KALAMAZOO, MI — An $18.9 million federal grant would do a world of economic good in the struggling core city neighborhoods around downtown Kalamazoo. The money — a fraction what it takes to build just one of the $97 million apiece F-15EX fighter jets coming to Macomb County — would improve housing, upgrade community centers and train residents in construction, electrical and home repair skills. Many of the 300 eligible fixer-uppers are in the Northside, a Black, low-income neighborhood crosscut by high-traffic one-ways and bordered on the east by a huge paper recycling factory and the city wastewater plant. A state assessment found that air quality there poses chronic health risks and overall life expectancy is far below other city neighborhoods. But the Northside is waiting in limbo. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded the grant last year before Donald Trump became president again. Now, the funds are blocked — and the recipients can only guess about why as they hire staff and advance a three-year housing project under federal contract terms they’re obligated to uphold if they ever want the money. “That money is contractually obligated,” said Jenny Doezema, director of the Kalamazoo Climate Crisis Coalition, a nonprofit which is managing the project for the county. The group is fielding numerous calls from homeowners and contractors who want to be put on the work list or submit bids, she said. “To pull it back at this point is taking back an investment in the community that people were counting on.” Kalamazoo is not a one-off. In the four months since Trump took office, federal grants have evaporated with little or no explanation as his administration cuts budgets, programs, services and staff at dizzying speed in an effort to slash the federal government and centralize power over what it sees as an overreaching administrative state. In four months, Trump has eviscerated social, political, governance and foreign policy norms. He has shaken Washington, D.C., and the country at large and used multi-billionaire Elon Musk team of tech bros to dismantle agencies, slash federal spending and employment, eliminate programs and seek access to data on millions of Americans. Trump’s efforts to remake a global economic order the U.S. built after World War II has injected uncertainty and volatility into markets. His trade policies have hurt Michigan, which is economically reliant on industries hit by tariffs. Trump has signed more than 140 executive orders since inauguration, the most of any U.S. president in 100 days. “This really has been an extremely strong assertion of executive power,” said Matt Grossmann, a political science professor at Michigan State University and director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research. Americans are torn. Only about 4 in 10 approve of how Trump is handling the presidency, according to the Associated Press. His ratings on the economy and trade are lower than that. About 46% of U.S. adults approve of his immigration policies, with about half of Americans saying he has “gone too far” in deporting immigrants living in the country illegally. While it’s normal for a president’s approval ratings to drop once in office, Grossmann said Trump’s decline is accelerated on economic issues such as inflation and trade. “If you say you’re going to lower prices and people don’t see it — and they also don’t see you focusing much on that issue, that makes an immediate difference,” he said. Trade war is hitting Michigan where it hurts Trump was in Michigan on Tuesday to celebrate a presidential chapter the White House called the “most successful first 100 days of any administration in history” and which Time Magazine called “among the most destabilizing in American history.” Trump’s impact in Michigan is coming into sharper focus as his administration passes the symbolic milestone — which the president celebrated in typically hyperbolic terms this week with a Tuesday rally in Macomb County, where, earlier, he promised state leaders something they’ve desperately sought for years: New fighter jets at Selfridge. “In recent years, many in Michigan have feared for the future of the base. They’ve been calling everybody — but the only one that mattered is Trump,” Trump said Tuesday. The jets protect about 5,000 military and civilian jobs at the base, located in a metro Detroit battleground county which favored Trump by nearly 14 percentage points in November. Macomb County, replete with white, blue-collar suburban voters, is a historic bellwether and swing county in a swing state that’s become ground zero for economic pain caused by Trump’s steep tariffs on auto parts and vehicles from Canada and Mexico. Alongside the pomp and demonstrations on Tuesday, a less obvious backdrop for Trump’s visit was a jump in Michigan’s unemployment rate, which rose to 5.5% in March from 4.2% last year — the largest jump of any U.S. state, putting Michigan in second place for the nation’s highest unemployment rate after Nevada. While some of the unemployment figure can be attributed to auto industry layoffs caused by a weaker demand for electric vehicles, economists say Trump’s tariffs still shoulder blame for price hikes, production cutbacks and layoffs in the U.S. and Canada. In April, the Anderson Economic Group of Michigan estimated that 25% auto tariffs on Canada and Mexico would cause job losses in Michigan due to higher vehicle prices, lower consumer demand and disruption in complex supply chains that involve parts which cross the border multiple times before they are installed in a finished vehicle. Automaker Stellantis, parent company of Jeep, Ram and Chrysler, temporarily laid off about 900 autoworkers in Michigan and Indiana in response to auto tariffs. “For auto tariffs, you are taking away jobs in American plants and possibly in the future getting a fraction of those back,” said economist Patrick Anderson, CEO of the Anderson Economic Group consulting firm in East Lansing. “Nobody knows what fraction that is, but it’s going to be a while and it’s going to be a fraction that’s smaller than one.” Tariffs are hitting Michigan where it hurts, said Anderson. “The tariff crisis we face in the industry is clearly as bad as the financial crisis back in 2009 — and arguably much worse. It involves not just financing but actual production of our goods and services, including two of our top three most important industries: agriculture and automobiles.” Ahead of his Michigan visit, Trump responded to mounting industry pressure and softened auto tariffs by offering rebates to automakers which finish a vehicle domestically, and by preventing duties on foreign-made cars from layering atop tariffs on steel and aluminum or tariffs imposed on Canada and Mexico in response to fentanyl trafficking. The threat to Michigan agriculture from Trump’s trade war is still crystalizing, but the New York Times reported that China is shifting soybean purchasing to Brazil. That hurts Michigan farmers, who export more than $700 million worth of soybeans. “Citizens of Michigan have every right to look at the president and cast judgment on whether tariff policies are good or bad for Michigan — and right now they have not been good for Michigan over the first four months of this year,” Anderson said. There was plenty of judgment, tariff-related and otherwise, among the thousands of protesters gathered outside Macomb Community College on Tuesday. Many held upside-down American flags or signs advocating resistance and dissent. One woman was dressed in a red cloak and a white bonnet from Margaret Atwood’s dystopian drama ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’ But there were also droves of jubilant Trump supporters decked in red hats. A group waiting in line held a “Best First 100 Days Ever!” banner, chanting Trump’s name. “I feel like we’re becoming a great nation once again,” said Felix Karim, 22, of Macomb Township, while waiting to enter the Trump rally. “I feel like we’re more respected — not only here, but especially when you travel.” Alayna Wrona, 25, of Center Line, praised Trump’s border policies and his attempted ban on transgender people serving in the military, early actions she’s been happy about. She wants the president to bring down taxes and the cost of higher education. “If (students) want to transfer and go out of state, be able to afford to go to whatever college they want to go out of state,” she said. “That’s what I want to see.” Litigation, layoffs and program cuts roil federal agencies This year has been a rollercoaster for Andrew Lennox. The U.S. Marine Corps veteran was fired in February as a supervisor at the John D. Dingell Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Ann Arbor. A month later he was rehired. In between, Lennox found himself seated next to a Pennsylvania sheriff and a Utah businessman listening to Trump’s March 4 Congressional address at the capitol. Lennox was invited by Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat who gave the party’s rebuttal. He said the vilification of federal workers — about 75,000 of which live or work in Michigan — by Trump officials, supporters and Republicans feels hypocritical. “It’s like — you guys had our back when we were in Afghanistan,” he said. “We’re not deep state insiders,” he said. “We want to keep our water clean, take care of veterans, make sure kids get lunch. There’s a severe lack of empathy.” There’s no official figure for the total number of firings and layoffs among the 2.4 million U.S. federal workers under Trump. The Michigan Dept. of Labor and Economic Opportunity said it received about 400 unemployment claims from federal workers as of April 21, but that’s “not a full, accurate representation” because they aren’t categorically tracked. Like many fired by Trump, Lennox was reinstated after a U.S. District judge in California issued an injunction forcing the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Interior and Treasury to reinstate terminated probationary employees. But the Trump administration is still pursuing their terminations in court while planning for larger-scale agency reductions-in-force, putting employees in limbo. Some have been put on administrative leave or fired a second time under different legal reasoning. The disruptions have hampered government programs and services. Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore struggled to hire seasonal staff necessary to protect endangered shorebirds and ready the park for visitors after a blanket hiring freeze. Algal bloom monitoring, shoreline mapping, data collection, ice and snow forecasting and buoy deployment in the Great Lakes are threatened by staffing and proposed budget cuts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), say former employees and partner groups which rely on the agency for funding. In the environmental policy realm, Michigan groups are girding for battle over pollution enforcement and climate regulation rollbacks they see as existential threats. Even if many of the current federal rules are upheld, “the Trump administration still wins in a lot of ways because this sweeping action is going to gum up the works,” said Charlotte Jameson, chief policy officer at the Michigan Environmental Council. “It’s going to stop enforcement and implementation of a lot of really important programs.” While generally slow to decide weighty matters, federal courts have nonetheless functioned this year as a primary check on Trump’s blitz of executive action, notably around mass federal layoffs, freezing federal grants, cuts to university medical research, foreign assistance and immigrant deportation. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has been active in Trump litigation. Her office is soliciting reports about social security disruptions and is she’s joining a coalition of Democratic attorneys general filing lawsuits against attempts to fire workers, cut public health and disaster relief grants, impose proof-of-citizenship voting requirements, and dismantle the Department of Education and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The lawsuits have helped jar loose federal funding. On April 21, the Federal Emergency Management Agency released millions in disaster relief and recovery reimbursements for the state of Michigan that had threatened to disrupt services and payroll. In the battle over immigration enforcement, Michigan’s position along an international border has thrust the state into the debate over due process — thanks in part to driver confusion on I-75 near the Ambassador Bridge, where the consequences of a wrong turn into the border security area have become very serious. A Venezuelan man made a wrong turn delivering food in January and was swiftly deported to a prison in El Salvador. A Guatemalan woman who entered the country illegally in 2018 was held in a windowless room at the border office with her two young children, ages 1 and 5, for five days after taking a wrong turn into the bridge area while en route to Costco. Immigrant advocates say border offices have become de facto holding centers under Trump, who has pledged to deport millions. Democratic U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Detroit said border officials told her in March that 213 people have been detained since January, with most being those who took accidentally a wrong turn onto the bridge. “People wanted management of the southern border — not necessarily a broad correct across all borders,” said Grossmann. “I think that plays a little bit differently here.” The trade war and strained relations with Canada over Trump’s expansionist talk about annexing the nation as a 51st state has translated into a noticeable drop in traffic across each of Michigan’s three international bridges. The largest drop is at the Sault Ste. Marie International Bridge in the Upper Peninsula, where U.S. Customs and Border Patrol data shows that passenger traffic is down almost 34% year-over-year in March. Linda Hoath, director of the Sault Area Convention and Visitors Bureau and a member of the bridge authority board, said there has been a noticeable drop in Ontario license plates around Sault Ste. Marie, particularly at local grocery stores. Hoath said the loss of Ontario business reminds her of the pandemic in some ways. She redirected her Pure Michigan tourism ad spending away from Canada this year. “It’s the rhetoric. It’s the tariffs. It’s all of it,” she said. Assistance programs face cuts, mining permits speed ahead The Trump tide is sinking some boats and lifting others. The EPA would not specify why the Kalamazoo housing project grant was blocked when MLive asked this week. Agency spokespeople said only that a review is ongoing as part of a standard effort “to ensure each (grant) is an appropriate use of taxpayer dollars and to understand how those programs align with administration priorities.” RELATED: Go here for more of MLive’s coverage of Trump The impact of Trump’s government-slashing in Kalamazoo goes beyond housing grant limbo. Nonprofit leaders gathered Wednesday to announce that local organizations have lost more than $37 million in federal funding this year for services ranging from housing assistance and food pantry supply to legal services for immigrant families. More than 60 people have already lost jobs and another 700 are at risk due to federal funding cuts, according to a local community impact analysis. Food banks in Grand Rapids, Flint, Battle Creek, Lansing, Detroit and Ann Arbor are scrambling to serve meals after the U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled $4.3 million worth of emergency food — roughly 2 million meals — for low-income households. Elsewhere in Michigan, permitting is being fast-tracked for a salt mine near Evart under a Trump order which added potash, an agricultural fertilizer that’s heavily imported from Canada, to a list of minerals considered “critical” to national security. About 30 miles west of Evart, an idled private prison is reopening in Lake County under a federal contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to house detainees as Trump ramps up deportations. That means revenue for local governments, which assess taxes and charges about $15,000 per month for water and sewer services. Prison taxes help fund local emergency services, police, schools, libraries, veterans and senior programs. Owner GEO Group paid about $1.6 million in local taxes in 2021, the last year the prison was fully open, but it has also challenged recent year assessments. “What it means is jobs and housing — more people in our shops and stores when they’re open,” said Harold Nichols, village of Baldwin president. “It’s a blessing to the community when they’re open. But when it’s not, it creates hardships.” In Macomb County on Tuesday, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called the new fighter jets a “game-changer” for Michigan’s economy. State Republican leaders such as House Speaker Matt Hall and Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt joined Trump for the announcement — but it was the Democratic governor whom Trump hugged, credited for delivering the win and motioned up to speak first. “Well, I hadn’t planned to speak…” said Whitmer, nervously approaching the podium inside the Selfridge hangar three weeks after an awkward experience in the Oval Office, where she was unexpectedly ushered into a press conference and tried to hide her face behind blue folders. But she rolled with it Tuesday. There were no folders at hand, anyhow. “I am really damn happy we’re here to celebrate this recapitalization at Selfridge,” Whitmer said. “It’s crucial for the Michigan economy. It’s crucial for the men and women here, for our homeland security and our future.” She continued. “Thank you. I’m so grateful that…” – she paused to look at Trump, who smiled, “… this announcement was made today. And I appreciate all the work.” Click here to follow MLive’s complete coverage of President Trump’s impact on Michigan.