The Metro

Every American president is hanging on one wall in Midtown Detroit. Damon DeWitt started painting them in 2008, when he was 25, living in Miami during the Obama campaign, working two jobs and trying to decide whether he was actually going to be an artist. He'd painted about six pictures in his life. So he made himself a deal: paint every American president, and if he still wanted to make art at the end of it, keep going. Forty-five portraits later — each one in a different style, with James Buchanan hung deliberately upside down — "Dads of Democracy" is at Wayne State University's Hilberry Gateway Gallery.

DeWitt joins Robyn Vincent to talk about the presidency, American power, and the connection between art and politics.

Editor's note: The collection is on loan to Wayne State from Mary Zatina and Kevin Prihod. Mary Zatina is WDET's general manager.

Yousef Rabhi is a Democratic Socialist. He beat 12-year incumbent Chris Taylor by 10 points — over the endorsements of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin — in a primary that was part of something bigger: a progressive wave. Rabhi spoke with host Robyn Vincent about why he ran for mayor, and how he wants to govern the city as a self-declared outsider. 

The Paint the Park Mural and Art Festival returns to Allen Park, in partnership with the Downtown Development Authority and The Mural People. It's free and open to the public Aug. 22-23.

Eight muralists will create large-scale public artworks throughout the city, showcasing the vibrancy of the community. There will also be more than 50 artist and maker booths, and demonstrations.

Plus, Slow Roll Detroit’s first Downriver ride and a mural bike tour will be led by founder Jason Hall on Saturday morning.

Jason Hall and Dan Armnad, co-founder and co-owner of The Mural People, joined Tia Graham to talk more about the festival and the Downriver communities.

Michigan voters wrote reproductive rights into the state constitution in 2022. Planned Parenthood of Michigan had 14 health centers then. Today it has seven. Three closed on a single day at the end of July — Lansing, Livonia and Warren. None of them performed procedural abortions. The clinic in Ferndale is still open only because Oakland County commissioners voted on Aug. 13 to spend up to $1.5 million keeping it there through 2028.

Ferndale sits in state Sen. Mallory McMorrow's district. She spent the past year running for the U.S. Senate, then suspended her campaign a month before the primary. She joins host Robyn Vincent on what the state did and didn't do to stop the closures — and why she walked away from the race.

In the days after El-Sayed's win, anti-Muslim hate targeting him online rose twenty-fold, according to the Center for the Study of Organized Hate. Researchers who track this say the language itself has shifted: from calling Muslims a terror threat, to calling them a threat to civilization.

Last night, that rhetoric arrived in Dearborn. Self-described anti-Islamic activist Jake Lang and Detroit pastor Lorenzo Sewell came to the city with a promised pig roast, timed to the city council meeting.

Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud has been answering this with something other than anger. Host Robyn Vincent spoke with him about what that message is, and how he's working to keep Dearborn residents safe.

The Gordie Howe International Bridge includes a mile and a half of cable and steel stretching across the Detroit River. The architect calls it a work of public art. It can be seen from around the city. On the American side sits Delray and parts of Southwest Detroit — neighborhoods that have long sat in the shadow of heavy industry. So we want to know: When a billion dollar project lands on a neighborhood that spent decades being overlooked — can it actually leave the people who live there better off?

Paul Draus is a sociologist at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. He spoke about this with host Robyn Vincent.

This has been a hard moment for many Jewish people. Antisemitism has been on the rise, and Americans' views of Israel are now mostly negative. Those are big changes. And they’re translating into political shifts. It's unknown know how a majority of liberal Jewish residents voted during the Democratic Senate Primary. But  a lot of older Jews are unsure of how to vote now that Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is the Democratic nominee.

Andy Levin organized for unions and served as president of his synagogue before running for office. Levin won his father's seat in 2018 and held it for four years before edistricting put him in a primary against Congresswoman Haley Stevens. A super PAC tied to AIPAC spent more than $4 million to beat him, and it worked.

Levin spoke with host Robyn Vincent about why he's supporting El-Sayed, and why many Jewish Metro Detroiters are struggling in this political moment.

In 2001, Detroit opened its polls with a big question on the ballot. Twenty-one people were running for mayor. Dennis Archer was stepping aside after two terms, and Detroit was about to pick somebody new.

But that wasn’t the focus for long. Because the day was Tuesday, September 11, and the twin towers came down that morning. So, WDET had to turn east and stay home at the same time: cover the deadliest attack in the country’s history, and cover a city that was still, that same afternoon, quietly choosing who would lead it.

Jerome Vaughn helped run that coverage. It won an award, though the award isn’t the part he remembers. He remembers that the voting didn’t stop — that was the story underneath the story. “Democracy goes on,” Vaughn said.

He joined WDET in January of 1992, when he walked into this building as an intern and — apart from one year away at Michigan Radio — never left. He’s run the WDET newsroom since 2007. Rosa Parks; Aretha Franklin; Kwame Kilpatrick; a bankruptcy, and a city working to rebuild. Through it all, he was in the room, or he led someone who was.

He also spent those years mentoring generations of Detroit journalists who credit him with their entry into media, and created the Detroit Evening Report so that Detroiters of color would hear their own city in their own voices

On his last day at WDET, he joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to look at how the city changed over his three decades in journalism, and what he learned along the way.

Some customers reach Coriander Kitchen and Farm by boat — down a canal in Detroit's Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood, past backyards and boathouses.

Nearly every parcel in that neighborhood sits inside a federal flood hazard area. The city has $20 million to change that, and closing the canals is one option on the table. Residents beat back a version of the same idea in 2022. This summer, more than 200 of them took boats onto the water in protest.

Chef Alison Heeres and Traci Rubin of the Jefferson Chalmers WATER Project talk with Robyn Vincent about what the canals mean to the neighborhood, who pays when a seawall fails, and what it would take to keep the water open. Have thoughts? Email the show at [email protected]

It’s said that all politics is local. But these days, that doesn’t appear to be so true. Instead, a lot of it is national because that’s where the drama is — much of it at the hands of President Donald Trump. The Republicans who disagree with the president are more likely to lose during an election year. That’s why Trump’s endorsements for Senate candidate Mike Rogers and gubernatorial candidate John James matter so much.

Dennis Darnoi is the founder of Densar Consulting, based in Farmington. He spoke with host Robyn Vincent about the Republicans advancing to the general election in both the Senate and governor’s race.