In the early 20^th Century Ford and Chrysler operated extensive facilities in Highland Park, helping its population grow to more than 50,000 people by the 1930s.

But both car companies moved away from Highland Park decades ago. Now its population hovers between 8,000 and 9,000.

Automotive historian Robert Tate writes for the website MotorCities and worked with the Chrysler museum.

Tate says Ford mass-produced its Model T in Highland Park, creating the moving assembly line that forever changed manufacturing.

Tate says even the Highland Park plant’s architecture was inspiring.

The following interview edited for length and clarity.

Robert Tate: The building was designed by Albert Kahn. He and Henry Ford had a great relationship. The doors opened January 1, 1910, on Woodward Ave. It became one of the largest factories in the world because they manufactured the Model T. The factory was about 865 feet and ran parallel to Woodward Ave. This was one of the most historic sites in the United States and the world, to be honest with you. And it also attracted a lot of people from European countries and other cultures to finally get a job and become an American citizen. So, the factory itself created a lot of things for a lot of people, not just the Model T, but for people to live a good life.

Quinn Klinefelter, WDET News: Why did it attract people from Europe and elsewhere?

RT: Henry Ford began using the moving assembly line. And in 1914, the average wage was $2.30. But he raised it to $5 a day. That attracted a lot of people from all over the world to come here, including my ancestors. My family came here from the South to get jobs like that. The only problem was that the hours were long, 10 hours a day and then five hours on Saturday for the workers. And that created a lot of health issues for a lot of individuals because they were so regimented in putting together parts at the assembly plant.

QK: How much did the Ford factory actually mean to the city of Highland Park?

RT: It meant a lot because you’re talking about taxes and people coming in. The Highland Park Hotel was there, they had a racetrack as well at the time. That generated a lot of income.

QK: Why did Ford move it out eventually? Why did it leave Highland Park?

RT: My belief is that things began to change when the 1927 Ford came out and the company had the model assembled at the River Rouge plant. The Model T was produced from 1908 to 1926. And then Ford introduced the 1927 Model A, which was very, very popular. Ford sold millions of those cars. Also, and people don’t like to talk about this, unfortunately there were a lot of workers who got killed at the Highland Park plant. Because at that time they didn’t have things enclosed for safety. So, a lot of men, unfortunately, lost their lives. But I think that Ford wanted to get out of Highland Park and move it closer to River Rouge because you had more goods coming into that particular facility for models to be assembled.

QK: In regards to Chrysler, how did they get into Highland Park?

RT: It was their major headquarters until they moved to a larger facility in Auburn Hills. I used to hear a lot of Chrysler employees say that the Chrysler Highland Park site was just too archaic.

QK: I’ve heard some experts say that when Chrysler in particular moved out, it truly devastated Highland Park’s economy. And that the enclave has struggled to really replace that revenue since. Do you agree?

RT: Yes, I do. The same thing happened with American Motors when they moved out. Unfortunately, the neighborhoods and the communities suffered when both of those companies moved to Auburn Hills. The neighborhoods were devastated.

QK: There must have been a lot of tax revenue and other money coming into Highland Park that suddenly vanished. But you say that from what you heard people who were working for Chrysler were happy to vacate and to go to a newer facility.

RT: My God, yes. I would hear that all the time because it was a new facility. It created a new way of thinking, using the new things that they were not accustomed to having at Highland Park. I remember walking through the hallways at the Chrysler facility in Auburn Hills and it was a showcase. It was a very beautiful building.

QK: After all that has happened since Ford opened the Model T assembly line, when you look at Highland Park now, what do you think is the legacy that automakers have left there?

RT: As a historian, I look at the 1950’s in Highland Park. Virgil Exner, who was the chief designer in charge, came out with the 1957 Chrysler line. And I’m a big fan of the 1957 Chrysler line. So, whenever I think of Highland Park, I think of the good days that launched a lot of cars that were popular, the 1964 Dodge, the 1957 Chrysler. Those cars changed America.

Read more Crossing the Lines: Highland Park

High fuel costs are impacting everyone. One industry is being hit particularly hard. 

Truckers are seeing costs skyrocket as diesel costs have risen 41% since the start of America and Israel’s wars with Iran. 

Jim Burg is the President of the James Burg Trucking Company in Warren. He’s been moving steel in the trucking business for decades. While he says costs are rising really fast, at this point, he’s only been modestly impacted by them.

He talks about how he made his start in trucking and what he envisions for the future of the business with The Metro’s Sam Corey.

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

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More stories from The Metro

For the nearly 1,500 immigration detainees at North Lake Processing Center, the large ICE detention facility in Baldwin in northern Michigan, visitation hours are limited.

Each detainee gets two hours a week. And many are being held hundreds of miles from friends and family.

Over the past few months, Julie Cordier has been visiting them.

She keeps a binder filled with notes on the people she’s visited and when. She estimates she’s met between 15 and 20 detainees, none of whom she knew before, who were brought to her corner of Michigan after being detained all across the U.S.

She says the cabin she shares with her husband at the end of along, winding dirt road is “kind of our happy place, out in the middle of the woods on a two track, nobody around.”

Except, it happens to be less than 10 miles from the private prison facility, owned by GEO Group, that’s been operating as a immigration detention center since last summer. 

The first time she visited was with her pastor at the Covenant Community United Methodist Church in Baldwin. 

They got the idea from a retired pastor in Grand Rapids, who has been driving people out to North Lake to visit detainees ever since a member of his church was detained. 

“We knew that there were all these strict rules,” she said. “Your shirt isn’t supposed to have any pockets. You can’t wear an underwire bra because of the metal. They are literally for people who come a long way to see their family members, and if you’re wearing an underwire bra, you’re not going in.

“They’ll give you a pair of scissors. They send you out to the little waiting area, and women wiggle out of their bra and cut out the underwire.”

To get in, she just needs someone’s name and what’s called their “Alien Number” — which is how they’re identified by the government. She calls it an “A” number. She doesn’t like the word “alien.”

The detainee she first met puts her in touch with others. 

“He’ll say, this person, here’s a name, a number, he really needs a visit. He’s really struggling. He’s losing hope and could really use a visit.”

Now, Cordier goes most weeks that she can, sometimes multiple times a week. She has been to North Lake so many times that she catches up with the staff at the facility about their weekends, their families, and how they’re doing. 

The other day, when she called to ask about visitation hours, the person on the other end of the line at North Lake recognized her voice.

“The gal who answered the phone,” she said, “was like, is this, Julie? I’m like, it is.”

She has helped family members of detainees get their cars back after they were impounded, given advice to people who’ve lost their apartments, and deposited money into commissary accounts on behalf of detainee’s family members who couldn’t do it in person. 

If people in detention don’t have family or friends who can come, the only connection they have to the outside world is through visitors like herself. 

“You actually feel like, oh my gosh, this is probably one of the very most important things I’ve ever done in my life,” Cordier said.

Baldwin is a very conservative part of Michigan. 65% of Lake County voted for President Donald Trump. 

When the facility re-opened back in June, lots of people here were excited about the jobs and traffic coming to this area, where there are very few opportunities for well-paying work. 

Cordier is part of a network of people across West and northwest Michigan paying visits to North Lake. It’s called Hope for Neighbors. 

But not all of her neighbors want to come with her to support detainees. 

“Honestly, not everybody in our church is wanting to get involved with it,” Cordier said. “I think a lot of people have preconceived ideas about the migrant population… and if you don’t take the time to actually get to know the immigrant population, I guess you just believe what you’re told, right?”

She pointed to data from ICE, about 1,200 out of the nearly 1,500 people detained at North Lake have no criminal record. 

When people at her church ask her why she continues to go, Julie says it’s simple to explain.

“It’s very easy to just hearken back to the things that Jesus said and say, ‘Hey, I’m welcoming the refugee. I’m loving my neighbor.'”

This story was originally published by Interlochen Public Radio.

Many look at our politics and feel powerless. But they often skip over the decisions that are happening in their backyard, and turn to the actions in Washington. 

For many, that’s not the story in Oakland County. 

On April 8, hundreds of people showed up to protest surveillance technology. And because of the way that meeting was conducted, a number of people decided to organize to try to recall Oakland County Chair Dave Woodward. 

What happened at that April 8 meeting? What would it mean to recall the legislative leader of Oakland County? What might come of all this local political organizing?

Justine Galbraith is a leader of the I Am Oakland County campaign. Justine joined Robyn Vincent to discuss her attempt to recall Chair Woodward.

The Metro called and emailed Oakland County Commissioner Dave Woodward prior to this segment. He later responded and appeared on The Metro on Thursday, May 7, 2026.

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

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University of Michigan Professor Derek Peterson wanted to highlight the work of school activists – both past and present – in his commencement speech over the weekend.

What he got was controversy.

Peterson discussed the work of suffragette Sarah Burger Stearns, the woman who worked for years to get the University of Michigan to admit women to the school. He talked about the Black Action Movement of the 1970s and ’80s that sought to make campus life better for people of color. Peterson championed Moritz Levi, the first Jewish professor at U of M.

However, it was a short clip of Peterson praising the work of campus pro-Palestinian protesters that drew the ire of conservatives, pro-Israel activists, and school leadership.

Elyssa Schmier of the Michigan Anti-Defamation League called it “inappropriate, divisive, and deeply unfair” to Jewish students.

Interim U of M President Domenico Grasso apologized for the speech, calling it “hurtful and insensitive.”

In response, the University removed the YouTube video of the entire commencement.

For his part, Peterson is unfazed.

He’s a tenured history and African studies professor and has been with the university since 2009. He’s a former MacArthur “genius grant” recipient and the outgoing chair of the Faculty Senate.

He tells WDET’s Russ McNamara that he’s surprised by the controversy – especially after his remarks were approved by the U of M leadership.

Derek Peterson: I thought I was giving a speech that was meant to congratulate all these students on the success of their time at Michigan. And I wanted to honor student activists. We had these two consequential athletes on the rostrum sitting beside me, Michael Phelps and Jalen Rose, both of whom I greatly admire. And I wanted to give equal time to student activists who I think have done more than most to push our university along the path toward social justice. So the goal of the address was not to provoke or cause controversy. It was to expand the kinds of things that we honored at our commencement ceremony and to bring into view how much I myself have learned and benefited from the work that generations of activists have done here in Ann Arbor.

Russ McNamara: It seems like – recently – there’s been a measure of work done by some to minimize activism at the University of Michigan.

DP: Faculty Senate leaders don’t often get an audience with the regents and with opinion leaders across the state as much as one does at commencement. And we’ve been trying for the past year, and past two years, in fact, to make an argument about how Michigan’s acquiescence to federal authorities around student protests has damaged our collective culture.

The space for protest on campus this past couple years has been dramatically constrained. The administration has instrumentalized the Student Conduct Code and made it much more difficult to organize protests.

Meanwhile, federal authorities have gone after international students and made the cost of protesting, regardless of what kind of person you are, much higher, specifically, if you speak on behalf of Palestinians.

So I’m a tenured professor. I’ve got all these titles after my name, and I felt it was a good occasion to honor the work that activists have done, and to bring it into view in a place in which it was increasingly difficult to see how much activists have contributed to our collective life.

RM: Is it surprising to you that when someone like Regent Sarah Hubbard says commencement is not the time or place for political messages? Because I read that and I’m kind of surprised that someone who graduated from the University of Michigan would not feel that at any point, there couldn’t be a political message attached to the university or in that city.

DP: Yeah, I don’t know if she’s ever really spent time with Michigan students. The idea that graduation ceremonies should be apolitical, nostalgic, that sort of thing, is just bunk.

The University of Michigan is not a finishing school for polite men and women, and our students are not freaking wilting flowers. They’ve just finished their degrees at the foremost public university in the United States. They can freaking well-handle controversy. They don’t need to have sentiment and nostalgia slathered upon them.

What they need is a spine stiffening. They need encouragement to face injustice and inequity with the tools that we’ve given them here at the U of M. It’s take what you’ve learned at this public institution and go and serve the public to which we are beholden as the world’s leading public university. So I fundamentally disagree with the idea that graduations should be, you know, romantic and uncontroversial. That’s a betrayal of the purposes of public education.

RM: You wrote a book that came out last year, A Popular History of Idi Amin’s Uganda. In this moment, are there lessons that can be learned about the United States, about world politics from Idi Amin’s Uganda?

DP: The book, which I wrote over the course of something like 20 years, is grounded on a lot of research that I did with archives that had been deliberately suppressed or lost or forgotten over the course of generations after Amin fell from power in 1979.

As a scholar, much of my work is about how through industrious historical research, we can uncover lessons and materials and ideas that have been either forgotten or suppressed by people in power. So as a scholar of African history looking at events in 2026 in Ann Arbor and around the United States, where it’s increasingly difficult to say anything at all about what happened in Gaza, I can’t play along with that deliberate silencing of an act of great violence.

And let me say I’m full of sympathy for Jewish people who suffered, including students at U of M who suffered as a result of the awful actions of Hamas on the seventh of October 2023.

I don’t have any sympathy for Hamas sympathizers, but as the leader of the Faculty Senate and as a faculty member who studies colonial and post-colonial African history it’s really important that we don’t invisibilize Palestinian suffering, particularly in a state in which many of our students come from the Middle East and have relations who have died in the course of Israel’s war in Gaza.

So honoring their experience at commencement seemed to me to be as vital as it was, also as I did to honor the experience of Jewish students who have found a safe haven in Ann Arbor over the course of generations.

I’m troubled by the fact that this speech has been portrayed as being antisemitic. It’s not. It was not. And I don’t feel the need to apologize for the speech, as I’ve been asked to do by people in administration here at U of M.

I do regret that Jewish attendees might have found themselves on the back foot, troubled by the remarks. I didn’t have the purpose going into it of provoking unhappiness on a happy day. And if I did it over again, I probably would add a sentence to the end of my speech. I would have phrased it something like ‘sing for Jewish students at the university who, over the past two years, have kept the memory of their loved ones who died on the seventh of October alive and have brought their suffering into view here at the university as well.’

I can honor the violence and trauma and be appalled by the awfulness of the seventh of October 2023 and also be vigorously pro-Palestinian and appalled also at the violence of Israel’s war in Gaza. I think both things are possible.

Progressives won big at the recent Democratic nominating convention. Eli Savit for attorney general, and Amir Mackled for University of Michigan Board of Regents. 

There were cheers for progressive Senate candidate Abdul El Sayed, and there were boos for more moderate speakers like Congresswoman Haley Stevens, who is also running for Senate.

Progressives organized well, and now there’s a lot of energy at their backs. But some are concerned that they will struggle to win general elections. 

Adrian J. Hemond is one of those people. He’s a longtime Democrat and the CEO of Grassroots Midwest, a bipartisan grassroots advocacy firm. 

Producer Sam Corey spoke with him about the promises of progressive organizing, and the challenges that could await them come November

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

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Highland Park is an odd shape—a trapezoid to be exact. Its borders include West McNichols Road on the north side, railroad tracks along the eastern edge, alleys behind Tennyson and Tuxedo streets to the south, and the Lodge freeway forming part of its western boundary.

These have been Highland Park’s city limits since officials incorporated it 1918.

That’s how it managed to avoid becoming part of Detroit, which had already annexed most of the surrounding land.

Leaders and residents wanted autonomy

Jeff Horner is a professor at Wayne State University‘s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. He says Detroit wanted to absorb Highland Park even before the latter became a city.

“Highland Park was not open to the idea of being absorbed,” Horner says. “They wanted to have some local autonomy.”

Michigan’s Home Rule law in 1909 made it difficult for one city to annex another. That same year, Henry Ford finished building his Model T factory in Highland Park. It was the first Ford plant to use an assembly line. Horner says the city’s population exploded.

“From the 1910 U.S. census to the 1920 census, the population of the city grew by over 1,000% from about 4,500 to about 45,000,” Horner says. “That is remarkable growth.”

Auto industry drove growth

Highland Park kept growing until 1930, peaking at almost 53,000 people. Marsha Battle Philpot grew up in the city and has written about its history. She says Henry Ford’s offer of $5 a day to work on his assembly line drew thousands of people from across the country.

“This was an astronomical sum in those days,” she says. “Maybe an average person might make $5 a month”.

The city’s population steadily declined through the 1930s and 1940s. But it was still relatively prosperous. Philpot says the schools were among Michigan’s best in the 1950s and 1960s.

“Even our elementary schools had swimming pools,” Philpot says. “It was really an extraordinary place to live.”

But good schools were not enough to keep people from leaving the city decade after decade. Ford eventually closed its Highland Park factory, which is now a Michigan historical landmark. Chrysler moved its headquarters, established in 1925, from Highland Park to Auburn Hills. The city’s tax base evaporated. It had so much trouble paying its bills its streetlights were repossessed. State-appointed emergency managers ran the city and the school district for much of the early 2000s, closing the McGregor Library and the high school. Glenda McDonald, Highland Park’s mayor since 2022, says those decisions hit young people especially hard.

“Children need a place to go, and literacy is a very important part of our children’s learning,” the mayor says. “It kind of put a very bad taste in people’s mouths.”

Lansing takes over

McDonald says emergency management didn’t solve Highland Park’s long-term financial problems. One was literally bubbling under the surface: leaky water pipes, some more than 100 years old. The city incurred tens of millions of dollars in debt to the Great Lakes Water Authority. Each side sued the other with the city accusing GLWA of overcharging residents who were too poor to pay for water. The legal dispute pushed Highland Park to the brink of financial ruin.

In 2023, the state intervened again, this time giving the city $100 million to pay its debt and fix its water infrastructure. McDonald says workers are now replacing every lead water line in town.

“We’re working with the state, we’re working with GLWA, and hopefully we’ll continue moving forward that way,” McDonald says.

Had the state not thrown Highland Park that lifeline, the city likely would have filed for bankruptcy. The financial crisis raised a question: would Highland Park be better off becoming part of Detroit? The mayor demurred.

“Blasphemy,” she says.

Legal hurdles, local pride make merging difficult

For one local government to absorb another, state law requires residents of both communities to vote in favor of it after weighing the pros and cons. Stephanie Leiser directs the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy. She says uniting Detroit and Highland Park could reduce bureaucracy.

“You can eliminate some layer of management there,” she says. “They don’t need to have an additional mayor and a clerk and all of those things.”

But Leiser says there’s not a ton of evidence that it would help Highland Park financially.

“They’re not going to save money necessarily on like plowing the roads, picking up trash, or maintaining the infrastructure,” she says.

Leiser says Highland Park’s finances are in better shape than they were when officials were considering bankruptcy in 2023. But it still has challenges, such as high property taxes.

Highland Park has some of Wayne County’s highest millage rates

In 2025, the city’s millage rate for principal residences was 63.221. That’s $63.22 for every $1,000 of a home’s taxable value. The non-homestead rate as over 79 mills. Rates for industrial and commercial personal property were over 57 mills and 67 mills respectively.

Former Highland Park Councilman Ken Bates says the city’s millage rates and pervasive poverty make it hard to attract new investment.

“We have to look into the future as to what will help Highland Park become sustainable,” he says. “What kind of industry should we count on?”

Bates says city leaders need a plan and the expertise to implement it.

“If not, it’s just you maintaining the status quo year after year,” he says. “You’re just one disaster away from financial calamity.”

More than just lines on a map

Bates says Highland Parkers are fiercely loyal to their community and that most want to remain a city within a city. Resident Michael Williams, Sr. admits he wouldn’t rule out becoming part of Detroit.

“We would get more popularity, probably more services,” Williams says.

But other residents, like Kim McDade, don’t see the benefit of giving up Highland Park’s identity.

“Highland Park needs to be given a chance to continue to build,” McDade says. “Our mayor is doing a great job in doing some things and making connections with the right people.”

Mayor Glenda McDonald says the city’s greatest strength is its people.

“They’re resilient, they’re loving, they’re kind, and we take care of each other,” she says. “I know a person on every single street.”

The mayor says that resilience defines Highland Park more than its shape on a map.

Tensions erupted at the Oakland County Board of Commissioners meeting as residents objected to the approval of a controversial Flock surveillance contract.

Public comment was halted after the crowd began calling for the recall of Board Chair Dave Woodward. WXYZ found that he visited Flock Safety’s headquarters last fall, a trip paid for by the surveillance company that he did not disclose prior to voting on the contract.

West Bloomfield resident Ellie Mosher said speakers were skipped during the comment period, prompting outcry from attendees before Woodward called a recess.

Residents attending the meeting already have reason to feel unheard. “They have had meetings regarding budgets that we are not have access to. That is not public record when it very much should be,” said Mosher.

Mosher is worried about Oakland County becoming a surveillance state with Flock cameras. “We’re seeing them pop up more and more. They can record. They use infrared light to be able to see at night, see license plates, see people’s faces through sunglasses, through clothing, through hats.”

This disruption follows criticism of a previous meeting where residents say commissioners approved Flock surveillance drones before allowing public input.

—WDET’s Natalie Albrecht contributed to this report.

A survey finds Michigan voters concerned about an issue that might surprise some political candidates: the use of vaccines.

The data comes from the group Communities United for Smart Policy (CUSP).

CUSP spokesperson retired physician and former Texas Republican Congressman Michael Burgess says Michiganders will have vaccines in mind when they cast a ballot.

The following interview was edited for length and clarity.

Michael Burgess: There is a significant percentage of Republican voters, 35%, who might be less likely to support a candidate if they perceive them as not going to make vaccines available. That is a real concern for people.

It’s the same problem for Republican, Democrat and independent candidates. If their constituents perceive them as someone who’s going to put obstacles in their way to receiving vaccines for them or their children, it’s going to have a very negative effect on the perception of that candidate.

Quinn Klinefelter, WDET News: There’s been a lot of vaccine hesitancy among some people, especially since COVID and when the pandemic erupted. How are you finding voters responding now as to whether or not they trust vaccines? Especially in light of the changes with the U.S. Health and Human Services department, where some vaccines have been pretty well slammed by the current secretary.

MB: COVID messed a lot of things up, I think it’s safe to say that. And when I discuss vaccines, I’m generally careful to separate the two issues. But there was a lot of loss of confidence in our public health system during COVID. And part of the job, as I see it, for people going forward is to regain that confidence.

You don’t do that by calling everything into question and saying nothing that you believed before is actually accurate.

This country has a pretty long history of successfully dealing with what are broadly termed as “vaccine preventable diseases.” And most of the public recognizes that and does not want to go back to a time when those vaccine preventable diseases are prevalent, because they don’t have to be. The vaccines are there, they’re safe and they’re effective. And they will protect against measles, mumps, rubella, meningitis, hepatitis B. There are a number of illnesses that just don’t generally cross the threshold of recognition for people because they haven’t had to worry about them for so long.

QK: As you look towards the midterm elections, there are a lot of people worried about affordability problems, rising prices, the war underway now with Iran, all sorts of other issues. Do you think whether or not someone believes a candidate will either push or put up obstacles to vaccine use is going to really make a difference in how they will vote?

MB: Yes, it will. Maybe not in every voter’s mind in every race, but it will make a difference. Everything’s all about the midterms right now. And there’s a reason for that, because depending upon how the midterms turn out, the direction of the country going forward could look vastly different. And it can hinge on a very few number of votes in selected states. So that’s why there’s so much emphasis on this.

QK: Again, I will hear some people say they just don’t trust what a particular government agency will put out, one way the other, in regards to vaccines and whether they’re usable or not. Do you see a way to rebuild trust in vaccines? Or is it good to have more of a skeptical look at them?

MB: Well, the lack of faith in institutions was going on even before the COVID years. That’s real, it’s significant, and guess what? These illnesses have not gone away. And that’s why you saw the numbers that you did in the polling that say “hey, I might not support someone who would prevent me from accessing what has been broadly perceived as protective for myself and my family.”

Editor’s Note: A typo in the top excerpt listed CUSP as “Communities United for Smart Politics”. It has been corrected to Communities United for Smart Policy” as of 5/8/2026. We apologize for the error. 

In November, voters will choose a new governor.

On the Republican side, the race is shaping up around Congressman John James and businessman Perry Johnson, who’s spending heavily out of his own pocket. 

Last week, one of their competitors became the first to drop out: former House Speaker Tom Leonard. He was running what most observers considered the most substantive policy campaign in the field.

As Speaker of the House, he ended Michigan’s driver responsibility fees, he worked with former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan on auto insurance reform, and he pushed to expand Michigan’s open records law to the governor’s office.

He says he left the governor’s race because it had gotten too negative — that he wasn’t willing to compromise who he was to win. It’s a striking claim. It’s also one worth examining. Leonard spoke about all that and more with The Metro‘s Robyn Vincent.

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Perceived failures by the Trump Administration regarding affordability and immigration enforcement—plus the ongoing war with Iran—has led to very low approval ratings for the president. Yet, approval ratings for the Democratic Party are somehow still worse.

The Michigan Democratic Party recently held its nominating convention in Detroit and it wasn’t without controversy.

WDET’s Russ McNamara recently caught up with Party Chair Curtis Hertel, who took over leadership following the disastrous 2024 campaign cycle. He says he’s excited by most of what he saw at the convention.  

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Curtis Hertel: I think some of the best moments were people cheering for their candidates, and the energy in the room was, was really great. You know, some of the booing that happened and other things you know, were not my favorite part, and certainly are things that violate our code of conduct and everything else. But I think if you look at it as a whole, we walk out of convention with the united slate of candidates that I think are poised to win in November.

You have Eli Savit, who has a record of being a prosecutor… and was an environmental lawyer taking on corporations. And when you think about what’s the most important thing for the attorney general’s office, it’s a People’s Lawyer.

The powerful, the rich, the corporations—they all have access to lawyers. What we need is people that can actually fight for the people of Michigan, the People’s Lawyer, like Frank Kelly and Dana Nessel—

Russ McNamara, WDET: I wanted to ask you about that booing real quick. Where does that come from?

CH: There’s always going to be people who disagree. You know, we’re a big tent, and it’s important that there’s a place in the party for people that have differing views. I think we can differ respectfully. I think that’s the way it should be.

I think that Republicans behave in a way where they eat their own. We shouldn’t be doing that but, but I don’t think it’s the the few hundred people that were at convention that were doing that we’re not the representative of the 7,250 people who were there who were cheering the people on. And I think we’re united. So, you know, I understand it’s interesting to focus on things where but, but I think it was a small part of it was the noise, not the frequency of what actually happened at convention.

Primaries vs. conventions

RM: There’s been talk by some at the convention about changing to primaries and away from convention endorsements. Is that something you can get behind?

CH: So I’ve always supported that. When I was in the Michigan legislature, I supported that. Primaries are good. Discussions are good. We want people to be able to be part of the choices. A primary would be a better system, but you have to change the Michigan Constitution to do that. I don’t think it’s happening tomorrow.

RM: Why do you think there’s the push right now to get it done? Because there weren’t whispers of this eight years ago…

CH: I can’t speak for those that are talking about it now. I mean, you you might want to have them on the show, but, but I will say that I I’ve always supported the exact same position that more people should be involved in the decision making process and any decisions. I think the more people that you allow in your decision making process, the better that is, because they feel connected to it.

Right now, (Republican candidates) are in a game of ‘who can stand with Donald Trump the most’. Trump is the most unpopular president in the history of this country, who has raised the health care cost on everybody and cut taxes for billionaires that has used a war of choice and tariffs of choice to actually increase the cost for every single American.

I paid $4.20 for gas this morning in East Lansing, before I drove here. They promised people that tax that their lives would be better, that there would be America First, so they’d be sick of winning, that the cost of groceries would go down, that the cost of gas would go down, that they wouldn’t be focused on foreign wars, all of that’s going to lie and whether it’s the Epstein files that they haven’t released, or the foreign wars of choice that they continue to go into, or the focus on billionaires and their bottom line instead of the American people’s, they have lied to the people of Michigan, and I think we got a good story to tell.

How can Democrats work for working people?

RM: Affordability is set to be the big story for the midterm elections, but if Democrats win, what happens after? What’s the plan?

CH: The Democratic Party has to remember that we are the party of working people. And when you look at when Democrats had the trifecta in Michigan, we did things to lower the cost for people. We passed the largest tax cut for working families, brought 30,000 kids out of poverty and gave free breakfast and lunch for every kid. The largest investment in affordable housing in our history, the largest investment in lowering the cost of childcare, we have the record to do that.

We didn’t run on it.

So Democrats have a responsibility to both provide solutions, but also to talk about them to the electorate.

There’s a line Maya Angelou has. “It’s not what you do for people, it’s how you make them feel.” (Ed. Note: This quote in many paraphrased forms is often attributed to Angelou, but there’s no evidence she ever wrote or said it.) We didn’t have the conversation about the things that we had accomplished for people.

This generation right now is the slowest generation in American history to buy a house, to buy a car, to start a family. That is a long systemic problem that we have not fully solved, and I think it’s important to acknowledge that, but they’re only making it worse.

On the other side, there’s a line in the movie “The American President” that if you don’t give people water, they’ll drink sand. Trump is to blame. He is trying to pit people against each other in order to maintain power, but we got to give people water. That’s the history and the soul of who the Democratic Party is, and that’s what we have to do as we’re heading into after the elections.

RM: But there’s always that sense that Democrats are going to get into power and they’re going to raise taxes.

CH: I just told you—

RM: Yeah, but what’s the plan you’re talking about making people ‘feel’ alright…

CH: It’s important to acknowledge the fact that in Michigan, we actually lowered the taxes for most working families and brought 30,000 kids out of poverty. We’re the ones that ended the retirement tax. (Former GOP Gov.) Rick Snyder is the one that put it on. So I do think that there are good examples of that. At the end of the day, I don’t want to raise the taxes on any Americans, except for those that are in the top 1% that I think can afford to pay them in order to provide what is guaranteed to all of us, which is the life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

“We’ve got to stop giving up on places.” 

RM: So Democrats are reconnecting with the working class in Michigan. But you know, nationally, that seems like it’s a lesson from 2024. What else can you glean from that election?

CH: Here’s the thing, it’s not just a lesson from 2024 I want to be perfectly clear. We need to build a party that is not just survive on one election alone. Like, like, that’s part of the problem is that we didn’t learn the actual lessons in 2018 because we won. And to me, there’s, there are really important lessons that the Democratic Party has to learn.

Part of it is, we’ve got to stop giving up on places. I was in 32 counties last year working to do the work of a Democratic Party.

It’s hard to sell a Democrat from California in Kalkaska, but it is easy to sell people that are actually from that community. And so we’ve got to rebuild.

So it’s not just about redoing one election and trying to win one election, this is about the structural problem that we have got to refocus back and try to win everywhere. It’s why we have an office in Detroit, because a lot of times, people in Detroit felt like we had abandoned them, that we were showing up in September and asking for their vote. We’re in as part of the community now, because it’s important to do that work.

Trying to bring people together after losing trust

RM: There was a major rift within the Democratic Party about Israel’s war in Gaza. A lot of that affected Dearborn, Hamtramck—metro Detroit’s Muslim and Arab communities. How do you rebuild that trust? Because a lot of them either stayed home or ended up voting for Donald Trump because he was the “peace candidate.”

CH: So I was endorsed for chair by both the Jewish Caucus and the Arab caucus, because there is a real want and need to build spaces where people communicate together.

There’s not going to be a Democratic party where everyone agrees on every single issue that that that that is out there, but there has got to be room for people to have conversation and be able to find places they agree with.

So for example, on ICE and the changing of what ‘America’ means when we have immigrants actually carrying their own papers because they’re afraid… I met with an American citizen who carries his passport every single day because he’s terrified of being stopped in the street.

That’s something the Jewish Caucus and the Arab caucus agree on, and they work together on. I think that’s what’s really powerful, is actually finding the spaces of agreement between people. My job is not to decide where the Democratic party goes. That’s the people’s job. Like the idea that the chair of the Democratic Party is supposed to set the position for all these people is just nonsense.

RM: I’m talking about outreach, really. There was a lot of trust broken. I talked with a ton of people, and we had 100,000 people vote uncommitted in a primary that took place in Michigan.

CH: We actively avoided conversations. And that does not work. I’m spending a lot of time in the Arab community and the Jewish community right now, actually, because I think it’s really important that we actually provide a space.

And I think that really the biggest thing that I am trying to solve is that people have felt forgotten by the Democratic Party. And I can tell you that that’s why I was in 32 counties last year. It’s why I was at more iftars than I’ve ever been in my entire life last year. It’s why finding that space between people is so important, and showing up and being part of the conversation and listening, which I think is probably the most important part politicians and party people have a tendency to talk a lot, but not to listen a lot. So that’s what I’m I’m doing as chair of this party, trying to bring people together.

Democrats need to fight back

RM: You talked about Eli Savit and Garlin Gilchrist being fighters for Michigan.

CH: Yes.

RM: Is that in response to the perception nationally of Democrats not being fighters for what they want? Because there’s a reason why the Democratic Party has a very, very low favorability rating right now. From the people I’ve talked to, especially at protests, they don’t feel like the Democratic Party or Democratic candidates are doing enough to fight for what they want.

CH: I will say that my best days are when Democrats are fighting back. I think we had the most progressive six months in the history of Michigan, when Democrats had the trifecta. But I get it like people are frustrated and they’re angry, and I would say two things about that.

One, we should always push our leaders to do more, and I’m all for that, and that’s important. But I will also say that for each of us, we’re waiting for the calvary to come, and we have to realize that we are the cavalry.

We have got to do the work to change and take the Republicans out of power.

We do these things called “People’s Town Halls.” It’s my favorite thing that I do as chair. We go into Republican districts and we actually bring people in because they refuse to meet with their own constituents, and we listen to people and what they’re feeling and the anger and the frustration.

And I get that people want that to change, but I will say this: right now, unfortunately, Democrats are in minority in the house by three seats, and in the Senate. We can change at this election. Democrats do have to prove they’re willing to fight back, absolutely, but we got to get to the place where in the power to actually change that first. And I have full faith that, when I’m going around the state, that we have Democrats that are ready to go out and do that work.

Activists in Ypsilanti Township keep fighting to halt a data center development associated with nuclear weapons research.

Stop the Data Center members gathered following an anonymous tip about a potential groundbreaking ceremony in South Hydro Park in Ypsi Township. So far, construction details for the $1.2 billion data center have been kept under wraps by University of Michigan and Los Alamos National Laboratory officials. 

Elizabeth Jordan is a spokesperson with Stop the Data Center. She says the facility will have several buildings, including one for nuclear weapons research that will need so much energy that a new DTE substation will need to be built on location. 

“One of the buildings will account for 10% of the energy, serving as a small data center for University of Michigan to lease, while the remaining 90% will power a much larger, top-secret military data center authorized for Los Alamos to conduct nuclear weapons research,” says Jordan.

Local officials are also against the data center’s construction in Ypsilanti Township. Jordan says the political influence of the University of Michigan could move the project forward despite existing zoning restrictions and widespread local opposition. 

Jordan says Stop the Data will continue to monitor the site closely, and host monthly public meetings. 

“[Stop the Data Center] is on Instagram…we also have big monthly meetings. The next one is May 9 at 2 p.m… it’s in North Hydro Park, right across the river,” Jordan says. 

The City of Highland Park is expanding its camera surveillance coverage of senior housing complexes. 

Police Chief James McMahon says seniors have complained about an increase in drug activity at the facilities. The city is looking to add more live cameras in five locations. 

McMahon says he anticipates new surveillance will be up and running within 60 days. 

-Reporting by Bre’Anna Tinsley

Additional headlines for Tuesday, Aprill 28, 2026

Highland Park adds to summer youth programming

Highland Park is also looking at how to serve its youngest residents better. Mayor Glenda McDonald announced extended programming for kids in the city this summer in an effort to keep them off the street. The city is partnering with local churches and the rec center to provide sports, mentorship and education programs. 

McDonald recalled a recent incident where a child was killed in Highland Park. She says she wants to keep kids safe. 

“I started out on a mission to try to put together a group of people with like mind, and wanted to save our children, give them something positive to do, make sure that they are engaged, encouraged and respected by the people in this city,” says McDonald.

Highland Park’s Ernest T Ford Recreational Center will provide sports, open gyms and meals all summer long. Local churches are offering mentorship and structured programming daily. All food and programing are free. 

-Reporting by Bre’Anna Tinsley

History of hats

Former hat designer and author Linda Hannah invites fashion and history buffs to explore the history of hats at the Detroit Public Library’s Main Branch Friday.

The event is open to all ages and starts at 4 p.m. 

Learn to cook with Konjo Me

Konjo Me serves Ethiopian food at the Detroit Shipping Company Tuesdays through Sunday. But this month it’s also offering a cooking class.

Attendees will learn to make one authentic vegan dish and a meat dish before sitting down to enjoy that meal.

The class is May 28, but registration is required. Find more info and purchase tickets at konjome.com.

Free Comic Book Day

Saturday is Free Comic Book Day and several shops in Southeast Michigan have in-store events. Vault of Midnight in Detroit will be offering 5 free comic books to each visitor from 11a.m. to 5 p.m. There are 40 comic books to choose from.

The store will also have sales tents outside with comics starting at $1 board games, manga and graphic novels. Vault of Midnight is located at 2857 East Grand Boulevard in Detroit.

Green Brain Comics in Dearborn will celebrate Free Comic Book Day with 3 free comics for visitors and an opportunity to earn more with non-perishable food donations to Gleaners Food Bank, donations to Friends for the Animals Metro Detroit or by wearing a costume.

Green Brain’s festivities begin at 10 a.m. with a special proclamation from Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud and end at 6pm. The shop will host several guest creators throughout the day. 

Green Brain is located at 13936 Michigan Avenue in Dearborn.

Listen to the latest episode of the “Detroit Evening Report” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

When you call 911 in Detroit, who’s paying for the ambulance? It’s a question that’s tripped up the Detroit City Council twice in two years… and the answer goes to a vote this afternoon.

Detroit pays three private ambulance companies between $500,000 and $600,000 each per year. That’s to keep a guaranteed number of rigs staged in the city.

Those same companies can also bill you — or your insurance — when they pick you up. Councilmember Angela Whitfield Calloway has called that “double dipping.” But The Detroit Documenters pulled the original 2023 contract documents and confirmed: that is how the deal is written.

So what is Detroit paying for? And what does it say about American healthcare that a city has to cut million-dollar checks just to guarantee an ambulance shows up?

Noah Kincade, coordinator for Detroit Documenters, joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to walk through what’s in the contracts and what’s at stake in a city council vote on the matter.

Editor’s Note: After this segment aired, the Detroit City Council voted 4-3 to send the ambulance contracts back to committee rather than vote on them directly. Council President James Tate was absent, and President Pro Tem Coleman Young II presided. Young, Scott Benson, Latisha Johnson and Denzel McCampbell voted to send the contracts back. Mary Waters, Angela Whitfield-Calloway and Renata Miller voted no. The Public Health and Service Committee will take the contracts up May 4 at 10 a.m.

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

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

More stories from The Metro

A few years ago, Hamas attacked Israeli civilians, and Israel responded against Palestinians with what many experts call genocide. 

Although the violence — which is still going on — occurrs in the Middle East, the actions have had reverberations for Americans. 

Anti-semitism and Islamophobia have grown worse. After October of 2023, the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and CAIR national recorded some of the highest levels of Islamophobic activity seen since September 11, 2001.

The Metro’s Sam Corey spoke to people practicing Islam in the area, and scholars of Islamophobia to better understand why this particular form of hatred is rising.

Click play on the media player above to hear the full story and additional comments by Sam Corey on The Metro.

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

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WDET is examining the highlights and history of Highland Park as part of our Crossing the Lines series.

The roughly three-square mile enclave, completely surrounded by Detroit, has many of the same issues as the Motor City. Some Highland Parkers say it’s often hard for visitors to know when they have left one city and traveled into the other.

Those residents include Pastor Leon Morehead, who leads the New Grace Missionary Baptist Church in Highland Park.

He’s a native of Detroit who has lived in Highland Park for about four years.

Morehead says the enclave is taking steps to reverse decades of decline.

The following interview was edited for length and clarity

Leon Morehead: It is becoming more of a walkable community. Many things are within walking distance right now. I love the tradition. I love the family atmosphere of Highland Park. I can talk to any of my local politicians and it’s just like we’re family. Even if I disagree with what they’re saying, they make themselves easily accessible.

Quinn Klinefelter, WDET News: Do you get the same sense from your parishioners? Does they seem pretty happy with the area?

LM: Yes, we love Highland Park. We even discussed one time about moving and everybody said, “Absolutely not, we will not move from Highland Park.” It’s centrally-located. And there’s so many things that Highland Park is on the brink of doing. There’s some great developments that are on the way. There’s some housing developments, there’s more jobs that are coming online and more community partnerships, which are helping us a lot.

QK: As a native Detroiter, when you come to Highland Park, did you notice much difference between the two?

LM: With Highland Park being inside of Detroit, it’s almost like you’re just riding through one city. Highland Park was built to be a suburb, I was told. I actually grew up in the north end area of Detroit. As a child, we would ride through and we would see the Chrysler plant and the Ford workers that were working in Highland Park. So it’s not really much of a difference for me because I’ve already experienced it.

My children grow up now in an area where everybody knows them. It’s like the old school days. They don’t want my children to get in trouble. They’ll say, “Hey, he came in at eight o’clock at night instead of six o’clock.” Things like that. I love that part of the Highland Park community. It is an enclave. But it’s an enclave of love.

QK: If you suddenly were granted the power to change things to whatever you would like, is there anything you see around Highland Park that you would like to address?

LM: Just like many other places, I wish we could have the roads together. Our roads are not bad. But there are some street roads that I just wish were a little bit better. Especially with the hot and cold temperatures, we all deal with the potholes. We have a good [Department of Public Works] that fixes them. But I just wish we had a way to have self-sustaining roads.

QK: For people who maybe have not been through Highland Park, what would you tell them? What would you like people to know about the area if they haven’t been here before?

LM: Stop at some of our local shops. One of the greatest things we have is our recreation department. We got a really nice park. They have concerts every Wednesday in the summertime. And when you go there, everything is safe. Everybody’s having a good time. Everybody’s just looking at each other enjoying the family atmosphere. So it’s a great thing.

There’s no doubt the Detroit Lions have scarred many of their fans, being the first team to ever go 0-16.

Heartbreaking losses that seemed to defy the rule book, like Calvin Johnson’s non-catch in Chicago. Or the picked up penalty in the playoffs vs the Cowboys.

Losing affects the players too, like Hall of Fame running back Barry Sanders faxing his retirement to his hometown newspaper.

It’s not easy for anyone around that franchise, apparently. The same goes for Dearborn-raised, Brooklyn-based comedian Joel Walkowski.

In his book “Honolulu Blues: How Loving a Losing Team Created a Winning Man” Walkowski recounts the story of his family’s personal trauma, alongside the failings of his favorite team, the Detroit Lions. It’s incredibly funny and deeply personal in a way that many can relate to.

Walkowski has been on stages across the country. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, on Comedy Central and a bunch of other places. He tells WDET’s Russ McNamara why he decided to write the book.

Joel Walkowski: It was during the [Lions coach Matt] Patricia era, and you knew that fourth quarter collapse was always coming, and knowing that the hard thing was coming kind of made it easier. And that made me think, like, ‘oh, being a Lions fan impacted me in a profound way’.

And then as part of my, like, sobriety journey, I was tasked to do goals for myself. Like, what do I really want out of life? What do I think maximizes who I am? And it was like, “Oh, if I don’t write this book, I will always regret it.” So it became my purpose, my number one goal, and like I revolved my life around writing this book.

Russ McNamara: It says a lot about the depth of a book when a historically bad franchise with its own share of tragedy isn’t the darkest stuff in it.

JW: I’ll say that there is maybe every bit of darkness that could exist is in this book, but it’s handled with lightness. And I do think the overlap is there because I started to get very serious about my sobriety, September 2021 exactly.

And I don’t know how familiar you guys are with Lions history, but things started to be done very different. So it’s Campbell-Holmes era. It’s Sheila Ford. I’m bouncing back from, like, my darkest points. So like looking at Jared [Goff] and Dan [Campbell] and Brad [Holmes], as I’m like, you know, white knuckling 90 days of sobriety and thinking, like, “Oh, is there a different way to do this?” It was so helpful.

RM: In the book, you’re very open about your experience growing up, and you specifically mentioned essentially getting addicted to speed as a child—as many people of our age did. At what point did you, even as a child, kind of realize something’s not right?

JW: I was seven years old when I was put on very high doses of Adderall. Then I get to high school and there was a high school video program. I started to want to make different videos. I wanted to have more ambitions, but I would just start taking pill after pill after pill, pulling all-nighters and really string myself out.

But along those same lines, every time I’d produce something, I got validation. I was seen for the first time. So this finding of my identity was happening while I was abusing a substance.

I didn’t become an addict because I was letting loose or partying. I became an addict alone in my room, fostering some ambition, because putting something out there was the only way I had any value, any worth, right?

RM: How much of that value and worth did you sort of get tied into with following the ins and outs of the Detroit Lions?

JW: My life revolves around Sundays, but I try and make them only value added. Regardless of a win or loss, I play basketball from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. If we win, I show my girlfriends the highlights. If we lose, I turn off my phone and don’t check any football news until Tuesday.

If you get to the very ending of this book, which dovetails with, you know, a certain 17-point halftime lead, [Lions vs 49ers in 2023 NFC Championship Game] that lesson was given to me is “the win is the friends and relationships we make along the way.” And that it took me nearly 40 years to learn that.

Joel Walkowski’s book “Honolulu Blues: How Loving a Losing Team Created a Winning Man” is out July 14, 2026 just in time for the start of Detroit Lions training camp. It is available for pre-order now.

The Trump administration has cracked down on immigration. President Donald Trump has conducted more ICE raids, signaled tougher security at the border, and has prevented fewer legal immigrants from entering the country. 

The Trump administration is also trying to end humanitarian immigration programs. One of those is Temporary Protected Status or TPS. 

The administration has revoked deportation protections from about one million people in the U.S. Most of them are from Venezuela and Honduras. It’s trying to revoke TPS from other countries but the courts have blocked the attempt.

The Department of Homeland Security says many countries on the TPS list are no longer in crisis. But many representing immigrants in court say otherwise.

Megan Hauptman is a Litigation Staff Attorney for the International Refugee Assistance Project. She is fighting the Trump administration to keep TPS for over 6,000 people from Syria. Over 1,500 of them live in Michigan alone. 

What exactly is TPS status? And what would happen if more people were to lose it? Megan Hauptman spoke with The Metro‘s Robyn Vincent about this and more.

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

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Large groups of teenagers have been gathering in downtown Detroit organized on TikTok and Snapchat. It’s part of a national trend being called “teen takeovers.” Most of the kids were just hanging out. But some of these gatherings turned chaotic. There have been brawls, vandalism, and an attempted robbery on Woodward. On April 11, a gun was fired, though no one was hurt.

Two of the 16-year-olds who organized the first gathering sat next to Mayor Mary Sheffield at a press conference last week. Daveion Page said he did it because he was bored. Danasha’ Tidwell said the violence that followed was “harmful and very unacceptable.”

Where can Detroit kids go to be safe and have fun? And, what’s the responsibility of a city to help grow and develop young people? 

Jerjuan Howard is the first director of Detroit’s new Office of Youth Affairs. He’s also an Army veteran, founder of the Umoja Debate League, and the owner of a new bookstore on Puritan Avenue. He spoke with The Metro‘s Robyn Vincent.

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

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