You can get to Coriander Kitchen and Farm by car but some people come by boat, down a canal on Detroit’s far east side, past backyards and boathouses. They tie up at a dock beside the striped umbrellas of the restaurant’s new outdoor bar.

The restaurant sits in what people call the Venice of Detroit — a web of canals running inland off the river through the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood.

Now the city is weighing whether to close those canals off.

A fear of flooding

It’s a flood fix. Nearly every parcel in this neighborhood sits inside a federal flood hazard area, and the city has $20 million to change that. A consultant hired to study the options started work in late June.

Residents have been fighting this idea for years. They fended off a version of it in 2022, and “no canal closures” signs have gone up across the neighborhood again this summer. In June, more than 200 people took boats onto the canals in protest. Their alternative: repair the seawalls instead.

The city says nothing has been decided. Detroit Building Authority Director Tyrone Clifton told Fox 2 in June: “We’re going to look at all the options, and one option could be closing canals, but it has to be a factual option we can bring back to the community so they can understand everything behind it and how it affects them too.” The city of Detroit did not respond to The Metro’s request for comment.

Alison Heeres is chef and co-owner of Coriander Kitchen and Farm, built into a fish marina that once sat empty. Traci Rubin chairs the Jefferson Chalmers WATER Project, a residents’ group that’s been working on this flooding for years.

They joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to talk about what the canals mean to the neighborhood — and what it would cost to keep them open.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org.

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Dr. Abdul El-Sayed says he saw it coming.

“When you launch a campaign and you’re trying to get money out of politics,” he told The Metro, “that invites record amounts of spending against you.”

More than $60 million in outside money went into last week’s Michigan Senate primary, most of it aimed at stopping him. The largest single source was AIPAC, whose super PAC spent about $30 million backing U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens — the most the pro-Israel group has ever put into a congressional primary.

El-Sayed won by fewer than 15,000 votes.

He ran health departments in Detroit and Wayne County, and he now faces Republican Mike Rogers for a seat that could decide control of the Senate. If he wins, he would be the first Muslim to serve there.

He sat down with The Metro’s Robyn Vincent — in the same studio where he announced his run in April of last year.

The money that defined the race

El Sayed came back to the spending repeatedly, including when asked why he lost Detroit. “Ask yourself, if there was no outside spending in this campaign, where do we think votes would have gone?”

He won’t stop saying genocide

Did calling the war in Gaza a genocide drown out his message on health care? He said it isn’t a trade he’ll make: “The job’s not worth it. The work is worth it.”

To Jewish voters who hear his criticism of Israel as criticism of them: “Judaism and the Jewish people are a light unto the world. But Judaism and the Jewish people are different than AIPAC and the Israeli government.”

Black Democrats and the ‘uncommitted’ vote

Many Black Democrats in Michigan blame the 2024 “uncommitted” protest vote, which El-Sayed backed, for costing Kamala Harris the state. Keith Williams, who chairs the state party’s Black Caucus, endorsed Stevens and said El-Sayed was with uncommitted only when it suited him.

“Convenience would have been to say nothing and stay quiet,” El-Sayed said. He noted that Harris endorsed him Friday. “I don’t think she thinks I’m the reason that she lost.”

On mistrust between Black and Arab Detroit, he said Arab and Muslim Michiganders can’t object to anti-Arab racism while tolerating racism toward Black Detroiters. “Standing up against racism is about principle. It’s not about tribalism.”

Data centers and health care

El-Sayed said what he’d write into federal law on data centers, after campaigning against the Oracle and OpenAI project in Saline Township: protections for local water, no utility rate increases, guaranteed union jobs, and money held in escrow before construction begins.

On Medicare for All, he acknowledged a freshman senator can’t deliver it alone. “You can’t get it all in one shot. But politics, as all of us know, doesn’t just move linearly.”

The Metro has invited Republican candidate Mike Rogers on the program several times and has not heard back.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org.

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The polls are open in Michigan today. And by tonight, most of us will have done the thing we’re told is our civic duty, or we won’t have. In the last August primary, less than a quarter of Michigan voters turned out.

So here’s the question: if you voted this morning or you dropped your ballot off at a dropbox last week, have you done your part?

Eric Liu has spent years cultivating the answer to this question. He was a White House speechwriter for Bill Clinton and later Clinton’s deputy domestic policy adviser. He co-founded Citizen University in Seattle. It runs something called Civic Saturdays, a gathering built like a church service, with singing, and readings, and a sermon. 

His forthcoming book is “Live Like a Citizen: 8 Ways to Change Your Mindset and Our Country”. He joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to discuss what it means to be a good citizen after the voting booth closes.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org.

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For the first time, truckers running between Detroit and Windsor have a choice of bridges — and the two crossings are competing for that business.

A semi pays about half as much to cross the new Gordie Howe Bridge as it does the Ambassador: roughly $35, versus $75.

But that’s a toll — what you pay to drive across. It has nothing to do with what is in the truck, and what is in the truck is about to get expensive. 

On Aug. 19, an additional 50% tariff is set to hit a long list of Canadian goods, among them wine, dairy, cement and hockey sticks. In other words, a business might save $40 getting a load across the river, then pay thousands more for the load itself.

So who actually comes out ahead here?

Mark Lee runs The Lee Group, where he has advised small businesses in this region for nearly 20 years. He joins host Robyn Vincent to talk tolls, tariffs, Delray, and whether Canadian visitors are coming back.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org

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The law says if you come to this country and want asylum, you have to ask for it in your first year. For decades, people who did that were largely left alone while they waited. The application was proof you were doing it the right way.

Not anymore.

Last July, ICE issued a memo reinterpreting which part of immigration law governs detention — a change that stripped many people of the right to ask a judge to release them on bond. The Board of Immigration Appeals backed that reading in September. Federal courts have split over it, and in May the 6th Circuit, which covers Michigan, ruled against the policy.

Attorneys here say something else changed alongside it. Agents started showing up at the homes and workplaces of people with applications pending — people whose only offense is waiting in a line that takes years.

On today’s show, host Robyn Vincent speaks with three people living with these changes.

Kevin Piecuch is an immigration attorney and executive director of the Southwest Detroit Immigrant and Refugee Center, a free and low-cost legal clinic. He describes a legal practice now dominated by detention cases, and recounts what he says he witnessed at a bond docket this month — arrest records submitted to a judge containing information he says was flatly false. 

We also hear from a young woman detained while her asylum case was still pending. We’re not using her real name.

Later, Pastor Kevin Casillas of the First Latin American Baptist Church in Southwest Detroit describes what these detentions have done to his congregation — and to his job. In January of last year, the federal government rescinded the policy that had kept immigration enforcement away from churches, schools and hospitals. Some congregations have since won court protection. 

The Metro contacted ICE’s Detroit field office and media department for comment. They did not respond.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org

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If you’ve spent a bad week this summer wondering what you ate, you’re not alone.

Michigan seems to be at the epicenter of a fast-growing cyclospora outbreak. The state is reporting far more cases than any other — over 9,000 Michiganders have gotten sick from the parasite. 

That is the story in front of us. Behind it is a harder one.

A year ago, about three-quarters of Americans said they trusted the CDC’s health advice. Today, it is half. 

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, fired the entire committee that advises the CDC on vaccines and replaced it with his own picks. A federal court blocked those changes, though the administration is appealing. 

Meanwhile, many pediatricians did something they had never done. The American Academy of Pediatrics issued its own vaccine schedule rather than following the government’s. 

So when health officials tell you how to keep your family safe from a parasite in the lettuce, there is a question underneath it now: Do you still believe them?

Dr. Céline Gounder is an infectious disease specialist, epidemiologist, and public health correspondent for CBS News and KFF Health News. She hosts the podcasts Epidemic and American Diagnosis. 

Gounder worked on the ground during the Ebola epidemic in Guinea and spent years studying tuberculosis and HIV across southern Africa. She joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to discuss the erosion of America’s public health apparatus and how it’s affecting the cyclospora outbreak and public health more broadly.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org.

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Enbridge is a step closer to building a new oil tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac for its Line 5 after the state of Michigan approved permits for the project last week.

Line 5 runs 645 miles from Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario, carrying crude and natural gas liquids. Most of it transits Michigan to reach Canada.

Enbridge and the state say a concrete tunnel would get the 73-year-old pipeline out of open water, where a rupture could spill into the Straits of Mackinac.

But the permit concedes some of what is at stake. Historic and cultural resources will likely be destroyed — the remains of tribal ancestors among them. Enbridge has to file a plan to lessen the damage. Environmental activists and Michigan tribal communities say that is not enough.

In a statement to The Metro, Enbridge said it respects the cultural and historic significance of the Straits and is committed to protecting cultural resources. The company said its surveys were directed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, that tribal representatives have been consulting parties in that process, and that more cultural survey work is scheduled for 2027.

The Straits are where the Bay Mills Indian creation story begins. They are also among the most productive fishing grounds for tribes exercising rights under an 1836 treaty.

Whitney Gravelle is a federal Indian law attorney and president of the Bay Mills Indian Community, which has vowed to fight back. She joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to discuss why she calls the state’s decision a betrayal.

This story has been updated with a statement from Enbridge. -Ed

Enbridge is a financial supporter of WDET. The WDET newsroom observes a clear boundary between funders and editorial content, and does not serve the agendas of financial supporters.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org.

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Smoke from wildfires in Ontario and Minnesota has been lingering in Michigan skies. 

Some of it started on July 7, when lightning struck the woods of northern Minnesota. Those fires burned so hard the Forest Service shut the Boundary Waters completely. And the fires went both directions. One crossed into Canada, another crossed out of it, into Minnesota.

Meanwhile, four Republicans in Michigan’s delegation wrote to Canada’s prime minister last week, demanding Canada manage its forests better. They say they are done “accepting apologies in place of action.” This comes as the U.S. Forest Service, the agency that manages federal forests and firefighting on this side of the border, faces significant budget cuts under the Trump administration’s latest proposals.

Bobbie Scopa fought fire for 45 years. She started as a seasonal firefighter in 1974 and finished as an operations section chief: the person on a major fire who decides where the crews go, and where nobody goes at all. She’s the author of “Both Sides of the Fire Line,” and she hosts the podcast Bobbie on Fire. 

She joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to explain why these fires are harder to stop than they used to be, and why she thinks Americans are asking the wrong question about them.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org.

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What does accountability look like for Michigan’s utilities after over half a million residents lost power earlier this month? 

Last week, the state opened an investigation into DTE Energy, Consumers Energy, and Indiana Michigan Power Co. for their response to the outages, which stretched on for multiple days for some residents in 90 degree heat.

In Farmington Hills, at a senior living home, where some residents rely on oxygen machines, staff were dressing people in the dark. 

The Michigan Public Service Commission is demanding that utilities explain by August how they deployed crews, how they guarded downed wires, and why their restoration estimates kept moving.

Farmington Hills Mayor Theresa Rich joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to discuss how her residents were affected by the outages and how she believes the utilities should be held accountable. 

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org.

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The cyclospora outbreak has highlighted just how hard it is to trace a bag of lettuce through a supply chain that can stretch thousands of miles. Here’s a smaller question: what if your lettuce came from down the block?

Amanda Brezzell grows food on Detroit’s west side, on land where houses used to stand. They co-founded a farm and design studio called Fennigan’s, where fresh veggies and fruit sit on a folding table under a sign that reads “Free Produce.” 

Brezzell came to that table by an unusual route: before growing sunflowers and tomatoes, they studied dangerous pathogens and emerging disease at Georgetown, so Brezzell can speak to the parasite and the pea patch in the same breath. 

Brezzell joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to discuss what it means to support local produce, especially as supply chains and food safety come under scrutiny.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org.

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In a normal year, Michigan sees about 50 cases of a parasite called cyclospora. As of July 16, over 4,000 people have been infected, with more than 100 hospitalizations. Stranger still, Michigan’s own case count is larger than the entire national total.

The parasite cyclospora causes days, sometimes weeks, of explosive diarrhea, and health officials still can’t tell you exactly which food it rode in on. Their best guess this week: lettuce.

Given all this, something feels off, not just with our salad, but with the system that is supposed to see these things coming.

Professor Barbara Kowalcyk has spent more than 20 years trying to fix that system. She came to the job the hardest way there is: in 2001, her two-and-a-half-year-old son, Kevin, died after eating contaminated food. She turned that loss into her life’s work — she helped create the blueprint for America’s last major food-safety law. Today, she directs the Institute for Food Safety and Nutrition Security at The George Washington University. 

She joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to assess this moment for Americans and how it is challenging the people working in public health trying to protect them.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org.

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Hours before the Ford Fireworks last month, a Detroit police officer shot 18-year-old Alonzo Lee-Perkins several times during a foot chase. Police say officers were trying to stop him over a suspected gun, that the officer feared for his safety, and that a gun was recovered.

His family doesn’t dispute that he was carrying one — they say he’d been shot before and was afraid for his life. What they dispute is what he did with it. His grandmother says he never took it out, that it was found only after he was shot and fell, wounded in the back.

He survived and was later charged with carrying a concealed weapon, resisting police, and felony firearm, and was released on bond.

Much of what happened is still contested, and the body-camera footage that might settle it has not been released. A city law is supposed to guarantee that footage, but it is frozen by a police union lawsuit. 

Violet Ikonomova, an investigative reporter at the Detroit Free Press, has been following this story. She also spent last year documenting a pattern of police shootings. She sat down with Robyn Vincent on The Metro to discuss whether this case fits that pattern and what we still do not know.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org.

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There is a quiet that settles into a house when the power has been out for three days. The hum you never noticed is gone. The refrigerator has given up. If someone in the house depends on a machine to sleep, or a medication that has to stay cold, the quiet starts to feel like something else.

That was the mood in many homes in southeast Michigan over the Fourth of July weekend. Storms came through on Friday night with winds over 60 miles an hour.

By that night, more than 450,000 utility customers statewide were in the dark — most of them DTE customers. For some, the power did not come back for five days.

As the lights returned, so too did an argument about what people are owed when the grid fails, and about who, exactly, is supposed to answer for it.

Representative Alabas Farhat is among the people pushing for answers to those questions. He represents Dearborn and part of Detroit — some of the hardest-hit neighborhoods — and he is calling for state hearings into how the utilities responded, along with bigger compensation for residents than the state’s $42-a-day outage credit.

DTE has defended its response. In a statement to WDET, the company said the storms caused the most damage it has seen in years — knocking out power to nearly 400,000 of its customers — and that its “sole focus is on restoring power for our customers as quickly and safely as possible.”

At a press conference this week, CEO Joi Harris said the company got only about 90 minutes’ warning before the storm hit, and officials said most of the damage came from large trees outside the utility’s easements, with replacement crews coming from as far as Texas and Canada.

Harris also acknowledged the limits of the credit: “We know that $42 doesn’t cut it.”

Farhat joined host Robyn Vincent on The Metro to discuss what he heard from constituents who spent days in the dark, why he believes the current credit falls short, and what it would take to hold Michigan’s utilities to a higher standard.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org.

Federal judges across the country have been getting pizzas delivered to their homes that they never ordered. It is an intimidation tactic — a way of saying, “We know where you live.” This is happening after judges rule against the Trump administration. Some have also received hundreds of threatening voicemails after doing so. 

These threats are on the rise, and a coalition of judges says they climb each time the Trump administration attacks a ruling.

So this week, something unusual is happening. A group of judges — appointed and elected by both parties — got on a bus. The Justice in Motion tour crossed Pennsylvania and Ohio and are reaching Michigan this week, stopping at the Grosse Pointe Library at 11:30 a.m. on Friday. At these stops, they are doing the one thing their profession trains them not to do: speak out, in public, together, about what is happening to the courts.

Victoria Roberts is among the former judges breaking that silence. She spent 25 years on the federal bench in Michigan’s Eastern District — and she got there as a trailblazer, the first African American woman to lead the State Bar of Michigan. She joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to pull back the curtain on the judicial system, how decisions are made, and whether this moment feels different.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org.

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If you live in metro Detroit, the last week probably tested your patience — and maybe your fridge.

First, the heat. As temperatures rose past 100, the grid strained, and a substation in Warren failed. Thousands lost power, some for many hours.

Then, just as that passed, the storms came. Friday night, winds tore through the region and dropped 80-foot trees onto power lines — and at the peak, hundreds of thousands of homes went dark. Some homes stayed dark for days.

And here’s the thing: that’s the grid we already have, straining under an ordinary Michigan summer.

Now Michigan is preparing to add something extraordinary — data centers built to power artificial intelligence, each one hungry for as much electricity as a small city. And the decisions about who pays for that, and how, are being made right now, mostly out of public view.

Nicholas Schroeck, dean of the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, thinks a lot about who answers to the public when big energy decisions get made. He joined Robyn Vincent to talk about what the data center boom means for Michigan’s grid, your electric bill, and whether the public has any real say.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have thoughts? Email the show at metro@wdet.org.

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A parasite called cyclospora is spreading through Michigan, and health officials still haven’t found the source.

In a normal year, the state sees about 50 cases; in the last two weeks, it has counted 700 infections among people aged 8 to 84, according to Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, chief medical officer for the state of Michigan.

It usually rides in on fresh produce — berries, herbs, leafy greens — but so far, no food has been named. Oakland County health officer Kate Guzman, a nurse by training, joins host Robyn Vincent to explain how investigators hunt for an invisible source, one interview at a time — and what it means that, a year ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped requiring states to report this exact parasite to one of its main early warning systems.

Editor’s note: This conversation was recorded before the latest case counts were released. The story has been updated to reflect the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services’ latest infection count. The outbreak is ongoing and the number continues to rise.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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In Huntington Woods, a battle has ensued over what you are allowed to say at the city’s Fourth of July parade. 

New rules would strip protest signs down to nothing but a group’s name and logo. A University of Michigan law clinic has told the city that those rules are unconstitutional and demanded their repeal.

In a June 12 letter, the University of Michigan’s Civil Rights Litigation Initiative — the clinic representing the Peace Group — says City Manager Andrew Pazuchowski told members the new rules were prompted by complaints about the group’s signs calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, along with a general concern about public safety. The clinic argues the rules were written to suppress a disfavored viewpoint and says that, to the group’s knowledge, there has never been a safety incident at the parade.

The Metro contacted the City of Huntington Woods for comment but did not receive a response.

Suhair Ghannam, a Huntington Woods resident and member of the Huntington Woods Peace Group, is in the middle of it. To understand why this cuts so deep for her, you have to go back to a dinner table in Nazareth, where a little girl learned not to talk about politics. Because where she grew up, speaking your mind wasn’t safe.

Ghannam joined host Robyn Vincent to discuss coming to the U.S. at 20 years old and finding the thing she says she treasures most about this country: the freedom to speak.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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July 1 is Canada Day, and across the river in Windsor, and all across the country, Canadians are celebrating it under the strangest cloud in years. Their closest ally and biggest trading partner has spent the past year hitting them with tariffs. Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has floated the idea of making Canada the 51st state more than once.

The friction is intensifying in Detroit. A new bridge to Windsor, the Gordie Howe, is finished and ready — but it is sitting empty, reportedly blocked by the Trump administration.

Here’s what makes today remarkable. The U.S., Canada, and Mexico share a big free-trade deal — it’s what lets cars, food, and almost everything else move across their borders cheaply. When they signed it six years ago, they set a date to revisit it and decide whether to keep it. That date is today — July 1, 2026. So this Canada Day lands on the exact day that the deal comes up for review.

Craig Baird, host of the podcast and radio show Canadian History Ehx, says we have actually been here before. He told host Robyn Vincent that tariffs have historically made Canada stronger.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Imagine opening your work calendar one morning and finding a meeting simply gone — deleted. And the meeting that vanished was about the safety of the water millions of people drink.

That’s what happened to Elin Warn Betanzo— a Michigan drinking water engineer, and one of the people who helped uncover the Flint water crisis.

More recently, she sat on a small federal panel that advises the government on drinking water. Then she signed her name to a public letter, alongside hundreds of other current and former employees, warning that the Environmental Protection Agency was walking away from its mission to protect the public. Two days later, the agency suspended her from that panel.

Now she’s suing to get her seat back. And her case raises a bigger question — one that reaches all the way to your kitchen sink: what happens to the rest of us when the government tells its own scientists to stay quiet?

Betanzo joined host Robyn Vincent on The Metro to talk about Flint, the lawsuit, and what’s at stake for anyone who drinks from a tap.

The Metro contacted the EPA, which said it does not comment on pending litigation. When the agency placed the dissent-letter signatories on leave last year, it said it has a “zero-tolerance policy”  for employees it accuses of “undermining, sabotaging and undercutting” the administration’s agenda.

Hear the full conversation using the media player above.

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand. Never miss an episode — subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or NPR, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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