It's episode 47 of Michigan's premier progressive podcast!

The Gotion electric vehicle battery component plant is causing a rift in the Big Rapids area, located in Mecosta County. Local Republican leaders jumped at the chance to have the California-based company build the new plant in their area--an area in which 18% of its residents live in poverty. But because Gotion's parent company is from China, right wing Republican politicians and officials, along with those from the right wing echo chamber, are using scary xenophobic and anti-Asian rhetoric to prevent the plant from being built. 

Anna Gustafson from Michigan Advance wrote an extensive and informative piece on this entire saga, and she joins me to talk about how the right wing became galvanized to try to stop the plant, and how congressional and state senators and representatives have joined in the fight, despite originally backing the plant! Anna's also written many other interesting and important stories across the entire state of Michigan. Please, read her stories at Michigan Advance!

Anna Gustafson of Michigan AdvanceMy opening monologue talks about how not only as right wing billionaire Elon Musk destroyed Twitter, or "X," but he's using the platform to spew right wing nonsense and conspiracy theories. I discuss how his anti-vaccine stances, and many other anti-vaxxers on the right, have led to more Republican voters dying from COVID after the vaccines were made available. 

And my "Last Call" puts a bookend on my talk with Ms. Gustafson as my Republican congressman, John Moolenaar of Midland, continues to fight against Gotion. It's strange he's fighting against this plant from being built in his district since he's never attacked Dow Chemical from working with Chinese businesses. 

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