Michigan
‘Debate week’ set to test GOP, Democratic hopefuls in top Michigan races
Lansing — Republican candidates for governor and Democratic contenders for the U.S. Senate will square off in a series of televised debates this week, giving voters across Michigan their best chances yet to compare the political hopefuls.
At 7 p.m. Tuesday, the Grand Rapids NBC affiliate WOOD-TV will host a televised statewide debate featuring the three Democrats running for the U.S. Senate: former Wayne County health official Abdul El-Sayed of Ann Arbor, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow of Royal Oak and U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens of Birmingham.
Then, at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, WJBK-TV (Fox 2 Detroit) will host a debate for the three Republican candidates for governor: former Attorney General Mike Cox of Livonia, U.S. Rep. John James of Shelby Township and businessman Perry Johnson of Bloomfield Hills. The next night, WOOD-TV, which has been using the phrase “debate week” to promote the upcoming events, will host another debate with the three GOP gubernatorial hopefuls at 7 p.m. Thursday.
The string of forums will provide voters a chance to hear from people who want to be the state’s future leaders, said David Dulio, a political science professor at Oakland University.
“Any opportunity that voters have to hear directly from candidates in an unfiltered, uncontrolled, uncurated environment is good,” Dulio said.
The debates will come about four weeks before the Aug. 4 primary election, and many Michigan residents have absentee ballots available to them.
Michigan’s governor, Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, can’t run again because of term limits. Meanwhile, the state has an open U.S. Senate seat because Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, decided against seeking reelection.
Many Democrats said they believe the race for their party’s nomination to replace Peters could be tight. If that’s the case, the televised debate on Tuesday could be important, said Adrian Hemond, CEO of the Lansing-based political consulting firm Grassroots Midwest.
“A marginal difference is a big difference in a close race,” Hemond said of the potential impact of the debate.
Who’s running to be Michigan’s governor?
The three remaining GOP candidates for governor, Cox, James and Johnson, are all expected to participate in the debates this week.
James has avoided most of the primary forums that have been organized. James ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2018 and 2020 before winning in 2022 his U.S. House seat that represents a portion of Macomb County as well as Rochester and Rochester Hills.
President Donald Trump endorsed James to be Michigan’s next governor on June 22.
Johnson has dominated the TV airwaves this year, shelling out millions of dollars of his own money to promote his bid. He made his fortune developing quality controls for the auto industry. He is running on eliminating the state’s 4.25% personal income tax, which currently generates more than $13 billion in revenue annually.
Cox, who was Michigan’s attorney general from 2003 through 2010, has worked as a lawyer with The Mike Cox Law Firm.
The Democratic side has two candidates for governor: Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson of Detroit, and Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson of Fenton.
Benson is viewed as the favorite to be the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in part because of her slew of endorsements, including that of the United Auto Workers union. She didn’t participate in a June 4 primary debate organized by Fox 2.
Who’s running for the U.S. Senate in Michigan?
Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary has gained the national spotlight as a test of how the party’s voters might be leaning after the 2024 presidential election.
El-Sayed, a progressive candidate who ran unsuccessfully for governor eight years ago, has said he wants to build an economy that works for working people, provide guaranteed health care coverage and protect clean air and water.
He’s often clashed with Stevens, who’s been a member of the U.S. House since 2018. Stevens has said she wants to focus on combating rising costs and protecting personal freedoms and entitlement programs like Social Security.
McMorrow was first elected to the state Senate in 2018. Her campaign website vows that she will root out corruption, protect rights and keep tax dollars working at home instead of funding wars.
The Republican nominee will be former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers of White Lake, who ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 2024.
How to watch the debates
The WOOD-TV debates on Tuesday and Thursday will be carried by CBS Detroit in the Detroit area, WBSF in the Flint area, WLAJ in the Lansing television market, WWTV in the Traverse City area, WJMN in the Marquette area and WBKB in the Alpena area.
The Wednesday night Fox 2 Detroit debate will be streamed on its website. The first 30 minutes of it will be televised on Fox 2 during The Pulse’s regular time slot, hosted by anchor Roop Raj, who is moderating the debate.
cmauger@detroitnews.com
Sterling Stamping Plant is the largest in the world
Ed Daniels, vice president of North America injection and stamping operations, discusses the process of producing metal parts for Stellantis models.
Warren — Hulking metal presses line one wall of Stellantis NV’s cavernous stamping plant here, punching out the raw shapes of Jeep doors, Dodge hoods and Ram tailgates in rapid succession.
Nearby, swinging yellow robots continue the tightly choreographed work, gluing and pressing and welding smaller components to the sheet metal that eventually will start to resemble the shape of a truck or SUV.
Seven miles north, in Sterling Heights, Stellantis operates an even larger stamping plant — the biggest in the world, at 2.7 million square feet — that does much of the same work, churning out various shapes of steel and aluminum 24 hours a day.
Together, these lesser-known links in the manufacturing supply chain support all of Stellantis’ big North American assembly plants — from next-door Warren Truck Assembly Plant, where the Jeep Grand Wagoneer SUV is built, to facilities in Windsor and Mexico that make minivans and pickups.
Inside Stellantis’ Huge Detroit Stamping Plants
The Detroit News recently got a rare look inside the automaker’s Sterling and Warren stamping plants, which are key to the company’s turnaround plan.
The Metro Detroit stamping plants, the automaker’s only two such facilities in the United States, have at times struggled in recent years, facing major job cuts and worker morale issues amid slowing sales and shifting production plans. But under Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa, the facilities are expected to cram in more workload — and add staff — as Stellantis begins a new five-year strategic turnaround plan, which includes a heavy focus on its most profitable North American market.
The carmaker’s goal: grow sales by more than a third to 1.9 million annually by 2030 as it launches 23 vehicles, including 11 all-new models. The company also is directing billions of dollars of investment into its U.S. manufacturing footprint due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
“Stamping has never really been viewed as the sexy side of automotive manufacturing, we’re relatively invisible,” said Ed Daniels Jr., vice president of North America injection and stamping operations. “Because when you look at the commercials and advertisements, it’s always a beautiful Ram rolling off the assembly line or climbing the side of a mountain.
“But we’re the inception of that vehicle,” he said. “This is where raw materials are turned into commodities and parts.”
The Detroit News recently got a rare look inside the two plants that combined employ about 3,000 people. The automaker wanted to show off a newly-installed blanking press at Warren Stamping and other machinery like a high-speed transfer press and a robot that spots flaws in the metal.
Hiring expected
The blanking press unspools long coils of metal and chops them up into pieces that can then be shaped into roofs, fenders and floor pans. Stellantis shipped the massive machine to Warren from its idled Belvidere Assembly Plant in Illinois last year.
After upgrades to the machine, executives said it’s able to produce as many as 120,000 metal blanks per week. It will save Stellantis money since the plant will no longer need to pay a supplier to break down the coils before the metal arrives there.
The blanker addition is a big deal for the plant and signals that the company wants to bring more work in-house and invest in the facility over the coming years, said Romaine McKinney III, president of United Auto Workers Local 869, which represents workers at the factory.
The plant has already brought back all of its laid-off UAW workers, and McKinney said he anticipates more hiring to get underway if sales grow and new Stellantis vehicles come to market.
In another corner of the Warren facility, one of the fastest press lines in the world — known internally as the Hellcat — pushes as many as 15 pieces of metal through per minute. Dies that weigh up to 50 tons apiece squish the material into the shapes of doors and hoods before robotic arms snatch them out and place them on conveyor belts. Midway through a shift, workers can reconfigure the machine to make a different component, a process that takes just five minutes.
Robots check for quality
Curtis Booth, who manages Warren Stamping, said manual processes inside the plant have become increasingly automated, and safer, over the last couple decades, even as the automaker’s two stamping factories still utilize some presses that were installed in the 1960s.
The latest high-tech addition is the Automated Body Inspection System, or ABIS. It’s a camera system mounted on a robot that automatically checks the quality of components and flags anything in need of repair.
Auto plants of all kinds are increasingly turning to these types of camera systems, infused with artificial intelligence, to catch flaws in sheet metal and other components before they are shipped. Booth said worker visual inspections are still used. But in some cases the human eye has too much subjectivity, and the ABIS removes the guesswork.
Greg Bauer, who manages Sterling Stamping, said his plant has added staff over the past year, and expects to continue hiring as more work is assigned to the facility. There is no space at the plant to add more presses, but officials have figured out how to increase efficiency — quickly toggling back and forth between making doors for a Chrysler Pacifica and Dodge Charger on on a single machine, for example.
“We want to bring high-volume parts into the plant, and we want to maximize the capacity of the equipment,” Daniels said.
lramseth@detroitnews.com
MENOMINEE, Mich. (WLUK) — 24-year-old Ethan Raymond Masters of Menominee was arrested on sexual assault charges June 30th, according to the Menominee County Sheriff’s Office.
According to a news release from the Sheriff’s Office, deputies learned of an incident involving a 24-year-old man and a 12-year-old girl which happened in Menominee June 22nd. Following a sexual assault investigation, police charged Masters.
Masters was arraigned July 2nd on 2 counts of Criminal Sexual Conduct First Degree. He remains in the Menominee County Jail on a $250,000 cash bond.
Menominee City Police and the Michigan State Police Crime Laboratory of Marquette assisted with the investigation.
Michigan
Michigan immigration advocates react after Supreme Court ruling on Temporary Protected Status
Twenty-four thousand immigrants in Michigan have Temporary Protected Status (TPS), but a recent Supreme Court decision could put their protection in jeopardy.
TPS is a humanitarian protection granted to U.S. immigrants fleeing dangerous situations in their home countries, often from natural disasters or political instability. The status allows immigrants from the designated countries to live and work in the U.S.
The Supreme Court overturned those for 356,000 Haitians and Syrians in a recent decision. While the court’s decision directly impacted Haitian and Syrian immigrants, it also established that the Secretary of Homeland Security has the authority to determine TPS status without judicial review or input from the courts.
That means that the Secretary of Homeland Security can eliminate TPS for any immigrant group that is currently in the U.S. under protection. That puts 1.3 million immigrants in the U.S. at risk of deportation. In Florida, 113,000 healthcare workers with TPS are at risk of deportation. The Haitian population in Philadelphia is also expressing concerns about what comes next for them.
“The Supreme Court turned its back on our moral and legal commitments to people seeking safety,” said Christine Sauvé, manager of Policy and Communication at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center. “The decision eliminates legal protections for people fleeing danger and allows the Trump Administration to really advance its mass deportation agenda.”
Left without the ability to live or work in the U.S., these Haitian and Syrian immigrants with TPS now face deportation. But going back home could still be incredibly dangerous.
“It’s not really an option to go back to their home country,” said Melanie Goldberg, immigration attorney with the Institute of Metro Detroit. “In the case of Haiti, they don’t even have an airport in Port-au-Prince that’s operational. Yet they say it’s safe for these citizens to go back.”
In Michigan, immigrants with TPS have contributed $349 million to the state’s economy, a sign that they are deeply embedded in the community, according to Sauvé.
“Many TPS holders have been in our communities for a very long time,” Sauvé said. “They’ve really spent decades building their lives here in Michigan. We welcomed them here, only to see that completely ripped away with the stroke of a pen.”
The Michigan Immigrant Rights Center encourages Haitian and Syrian immigrants with TPS, as well as any immigrants in the U.S. with a TPS designation, to seek out a qualified legal service provider and review the “Know Your Rights” Materials on the MIRC’s website
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