The Takeaway

Gretchen Whitmer (D) is the second woman governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm (D), the current Secretary of Energy, was the first. No Republican woman has ever served as governor of Michigan, but the relatively unknown, Trump-endorsed Tudor Dixon would be the first if elected over incumbent Gretchen Whitmer. After winning in 2018, Governor Whitmer quickly became a star in her party, and in 2020 delivered the Democratic response to President Trump’s final State of the Union address.    In Michigan's May primaries, 10 candidates were seeking the Republican nomination, but half were disqualified when it was discovered that their nominating petitions included tens of thousands of forged signatures. The early Republican front runner and the Republican candidate with the biggest campaign budget were among those disqualified early, and suddenly Tudor Dixon was leading a much narrower field. With fewer dollars to spend than her opponent, Dixon is relying more heavily on earned media. It’s an incentive to be more outrageous and earn free news coverage to keep her name in front of the voters. Dixon effectively did this earlier in September when she used her address to the annual CPAC conference to make light of a 2020 plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer. In August, two men were convicted of conspiracy in the case.  Michigan voters are also in a unique position this year. Not only will they decide the state’s governor, they will also vote on a ballot measure which could ensure that access to abortion is protected by the state’s constitution. Governor Whitmer is a proponent of abortion access; meanwhile, Tudor Dixon has been an open opponent of abortion, even in the case of rape or incest. Democratic ad attacks have made this a central theme of the campaign because much like the Governor, Dixon has also emphasized her identity as a woman and a mother. So, what will be the outcome in this SHElection? We hear from Simon Schuster, a senior political reporter with M Live and Jenna Bednar, a professor of political science and public policy at the University of Michigan and External Faculty of the Santa Fe Institute about Michigan's governor's race. 

The new animated series, Spirit Rangers, debuts on Netflix on Indigenous People’s Day, October 10th. It follows the story of Kodi, Summer and Eddy, junior park rangers who have secret abilities to be Spirit Rangers and protect the environment. Series creator Karissa Valencia joins us to discuss the show.

"Quiet quitting" is the latest workplace trend sparking conversation in social and mainstream media. The idea went viral after TikTok user Zaid Khan, a 24-year-old engineer in New York City, talked about not actually outright quitting a job, but "quitting" the idea that you have to go above and beyond the job description.  It also spawned a spinoff, "quiet firing," which refers to employers who don't offer raises or promotions, or use other tactics to passive-aggressively push employees out of a job. We speak with Sarah Damaske, Professor of Sociology and Labor & Employment Relations at Penn State University, about "quiet quitting," "quiet firing," and what these viral ideas say about the current state of labor and work. 

The 1835 Treaty of New Echota between Cherokee leaders and the U.S. government forced the Cherokee Nation off their ancestral lands east of the Mississippi River and onto the deadly "Trail of Tears”- what is now present-day Oklahoma. A quarter of the Cherokee population died on that treacherous journey.  Today, nearly 200 years after the The Treaty of New Echota displaced the Cherokee in forced migration West, Cherokee Nation is one of the country’s largest tribes. And the treaty which pushed them off their lands also contains an unfulfilled article: a guaranteed right to send a non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives. Now, Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr., is calling on Congress to make good on the promise of its predecessors as soon as this year. We spoke with Delegate Kim Teehee, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Director of Government Relations for Cherokee Nation and Senior Vice President of Government Relations Cherokee Nation Businesses. In 2019, Chief Hoskin designated Kim TeeHee as the first Cherokee Nation delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives.

The bestselling book, "The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together," tells stories of racism at the root of our most complicated issues, like white communities burying their lavish public pools instead of sharing them with their Black neighbors.  In the new podcast, also titled The Sum of Us, Heather McGhee discovers the stories of everyday Americans who are working to build multi-racial communities to rally against the racist policies, practices and ideas built into our society. McGhee comes with some examples, and explains how the podcast differs from and continues the goal of her original book. 

As Republican governors like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott send migrants to Democrat run cities and the Supreme Court's conservative majority evades long-standing legal procedure, Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer discusses how the cruelty of these practices is still the point.  His bestselling collection of essays, "The Cruelty is the Point," argues the Trump administration effectively used cruel policies to rally its supporters. Now out on paperback with new writing, The Cruelty is the Point: Why Trump's America Endures, brings Serwer's premise to the latest issues in politics. 

The devastation caused by Hurricane Fiona has re-opened conversations about the unsustainable nature of Puerto Rico’s status as a colonial entity. Many are calling for statehood as a solution to bureaucratic challenges that slow down disaster relief. In revisiting this discussion, we hear from Christina Ponsa-Kraus, a Geroge Welwood Murray Professor of Legal History at Columbia Law School and Dr. Charles Venator-Santiago, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Connecticut, about the status of Puerto Rico’s future and the Island’s political possibilities.  

Lynsey Addario has spent more than two decades capturing intimate and human moments in the midst of the world’s most devastating disasters and conflicts. Her stunning photography shines a light on humanitarian issues including war, gender based violence, and climate change. Most recently, she has been documenting the war in Ukraine and its impact on the country’s civilians. Now the School of Visual Arts is honoring her with a career-spanning solo exhibition of her courageous work. Lynsey shares why photojournalism is important, how she braves dangerous situations, and what inspires her through it all.

Puerto Rico is still reeling from Hurricane Fiona, which has brought widespread flooding, damage, and power outages across the island.  We speak with Alana Casanova-Burgess, host of the La Brega podcast, about what she's been hearing from Puerto Ricans following Hurricane Fiona, and hear "desahogos," or "vents" from the Puerto Rican diaspora that La Brega has been collecting. La Brega invites Puerto Ricans to share audio memos about how they are feeling following Hurricane Fiona at http://labregapodcast.com/buzon. 

There are still a lot of barriers to voting, and when we’re thinking about access to voting, it should be easier for every voter to cast a ballot.  According to the CDC, about 1 in 4 adults in the U.S. live with some type of disability: nearly 61 million people. When it comes time to cast their ballots, voters with disabilities can face a number of challenges at the polls. For in-person voters in the 2016 election, the Government Accountability Office found that less than half of polling places were accessible from parking to the voting booth. Accessibility increased in 2020, and people with disabilities made large gains in the historic voter turnout surge of 2020. Expanded access to mail-in ballots pushed disability turnout to 17.7 million in 2020, up from 16 million in 2016, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. We spoke with Michelle Bishop, Voter Access & Engagement Manager at the National Disability Rights Network, and Michelle explained how the steps taken during the 2020 presidential election and against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, lowered some of those barriers and helped make it safer to cast a ballot for all voters,  including voters who have a disability.

Jean-Michel Basquiat remains one of the most impactful artists more than three decades after his tragically untimely death. His boundary-defying artwork has influenced music, fashion, and film and television. It has also completely transformed the contemporary art world. In 2017, his 1982 piece Untitled sold for $110.5 million. This is the Jean-Michel Basquiat the world knows and now his family has decided to share a more personal side of their beloved son and brother. This spring, his sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux opened a 12,000 square foot exhibition that features hundreds of their brother's artwork, photos, and personal artifacts so visitors can get to know him in an entirely new way.

A newly national show from WNYC Studios debuts this Sunday. Notes from America will be a live weekly call-in show inviting you to listen in and join conversations on the country’s attempt at a plural society.  From conspiracy theories and social media algorithms to Christian nationalism and minority rule, Notes from America will parse out the big issues in our culture, media and democracy all to explore how we got to this point in our country’s history and how to grapple with where we might be going.  We heard from host Kai Wright about the show's "dinner party" atmosphere and how you can join the conversation. 

This week marks Bisexual Awareness Week – a week to celebrate the bi-plus community and help bring light to the issues that bi-plus individuals face. The bi-plus community – which includes bisexual, pansexual, and omnisexual folks, among others – is the largest population within the LGBTQ community. But among other issues, bi-plus folks disproportionately struggle with physical and mental health issues. According to the Bisexual Resource Center, bi-plus people face even higher rates of depression and anxiety than lesbians and gay men. And for the first time, the Biden Administration hosted a Bisexual Health Equity Roundtable. Yesterday, 15 bi-plus healthcare policy experts and advocates met with federal agency officials at the Department of Health and Human Services to discuss the health disparities facing the bisexual community, and made policy recommendations to address these issues. We spoke with one of those advocates, Kierra Johnson, the Executive Director of the National LGBTQ Task Force.

Frida Kahlo is everywhere. Her signature flower crown, bold unibrow, and brightly colored dress have become cultural shorthand for third wave feminism. Her life, at times turbulent and painful, has been depicted dramatically in movies and on television. This extraordinary artist was not just an icon, she was human. A Broadway musical about her life, currently in development, aims to show a different side of the Mexican artist. The show is based on the book Intimate Frida, written by her niece Isolda P. Kahlo, as well as personal conversations with her family in Mexico. Composer Jaime Lozano seeks to highlight the Frida not everyone knew behind the now-legendary icon, and honor their shared Mexican heritage on the Broadway stage.

Detroit, Michigan is the largest Black-majority city in the United States, with almost 78-percent of the population Black.  And since 1955, Detroit has been represented in Congress by at least one Black representative.  But a redistricting process and a primary in which 8 of 9 Black candidates split 71-percent of the vote left the only non-Black candidate, Shri Thanedar, to win with just 28-percent of the vote. We speak with Mario Morrow, political consultant based in Detroit and CEO of Mario Morrow and Associates, and Andra Gillespie, political scientist at Emory University, and explore the history of Black representation in Michigan, the political and electoral forces which led to this result, and the implications of this outcome on the Black community in Detroit.