Stateside: Thursday, July 23, 2026

From Michigan Public, this is stateside. I'm April Bear. Today, Michigan cities and police forces get serious about tracking e-bike use and injuries. A lot of these so-called e-bikes may not be actually fitting the legal standards of an e-bike and are going faster than 28 miles an hour. Also, how art can reframe some of life's most difficult experiences, like incarceration. I don't think I liked poetry until I started writing it at the age of 24 when I was locked up in jail for some drug charges. Plus, we bring you the second in a pair of conversations with Democratic candidates for a U.S. Senate seat. You know, there's not a town hall that I do where somebody doesn't come up to me and say, I voted for Donald Trump three times, and I'm voting for you. And I'll ask them why. And they'll say it's because I really think you want me to have health care. Abdul El-Sayed joins us. Coming up today on stateside.

Welcome to stateside. I'm April Bear. On today's show, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed lays out his platform in the Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat. We can actually have a Democratic Party that is going to show up and push back against that corporateized system to put people back in the center of our politics. Yesterday we heard from Haley Stevens, who's also a candidate. That's available at our website. And just a note, we have reached out to Republican candidate Mike Rogers and have not heard back from his campaign. If he would like to come on the show, we would relish the chance to give him the same opportunity. If anybody knows him. Please put a word in for us. But before we get on to the election beat, let's talk about something that you're no doubt seeing on the streets and sidewalks in your town. There's a new set of wheels popping up all over Michigan. Electric bikes are an exciting option for commuters, for students, or really anybody trying to save a buck on their transportation needs. But they do come with some different safety concerns that are getting attention in policy circles all over the state. Sabolskis is a data reporter with the Detroit News and she wrote about this recently. Lane, hi, welcome to stateside. Hi, nice to be here. So e-bikes, I mean, they're red hot right now. It seems like everybody wants one. Can you give us an idea of the scale of the surge in injuries that's been happening as more and more people have been riding these? Yeah, yeah. So there's been an increase for sure. A lot of it is they're getting a lot more popular. They're very accessible on sites like Amazon and other online retailers. And they're not as expensive as they used to be right. And local hospitals are seeing that go up. So especially among children. So some of the data that I got from a Corwell emergency room, it was the Beaumont University, I believe, was that they've been seeing those. increases in injuries that they're saying go up every single year since 2023. I think they started with six e-bike injuries in the entire year of 2023, and that was all adults. And now, as of this year, so far, they've had 22. And that's just this year. Just so far. Yeah, we're still in the summertime. Yeah. And that's one emergency room. So the doctor that I talked to there, she said that she sees an e-bike injury at least once every shift. So it's been intense. And especially, you know, kids not riding these with helmets, adults not writing these with helmets. It's definitely been concerning. Lane, you are a data reporter. Can you maybe tell us a little bit more about how these injuries are being tracked? I mean, I didn't, I don't even know really if emergency rooms keep track with bicycle injuries. But now there's this whole other vector with e-bikes. What kind of data are you finding? So the problem is that the data is not consistent among hospitals. I tried looking into some of the CDC data that's available, and it's not super clear how much e-bikes are really teased out hospital by hospital. The data is available on a nationwide level from the National Consumers Group, but it's hard to narrow it down by state, right?

Something that the upcoming change to the police reporting standards is going to be able to do is when there's an e-bike that's involved in a crash with a motor vehicle. And that crash has to be, you know, have involved personal injury or have damages of up to over $1,000 for a report to be filed. But essentially what's going to happen is now when police officers are called to the scene, they're going to be asked to. determine, you know, determine the type of bicycle, right? So instead of just saying, is this a bike, yes or no, you're going to have to say if it's a regular pedal bicycle, if it was motorized, if the motor was not a new or if it's an unknown type of bicycle. So what that's going to do, it's going to give, give researchers a lot more avenues to see how painful these things are and, you know, how really the trends that we've been, you know, we've been wanting to see for a while now. So, um, It's going to really help give a sense of the scale, I think, that we just don't have access to yet. With police changing how crash reports are done in this way, do you have any sense of what's changing those procedures, what the impetus was to find out? Yeah, yeah. So the sergeant who trains police officers on these changes to the traffic crash reports, he told me that the change started, you know, being talked about the Michigan State Police over two years ago now. It was basically happened when, you know, the sergeant started, you know, and the police started seeing that these crashes were just getting worse. You know, there were conversion kits that were changing, you know. e-bikes to go upwards of 40 miles an hour and that's not an e-bike anymore um but um essentially that these these e-bikes were going faster they were getting scarier and they were getting more dangerous and officers when they were on the field kind of didn't really have a clear way of how to report what kind of vehicle this was in the first place. So the national standards for these traffic crash reports were changed in 2024. But the sergeant told me that discussions were going on in Michigan before that as well. Yeah. I mean, for those who haven't taken a ride on one, can you maybe help us understand the difference in speed and maneuverability between an e-bike and either a bicycle or a scooter? Think about it this way. I mean, let's say you were riding a bike without any assistance, right? All the power that you're giving to the bike is coming from you. When you add in an electric component. you go faster than you might be able to on your own, right? So that adds in a level of speed. It means you have to pay more attention. It also means the drivers need to pay more attention to you, right? Because folks are getting killed on these e-bikes. You know, and on, you know, we've seen so much public uproar about the bikes, but the bike riders are getting hurt themselves, right? So.

The main thing that really gets me here is that a lot of these so-called e-bikes may not be actually fitting the legal standards of an e-bike and are going faster than 28 miles an hour. The other thing that has been on my mind about this is just the rules for riding and how they may vary in a lot of communities. I've seen lots of e-bikes in Detroit, in Ann Arbor. Friends tell me they're very common in Grand Rapids. And East Lansing's got a bunch of them too. There are really a lot of places they're being ridden, but they're being ridden on such different paths. Like there are some places I've seen people riding them on the street. I have also seen people writing them on sidewalks, which is terrifying in a completely different way. Is there any effort to standardize the infrastructure piece of it across the state? Or have you noticed anything in the rules among cities? Yeah, yeah. So right now at the statewide level, there's been a push, another, you know, pushing the legislature to kind of get stuff out to standardize how their rules are. But, you know, from what I was getting from the legislators I talked to is that local communities are going to be able to more effectively address things the way that their community needs it. And the state is hopefully going to be able to push more on the education side of things and, you know, that area. I think also here, if e-bikes are, you know, don't have a specific city regulation in your municipality, it's also depending on this, you know, how comfortable the rider is, right? Because something that some researchers were speaking to me about is in some, you know, riders themselves is that if a e-bike rider doesn't feel safe on the street, right? Because that's totally, you know, reasonable concern, you know, to not feel safe on the street with all these these folks getting hurt, right? then they, you know, and there's not a bike line. And if there's not a bike lane available, then they might be pushed onto the sidewalk, right, so that they're safer. But then you have the pedestrians who are concerned for their safety as well. So it just kind of trickles down. with the infrastructure that's available to them. You mentioned education. I know that motorcycle riders are required to complete a course to get a motorcycle license. Is that what some lawmakers who are moving this issue in Lansing are trying to get established? Yeah, there's been a discussion of registration for higher speed e-bikes. But I really think that it's going to come down to how are e-bikes categorized, right? What do folks in our state have access to, right? Because, you know, legally an e-bike in Michigan can go up to 20, the highest class can go up to 28 miles per hour pedal assist. Once you go above 28 miles per hour, that assist has to shut off.

Right. A lot of the e-bikes that we're seeing e-bikes, I say that in quotes, are not legally considered e-bikes at all because they go way above that speed. You know, parents could buy these for their kids on Amazon for, you know, under $400. And they might not even know because the Amazon or other online retailer is listing it as an e-bike, right? But that doesn't fit into Michigan state law as what is an e-bike, right? Are there any places that right now have bans on the books for e-bikes? Total bans? Not necessarily, but there's been communities who are either expanding their continuing bike ordinances to include e-bikes. There's been communities that have gotten into starting to manage where e-bikes are allowed in their cities. Dearborn Heights passed an ordinance in June to ban e-bikes from city parks and playgrounds, city hall, the library of other public city properties because of safety risks for pedestrians. In April, we saw South Lyon pass an ordinance that banned e-bikes downtown and in the historic district, and they also prohibited reckless riding on sidewalks and kind of got some speed limits there. I think crucially in South Lyon, they made e-motos illegal. So the e-moto category is what you would typically call those e-bikes that e-bikes, again, I say that in quotes, that go over the state's legal limit of 28 miles an hour. Mackinac Island has banned e-bike use unless an individual has a documented mobility issue. So if I were to summarize that in a nice little thing, I would have, I would say, you know, It's something that a lot of local communities are looking at. Some have taken action like South Lyon, but it's really going to be up to cities themselves to determine what's best for them. And their road infrastructure that they have already in place and their residents. Lane Sebulskis is a data reporter with the Detroit News, and you can read her recent story about the surge in e-bike injuries and how the data is changing at Detroit News.com. Lane, thank you so much. Thank you so much, April. I appreciate it. We need to break now. When we come back, a poet and an architect talk to us about the practical application of everyday art. I'm not there kind of lecturing, telling folks what to do or how to do art or the right way to do art. I'm there to get the process going and to help facilitate the process. That's in a moment. You're with stateside. This is stateside. I'm April Bear. This summer, the University of Michigan is sending two faculty members across the northern part of the Mitten and into the UP as part of a new arts initiative program that brings hands-on community-centered arts experiences to regions far beyond Ann Arbor. I'm speaking today with Jonathan Holland, a poet, memoirist, and lecturer who has spent time in jail. He now is a teacher in Michigan's LSA Department of English Language and Literature. Also with us today is Katie Newell, a professor of architecture at the University of Michigan's Tobman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. John, Katie, welcome. Thank you for having us. John...

Can we just start with you? I'm curious about how poetry became part of your identity and how creative work became a thing for you when you were living inside. So I actually never wanted to be a poet. I don't think I liked poetry until I started writing it at the age of 24 when I was locked up in jail for some drug charges. And I first came to writing through screenwriting, and I was writing to sort of work on... recovery from addiction after the passing of my grandma and my family members. I lost a support network really early on. So I went to riding as I knew I needed something. I remembered back in the day, Ms. Sweetak said I was good at riding. I flunked. I feel like every college class in my first semester of college, except for my English class. And he said, I gave you a B plus because I couldn't give you an A because you missed so many classes. And there are just these moments, these things that we remember that we can go back to. moments of trauma or these moments of difficulty. So I first came to screenwriting and I started writing poems in jail when I woke in the middle of a dream after my grandma who'd been deceased for years and had raised me, told me to write a damn poem. So I kind of woke up and I'd started writing that poem in the dream and I woke up and continued that poem. And I found myself over the next week or so sharing it with the other people in the block. I'd wake up early because there's not a lot of silence in there. So I'd wake up early before people would get up and I'd use the light coming in from the booking and sit sort of in the day room. And I'd... sat there with the the source, looking up different words and rewriting by hand over and over again. And it just became kind of an escape from that moment. And I think a really productive escape in a way that I could take control of time. And I think that process has followed me that using writing to sort of have something productive to spin on, have something productive to kind of like... rechannel that not so merry go round of thoughts that we kind of fall into just having that process of generation, revision, and this hope, this sort of hope in this piece that you're working on. And everything I'm writing is always the best thing that's ever been written until the next day. But I need that. And I've kind of like fallen in love with that. And I've continued to love that as I've grown into a profession that deals with writing. The thing that gets to a lot of us about poetry is that intentionality. And, you know, it slows us down as readers. You know, we need to kind of sit and sit with it and really go at the pace that the poet is inviting us along to. I love what you said about it giving you some control over time again. Katie. Can you talk about what's been coming up for you as you're thinking about the project and what you're going to ask people? Yeah, definitely. I guess I'll mention that maybe the groups that I'm working with are not living inside right now. I'm not working with prison groups. I'll be working with two groups, some in Potoski and some in Traverse City, working through basically bringing different objects that I started to make when I became involved in helping my dad pass away and helping him transition in life.

You were a caregiver for him. Yeah, I was his primary caregiver at the time. And I found myself wanting to surround us with meaningful objects, things that were important to him, trying to figure out ways to ask him, what kind of lighting do you want? What do you want in your hands? Who do you want in the room? Who do you not want in the room? What do you want to talk about? And that... For me, turned into an art practice in terms of making objects and spaces as an architect that are facilitating those moments in our lives. And the workshop that I'm working on introduces some of the things that I've done just as a way for people to interact with those type of objects, but then opens up spaces for them to start having a moment to think about what they might want when either they're transitioning into death or caregiving for someone else and just having a moment of pause to say, oh, these are the things I actually care about. These are the things I want with me. the things that are meaningful. Yeah. John, I want to ask a similar question to you. Having gone through this process yourself of getting the relationship with the word on the page, what are you thinking about as you're preparing what you're going to talk to people about in the workshops? I honestly, this whole program has not really been about me kind of standing up there and presenting or lecturing. And I think that's the same with this program through the arts initiative. It's been about bringing. art access outside of the university and engaging in arts alongside our community members. So on the inside, I am solely a facilitator and I say just enough to get the activities going and then I participate in the workshops just alongside the folks. We're also doing these youth workshops in Flint that are less riding based, but we're making Play-Doh and puppets. And I'm not there kind of lecturing, telling folks what to do or how to do art or the right way to do art. I'm there to get the process. going and to help facilitate the process because I think that's what's most valuable is just participating in that process learning again how to turn that internal critic off because I think all of us at a really early age stop for a lot of us stop doing art at a really early age and I've got kids around this age now where you start to see that internal critic get louder and louder and louder and that exists in artists just the same but it also for non artists it's loud enough to stop them from starting so I think all of these workshops are just about getting people to start and not think too much about the end game, which when we're in the university, we're focusing on that end product, right? These workshops are about the process for me more than anything. I mean, the point at which we all start to compare ourselves and decide that what we're making is somehow not valid or not worth putting into the world, that's a heartbreaker no matter who you are and where you are in your life. I'm really struck by what both of you said. the possibilities for offering something to people who have lost control over a lot. They've lost control over the manner in which they're living, where they're living, what's around them. John, how much can the control of the creative process return to people? How can that pay off? Again, I think for me it's all the process, especially talking with people. We did one prison workshop and then we're going to do another one in August. Talking to folks, I think the hope is always in the product. This product, this thing that I'm riding will save me. It'll make me money. It'll give me success. It'll help me on the parole for hearing. That's that sort of goal. That's always this mirage that we're always working towards in the desert.

I am learning how to deal with those conversations because I was in that moment where it's like I'm broke. I know I'm getting out to be homeless. I need to write this script to save my life, right? I need to publish this book to get out of this situation. So I mean now that I can go in and say, hey, like it's the process, fall in love with the process. The process is what's important. There's that nagging voice in my head that's like, well, you got. you've made it a little bit, you know, and I'm still working towards everything myself, but this idea of like, you made it into a job and a career and like it's easy for you to say that. And that's privilege. And I definitely recognize that. But I think just most of my activities aren't individual writing that I'm presenting, especially for the folks on the inside. They're all collaborative. They're asking people to work together to create these products that are not. their own, but that are sort of a collected property of the group. And I'm making a book out of those kind of artifacts that we made while we were on the inside to then go back and share to the folks. But I think I'm usually trying to sort of redirect that and think if we focus in the process, we can control the process. And that process of generating text can be fun and beautiful. That process of revision can be revelatory. And that can help us to revise. Revision I've always thought is a chance to revise ourselves. right we revise what's on the page and we sort of revise ourselves in our thought process in that process and i think That's the hope here. And I don't think you can get that in an hour session. But I think as I continue this project and I continue to go into prisons and I continue to hopefully take creative writing classes into prisons, that's my hope that people, you need that, you need that goal at the end. You need that hope at the end. But hopefully as you're fixated on that and going through the process, you fall in love with that process along the way. You mentioned the project that you're working on. I know you brought some poems with us today. Could you read something that is part of that particular project or other things that you've been working on? Absolutely. So the book that I'm making out of the stuff that we did on the inside, all of its collaborative work. And we didn't have our colored pencils. They got jammed up in the mail. So we, everything's black and white right now. The book that I'm making to bring back is called Art to Escape the Dark. And it's going to be compiled of these collaborative activities. And then some of the folks on the inside submitted poems and essays and stories that dealt around the concept, the idea of community. So this is a. collaborative poem that everybody wrote together, myself, the PCAP folks, and the folks on the inside in small groups. I'm thankful for community. I'm a logger. I'm a Mexican. I'm eager to see the people I love. I'm a superhero. I am a proud father. I'm growing daily. I'm a fisherman. I'm finding new people. I am a friend. I am struggling.

I am anticipating new horizons. I am driven. I'm hungry. We are you. I am God-fearing. I am perfect imperfections. I am dedicated to learning. I am lazy sometimes. I'm satisfied with the little things. I am a salvageable soul. I am focused on growing. I am hungry. We are art. I am determined to make something better of myself. I'm searching to find a love within. I'm amazing. I'm wishing I didn't drink that coffee. I'm learning to be grown. We are inspirational, growing amazingly strong, and our fragility. If you're just joining us, my guest today are Jonathan Holland. He's a lecturer in the University of Michigan's Department of English Language and Literature. He's a poet and memoirist and has spent time in jail. Katie Newell is also with us, Professor of Architecture at the Topman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. That line, help me out here, looking for a love outside or looking for a love inside, there was one line in there that just was piercing. I'm searching to find a love within. Searching to find a love within. I mean, honestly, the whole of the thing. And the multiplicity of voices really push us back on the idea that there is one experience for people who have run afoul of the law and who have, you know, stood before a judge. How did the group organize all of those thoughts into what we just heard? We started off with just a free right that was I am. And I had people for two to three minutes just write as many I am statements as possible individually. And then I put them, we put them one another into together into groups and sat down and said, all right, I want at least one I am statement from every person. And then a we are statement at the end. And you guys can figure out how to come up with that. So each individual group had their own sort of process of coming up. This was a. prompt inspired by this Inside Out collaborative working group that we made this prompt in the Inside Out group during a training a couple months ago. So it was really awesome to see people kind of go into groups and figure it out themselves. Again, nothing about this is about me kind of like directing. I'm directing traffic more than I'm directing. Yeah. Katie Newell, I wonder if you could likewise bring us a little bit into the brass tacks. of the work that you're going to be doing with these groups. You mentioned the fact that this is about bringing some intention into the objects. What kinds of questions open up that subject and get people thinking about their relationship with objects? Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to be working through a workshop where people are first going to be literally handling pieces of glass that I've made. I found that at a time when I was helping my dad pass and also working with glass, I started to make

make objects that were somehow, I would say a combination between a worry stone and a stuffed animal. They're very heavy. People tend to hold them to their heart. They have these different textures so you feel around and move them. Like a fused glass, not a blown glass. Yeah, it's a kiln casting process. So it's made very slowly in a kiln. And there's something to that sort of time and they're very rich and kind of deep colors. I'm really appreciative of kind of having this moment where people will be interacting with them in a way that others will be touching and allowing them to get into this sort of headspace where people are very mindful and very intentional of the objects that are around them. From there, I've then made, it's literally this sort of set of questions. They come set out in these sort of beautiful cards that move through people discussing everything from objects to senses to spaces to people. poems, books, things that might be meaningful to them that just give them prompts that ask in a way what might be something they would want around them, either in a major life transition, a moment of passing, a moment of grieving. I find that a lot of people have just never been asked this before. There is a kind of underlying of wanting to talk particularly about moments of passing. It's something we don't talk about a lot. So I think a lot of people take this opportunity or just to even be asked. And maybe they might be away from family. members, they might be alone, they might be there with friends, but oftentimes we're not talking about it. So these prompts let someone just to simply say, you know, what kind of lighting do I want in the room? What temperature do I want? Do I have a favorite blanket? Do I have an heirloom? from generations past that I want to make sure that there. Is there something in my mind that I've wanted to create? Maybe going back to John talking about these tremendous ideas that were almost stopped from being creative or being an artist when we're younger, when really it's in there. And someone hasn't yet been prompted just to say, this is what I see for myself. And because we don't talk about it. It's like lying there and doesn't come out. So I'm trying to create all these prompts where somebody, even if they walk away with just starting to think about it, or if they walk away with these cards and questions they can share with others as a moment to even let them tell people. When I die, I want this. Or they also walk away with these things where they can ask their friends, they can ask family members. So I just want the kind of conversation to be there where designing our moments of passing or grieving or immediately after our rituals becomes something that is. just more natural conversation and opens that up for people. John talked a little bit about access to process. You know, some people, I think a lot of us tend to feel that art with capital A is not really accessible to us, sometimes just as looking at art, but also in terms of the making. And John talked a little about that. Katie, what does access to a process mean to you? Yeah, that's such a great question. I think a lot of it has to do with people.

finding their own interests or finding their own ways. So if I can set up a series of prompts that allows somebody to individually start to recognize what might in fact be important to them, what are they drawn to, what do they start talking about, what do they find that they actually don't want to talk about? It's sort of like cracking open for somebody what they want to have control over and express themselves through. So I think the access just simply comes from giving the space to figure out what somebody actually cares about. And I think from there, giving them the expression to be able to say, like, this is what's meaningful for me. And maybe understanding creative thinking and artful ways can come across in so many, let's say, mediums, or even just the choice of assent, or the way somebody sets up a room, the way somebody writes a letter to a friend. I think all of that ends up being something that I think maybe in ways that John's talking about, too, people just need to understand that. Art is actually so many things of what we do. Yeah. I think it's just, again, art also parallels emotional processes, right? So this idea, and I think that's what's so beautiful about viewing art and being an audience of art is it can conjure up so much, it can so much inside of us. And this idea of actually engaging physically with art. John Holland and Katie Newell. They both teach at the University of Michigan, and they're taking part in the U of M's Prison Creative Arts Project that's going to be happening in the UP this summer. John, Katie, it's a real pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for the work you're doing. Thanks for having us. Thank you.

Is anything special or notable going on in your community this year? One of our favorite ways to pick up story ideas are the things that we hear about from you. You can drop us an email to let us know. Our address is stateside at Michiganpublic.org. Let's pause for a moment. After that, Abdul El-Sayed talks to us about issues in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate. What we don't have right now is a thoughtful immigration court system that actually enables people to work through the system and have a pathway to citizenship. You're with stateside. This is stateside. I'm April Bayer. Voting is happening among Michigan's most important contests this year, a seat in the U.S. Senate as Democrat Gary Peters steps away. The Democratic primary is one of the most hotly contested parts of this race, and it's drawn a healthy share of national attention as voters and analysts try to understand where the party is headed. Yesterday, you heard us speaking with Congresswoman Haley Stevens. Today, we welcome the other frontrunner, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. You'll remember he has served public health roles with both the city of Detroit and Wayne County. And now he's running for Senate. Abdul, welcome back. Thank you so much for having me. You've undertaken, this is not your first statewide campaign. You've undertaken campaigns for governor before. Tell us your pitch for voters who, about why you should be elected to this specific statewide seat when they may know you as a candidate who was not successful in prior races. Yeah. So I ran back in 2018 for governor. And. I said something at the time I think folks weren't quite ready to hear, which is that Donald Trump is not himself the disease of our politics. He's the worst symptom of the disease of our politics. And in the ensuing eight years, that disease has gotten worse. The disease is the system that allows corporations, billionaires, special interests, to buy and sell politicians to rig the system against us. It's why we pay more for all we have to buy. We get paid less for the work we do. We watch as our tax dollars get misappropriated abroad to do terrible things to other people rather than... kept here to do good things for our people. And we have an opportunity to think past that. I remember sitting in my office back the day that this race opened up when Senator Gary Peters announced that he was not seeking reelection, it was the day that the Trump administration had frozen federal funds. So I'm sitting in my office in Detroit trying to figure out how to make sure WIC checks go out, how to make sure that our federally qualified health centers don't shut down. how to make sure that vaccines keep going in arms. And I had to ask myself, where is the fight for this work now? If I were to be elected, I'd be the first Democratic doctor elected to the U.S. Senate since 1969. First ever public health official elected to the U.S. Senate. And I think we probably could use one of those right about now as we try to dodge lettuce and not breathe the air. So all of that is to say,

My message hasn't changed, but where you think about where that message needs to go, we need policymakers in the US Senate who aren't bought off by the system that exists to stand up for things like the ability to have a job in an economy where AI is barreling down on us, the ability to know that you're going to have a say in what happens in your own backyard because they want to move an AI data center in. The ability to know that you can get health care when you need it, that you don't have to pay an arm and a leg to send your kid to school or go to school yourself, that your kid's school is actually going to look. like the kind of place that's dignifying of their minds. All of these things need to get us to think past the system. And I've been thinking about that and writing about that and advocating along that for the better part of 10 years now. Even if this election is not specifically about Donald Trump, you cited the bigger picture. Michigan did go for him narrowly in the last presidential contest. How do you hope to win over his voters? You know, there's not a town hall that I do where somebody doesn't come up to me and say, I voted for Donald Trump three times, and I'm voting for you. And I'll ask them why. And they'll say, it's because I really think you want me to have health care. And I really think you're America first. Like, you want to keep my money here. You don't want to send it to drop bombs on other people. And you've been clear about that from the jump. And I've been watching you for 10 years. You say the same thing to everybody. That consistency is what we often lose. I think when voters are asking about a candidate, they're asking two questions. One is explicit and one is implicit. The explicit question is, what do you say you're going to fight for? And then the implicit question is, how do I know you're going to fight for it? You've had $50 million come into this race on behalf of my Democratic opponent. Most of that money coming from an organization focused on sending our money abroad. The rest of that coming from corporations through shell packs. And what that tells you is, I don't back down. When I tell you what I want to fight for, you know I'm going to show up and fight for it because I don't pull my punch. I don't pretend to say the thing that you want to hear. I tell you what I really believe. And I've been saying it for 10 years now. So all of this is to say that we can either have a corrupted system where DTE, Blue Cross, Big Pharma, Big Tech, A PAC, spend money to elect both the Democrat and the Republican, or we can actually have a Democratic Party that is going to show up and push back against that corporatized system to put people back in the center of our politics. Abdul, this has been a devastating year for Americans watching immigration enforcement staffers, deputized by the federal government, watching... Those officers take lives, including the lives of U.S. citizens, green card holders who have done no wrong and others. You've called for abolishing ICE. What is a reasonable alternative? So just remember, ICE didn't exist 25 years ago. And people want to pretend like ICE was written in the Constitution. The Constitution was written specifically to protect us from things like ICE. The whole point was that the government wasn't allowed to become tyrannical on you. and now you have this agency that operates outside of normal bounds they're taking people's lives at the specter of immigration i just want to be clear i went to minneapolis at the height of project metro search i wanted to see for myself what it looks like when an agency goes rogue when they lay siege to a city in our own country what i saw

gave me chills, it still gives me chills. And what's clear to me is that ICE is actually not about immigration. ICE is about normalizing paramilitary force on our streets with the excuse of immigration. So we can have a safe, secure, southern border. I believe in that. We can even enforce our immigration laws. I believe in that, but not at the expense of the Constitution itself. And so I think we abolish ICE, and what we do is we build a very targeted force that respects The will of the people and the Constitution only enforces in the circumstances where somebody has become a danger to society and otherwise puts the Constitution first and foremost as it was always supposed to be. Are you suggesting a new agency or maybe that these tasks could be parceled out among the Department of Justice, the State Department, the Department of Commerce? I think we need to be thinking about both alternatives, right? You know, what we don't have right now is a thoughtful immigration court system. that actually enables people to work through the system and have a pathway to citizenship. So I think you need a targeted multi-agency task force focused specifically on enforcing in the circumstances where there is a threat to public safety. And that could either be done through a set of the agencies you talked about or a new force under HHS or excuse me, DHS. But all of that is to say that ICE on its own terms right now as it's been created. cannot continue and must be abolished. And I just want to be clear, maybe it's just because I've run government agencies. But when you have a culture of impunity that sets in, And folks think that they are above the law. You cannot reform or train that. You need to abolish it and start from scratch. Let's move on to foreign policy. Your campaign has hit a nerve with voters who are unhappy with U.S. policies on Gaza, bombings in Lebanon, and on Israel, this longstanding relationship that we have. What do you have to say to voters who you might differ with, how you'll represent their views as a senator? Let's just start on principles. I believe in equal rights to peace, dignity, and self-determination for Palestinian and Jewish Israelis alike. I believe that our tax dollars, the only communities that have a right to our tax dollars, are communities here who pay them. And I believe that we cannot continue to send our tax dollars to foreign governments unconditionally. That is Israel, but that's also Egypt where my family immigrated from. That's Saudi Arabia. That's Qatar. That's UAE. That's Pakistan. That's Jim Jordan. And I believe that we ought to be the principal enforcer of the international law system that we helped to architect after World War II. And so what that means to me is that when you have a rogue state like the state of Israel that has conducted a genocide, at baseline conducts apartheid has taken us to a war where they're attempting to annex southern Lebanon that we should treat them the way that we would treat any other country that violates international law and yet we run cover for them we send them unconditional military aid now look a lot of folks will point and say well why don't you support a two-state solution and what i'll say to that is i support the solution that comes out of the process

that dignifies equal rights to peace dignity and self-determination for a free Palestinian people and Jewish-Israeli people alike. It's not my job to dictate what the ultimate peace should look like. It's my job to make sure that our tax dollars don't push that ultimate peace further and further away. And the last point I'll say is this. We've had it as a stated policy in this country to have a two-state solution for I don't know how long. But our money gets sent abroad to aid, arm, and abet, a government. that is actively trying to foreclose on the possibility of a Palestinian state. So what does it mean to say a thing versus to do a thing? And I'm just asking that we stick according to our principles. So folks can say, well, Abdul, your principles don't apply because you're making exceptions here and there. Show me where I'm making exceptions. But until then, tell me where you disagree with my principles. And most of the time what happens is people say they agree with my principles, but disagree with my arguments, which is to say that either one of us, one of us is not being consistent. And so point to me where I'm being inconsistent. Ultimately, our job is to look out for people in our own country. There are places not too far from here in Ipsilani, April, where there are children who go to schools. that looked like they did 50 years ago. They can barely breathe clean air. They worry about even getting to school because there are so many potholes on the roads. And you want to tell me that the best use of $3.3 billion is to send it to a foreign government to buy bombs and tanks, to drop on other people and their kids. That, to me, seems just ridiculous. Abdul, I don't have to tell you about the ways that Arab and Muslim people have been treated in this country, especially in the last 25 years. Islamophobia is mainstream these days. And also... Jewish voters I've talked to are just increasingly shaken and frightened by anti-Semitic attacks in this country. You know, a temple right here in southeast Michigan, Jewish people who may even believe that the Israeli government is wrong, who believe that genocide is the word that we should use to talk about what happens in Gaza, who still feel like their kids hear slurs in the schools and that they're targeted because of their faith in a Jewish state. Can you assure them that you do believe in Israel's survival and that Israel's existence has benefits for the U.S.? I believe deeply that anti-Semitism is a scourge. I grew up in a community where I was blessed that 40% of the kids I went to school with were Jewish. I learned so much about the Jewish faith and Jewish history and culture and traditions and contributions to American life. Judaism is a beautiful faith and the Jewish people are a beautiful people. I stand forthrightly 100% against anti-Semitism as someone who knows what it's like to be discriminated against for how I pray. In fact, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia tend to go hand in hand. Now, I think we have to differentiate between Judaism and the Jewish people and APEC and the state of Israel or the government of Israel. Those are different things. And any attempt to use the specter of anti-Semitism to cover.

a foreign government, I think, does a disservice to the idea of anti-Semitism. I think it is in and of itself anti-Semitic. And I'll just say this. I intend to be a principal critic of the Egyptian government and military in the U.S. Senate. Does that make me anti-Egyptian? Probably not. I'm by blood 100% Egyptian. Similarly, should people hold me accountable for what the government of Egypt does? Because I happen to share the same ethnicity. as most of the people who live in Egypt, no. So I think if we applied that principle evenly everywhere, we would come to a very different set of conclusions. It's our job as a country to look out for people in our country. And is our job as a country not to use our tax dollars to hurt other people. And I also just want to change the frame here a little bit. Let's not forget that there were 73,000 at the minimum, people killed by our tax dollars as a function of a foreign government, that very exact same foreign government that we're talking about sending our tax dollars to now. And if we want to discount the lives of Palestinians and Palestinian children and women and Palestinian infrastructure and Palestinian rights, then we can go on and have a conversation about why we should put one state's interests above a different people. But I personally just think, go back to where I started, the Palestinian people. and Jewish Israeli people have equal rights to peace dignity and self-determination, and I do not want my tax dollars to be spent taking any of those away. Let's swing back to domestic matters. Many, many communities in Michigan have AI data centers either in the works or already under construction in their communities. How would you support the federal government changing the way that it regulates the data center, the data center, boom, that Michigan experiences right now? Well, right now that the federal government doesn't regulate anything. And herein lies the big problem. We actually don't have real regulations on this or the broader question of AI more generally. We're talking about... technology that is probably the single most important technology to hit humankind in the last century, maybe beyond. And we still, as a federal government, have nothing to say about it. And part of the problem here goes back to the central issue of money out of politics. There is way too much corporate money sloshing around, $100 million super PACs that are spending money in races like ours to try to make sure that this becomes ungovernable. So when it comes to data centers in particular, I actually think that we need federal policy and we needed it yesterday. We've put forward what we call a terms of engagement, that if you want to build a data center anywhere in the United States of America, you better abide by the following terms. Number one, no touching water. They should be all closed loop systems. Number two, there shall not be an increase in electrical utility fees. Any utility involved in the project should be taking some of its revenue to invest in better reliability, not worse reliability or not even the same reliability.

All of the jobs that they say they're going to create better be good union jobs. They better create every last job that they created. And then they got to make the community rich. There needs to be a community benefits agreement, negotiated in good faith that puts all of the money up front in escrow that the community can expect and that all of this needs to be enforceable by clear fees, fines, and the ability to shut down a data center if they don't abide. Right now, a lot of these corporations are able to use their heft, their power, their money, to truck local communities and get what they want in this race to the bottom between them. The federal government is the only actor that's big enough that actually can regulate and set the floor for what a community should be able to expect so you don't have this race to the bottom between different communities. I want to bring things to an issue that you've campaigned a lot on, and you've already mentioned health care. The Affordable Care Act premiums, subsidies, elimination has been a big hit to a lot of communities in Michigan, people who might have bought insurance on a private market. are facing paying so much, many just chose not to pay at all and to take their chances. And the costs of employer-funded health plans are up as well. What's the answer on health care? I believe it's Medicare for all. And let me just talk about what that would mean. You know, chances are, April, in your back pocket or your purse, there's probably an insurance card. You and Michigan Radio each pay a bit into that. It's probably about $2,000 a month. And then on top of that, you probably have a deductible. And that deductible, you know, for the average family of four is about $4,500. That's the money you have to pay to get access to the insurance you thought you already paid for in $2,000 a month. And then there's a copay and there's a network. You can't just go to any doctor or any hospital or any clinic. You've got to go where they tell you you can go. Otherwise, you're going to pay a whole lot more money out of network. That's the experience of having private health insurance now. And those premiums, by the way, went up about 15% last year. What Medicare for all would mean is that next to that card, you have another card. That card is given to you the day you're born, does not expire until the day you expire, God willing, 120 years of life after a long, healthy life. It doesn't go away if you turn 26 or get married or get divorced or get a job or lose a job or turn 65. It's just there for you. And there's no network. That's what we're talking about. Now look, the current system we have, it monetizes the fact that we might get sick. And it creates a whole lot of extra money that we pay, money to pay the CEO's bloated salary, money for marketing, money because of the billing that has to happen. Medicare for all gets rid of all of that, offers us durable health care for less than we pay right now, and the health care side stays. Private. So any doctor out there, any clinical out there says, hey, you know, we could get great patients and provide good care. We can do that. So we need to address the one issue that's keeping us from doing that, which is the power and the money of these corporations to buy off politicians to make sure that we cannot have this conversation and cannot have Medicare for all. It is a political problem. If we had Medicare for all, how could we possibly afford to cover more people given the costs that we already have on the federal government's table right now?

So two points. Number one, we can thank Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump for that much added spending. Why? Because every time they get elected, they fearmonger about what we want to do to actually provide people things they want. And then they do two things. Number one, they cut taxes on the richest people. And number two, they take us into wars. We have no business fighting with $500 billion what we spent on this stupid war that just raised our gas prices already. So maybe we should stop doing those things. I believe in taxing billionaires their wealth and I believe in ending stupid foreign wars or unconditional foreign military aid to countries that are doing genocide. That's number one. Now number two is we already pay for it. April, like 19 cents on the dollar for every dollar spent and the whole economy is spent on health care. We already pay for it. It just comes out of our back pockets in the least efficient way possible. So this question is always raised to say, well, we can't possibly have nice things because our government's too busy doing bad things. Well, no, let's stop doing bad things and then start doing good things and doing them in a way that actually saves everyday people money. Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is a candidate for the U.S. Senate. Abdul, it's good to see you. Thank you. Thank you. That's stateside for today. I'm April Bear. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you again tomorrow.