Towards the end of his first week back in office, Donald Trump made a cross-country trip to see two areas of the country experiencing disasters. The first was Western North Carolina, still recovering from Hurricane Helene. The second was Los Angeles, which was experiencing devastating fires for almost four weeks.
These trips were little more than political theater. The Trump administration does not seem interested in actually providing the essential public services so desperately needed by communities recovering from massive climate shocks.
Republicans and Trump have openly discussed withholding aid from L.A., demanding policy changes in exchange for support. They have also openly suggested getting rid of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) entirely. Given that FEMA coordinates disaster response efforts and provides direct assistance for recovery and rebuilding, these politicians are obviously not serious about ensuring the government provides for the needs of its people, except perhaps as political patronage. Their other actions indicate quite clearly that they believe the government exists primarily to support corporations and billionaires, not everyday people.
Assistance for vulnerable communities hit by disasters has never been held hostage to partisan politics quite this way before in the United States. Furthermore, the Trump administration closing FEMA altogether would be blatantly illegal given that Congress has legislated its responsibilities and appropriated its funding. However, Trump is already trying to exceed his authority by shuttering USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. FEMA could be his next target.
Friends… I have some thoughts.
1. Trump has always been a disaster at disaster response.
The President holds two roles in these kinds of disasters and crises: operational leadership and demonstrating empathy and compassion.
On operations, a presidential disaster declaration is key to unlocking federal resources for disaster response, and FEMA is part of the Administration, which is headed by the President. Empathy and compassion are more of a soft power; the “head of state” part of the job of being president is providing emotional support to those impacted while communicating that everything is under control.
Trump was bad at both of these things in his first term. Reporting confirms he dragged his feet in signing declarations that would literally be sitting on his desk, holding back a federal response. There wasn’t any open question about what was needed; he just hadn’t bothered signing the thing.
As for providing comfort, does anyone remember the paper towel rolls being tossed in Puerto Rico? And in case you forgot, the recent plane crash in the DC area saw the President wildly and irresponsibly speculating as to the cause of the crash while first responders were still searching the river. This added to the anguish of families impacted by the crash.
2. FEMA needs reform, especially in the age of climate disaster, but that doesn’t mean we should just toss the whole thing out.
FEMA comes under a lot of heat, some of which is indeed justified. There is a lot that needs to be done to reform FEMA, particularly considering the more frequent and more devastating disasters we are seeing with current climate impacts and what is needed. We need to fundamentally rethink how to help communities recover and get back on their feet – especially into homes and back in schools – much faster. It should be easier for survivors, who often have lost key identity-related documents, to get support. FEMA also needs to do better on equity; right now, it often reinforces, rather than addresses, deep inequities in housing access.
However, getting rid of the agency makes zero sense as a way to respond to policy issues. Just shutting it down harms people who are already experiencing crises at probably the most destabilizing time in their lives. Furthermore, as mentioned above – and expanded upon below – it’s certainly not within the legal mandate of the executive branch to close down an agency implementing Congressionally appropriated programs.
(By the way, replace the word “FEMA” with “USAID” in the heading above, and you get an equally correct statement – but that’s another story entirely that we’ll be writing about as well.)
3. Trump wants to personally control the purse strings, and that’s dangerous for everyone.
Whatever else can be said, Trump certainly knows the importance of being able to bestow rewards to supporters. That’s one of the reasons he was so quick to pardon the violent insurrectionists from January 6th. He wanted to show himself as a benefactor to his supporters. It’s also why he demanded to have his signature on the COVID relief checks back in 2020 (which Democrats did a lot of work on since they controlled Congress at the time). While I don’t think dissecting every word of Trump’s remarks is always useful, in this case, I think he did say something telling. After talking about getting rid of FEMA, he talked about still providing support, saying, “It’s going to come from us.”
Trump is not necessarily looking to cut off federal government support for disasters entirely when he’s talking about closing FEMA. He wants to control it and be able to reward or withhold any federal response depending on his preferences while shifting responsibilities back to the states. So, if California Governor Gavin Newsom is unable to maintain his detente with Trump, he could refuse to provide support for the LA wildfires while also trying to avoid any blame for the consequences.
This sort of direct presidential control of spending and the politics of patronage is horrifying, the opposite of how a liberal democracy where everyone is equal under the law should operate. I’d think some governors on both sides of the partisan divide would also have some concerns about ending FEMA, considering the states that receive the most FEMA support are often Florida, Texas, and Louisiana.
The challenge in pushing back against these kinds of over-the-top nonsense proposals is that one is sometimes cornered into fully embracing an institution with real flaws (as most of them are). That sits uneasily at times, since Trump’s bombast usually has a glancing relationship with real problems people are facing on the ground.
Do we need to do better to help people recover? Yes. Does FEMA need reforms? Yes. And Reforming is a lot harder to fit on a sign than “END FEMA.”
So how about this for a starting point: it is part of the job of the federal government to care for people after disasters. It should help people prepare for the disasters that are coming. And we shouldn’t let any of this depend on the whims of one person, especially someone with as little care for people as Donald Trump.
