Granholm pitches Biden's big plans in Michigan homecoming

• Biden's team also knows that former President Trump — who'll be in Wisconsin next week — sees a chance to cut into Biden's union support by savaging the administration's new regulations to promote EVs, which many autoworkers see as a threat to their jobs.

Enter Granholm, a former two-term Michigan governor, bearing job announcements and big checks.

• "I don't think people have really appreciated the fact that federal policy actually works," Granholm told Axios in an interview here, where she announced a $1.52 billion loan guarantee to help restart a shuttered nuclear power plant.
• If approved by federal regulators, the plant would be the first recommissioned nuclear reactor in U.S. history — and provide 1,000 union construction jobs.
• "All of this activity ... is not just coincidence," Granholm said. "We have a president who gets the importance of bringing jobs back and investing in America."

Between the lines: Granholm's four-day swing through Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin was part of Biden's post-State of the Union push to tout his official agenda.

• On the ground, the events felt more like campaign rallies.
• The audiences were sympathetic. The federal funds behind the projects Granholm touted — ranging from $170 million to $1.52 billion — were met with applause.

Zoom out: Biden and his top officials have been frustrated that voters aren't giving him credit for a healthy economy that has defied expectations and added close to 15 million jobs.

• His team hopes voters will start believing their financial prospects are improving when the effects of his three signature legislative programs start coursing throughout the economy.
• Yesterday's jump in consumer sentiment might suggest it's beginning to work.

Zoom in: Biden does some of the billion-dollar reveals himself, like he did last week for an $8.5 billion announcement to help build a semiconductor factory in Arizona.

• And his Transportation Secretary, Pete Buttigieg, has thousands of projects to announce, which he frequently does — in swing states.

• Besides the powers of the presidency, Biden's campaign has a massive cash advantage to flood the airwaves, while Trump spends some of his days in court.

What we're watching: At a United Auto Worker union hall in Lansing on Tuesday, Granholm announced a federal pilot program to train workers for battery manufacturing roles.

• She was joined by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Labor Secretary Julie Su, who reminded the mostly white, working-class crowd that "good jobs don't just happen by accident."
• Next was a panel discussion on green energy jobs with women community leaders at a brewery in Grand Rapids.
• Then she was off to Holland, where she highlighted a $1.7 billion expansion of an EV factory
• She finished with a stop at a Heinz-Kraft facility, which received $13 million to help lower the plant's industrial emissions.

The other side: Trump's pitch to autoworkers and union households is that Biden's green energy agenda — specifically the transition to electric vehicles — will create "a bloodbath" for the auto industry.

• Trump's team notes that consumers aren't flocking to EVs the way some auto companies — and many Democrats — had hoped.
• The American Petroleum Institute is up with a seven-figure ad buy in swing states including Michigan, warning about Biden's new tailpipe emission standards: "Don't let the government be a backseat driver," the narrator says.