Gov. Gretchen Whitmer continues to lobby President Donald Trump for $3-$5 billion to bring a new semiconductor facility to a mega site in Mundy Township that many residents don’t want.

Whitmer trekked to D.C. on Thursday for her first face-to-face meeting with the 47^th POTUS to discuss a variety of issues, including her focus on landing a $55 billion semiconductor plant at a three-square-mile mega site near Flint.

While neither Whitmer nor the White House have released details, the governor described the meeting as “productive” in a statement to the Detroit Free Press.

“I had a productive meeting at the White House today with President Trump where we discussed bringing good paying jobs to Michigan,” she said. “We also discussed tariffs, the importance of keeping our Great Lakes clean and safe, and additional defense investments in the state.

“I’m grateful for his time today and I’ll always work as hard as I can with anyone for the state of Michigan and its people,” Whitmer said.

Many of those people in Mundy Township aren’t big fans of the proposed mega site, or the non-disclosure agreements with Whitmer’s Michigan Economic Development Corporation and others used to shield details from taxpayers.

In November, voters elected Republican township supervisor Jennifer Arrand Stainton and trustees who oppose the mega site, which stretches across 1,000 acres of farm land ringed by 167 homes, three churches, two day cares and nine subdivisions, many of which feature “no megasite” signs.

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“I think some transparency needs to come out from the proposed site and I think the township needs to get more involved and we need to protect our citizens against the possible pollution and contamination that this would bring to our community,” Stainton told WJRT following the November election.

Stainton and hundreds who have signed on to a petition to “Stop the Mundy Township Megasite” point to more than $250 million in state tax dollars already allocated to the project, “which would be twice the size of Disney Land” and “would drastically alter the landscape and destroy neighborhoods and natural resources,” the petition reads.

“One of the things that we’ve noticed here in Mundy Township is a lack of senior housing, affordable senior housing,” Stainton told WJRT. “I think that area would be a great senior housing area.”

“We want our community to stay the way it is, but the public is not hearing our side of the story. All they’re hearing is more jobs, more manufacturing, but it’s going to disrupt our lifestyle,” Cindy Nolff, a local resident who opposes the mega site, told WSMH.

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MEDC officials are currently is talks with Western Digital Technologies to locate in the township of about 14,800, but state Sen. John Cherry, D-Flint, told WJRT last year the deal hinges largely on securing federal funding through the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors and Science Act, better known as the CHIPS Act.

Trump described the CHIPS Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden, as “a horrible, horrible thing” in comments to Congress earlier this month, when he urged Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to repeal the law and use “whatever’s left over … to reduce debt or (for) any other reason you want.”

The president also denounced the general failure of corporate welfare deals, noting his administration has secured $1.7 trillion in high tech investments from companies like Apple, Softbank, OpenAI, Oracle and others since taking office.

“And just yesterday, Taiwan Semiconductor, the biggest in the world’s most powerful in the world, has a tremendous amount — 97% of the market — announced a $165 billion investment to build the most powerful chips on Earth right here in the U.S.A,” he said. “And we’re not giving them any money.”

Regardless, plans are moving ahead in Mundy Township despite the public opposition as Whitmer lobbies Trump for CHIP Act cash, though the non-disclosure agreements between MEDC and the Flint and Genesee Economic Alliance have been dissolved, according to WJRT.

“I’m hoping that today marks the turning point in terms of lines of communication being opened and a repairing and restoring of that trust beginning,” Trustee Mark Gorton said.

In December, the first meeting of the new township board after the election, FGEA Executive Director Tyler Rossmaessler promised more transparency on the Mundy Township mega site moving forward.

He also offered examples from other mega sites regarding what the massive development could mean for the township.

“There will probably be a negotiated payment to the township that will be for many many decades that will include hundreds of millions of dollars to the township to this board to invest in things like roads, police, fire,” he said.

Elsewhere in Michigan, local residents have successfully fought back against similar mega developments forced on small communities by the Whitmer administration.

Voters in Green Charter Township in 2023 recalled all township board members over their support for a secretly negotiated deal to award Gotion Inc. $715 million in taxpayer-funded subsidies to build a battery component plant nobody wanted.

A year later, voters elected several new Mecosta County commissioners who oppose the Gotion plant over the company’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party and environmental concerns, and the county board reversed its support, as well.

The Gotion plant remains tied up in litigation over the reversals, and has made virtually no progress toward constructing the facility, which Trump strongly opposed during his 2024 campaign.

It was a similar groundswell of opposition in Clinton County’s Eagle Township last fall, when locals rallied to force the Lansing Economic Area Partnership to move its planned EV mega site somewhere else.

Much like in Mundy Township, local residents and township officials believed the 1,000 acre site would have come with more problems than it solved, despite the promise of a lot of jobs some time in the future.

“They’re going to build a huge complex to attract workers, well then, you’re to have to build more housing. You’re going to need more infrastructure for your schools, more money for your roads,” Eagle Township Supervisor Troy Stroud told WILX in November.

“Doubling or tripling the size of your township, now you’ve got a lot bigger scale issues that we didn’t have before,” Stroud said. “Economic development is good, but within reason.”

Cori Feldpausch, a longtime resident who launched the Eagle Township Facebook group “Stop the mega site,” told the news site local residents opposed the project over a lack of transparency, and concerns it would ultimately transform the character of the rural community.

“People come here to find that rural life,” she told WILX. “They work in Lansing; they work in other places and cities, but when they come home at night, they want the quiet. They want the ability to raise their kids in a small community.

“And that’s exactly what this fight has been, it’s about what the community wants,” Feldpausch said.