP: “We ended the last administration’s insane electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto workers and companies from economic destruction.”

THE FACTS: There was no federal mandate to force the purchase of EVs, as Trump has falsely claimed many times before.

Biden had set up a non-binding goal that EVs make up half of new cars sold by 2030. Trump issued an executive order on his first day in office revoking that goal.

Biden’s policies tightened restrictions on pollution from gas-powered cars and trucks in an effort to encourage Americans to buy EVs and car companies to shift from gas-powered vehicles to electric cars.

A closer look at Army recruitment numbers

TRUMP: “I am pleased to report that in January, the U.S. Army had its single best recruiting month in 15 years.”

THE FACTS: Trump has repeatedly claimed that the Army’s recruiting turnaround is tied to his time in office.

In fact, according to Army data, recruiting numbers have been increasing steadily over the past year, with the highest total coming in August 2024 — before the November election. Army officials closely track recruiting numbers.

A significant driver of the recruiting success was the Army’s decision to launch the Future Soldier Prep Course at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in August 2022. That program gives lower-performing recruits up to 90 days of academic or fitness instruction to help them meet military standards and move on to basic training.

Associated Press writers Melissa Goldin, Matt Daly, Chris Rugaber, Will Weissert, Josh Boak, Rebecca Santana, Becky Bohrer and Elliot Spagat contributed to this report.

Find more AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

President Trump will give a speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, his first address before Congress since returning to office.

The speech comes as the Trump administration is making swift and dramatic cuts to the federal government, while the Republican-led House and Senate have done little to curb them.

According to the White House, Trump is expected to lay out his achievements since returning to office, and appeal to Congress to provide more money to finance his aggressive crackdown on immigration.

“It’s an opportunity for President Trump, as only he can, to lay out the last month of record-setting, record-breaking, unprecedented achievements and accomplishments,” senior adviser Stephen Miller told the Associated Press.

WDET will carry NPR’s special coverage and analysis of the president’s joint address, as well as the Democratic response from Michigan U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, beginning at 9 p.m. ET at 101.9 FM and at wdet.org.

Watch NPR’s livestream of the address below.

–Associated Press White House Correspondent Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

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

Donald Trump’s presidency has been marked by confusion and chaos for tens of thousands of federal workers across the country.

Federal departments are under scrutiny by Trump and Elon Musk, under the guise of making the government more efficient. Although Musk wasn’t elected by anyone, he’s been making sweeping changes and massive cuts to federal agencies — many of which regulate his companies.

His so-called Department of Government Efficiency, approved by Trump, has fired 1,000 National Parks Service employees; 3,400 U.S. Forest Service workers and 2,400 people at the Veterans Affairs department. 

These moves have frustrated many people and sparked some heated moments across the country. In town halls held this past weekend, Republican lawmakers were confronted by angry voters demanding answers. 

Doug Collins, the Trump-appointed Veterans Affairs Secretary, has said the department isn’t cutting critical health care or benefits. 

To discuss these massive cuts to federal agencies, Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingell joined The Metro. She represents Michigan’s 6th Congressional District and she’s been sounding the alarm about cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Use the media player above to hear the full conversation.

More stories from The Metro on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025.

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