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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Have you ever rented an apartment and noticed extra fees tacked onto the rent? A fee for the trash. A fee for pest control. How about a fee for “managing the boiler.”

Those are among the allegations against Greystar, the biggest landlord in America. It paid $24 million to settle a lawsuit claiming it hid fees like these on top of the rent it advertised. Greystar says it did nothing wrong — and the settlement lets it keep charging the fees. It just has to list them now.

This one hits close to home. Greystar runs more than 3,000 apartments in metro Detroit, and nearly 2,000 more in Ann Arbor and Lansing. The fees can add hundreds of dollars a month. And if you miss them, many leases say you can be evicted.

It comes at a brutal time to rent. Nearly half of America’s renters already pay more than they can afford. Just yesterday, Congress passed the biggest housing bill in decades — but it leaves fees like these largely untouched.

Investigative reporter and author Tracie McMillan spent months digging through leases and court records for her new investigation in The Guardian. She joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to explain why renting can cost so much more than the advertised price.

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If it feels like everyone you know is stressed about money right now, the numbers back you up. This spring, U.S. consumer confidence fell to its lowest level ever, dragged down by gas prices and tariffs. Here in metro Detroit, unemployment is running nearly a point above the national rate, and small business owners are gloomy — just 28% think the economy is in good health.

So here’s the puzzle: At the same time, Michiganders are starting businesses at a furious pace — more than 40,000 new business applications in the first three months of this year, up 25% from a year ago. People say the economy scares them, yet they are betting on themselves anyway.

Mark Lee has spent his career advising small businesses across southeast Michigan, and he started his own company in January 2008, right as the last recession hit. He joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to discuss if these new business owners are jumping or being pushed.

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Detroit and Windsor sit across a narrow river from each other, close enough to see the lights on the other side. For decades, they existed like one town in two countries. Auto parts crossed the water again and again before a single car was finished. Families, music, and Saturday nights moved back and forth with a constant rhythm.

Then, after 9/11, crossing got harder with longer waits and tougher searches.

Soon, the two cities will cut the ribbon on something new between them: the Gordie Howe International Bridge. That ribbon cutting, scheduled for June 12, has been postponed, and officials aren’t saying exactly why. 

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has called the bridge a symbol, but also a fact of cooperation. Yet it comes at a tense moment. President Donald Trump has threatened to block it, wrongly claiming the U.S. would get nothing from a bridge that Michigan actually co-owns.

So what does this bridge, the first publicly-owned one at this border, do for Windsor and Detroit — and for the people who have spent their lives crossing between them? 

On The Metro, host Robyn Vincent spoke with Lee Rodney, a border-culture scholar at the University of Windsor and creator of the Border Bookmobile, about what a new bridge actually does for a region the border has divided.

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For four decades, Detroit has had the same law on the books: a landlord can’t rent you a home until the city has inspected it and proven it is safe to live in. But almost nobody follows it. Today, roughly one in seven rentals actually meets that bar. The city rewrote the law in 2017 and again in 2024 to raise that number, yet it has barely moved.

Detroit is a sharp version of a problem you will find in many cities built on old, cheap housing. The law says, fix the place up, but the math says, don’t even bother. In other words, it can cost more to bring an old house up to code than the rent will ever pay back. 

Here’s what that looks like in one house, near the Bagley neighborhood: Windows nailed shut, no heat on the second floor, sewage backing up into the basement. 

Senior reporter Aaron Mondry at Outlier Media has uncovered these findings and reported on that family in the Bagley neighborhood. He joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to discuss how the law is failing renters and landlords.

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For nearly 20 years, the U.S. has been closing its coal mines. Coal became too expensive, and gas, solar, and wind power are cheaper and more efficient options. Now, the Trump administration is spending roughly $700 million to revive the coal market, using a 1950 wartime law. 

The people behind this shift are often the ones who say the market should dictatee decisions and the government should stay out of it. They argue the shift is practical, citing rising power demand from AI data centers and the need for reliable electricity.

Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard and author of “The Big Myth,” believes other factors are at play. “I think the important point to make here is that there is no rational economic, social, or environmental argument for sustaining coal as a primary fuel, and certainly not for reopening closed coal plants,” she said. 

Oreskes joined host Robyn Vincent on The Metro to talk about the Trump administration’s move to revive the coal industry and how politics and power factor into what we believe is practical — or possible. 

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You probably learned this as a kid: When something goes wrong, you call 911. Someone answers, and help is on the way. But across America’s biggest cities, more than 1 in 5 911 centers can’t answer calls fast enough to meet the national standard.

Often, there simply aren’t enough people on staff to pick up the phone.

Reporter Byard Duncan spent a year finding out how often emergency calls go unanswered. His reporting was the source of recent episode of the investigative podcast Reveal called “911, Please Hold.” His search took him from California to Capitol Hill, and one common theme emerged: emergency call centers dispatchers are not classified as first responders.

In the federal government’s eyes, they sit alongside receptionists and bill collectors. There’s a move in Congress to change that, and this past winter, a team from Detroit’s 911 center went to Washington to fight for it.

Why aren’t emergency call dispatchers considered first responders? Duncan joined The Metro to share his findings.

“911, Please Hold” was produced by Byard Duncan for Type Investigations in partnership with Reveal.

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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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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.

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Have you ever sat in your car in a grocery store parking lot, looked at the receipt, and felt something in your chest tighten?

You’re not alone. Roughly half of Americans say they struggle to afford their rent or mortgage. Food prices rose more than 3% over the past year and are forecast to keep climbing. Total household debt just hit a record $18.8 trillion.

The cost of daily life and the weight of debt are taking a toll on our mental health, especially in a moment when the term“affordability crisis” has entered the national lexicon.

Lindsay Bryan-Podvin is a financial therapist based in Ann Arbor, the founder of Mind Money Balance, and the author of “The Financial Anxiety Solution.” She joined host Robyn Vincent on The Metro to talk about how the financial pressures of this moment are affecting our mental health, and what we can do to feel better.

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Over the weekend in downtown Detroit, a 14-year-old boy was shot in the chest near Library Street and Grand River Avenue. Two groups of teenagers had converged outside a Gucci store. Police say there was an argument and one teen, in the chief’s words, “decided to settle it with a firearm.” The boy is expected to live.

For months, teenagers across the country have been mobilizing each other on social media and meeting up. In Detroit, it has been mostly just noise — kids hanging out, looking for something to do in a city that wasn’t built with them in mind.

Some nights, it has turned chaotic.

Last weekend alone, Detroit police detained 109 teenagers across two large gatherings downtown and at Palmer Park, almost all for breaking curfew.

The city’s answer is to give teenagers somewhere to go and enforce the rules more strictly. Mayor Mary Sheffield is working with organizers to move the gatherings into sanctioned spaces. Police are leaning into the existing curfew — 10 p.m. for kids under 16, 11 p.m. for 16 and 17-year-olds—and ticketing parents whose children break it.

One member of the Board of Police Commissioners says this isn’t enough. Darious Morris represents District 3 on the civilian board that oversees the Detroit Police Department. He joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to talk about what the city owes its teenagers, and what their parents owe them, too.

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When someone finally walks out of an abusive home, we tend to think of it as the end of the story. The door closes, the survivor is safe, the danger is behind them. The truth, though, is thornier. 

Advocates say leaving is when the violence often spikes, when the threats escalate, and when survivors are left to rebuild a sense of self after years of being told they had none.

It’s Mental Health Awareness Month, and on The Metro, we spend time on the parts of a story that are often left out, like what happens after the crisis.

JoJo Dries knows a lot about the aftermath. She runs On the Wings of Angels, which meets survivors at the moment when they’re ready to leave, with shelter, security, therapy, and a community willing to catch them.

Ahead of an event this month on the mental health impacts of domestic violence, Dries stopped by The Metro. She spoke with Ahlem Mahdhi, a fellow at WDET through the U.S. State Department’s Professional Fellows Program.

Editor’s Note: This conversation includes descriptions of abuse. If you need help, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 800-799-7233, or you can text START to 88788.

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Inside a Michigan prison less than an hour from Detroit, 25 incarcerated men are doing something many people behind bars haven’t been able to do in decades. They’re working toward a bachelor’s degree from Wayne State University, paid for in part by federal Pell Grants.

Congress blocked those grants for incarcerated students in 1994. It restored access in 2023. But as the Trump administration restructures the Department of Education, the future of that funding is uncertain.

The question at the center of this story: Can a college degree behind bars change who walks out — and is the country willing to keep paying for it?

Jonathan Roden has lived both sides of that question. He spent 23 years in Michigan prisons. While he was inside, the college path available to him was an associate degree through Jackson College. He wanted more.

He came home in August of 2023. Nine days later, he started at Wayne State. In December, he graduated from the Mike Ilitch School of Business.

Now he walks back and forth through those same prison gates, this time as a coordinator for Wayne State’s prison education program. Roden, a Michigan Justice Fund fellow for WDET, is opening doors for men who are right where he used to be.

He joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro alongside audio from Carlton Banks, a student in the inaugural cohort at Macomb Correctional Facility. Banks was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 1994 murder of a teenage Subway employee named Angela Garcia. He was 18. He’s now 48. Under a 2022 Michigan Supreme Court ruling, he expects to come home in 2028. He calls that prospect “a blessing, but not a celebration.”

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