The Flyover Coalition

By bankrolling a Netflix documentary about life in a Dayton glass plant after Chinese owners take over, Barack and Michelle Obama enter the debate over the future of U.S. manufacturing just in time for election season. Read more.

In previous downturns, a fall in recreational-vehicle sales was an indicator of a recession to come. These days, another sales swoon for RV manufacturers, concentrated in northern Indiana, has economists concerned. Read more.

Florida has joined Michigan, Ohio and other heartland states in efforts to become a center for developing and testing self-driving technology, backed by new legislation as well as innovative companies. Read more.

Hundreds of workers at McDonald's restaurants, mostly in the Midwest, walked off the job to protest low pay and other working conditions, elevating the tight-labor sting at the king of fast-food restaurants. Read more.

Seldom has one man meant so much to the fate of a big American city, especially in the modern era. Thus have so many metro Detroiters been drawn today to the unfortunate news about Dan Gilbert. Read more.

Detroit's multibillionaire patron, Dan Gilbert, lies hospitalized with symptoms of a stroke. That has quickly raised the question: Is Detroit too dependent on one man for its economic-development success? Read more.

Dan Gilbert, who nearly single-handedly drove the revival of private-capital investment in a down-and-out Detroit, was hospitalized on Sunday morning with stroke-like symptoms. Little information is available. Read more.

Minneapolis-based Target is confounding the retail world with strong results from its remake -- including robust e-commerce increases -- even while other store chains based in Flyover Country struggle. Read more.

Whipsawed by trade wars, economie of scale and a complex pricing system, dairy farmers -- especially family farmers -- in Wisconsin and elsewhere are getting trounced out of the business at a record, startling pace. Read more.

Outstate residents of Flyover Country are used to feeling alienated from the big cities that dominate their states. But Illinoisians' alienation from Chicago is reaching unprecedented -- maybe even secessionist -- levels. Read more.