Shortly after rifle shots wounded former President Donald Trump and killed one of his fans in July at a Pennsylvania rally, the Republican Party held its national convention in Milwaukee to nominate Trump again with Senator JD Vance as his running mate. One of the creepiest moments in Vance’s awkward acceptance speech came when Vance smiled wistfully and recalled what they found in the house of his grandmother after she died. She’d raised him in Ohio.

Whether it’s a lack of trust in the U.S. political system or simply not liking the candidates, Detroit has always struggled with low voter turnout in regional and presidential elections. According to a July 2024 report from University of Michigan, about 12% of Detroiters who are eligible to vote reported they were unlikely to cast a vote in this November’s election. In June, Detroit elections administrator Daniel Baxter told Outlier Media that of Detroit’s 513,000 registered voters, about 127,000 are inactive.

Detroit rocker Jack White is taking his battle with Donald Trump to the courtroom, making good on his pledge to pursue legal action against the Trump campaign after it used a clip of White’s hit “Seven Nation Army” in a social media post. White and his former White Stripes bandmate Meg White are listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court.

Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian American activist, filed a lawsuit against the Michigan Democratic Party on Thursday, alleging she may have been cheated in her quest for the Democratic nomination for a seat on the University of Michigan Board of Regents. Arraf claims the party’s process of selecting two nominees for the board on Aug. 24 was marred by voting irregularities, discrepancies, and a lack of transparency. “We cannot be confident in the results that have been announced,” Arraf said at a news conference Thursday.

Livingston County Sheriff Michael Murphy has stepped down from his position on a nonprofit organization dedicated to advocating for victims of sexual and domestic abuse in the wake of his controversial decision to host former President Donald Trump at the sheriff’s office last month. The Michigan Bureau of Elections is investigating Murphy after Metro Times reported that he may have violated state law by using taxpayer resources to support a political candidate.

Detroit rocker Jack White slammed Donald Trump, calling him “scum” and his team “fascists,” after the Republican’s presidential campaign used a clip of White’s hit “Seven Nation Army” on a pro-Trump social media post. White said he’s suing the campaign “to add to your 5 thousand others” after Trump’s deputy director of communications, Margo Martin, posted a brief video clip of Trump boarding a plane with White’s music playing in the background.

In a Dearborn cafe, weeks before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Abbas Alawieh tells Metro Times, “We never want to go back to the version of progressive politics where we’re allowed to be progressive on everything except for Palestine.” Alawieh, who’s the co-founder of the antiwar Uncommitted National Movement, is reflecting an increasingly mainstream position, one that the movement hoped would soon build to a crescendo loud enough to force party leaders to listen. There were reasons to be hopeful.

The Michigan Bureau of Elections is investigating a complaint that alleges the Shelby Township Police Department violated state law by using public resources earlier this month to host a campaign event featuring Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance. The complaint was filed Friday, two days after Metro Times raised questions about the legality of recent Donald Trump campaign events at the Shelby Township Police Department and the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office.

Literally and figuratively, Mallory McMorrow of Michigan threw the book at former Republican president Donald Trump at the Democratic National convention in Chicago last week. Thump! It bumped atop the lectern on the podium when she slammed it down.

The Michigan Bureau of Elections is reviewing two complaints that allege the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office violated the law when it hosted a nationally televised campaign event for Donald Trump on Tuesday. The complaints were filed Thursday, one day after Metro Times published a story raising concerns about the event. The Michigan Campaign Finance Act makes it a crime punishable by up to 93 days in jail to use any public resources to support a political candidate.

Michigan law makes it a crime to use public resources to support a political candidate, but that didn’t stop two brazen local police departments from hosting nationally televised events for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign over the past two weeks. The latest event was Tuesday at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office in Howell, where Trump spoke in front of two banners each that read “Make America Safe Again” and “Michigan is Trump Country.” Trump spoke from a podium emblazoned with the Trump 2024 campaign logo. Behind him were three shiny sheriff’s SUVs.

Michigan women are making gains in state politics, ranking 14th nationally for the number serving in the legislature. However, the latest analysis reveals funding disparities are a concern.

Michigan Democrats are slamming former President Donald Trump for choosing Howell as the location for his rally on Tuesday, a month after white supremacists rallied there, chanting “We love Hitler. We love Trump.”

The United Auto Workers (UAW) union has filed federal labor charges against former President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, accusing them of attempting to intimidate workers who engage in legally protected activities, such as striking. The charges come in the wake of a rambling, disorderly conversation between Trump and Musk on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

In law school at Yale, Senator JD Vance of Ohio organized study sessions with classmates to examine “Social Decline in America.” His fellow scholars served as a de facto focus group for his hit book Hillbilly Elegy. One reading assignment Vance ordered was a lengthy essay in The Nation that was published in the mid-1930s about migration of poor, white people from the Southern states to the Motor City to work in the momentarily revived automobile factories during the Great Depression. It was titled “The Hill-Billies Come to Detroit.”

Democrats have been delirious with joy ever since President Joe Biden finally ended his untenable re-election campaign last month, making way for a feel-good ticket of Vice President Kamala Harris and her freshly announced running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. If they win in November, she will be the first woman to be elected president, while he is a plainspoken former schoolteacher and football coach with a surprisingly progressive record as a lawmaker, catapulting to viral fame in recent weeks for simply saying what many of us have been thinking: Republicans Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are “weird.” More than that, with a palpable momentum, the pair seem to be in about as strong of a position as possible to keep Trump from returning to the White House and enacting the terrifying Project 2025, a far-right plan to replace the government with a Christian nationalist autocracy.

At the mature, old age of 72, the Oxford-schooled Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana is far too wise, much too educated, and way too refined to run his fat mouth like some cocky young punk. But the sharp-tongued Republican chose to do just this last week with personal insults about Kamala Harris, the vice president of the United States and the Democratic candidate for president against former President Donald Trump, Kennedy’s fellow Republican. If elected, she would become the first female president and the second of color.

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib criticized her colleagues for hosting Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is visiting the U.S. this week for a planned address on Wednesday. “Netanyahu is a war criminal committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” said Tlaib, the lone Palestinian American in Congress. “It is utterly disgraceful that leaders from both parties have invited him to address Congress.

By accepting the figurative gold watch of retirement and dropping his reelection bid Sunday, President Joe Biden gave his Democratic Party a powerful chance in November’s election to not only sweep government leadership at the federal level but also to win big in local races around the 50 states. Such a wave could be led by his obvious replacement, Vice President Kamala Harris, who might become both the first female chief executive and the second person of color to win the White House. Against former Republican President Donald Trump, the former prosecutor Harris would oppose a convicted felon and a bellicose bully who is a proud, racist, sexist, white man with issues of impulse control and ego.