from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Monday,

September 30th. We begin this week with our usual Monday morning politics segment and

continue the Monday series we've been doing on the swing states one by

one. Today, Michigan, one of the states where voting is already underway. Trump won Michigan in

2016. Joe Biden won it in 2020. Here's how much of a swing state it is. In 2016, Trump beat

Hillary Clinton there by just 11,000 votes out of 4.5 million

cash, just two-tenths of a point win, the closest in the nation. In 2020, Joe Biden won

Michigan a little more comfortably by about 154,000 votes out of about 5.5 million cast. That was about a three percentage point win.

But another twist came in February of this year in the Democratic primary when more than 100,000

people voted uncommitted to protest Biden's policy toward the war in Gaza. Here's Michigan

Congresswoman Rashida Taleb,

the only Palestinian American member of Congress, supporting a vote for uncommitted before that

primary. This is the way you can raise our voices. Don't make us even more invisible. Right now,

we feel completely neglected and just unseen by our government. If you want us to be louder,

then come here and vote uncommitted. So one question in Michigan now is how many of those

100,000 voters will come home to Kamala Harris. Another question is the possible influence

of the vice presidential candidates,

both from neighboring Midwest states and reflecting different kinds of Midwest populism, you might say.

Tim Walls and J.D. Vance will have their debate tomorrow night.

We'll have it on the station, perhaps a bigger deal in Michigan than in most other places.

Now, J.D. Vance was in Michigan the other day and addressed the nation's housing shortage.

He blamed it on, can you guess, undocumented immigrants.

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