The Black Church – and their leaders – are woven deep into Detroit politics. Pastors were instrumental in unifying congregations and public support during the civil rights movement.

Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Representative Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) are among those who have made the jump from the pulpit to Congress. So political aspirations for spiritual leaders is not uncommon.

In Detroit, the city is looking for a new mayor. There are a dozen people in the running. Among those vying for the job is Reverend Solomon Kinloch Jr. of Triumph Church – which boasts 40-thousand members across Detroit, Flint and Southfield.

1:1 with Rev. Solomon Kinloch Jr. 

In an interview with Detroit Public Radio’s Russ McNamara, Kinloch lays out what he thinks the city needs out of its next mayor.

Rev. Solomon Kinloch: We are at a point right now where we don’t just need an executive and an administrator. We need a unifier, but more importantly, we need a builder. And that’s what I’ve been doing for 27 years as a community leader.

Russ McNamara: Do you see the job of mayor as similar to your current job?

SK: Dr Frederick Sampson, who was a pastor of another generation right here in the city of Detroit, used to say that the church’s address is a compilation of multiple addresses. And so it’s not that people are beaming out of another place to come to this place. They comprise and they populate this place. So it gives me a unique capacity every weekend and every day during the week, when we meet to hear the intimate concerns of people. And one of the concerns Russ that people have, they have a distrust of institutional politicians. They want government to just work good. And we got to get back to making sure that government is working good for the people it’s supposed to work good for

RM: So, what is the best way to kind of build these coalitions and build Detroit up?

SK: I believe we got tremendous stakeholders and resources, but also relationships in the city of Detroit, I believe, bringing together our residents, bringing together our Black presidents, bringing together our union leaders, bringing together for lot philanthropical leaders, bringing together also our corporate leaders, coming together (with) activists and advocates, coming together in a round table, and not having people Lord their will or their agenda on us, but convening a table where people can collectively be a part of their own destiny and their design.

RM: Attendance has been dropping fairly steadily over the past several decades, especially among younger folks. Politicians, of which you now are, dream of courting the younger vote. What have you done in your own congregation about reaching out to youth?

“Church is not just interested in worshiping on the weekend, but doing the work for the betterment of people every day during the week.”
– Rev. Solomon Kinlock

SK: People want to be a part of something that’s doing something because you can do good. And so one of the things that we have sought to do is partner, not just our worship on the weekend, but also giving people an opportunity where they can participate in the building of their community. The fabric of my whole life is woven together by that thread of commonality. I came from the New Bethel Baptist Church where my pastor was the Reverend Robert Smith, Jr, who currently serves there. Aretha Franklin’s father, C.L. Franklin was his predecessor, and all we know how to do is not to use the pulpit as a pedestal to promote a person, but we were taught that the pulpit is a platform to lift an entire community of people. And I believe that when people see that, particularly young people, see that. Church is not just interested in worshiping on the weekend, but doing the work for the betterment of people every day during the week. They want to be a part of that.

RM: You don’t have any plans to step down from your current position.

SK: I will, as mayor, continue to preach on the weekend, but the day to day operations are already being managed by a tremendous executive team.

RM: Your announcement was well attended at the Fox Theater. How do you plan to walk that tightrope so your congregation is uplifting the Lord and not the person who happens to be running for mayor?

SK: Triumph church is 105 years of age. They understand that is bigger than me, is bigger than all of us. We have a responsibility in our present age in order to live in a way where we leave a better world when we leave it than the way we walked into it. And the church was there long before I showed up. It was more than 70 years long before I showed up. We want to make sure with this moment that it is there long after we’re gone.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has abruptly dropped all charges against seven pro-Palestinian protesters arrested during an on-campus demonstration last year.

The felony charges alleged that the protesters were obstructing and resisting arrest as police were breaking up a pro-Palestinian encampment on the University of Michigan Diag. 

Nessel was reportedly asked by members of the University of Michigan Board of Regents to investigate the protesters after local prosecutors decided not to press charges.

Civil rights attorney Amir Makled says it never made sense for the AG to get involved in the first place. Citing concerns of potential bias, Makled asked the judge in the case to urge the state end the prosecution.

“It is a little surprising that on the eve of a motion to disqualify the attorney general’s office that the defense filed, the AG decides to just drop the case entirely,” he said.

In a statement, Nessel denied allegations of bias and criticized the pace of the judge handling the case – calling the matter a “circus-like atmosphere.”

Nevertheless, Makled says dismissing the case was the right move.

“We hope this sends a clear message to institutions across the state and the nation that protest is not a crime and dissent is not disorder,” he said.

Nessel — who is Jewish — says her involvement in the case was not evidence of bias and called the accusation “baseless and absurd.”

U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) has introduced a bill that aims to keep Chinese-made vehicles out of the country by empowering the Commerce Secretary to ban imports.

The bill, referred to as the Connected Vehicle National Security Review Act, would establish a national security review process for connected vehicles and connected vehicle components manufactured by companies from China or other countries of concern. 

Aside from worries over cheap vehicles flooding the market, Slotkin says there are concerns over data collection and them posing a threat to national security.

“So a Chinese vehicle made by a Chinese automaker, or the key connected parts that could go in a car that could send that important data back to Beijing,” Slotkin said.

It’s the first piece of legislation for the Holly Democrat since entering the Senate in January.

American-made cars also collect a lot of data by pairing with our smart phones. The same is true for other tech giants like Facebook and Google. Slotkin says that’s different because those companies are subject to laws here in the U.S.

“If some character in the company uses that [information] for nefarious purposes, they could be prosecuted. They could be gone after here in the United States, by American courts,” She said. “That is not the case if a Chinese company was collecting all kinds of data on you and sending it back to Beijing.”

The bill has already found bipartisan support in the Senate and Slotkin is optimistic it will pass.

Hoekstra confirmed as US ambassador to Canada

There’s been a call for Democrats to push back harder against the plans of the Trump administration.

However, that did not extend to the confirmation of Pete Hoekstra to be the new U.S. Ambassador to Canada. The former Congressman and chair of the Michigan Republican Party received the backing of both of Michigan’s Democratic Senators — Slotkin and Gary Peters.

Slotkin felt it was an easy choice, even though Hoekstra had been working to elect her opponent.

“Our relationship with Canada right now is as fraught and messy and upsetting as I’ve ever seen it in my entire lifetime,” Slotkin said. “So who do I want in Ottawa pushing back on President Trump’s kind of blanket approach to Canada? I want a Michigander who understands Michigan’s economy, Michigan’s agriculture, Michigan’s manufacturing.”

Slotkin has voted to confirm members of President Donald Trump’s cabinet, including Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. She was hardly alone. Rubio was confirmed unanimously. However, since taking the job, Rubio has led the charge to remove people from this country whose views do not align with the Trump administration.

Rubio also oversaw the extraordinary rendition of men sent to an El Salvador prison without due process.

“Marco Rubio was someone who was a senator and served on these national security committees for a long time, and I think what you’re seeing is just the pure dominance of the Trump White House and making policy over the heads of these cabinet level officials,” Slotkin said.

The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the Trump administration should “facilitate” the return of one man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Slotkin says this sets up a Constitutional crisis.

“The president has not been obeying a number of court orders, right, not just on this, on a bunch of other things,” she said. “The constitution has three co-equal branches of government. It means that we’re going to have to have a showdown about whether he obeys this court order, and a few others.”

How far will that showdown go?

“Obviously, we never want to get to the point of conflict and violence,” Slotkin said. “But the average citizen can’t ignore a court order. The average business can’t do it. So this administration is going to have their moment here, and the courts are going to have their moment as well.”

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.

Stock markets worldwide are careening even lower Friday after China matched President Donald Trump’s big raise in tariffs in an escalating trade war.

Not even a better-than-expected report on the U.S. job market, which is usually the economic highlight of each month, was enough to stop the slide.

Trump’s 25% tariff on imported vehicles — which the administration says will help foster domestic manufacturing — is likely to both drive up auto prices and force automakers that rely on global supply chains to rethink what and where vehicles are being made.

Stellantis has already laid off 900 workers at plants in Michigan and Indiana after pausing production at some of its assembly plants in Mexico and Canada.

Patrick Anderson, CEO of East Lansing-based Anderson Economic Group, told WDET that he thinks Trump’s tariffs will cause Michigan’s economy to tank. 

“For the lowest tariff cost vehicles we expect prices to go up somewhere between $2,500 and $5,000 per car,” Anderson said. “For a lot of mid-priced cars (it will go up) $5,000, $8,000, $10,000.”

Anderson said Michigan’s close ties to the auto industry are a good thing. However, it also makes us more vulnerable to recessions.

“Also, in this case, (more vulnerable to) a huge U-turn in terms of trade policy,” he added. “(Now) that’s being undertaken by the Trump administration, which has very negative effects on our ability to build cars and sell cars here in Michigan and in other states.”

As long as the tariffs are in place, he says it’s not likely to get better.

“I don’t see any upside to higher tariffs for states like Michigan any time in the next…year,” Anderson said. “You might get some production to move to some plants, but you’re already seeing — and this is just in days — reductions in employment.”

The cratering stock market — in addition to the tariffs — feeds into itself and makes things even worse.

“You’re seeing a huge toll on people’s retirement savings that affects whether or not they’re going to buy cars,” Anderson said.

And if higher prices lead to a drop in sales and manufacturing, the state and region will drop into an avoidable collapse, he said.

“Because you can’t take this much of a, really a baseball bat to auto sales, if that’s your leading industry, and not expect there to be employment losses.”

Auto companies are also navigating the reversal of fuel economy standards, dialed down greenhouse gas emission standards and a host of electric vehicle policy rollbacks.

Associated Press writers Stan Choe, Alexa St. John and Paul Wiseman contributed to this report.