The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is under assault. This department works with states to prepare for disasters, provides on-the-ground help during emergencies and pays billions of dollars for repairs. Just as climate change is intensifying the scope and severity of natural calamities, the Trump administration is shrinking the agency and its resources.
There is little hope for a turnaround as “King” Donald, climate-denier-in-chief, has stated his intention to phase out the agency after the 2025 hurricane season. He plans to make the already strapped-for-cash states pay for billions in future damages. The poorest states will struggle the most. Black and Latino neighborhoods, which tend to be located in poor communities, will bear the brunt.
A tainted history
One would think that those with the least would get priority for help from FEMA. In fact, it has been exactly the opposite. The agency has a track record of discrimination, paying less in relief to Black residents and their communities than to whites and their neighborhoods. Yet poor districts are more vulnerable because they usually have inadequate infrastructure and residents have limited access to emergency resources.
Such was the case with the prime-time spectacle of inequality after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005. Before that storm, Orleans Parish had the 6th highest poverty rate among all U.S. counties, with 30% of residents without a car. They couldn’t evacuate on their own and were left to find shelter in the storm-damaged Superdome. Of Katrina’s victims, 51% were Black people.
Fifteen years later, FEMA’s advisory board recommended the agency “explore and investigate” issues of racial disparities. But, instead of pushing for improvements, Trump and his henchwoman Kristi Noem want to “wean” the states off FEMA, placing disaster recovery totally at the state level. Noem is the head of Homeland Security under whose umbrella FEMA is housed.
One result of Trump’s attack is that St. Louis, with a Black population of 44%, was left mostly on their own after a tornado wrecked huge swaths of the city in May. This prompted the NAACP and the civil rights Legal Defense Fund to write FEMA, urging them to take more proactive steps to protect Black communities before, during, and after a disaster.
Phasing out FEMA
Numerous hits are debilitating FEMA. As a result of interference by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), one-third of the agency’s full-time staff is gone, crippling it as it struggles to keep up with need. Also, the current administration terminated door-to-door canvassing, designed to reach those with the greatest difficulty accessing aid.
Furthermore, when time is of the essence after an emergency, Trump is slow walking his response to requests for aid by governors. A state has to ask the president to declare a federal disaster to let money flow. The spring tornadoes and flooding that hit Missouri caused $1.6 billion in damage and killed several people. Yet Trump held back approval of Governor Mike Kehoe’s request for aid for well over a month. The wait left some people camping outside their destroyed homes because they had no money for shelters.
In a further outrage, Trump’s January pause on numerous federal grants froze FEMA payments that had already been approved, as for example moneys to Hawaii to rebuild indigenous areas after the 2023 wildfires in Maui. Trump also canceled a program to fix long-standing infrastructure problems, where funding was expected to be delivered in 2025. Its goal was to help local, state and tribal governments protect residents from future catastrophes such as floods, wildfires, tornadoes and hurricanes.
Reality hits the states
FEMA was created in recognition that no state, particularly in the poorest areas of the country, has the personnel and financial reserves available at a moment’s notice to respond to a major calamity. Presidential declaration of an emergency makes state and local governments eligible for reimbursement of 75% of the cost of recovery and rebuilding. To cover the funding they have been getting from FEMA, many states would need to raise taxes and/or cut already starved social services, another hit to the poor.
Not surprisingly, twenty-three states are suing Trump for violating a court order to unfreeze FEMA funds.
States will not be able to provide the aid that FEMA can. To fulfill its function of helping those wiped out by disasters, FEMA needed serious reform, not eradication. Now, many of the desperate poor and people of color victims may never recover.
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