DETROIT — The Dodgers’ game against the Tigers on Sunday at Comerica Park began in a rain delay.
First pitch was at 11:35 a.m. PDT following a 55-minute delay.
Dodger manager Dave Roberts was anticipating a potential delay a couple hours before the original game time.
“Then it’s supposed to kind of be isolated around 5:30 [2:30 p.m. PDT,]” Roberts said of the storm forecast. “So there is that window 2-5 p.m. [11 a.m.-2 p.m. PDT], that looks promising.”
Dodgers right-hander Tyler Glasnow took the mound opposite Tigers left-hander Framber Valdez.
For a player who has been so improbable, the Dodgers must now do the impossible.
When it comes to pitching, they must shut Shohei Ohtani down.
Despite suffering a knee ailment and biceps soreness this season, Ohtani is slowly trying to take the mound for the first time in more than two months.
Stop. Just stop.
The Dodgers have no business sticking Ohtani back on the mound. He belongs out there no more than Kiké Hernandez does.
There’s no two ways about it — the Dodgers should not plan on jamming Ohtani back into the starting rotation.
The Dodgers should thank him for his passion, applaud him for his 1.79 ERA in his first 14 starts, promise to return his resin bag next season, and ask him to go to work on that bat.
As much as the fans want to see all Ohtani, all of the time, the next couple of months are not about celebrating a novelty, they’re about winning a championship, and Ohtani can best get that done by avoiding another injury to himself on the mound and directing all of his efforts at the plate.
Recently, his hitting needs all the help it can get. After Saturday’s loss in Detroit, it had been a startling nine games since Ohtani homered or collected an RBI. During that span he had more than twice as many strikeouts as hits (13-5).
In this final month he needs to concentrate on getting his swing right and not worry about bullpens or openers or piggy-backs or any of the numerous machinations involved in getting him back on the mound.
Bottom line, the Dodgers need him more at the top of the order than in the middle of the diamond, and for now, he shouldn’t be in two places at once.
Bottom, bottom line, there is a sense that the Dodgers agree.
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani follows through on a pitch during a game last month at Dodger Stadium.
(Harry How / Getty Images)
Ohtani threw about 20 pitches in a bullpen session Friday and wasn’t 100%, and that set off alarm bells with the Dodgers’ bosses.
While guessing that Ohtani’s balky left knee would not allow him to be 100% by October, manager Dave Roberts openly wondered Saturday whether a pitching comeback is worth the effort.
“Obviously, where we’re at right now with the pitching, the starting pitching certainly being a strength, his value offensively is hugely important, and so we can’t compromise that in any fashion,” Roberts told reporters in Detroit. “So, if throwing potentially cuts into that, that’s not worth the squeeze. So that’s something for me. Very, very bullish on making sure we don’t compromise the hitting.”
Did you hear that? Not worth the squeeze? Exactly.
Are you listening, Ohtani? He’s always been the ultimate team player, so if the Dodgers asked his permission to shut him down, he would agree, right? Right?
Keeping Ohtani off the mound for the rest of the season is a radical view, certainly — c’mon, you’re paying the dude $700 million to hit and pitch! — but it’s a view backed by common sense.
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani prepares to bat during a game earlier this month as Dodger Stadium.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Point One: The Dodgers won a World Series in 2024 with Ohtani strictly hitting, so it can be done.
Point Two: Last postseason, even with his three-homer, 10-strikeout gem in the National League Championship Series against the Milwaukee Brewers, Ohtani had a playoff ERA of 4.43.
Playing in the postseason is hard. Pitching and hitting in the postseason is nearly impossible. That magical Brewers clincher was his only shining moment.
Point Three: They recently acquired Tarik Skubal specifically to reduce the need for Ohtani, and they now have a nearly unbeatable rotation without Ohtani.
With Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow having returned strong from injuries, they have four starters who easily can dominate a series.
Check out the current seven-game span of games started by Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Skubal, Snell and Tyler Glasnow.
They gave up as many as three runs only twice. They pitched less than six innings only once. Their ERA was 2.38.
Point Four: The struggling Dodgers offense desperately needs Ohtani to get right at the top. Who is going to get the big hit if he doesn’t? Entering the last month, the candidates are few.
Not a slowing Mookie Betts. Not psyched-out Kyle Tucker. Not aging Teoscar Hernández. Maybe Freddie Freeman, but he hasn’t hit a home run since July 4. And maybe Max Muncy, if they pitch to him.
Will Smith will be returning this week after a prolonged absence, and that will help, but not enough.
If anything happens to sideline Ohtani the hitter, the Dodgers are sunk, period.
And if he pitches, lots could happen to him.
The knee. The elbow. Whatever it was that has kept him off the mound since July 3. So much can go wrong if he’s pitching, and any pitching injury could have the double whammy of sidelining him as a hitter.
“I think 100% for me as far as an offensive player, that’s very important,” Roberts said. “As a pitcher, for me, given the strength of our staff, our team, I don’t think that’s as important. I think it’s important for us not to compromise his health in any capacity. But for me, it’s just his presence in the batter’s box is hugely important to him.”
Yes, Ohtani wants to pitch. Yes, the Dodgers promised him he could pitch. But that was before the injuries and the acquisitions and the slump.
Everything is different now. The landscape has changed.
The Dodgers no longer need the arm so badly that they can risk the bat.
Barely 20 bullpen pitches at the end of August? He’s clearly not going to be 100% by October, so shut him down and let him swing.
Shohei Ohtani is 32 and finishing his ninth season. He’s not a kid anymore.
He’s not infallible anymore.
Having him pitch and hit for a second consecutive October indeed would be a great story.
But having him use his bat to lead the Dodgers to a three-peat would be a better one.
Gladys Knight has announced she’s gearing up to embrace the next phase of her life and career at 82.
The announcement comes after recent performances raised alarm with fans and staff worried about the storied singer’s health.
“After much soul searching I’ve decided that I will be easing into fewer performances while focusing on transitioning into the next stage of my career and life moving forward,” Knight said via Instagram on Thursday.
Knight said she’ll be spending more time on projects with her husband and manager; William McDowell, 68; and visiting with her grandchildren.
“I’d like to take a moment, in advance, to thank all my fans over this last three quarters of a century for making a little girl’s dream come true and supporting her every step of the way,” she continued. “I am immensely grateful to all of you and send my eternal love back to you. … I hope to see your smiling faces out and about and on the road.”
Her publicity team declined further comment Friday.
During her Aug. 18 show in Detroit, Knight took several breaks. And back in July at the Hollywood Bowl, the Grammy-winner seemed to lose her place while belting, “Midnight Train to Georgia,” one of her signature songs.
Backup singers appeared to come to the rescue more than once, guiding the singer back toward the stage as she wandered off and filling in when the lyrics to her classic soul hits seemed to escape her.
In an interview with the Shade Room last year, Knight’s son, Shanga Hankerson, claimed McDowell pushed the singer into performing and manipulates her.
Hankerson said that he drove to North Carolina to see his mom and was kept from being alone with her. He subsequently filed a complaint with the state Department of Health and Human Services.
“I noticed that William would always chime in, make sure that I didn’t get to speak with her by myself or by herself,” he said.
During a performance, Hankerson said he was concerned watching as his mom, who’s been performing for 75 years, fumbled through the set.
“The band played two or three extra bars, and she zoned out. The background singer started singing, and that brought her back. They’re having to rewind the teleprompters because my mom is forgetting to even look at them,” he said.
DETROIT — As Tarik Skubal crossed the field from the bullpen, he had to crane his neck to catch part of the tribute video playing on the massive screen behind him.
By the time he reached the Dodgers dugout, the crowd rose to give him an ovation. Skubal controlled his expression and wiped his face with the towel draped over his neck.
Less than four weeks ago, he said goodbye to the only organization he’d known — the Detroit Tigers drafted him in 2018 out of Seattle University. Now, he was back in the ballpark he’d called home for six years.
In the Dodgers’ 2-1 win Friday, Skubal showed why he was widely considered the best player available at the trade deadline, holding the Tigers to one run and four hits over six innings. The Dodgers’ offense continued to scuffle but did just enough to bounce back from a three-game sweep in Atlanta — the 14th time this month they played a game decided by a single run.
Skubal’s reception included some boos (and “Scuuuub”s) as he took the mound. Even though the trade was out of Skubal’s control, a faction of the Tigers fan base — including this reporter’s rideshare driver from the airport — was upset Skubal never reached an agreement for a contract extension with Detroit (62-72).
The Tigers’ last publicly discussed extension offer was four years and $75 million at the end of 2024 — which drastically pales in comparison to the contract he’s expected to garner in free agency this offseason.
The mutual affection between the player and Detroit, however, took center stage Friday, even as Skubal tamed the Tigers’ offense.
He quickly reined in his emotions. After a delay for a PitchCom malfunction, Skubal gave up a leadoff double to Detroit’s Gleyber Torres on a fastball down the middle. But then the left-hander retired the next 12 batters.
Skubal struck out the side in the third inning, getting Max Clark to swing through a changeup, Javier Báez to chase a high fastball and Torres to watch an off-speed pitch clip the bottom of the zone.
That streak ended with a double up the left-field line from Eduardo Valencia, who turned on an inside slider to lead off the fifth. Then with two outs, Clark stayed back on an outside fastball and sent it the other way for a triple that drove in the game’s first run.
The Dodgers have struggled at times since the All-Star break, but Will Smith’s return from injury and Shohei Ohtani’s return to pitching should help.
Skubal induced Báez to fly out to center field and punched the palm of his glove on his way off the field.
The Dodgers (81-54) missed a chance to tie with one out in the sixth, when Kyle Tucker was thrown out at home trying to score on a pinch-hit single by Kiké Hernández. But they salvaged the inning when Teoscar Hernández drew a walk and Miguel Rojas smoked a single through the infield to tie the score.
In the seventh, the Dodgers loaded the bases with two outs and failed to squeeze in a run.
Evan Phillips took over on the mound in the bottom of the inning. Skubal’s pitch count stood at only 83, but he had thrown 100 pitches in each of his previous two starts.
The Dodgers finally took the lead in the eighth, manufacturing a run with singles from Teoscar Hernández and Freddie Freeman on either side of a sacrifice bunt from Ben Rortvedt.
ATLANTA — Lefty Tarik Skubal hasn’t had time to fully reflect on his time in Detroit. When he learned at the beginning of the month that he was being traded to the Dodgers, he had one night of emotional goodbyes, before shifting his focus the next morning to preparing to face the Cubs in a few days.
Friday won’t be the right time either. He’s scheduled to take the mound against the Tigers, the only organization he’d played for up until three and a half weeks ago, in the series opener.
“I play baseball, and I don’t really want to let any noise or anything outside change or take away from my ability to go play baseball and put our team in a position to win,” he said in a recent conversation with The Times. “So that’s where my focus is always at. It doesn’t matter if it’s opening day of the season, it doesn’t matter if it’s spring training, it doesn’t matter if it’s the dog days of July, it doesn’t matter if it’s the postseason. For me, the game is always the same game, and that’s something that I take a ton of pride in.”
Even in his short time with the Dodgers, Skubal has thrown himself into the task at hand, from the way he’s pitched, to his commitment to connecting with his new teammates, to how he’s handled questions about his impending free agency.
Oddly enough, after the World Series favorites traded for the best pitcher available, they lost the next six games as part of a seven-game losing streak.
“Everyone around here was like, ‘Hey, we win games here,’” Skubal said. “And I go, ‘I don’t know, maybe it’s me.’”
Eventually, the Dodgers did win a game with Skubal on the roster. They even swept two series straight — before running into the Braves this week. And as Skubal has settled in, he’s enjoyed the sheer abundance of baseball conversations going on around him all the time, whether it be a pitcher chatting with the pitching coaches about sequencing, or hitters breaking down how an opposing pitcher attacked him.
“No one’s ego is too big to ask a question and try to learn from anybody,” Skubal said. “So I think that’s what makes this team so good. I think that’s why they tick, and I think that’s why they’re so good, especially in September, is they’re just not afraid to fail. They’re going to try and learn as much from each other as possible. I just love being a part of that.”
Likewise, his new teammates have loved him embracing them right away.
“You can’t tell whether he’s pitching or not because his personality never changes,” Kiké Hernández said. “And I appreciate how talkative he is, like even during his starts, like in the middle of the game, which is kind of refreshing.”
Already, Skubal’s joining in on pregame handshake lines and slapping the dugout railing in time to Roki Sasaki’s warm-up music. After Miguel Rojas nicknamed him “Scooby Doo Pa Pa,” Skubal used the song that inspired the name on an Instagram post.
“At the end of my career, if the one thing [all my ex-teammates] say about me is, ‘Yeah, he was talented on the field, but he was an even better teammate,’ that’s what I want to be remembered as,” Skubal said.
Skubal is only under club control for the rest of the season, but he’s consistently said he doesn’t want to address free agency.
“I really am probably not going to get to that until this season’s done,” he said. “Until, hopefully, I’m holding up a trophy and I’m celebrating with these guys for two weeks, and I’m going to [have a headache] for a month after.”
A video clip from Skubal’s appearance on the podcast “Pardon My Take” caused a stir on social media, when he said, “I would love to play my whole career in Detroit” and expresses hope that the Tigers are involved in negotiations in November. But Skubal points out the missing context in that clip.
His response was to a question that described the Tigers trading him as an “unfortunate part of where baseball is.” He understood the premise as, smaller markets can’t retain their stars.
Pitcher Tarik Skubal (29) hugs Jack Flaherty in the dugout after getting pulled from his last start with the Tigers on July 29.
(Paul Sancya / Associated Press)
“Which I don’t agree with,” said Skubal, who has thought a lot about the larger picture as a member of the MLB Players Assn. Executive Subcommittee. “You can retain whoever. Now, the longer you wait, the harder it is to get guys to give away the years to hit free agency. I think that’s just the business of baseball, and that’s not any different than any other sport.”
He backed his point with counterexamples on each side: the Royals signing homegrown star Bobby Witt Jr. to an 11-year extension worth $288.8 million guaranteed, and the Yankees’ Aaron Judge still hitting free agency in 2022 (before ultimately re-signing).
“There’s narratives around the sport that I don’t agree with, and that’s one of them,” Skubal said.
Though Skubal excels at focusing on the present, he also seems to sense how much weight his words carry. Wanting to avoid out-of-context reading between the lines as he praised the Dodgers, Skubal made sure to note that he wasn’t comparing his new situation with his old one.
He’s made clear over and over how special his time in Detroit was to him.
Skubal’s resolve hasn’t been tested in exactly the way it will be on Friday. But he’s performed on that same mound under unique circumstances.
When Skubal took the mound in his last start for the Tigers on July 29, he knew it could be a turning point for him and the club. The Tigers lost in extra innings, but he made a quality start and recorded his 1,000th career strikeout before leaving the game to a standing ovation at Comerica Park.
“You really appreciate that stuff,” Skubal said. “And I went down the tunnel and had some conversations with coaches that were pretty emotional too.
“You appreciate everything because without fans, this game is nothing. If no one showed up, we wouldn’t be able to play baseball for a living.”
He’s sure to have quite the reception on Friday, too. And even though Skubal excels at compartmentalizing, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts had one request for the Tigers.
“I hope they do the festivities the night after we win on Friday,” Roberts said, “so the emotion doesn’t get to him and he can just kind of enjoy the welcome back.”
The Dodgers have struggled at times since the All-Star break, but Will Smith’s return from injury and Shohei Ohtani’s return to pitching should help.
The bass legend and superproducer Don Was didn’t expect to be covering Curtis Mayfield’s Civil Rights-era anthem “This Is My Country” on the road in 2026. But lately, the chaos in the United States made the song seem regrettably apropos.
“It wasn’t supposed to still feel potent. It was supposed to be something that served a moment,” said Was, who included the defiant single on his 2025 album “Groove In the Face of Adversity.”
“It’s shocking to be here in 2026 and, whatever distance we traveled from 1966 until now, to see it all get reset,” Was said. “That song’s a more powerful statement now than it was then. It was inconceivable that it would still be relevant — this is supposed to be the utopian age of Aquarius. This is not the way it was supposed to turn out.”
Was remembers the tumult, violence and hope that came out of that era in his hometown of Detroit. The city’s music, famed for rough-hewn virtuosity from blues to soul to techno, is the spring that waters “Adversity.” It is, remarkably, the 73-year-old’s first solo album after a career spanning the pioneering electro-pop band Was (Not Was) and deep producer relationships with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Bonnie Raitt.
He also spent years in Bob Weir & Wolf Bros with the late Grateful Dead founder, and will play from the Dead’s landmark “Blues for Allah” on his tour that stops at Lodge Room on July 7.
With a backing band of studio killers dubbed the Pan-Detroit Ensemble, “Adversity” has an expansive modern atmosphere, yet a lived-in, filament-bulb quality in the playing that carries through funk, jazz, rock and R&B. It’s largely a covers record, but you wouldn’t know it from the depth of the revisions — veering from the Yusef Lateef standard “Nubian Lady” to Hank Williams’ “I Ain’t Got Nothin’ But Time,” closing with funk group Cameo’s “Insane.”
“I’ve been carrying it around in my head for 30 years,” Was said. “This first album to me is really a handshake, a ‘nice to meet you,’ this jambalaya of Detroit sounds.” While much of the source material comes from elsewhere, the cumulative mood is extremely personal to an artist who has spent his life helping the greats find true expression.
“I’ve come to admire artists who are willing to go in deep inside their most personal thoughts for the sake of helping the listener understand their own lives,” he said. “To help them deal with the trauma of being human — especially in these times, man.”
Tops on that list is the late Grateful Dead founder Bob Weir — who died in January at 78 — as a model for a band staying fearless and uncompromising. Was, still heartbroken about the loss of his friend and bandmate, recalled their first time on tour.
“When Bobby called asking me to play bass with the Wolf Bros, I thought at the very least, this is going to be a master class in losing self-consciousness and forgetting about fear,” Was said. “If the band stumbled, the audience wouldn’t walk out. They appreciated the fact that you were trying to do something new for them. Then there’d be a couple moments every night with an incredible exchange between the musicians and you can feel the audience becoming a member of the band.”
Playing the Dead’s “Blues for Allah” on this tour — an LP rooted in Middle Eastern scales, pirouetting time signatures and improvisational telepathy — put him in communion with his old friend.
“I used to think that songs like ‘King Solomon’s Marbles’ were just jams and conversations on the spot. But when we really got into it, there’s a form underneath and you can take tremendous liberty with that form,” Was said.
Was’ production career was built on a similar principle.
His early band Was (Not Was) remains a visionary electro-pop act with subtle, salient politics. “Out Come the Freaks” is a favorite on Pride month dance floors — “If you just wanted to do poppers and dance all night, it worked, and if you wanted to think about the government careening out of control, it worked too,” Was said of the band’s club material.
The late Ozzy Osbourne sang on the band’s international hit “Shake Your Head,” alongside a winking, very game Kim Basinger. The actor was a replacement after Madonna backed out, leaving the proto-rave tune one of the era’s most unlikely collaborations.
He recalled Ozzy fondly. “In 1975, this folk group I was in booked us to open for Black Sabbath at the Toledo Sports Arena, playing for a bunch of 14-year-old white boys on amphetamines,” Was said. “They weren’t having it. I’ve heard the tape of that show, and the drummer was bleeding from being hit by so many bottles that we had to stop playing. That was my first exposure to Ozzy, so I was a little afraid to do the session, but he was up for an adventure.”
Don Was and the Pan-Detroit Ensemble
(Gemma Corfield)
A Stones confidant and producer from 1994’s “Voodoo Lounge” up until 2023’s “Hackney Diamonds” (where Andrew Watt took the helm), Was had nothing but praise for the band, and still admits to a twinge of fandom in their presence.
“There’s never been a day in the studio with the Rolling Stones where I didn’t look around the room and go, ‘Oh my God,’” he said. “I’ve known Mick for over 30 years, but the last time they played L.A. at SoFi Stadium, Mick came walking down that stage and I was like, ‘Wow, there he is, it’s 1965 again.’”
With Dylan, he recalled the mercurial genius’ impish side. “I was producing Dylan, and George Harrison came in to play guitar. Bob was messing with him, Bob pushed the engineer aside and he ran the tape machine. George had never heard the song before, didn’t know what key it was in, and Bob just starts the tape. George played a respectable solo, but clearly it was rough. Bob, just to be funny, stopped the machine and said ‘That’s it, perfect.’ George turns to me and said, ‘What do you think, Don?’ And Bob goes, “Yeah, what do you think, Don?’ I’m looking at these two guys and time slowed down. I remembered trying to sell my car to get a ticket to go to New York to see the Concert for Bangladesh. Now they’re asking me what I think. I was paralyzed.”
“A voice appeared in my head,” he said, “Telling me, ‘He’s not paying you to be a fan.‘ So I said to George, ‘It was good, man. Let’s see if we can beat it.’ You can’t allow the iconography to dictate the outcome in the studio. You have to put that aside.”
As president of Blue Note Records, the estimable jazz label he’s led for more than a decade, Was relentlessly looks forward. He’s released restless modern records by Domi & JD Beck, Fathers, Makaya McCraven and Julian Lage (the hotshot jazz guitarist now playing with Dylan). He’s refreshingly optimistic about challenging music in streaming’s ruthless economy.
“Don’t make music for the delivery system,” Was said. “I don’t think about streaming, I think about touching people. If you do that, nothing has changed fundamentally in the music business. If your purpose is to get under people’s skin and make them feel something, that’s the same job it was for Mozart. How people listen can keep changing, but I don’t think the palette of human emotion changes, and that’s who you’re addressing.”
Was came from a working-class industrial city, making music reflective of Detroit’s technological upheaval and economic neglect. “Adversity” is a beacon to keep playing in spite of everything.
“I think that the salvation of musicians is that no matter what happens, what technological advancements come along, there’s still nothing like the experience of being in the same room as people who are playing together,” Was said. “It’s always been tough, man. It’s harder these days to buy a Ferrari as a musician, but I don’t know that that’s necessary. I have total confidence that the opportunity is there for anybody who is willing to give the audience a meaningful experience.”
Sony Pictures will invest $100 million and take a minority stake in virtual reality venue operator Cosm, as the studio continues to build a business in communal experiences.
As part of the investment, Sony Pictures Chief Executive Ravi Ahuja will also join Cosm’s board of directors, the studio said Wednesday. The size of Sony’s minority stake was not disclosed.
The El Segundo-based Cosm currently operates three venues — one at Hollywood Park in Inglewood, and the others in Dallas and Atlanta. The company plans to open additional venues in Detroit and Cleveland.
Cosm bills itself as a “shared reality venue,” and its facilities center around a massive, wraparound screen that is intended to envelop viewers with additional digital effects. The company has largely focused on sports, though it has also shown Cirque du Soleil shows and done several collaborations with Warner Bros., including recent screenings of 2001’s “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” in honor of the film’s 25th anniversary.
“Cosm sits at the intersection of several trends shaping the future of entertainment,” Ahuja said in a statement. “We’ve followed Cosm since before launch and have been impressed with the quality of the experience and the enthusiasm it’s generating with audiences.”
TORONTO — A new Canadian-built bridge across the Detroit River that U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to block will open soon, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Gordie Howe International Bridge, jointly owned by Canada and the U.S. state of Michigan, is set to take place on Friday, while the bridge itself is expected to open to traffic later this month.
In February, Trump demanded that Canada turn over at least half the ownership of the bridge to the U.S. federal government and agree to other unspecified demands in one of his many salvos over cross-border trade issues.
The bridge, which would connect Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, and would be a vital economic artery between Canada and the United States, had been expected to open early this year, according to information on the project’s website.
The bridge is named after Howe, the late Canadian hockey great who spent 25 seasons with the Detroit Red Wings.
The project was negotiated by former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder — a Republican — and paid for by the Canadian government to help ease congestion over the existing Ambassador Bridge and Detroit-Windsor tunnel. Work has been underway since 2018.
“Obviously the bridge will be open at the end of the week. A symbol of, but also a fact of cooperation between our countries,” Carney told reporters as he walked into Parliament.
“Great for Canadians going across the border, Americans coming across the border, and for commerce,” he said, calling it “positive news.”
Trump threatened the bridge as the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement is up for review this year, and Trump has been taking a hard-line position before those talks, including by issuing new tariff threats.
Carney, meanwhile, has spoken out on the world stage against economic coercion by the United States.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, has said that the Canadian-funded project is a “huge boon” to her state and its economic future.
Michigan is a swing state that Trump carried in both 2016 and 2024.
Snyder wrote in an op-ed in The Detroit News earlier this year that Trump was wrong in asserting that Canada owns both the U.S. and Canadian sides of the Gordie Howe bridge.
“Canada and the state of Michigan are 50/50 owners of the new bridge,” Snyder wrote. “Canada was wonderful and financed the entire bridge. They will get repaid with interest from the tolls. Michigan and the United States got their half-ownership with no investment.”
The Gordie Howe bridge will join the privately owned Ambassador Bridge as the second span connecting Detroit and Windsor, Ontario.
The rival Ambassador Bridge is considered the busiest U.S.-Canadian border crossing, carrying 25% of all trade between the two countries. It plays an especially important role in auto manufacturing.
Companies controlled by the Moroun family, owners of the rival Ambassador Bridge, previously sued to prevent the Howe bridge from being built.
