Thomas Breen file photo
Elicker: "Now is the time for us to put the feet on the gas of resistance."
The Trump administration has potentially suspended $27 million in federal grants related to climate, health, and environmental resiliency that had been slated for New Haven.
Mayor Justin Elicker revealed that number as he criticized the president for presiding over “100 days of American decline.”
Elicker put forward those budget numbers and that political critique Wednesday morning during a press conference held on the second floor of City Hall.
The presser took place one day after President Donald Trump wrapped up the first 100 days of his second presidential administration.
Trump has celebrated his administration’s tariffs, deportations, budget cuts, and executive orders as all in service of “makin’ America great again.”
Elicker — whose mayoral administration has filed two lawsuits against the federal government and signed on to three more through amicus briefs — offered a damning assessment.
“It’s been 100 days of chaos. It’s been 100 days of destructive actions,” he said. “It’s been 100 days of American decline. … It’s been 100 days of upending our economy.”
The mayor said that New Haven currently receives around $355 million in federal funding, including $314 million to the City of New Haven and over $40 million to the city’s public school district. Those funds support a total of 85 full-time city employees and another 247 at New Haven Public Schools (NHPS).
Elicker said that there are seven federal grants to New Haven that add up to $56 million and that have been imperiled by various Trump administration actions.
Of that $56 million in awarded but unstable federal funds, $27 million “are currently suspended,” Elicker said. “But, depending on the day and the work that some groups are doing to fight back with litigation,” he added, the status of those grants are liable to change.
Just the other day, he said, the $20 million federal Community Change grant that New Haven had received from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) saw its status changed “from suspended to open.” That change coincided with an order recently issued by a Rhode Island judge barring the Trump administration from unilaterally withholding certain environmental funding, he said.
These lawsuits are working, Elicker said. “I encourage a lot of other cities to fight back, because this is the right thing to do.”
Asked for a detailed accounting of which grants are imperiled and which suspended, Elicker pointed to the following federal funds:
• $25 million through FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program. Elicker said that the city is assuming that this money will no longer be available, as the Trump administration has publicly announced that it is ending the program. However, New Haven has not yet received a formal notice from the federal government or the state government that these funds will actually go away.
• $20 million through the EPA’s Community Change Grant program. As noted above, this grant recently went from being “suspended” to “open,” though the city is unsure how long these funds will remain accessible.
• $9.4 million through the Climate Pollution Reduction program for geothermal heat pumps by Union Station. This grant has not yet been suspended, but the city does consider it at risk.
• $1 million through the EPA’s Environmental justice Government-to-Government program. This grant has been suspended.
• $434,680 through an Immunization/Vaccines for Children program. Elicker said this grant has been suspended.
• $334,610 through a USDA Composting Food Waste program. This grant is not yet suspended, but the city does deem it at risk.
• $212,155 through an Immunization Action Plan program. Elicker said this grant has been suspended.
Elicker was joined at the press conference by city staffers, nonprofit leaders, and community organizers from such groups as the New Haven Pride Center, New Haven Immigrants Coalition, UNITE HERE, the Arts Council, the Friends Center for Children, and Discovering Amistad.
New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Supt. Madeline Negrón, city Economic Development Administrator Mike Piscitelli, and city Community Services Administrator Eliza Halsey also took turns at the mic to detail how the Trump administration’s actions have imperiled myriad aspects of life in New Haven — from slowing new housing construction to dragging down NIH-grant-funded growth to the bioscience sector to causing fear and uncertainty among students and teachers in the face of the pending destruction of the federal Department of Education.
“We need the wind at our back, not the wind in our face,” Negrón said. The Trump administration “has been a Category 5 storm that is attempting to blow down the entire house of public education.”
Elicker drove home the message Wednesday that New Haven has shown over the past 100 days how to stand up to a hostile administration in D.C..
“We are leading in the resistance of a presidential administration that is attacking the core values of our city,” Elicker said.
“We should be proud of how New Haven as a whole has responded,” he said. The city is a “center for resistance. … Now is the time for us to put the feet on the gas of resistance.”
Click here to watch Wednesday’s press conference in full.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy's take on Trump's first 100 days, on Tuesday.