'Greatly imperiled': Expert warns Trump policies backfiring on Midwest towns

A central plank of President Donald Trump's brand is to revitalize the economies of distressed factory towns across the Midwest — but the amount of money he wants to put into these communities is completely at odds with his dismantling of federal programs that these areas already depend on, wrote University of Chicago sociologist Jerel Ezell in an analysis for Politico.

Ezell hails from Flint, Michigan, where General Motors was born and which has seen an economic decline in recent decades.