Michigan Primary Preview, Biden Administration Sues To Block Grocery Merger

uncommitted instead of President Biden.

What's the president hearing from voters who delivered the state forum in 2020?

Some Michigan voters warned Biden to change course on the Israel-Hamas war.

but we're sizable enough to make a candidate lose.

What are they hearing?

Kroger and Albertson's propose to combine.

What does that mean for your neighborhood supermarket?

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send with their vote or decision not to vote, as the case may be.

And they matter because Michigan is a presidential swing state,

one of six that went to Joe Biden in 2020 and decided the election.

And Biden and Trump, of course, are the favorites today.

For a preview today, we're joined by our co-host Leila Fadal and by NPR national

political correspondent Don Gagne, both in the great state of Michigan.

Good morning.

Nikki Haley is on the ballot.

She vows to continue to give Republican voters an option other than Trump,

at least through Super Tuesday.

On the Democratic side, there's President Biden, who faces only minor challengers on the ballot.

Except there is one challenge to Biden that is really worth watching today.

It's an orchestrated campaign by pro-Palestinian activists who are angry.

And that is an understatement.

They're angry that Biden has not called for a complete and permanent ceasefire in

Gaza and to pressure him to do so, to send him a strong message.

Arab Americans and Muslim Americans, many of them based in Dearborn,

are urging Democratic primary voters to vote uncommitted.

How widespread is the protest?

We heard that same outreach in the Detroit metro area about Gaza from young people,

progressives, other people of color, and specifically from young Black voters who

were saying to me, they worry about Gaza, but also human rights in the U.S.

Voting rights, police brutality, equality, inclusivity.

And of course, the economy came up too.

And that's all making them think about sitting out this election.

Take Kaya Brazil.

She's Black, a full-time student at Wayne State.

She's 30.

And she had to quit one of her two full-time jobs to enroll in school.

She's a lifelong Democrat, has always voted.

But this year, she's not inspired.

In the Democratic primaries today, she may vote uncommitted.

And in the general election, she's thinking about staying home.

So I asked her what she wants to hear from a candidate for president.

It is absolutely ridiculous that you can work 40 plus hours and not be able to support yourself,

let alone a family.

Are there people in these voter groups who are thinking of Donald Trump as a

choice for them in the fall?

The big question is more, how many show up for the Democrats?

The big question in a state like Michigan, where it's all about the margins.

When we asked the campaign about their concern around the protest vote against Biden among

would-be Democratic voters over Gaza, they said he's working for peace in the Middle East,

but then highlighted a lot of other important issues that might appeal to these voters,

like his investment in green energy or his stance on reproductive rights.

So it seems like the campaign is hoping to win back voters who are

angry with these other issues, where they might see him as doing well.

So again, all these voter groups are important, but none give Michigan to a candidate alone.

I think Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud,

the first Arab-American mayor of a majority Arab-American city, put it to us best.

but we're sizable enough to make a candidate lose.

and spent some time with Reverend Kenneth Flowers.

He's a committed Democrat, a Biden fan.

He'll be voting, but he points to the low unemployment rates

and the infrastructure bill as some of the wins for his community.

But he's in his 60s, and he says he's concerned because in his congregation and community,

he's hearing that same apathy and sometimes anger.

Now, Black voters turned out for Biden in 2020.

He won by about 94% among that demographic.

This year, though, Flowers says, based on his conversations,

the president doesn't have the same pull now as he did then,

and he has a lot of work to do before.

Now, at the same time, he nor Vice President Harris should take our vote for granted.

They have to earn it.

But that's the type of apathy we heard,

not just in these candidates, but in the two-party system itself.

Now, Don, Layla has given us some impressions of specific voters there.

How do those impressions compare with what you have experienced

as someone who's living in Michigan?

According to my reporting, according to my living here and encountering people,

it's especially palpable in the Arab and Muslim-American communities, certainly.

But African-American voters talk about their frustrations.

And if you head out to the suburbs where a lot of independents

and more moderate Republicans helped Biden out in 2020,

they're still watching.

And for some, it's maybe not even a choice between Biden and Trump.

It's whether or not to vote at all at the top of the ballot.

This is indeed worth mentioning.

And already people are quick to ponder a third-party vote

when I have conversations with them.

I used to hear a lot of that over the years in the general election,

but never during primary week.

And now Nikki Haley supporters I talk to are wondering

what other options may be out there for them.

Same with Arab-American voters, certainly with Black voters too.

Of course, there's a lot of Midwestern suburbs

that were very red years ago and are getting more blue.

And the question is whether Biden can sustain that.

And I also wonder about the union vote in Michigan.

some like Trump, certainly.

But overall, Biden won them big.

With the United Auto Workers Union,

it's usually around 60% for the Democrat,

a solid margin by any measure, right?

And it helped Biden win in 2020.

But the catch is there's no letting up for Biden.

He needs to do that again.

He needs that margin.

He does have a big endorsement from the UAW

and its charismatic new leader, Sean Fain.

The UAW was coming off a strike in the fall

and they got a contract with big raises.

Biden even marched on the picket line with them.

And despite all these wins,

I spent time with a family that's four generations

of auto workers and they all seem to be leaning,

not enthusiastically, but leaning towards Trump

over things like immigration and Ukraine.

Biden needs to work it because he needs to do well

with unions more than ever,

especially if other pieces of the coalition,

as we've been talking, are not enthusiastic.

You know, it's a mix of constituencies

that Democrats really need to win in Michigan.

Biden needs to tend to them all

and to do so by keeping the margins of victory

at their typical level within each group.

And Trump, meanwhile, just has to make some inroads

and to pick off enough of them to win himself.

in the days ahead.

NPR's Leila Fadal and Don Gagne, thanks to you both.

of grocery chains and nine states are going along.

Kroger and Albertson's, want to become one.

That mega merger would reshape the industry,

which now also includes retail giants

like Amazon and Walmart.

But the Biden administration

and several states are suing to block it.

Good morning.

I grew up in Indiana saying grocery.

People also say, what, grocery?

I've heard, I mean, obviously lots of people say grocery.

I say grocery.

We'll stick to that.

How big would these two grocery chains be

if they're combined?

in recent history.

It's worth almost $25 billion.

And so what you have is you have Kroger,

which is the largest supermarket chain.

It owns all these other stores

like Ralph's, Harris Teeter, Fred Meyer.

And then you have Albertson's,

which is its top direct competitor.

And it also owns Safeway, Vons, Juul, Osco.

And together they employ 720,000 people.

They own about 5,000 locations across 48 states.

And so the Federal Trade Commission,

along with nine states,

are suing to stop that merger,

arguing that it would erase competition

for both shoppers and for workers.

I mean, my mom hundreds of miles from here

is shopping in one of these stores.

that the companies took to the government

that this merger should be okay?

to surviving in today's grocery business.

They say, sure, we're top regional chains,

but the real competitors are these national giants

like Amazon, Walmart, Costco, even dollar stores.

Walmart sells more groceries

than Kroger and Albertsons combined.

Plus they say the two of them

are the largest union shops in American retail.

And so they say blocking their deal

would actually just boost

these massive non-union stores.

And they certainly expect a tough scrutiny.

They also tried to cushion their deal

by pitching a plan to sell off hundreds of stores

in areas where they overlap

to basically create a competitor to themselves.

would seem to be an argument designed

to appeal to the pro-union Biden administration,

but it sounds like federal regulators weren't impressed.

for example, on the plan to sell the stores.

The FTC said this plan is a messy hodgepodge

that the buyer would struggle to run,

let alone grow to compete.

On the question on national competitors,

I post that one to Rahul Rao.

He's one of the main officials on this case at the FTC.

And he said the review really looked

at how people actually shop for food.

And in a lot of rural communities,

there aren't Walmarts out there.

It takes days for Amazon to be delivered.

And the main argument against the merger right now

is that Kroger and Albertsons compete head-to-head

on food prices, on pharmacy hours,

on quality of products, on benefit packages.

And they wouldn't really need to

if they're the same company.

It will be a very interesting case.

One thing to note, regulators are going

to be testing this new kind of argument,

which is that mergers should protect

not only consumers and prices, but also workers.

And we haven't really seen it tested in court,

so it will be interesting to watch.

on the grocery, grocery, grocery industry.

almost the last day of the month

that I have to pronounce February.

I'm Steve Inskeep.

Today's episode was edited by Reena Advani,

Emily Kopp, H.J. Mai, and Ben Adler.

It was produced by Claire Murashima,

Ben Abrams, and Julie Deppenbrock.

We get engineering support from Stacey Abbott,

and our technical director is Zach Coleman.

Join us again tomorrow.

We'll have results and analysis from the Michigan primary.

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