The White House plans to cut disaster aid to Americans
Trump announced he's winding down FEMA -- and will personally decide whether you get help in a crisis.
Bottom Line Up Front:
At a White House briefing, Trump said he plans to “phase out” FEMA after hurricane season and take control of disaster aid decisions — confirming one of the major warnings I made about his second term: that disaster relief would become a political weapon.
WHAT HAPPENED
In a White House briefing yesterday, President Trump announced plans to “start phasing out” the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) after the current hurricane season. Reuters reported the remarks.
“We’re going to do it much differently,” Trump said. “We’re going to give out less money… directly. It’ll be from the president’s office.”
I want you to focus on that last line. From the president’s office.
FEMA has long been the central federal agency for disaster response, coordinating everything from wildfire relief to hurricane recovery. Trump’s plan? Replace it with a system where funds are distributed directly from the White House, possibly by the President personally.
I dealt with emergency requests weekly when I was DHS chief of staff. And I will tell you: this is not about efficiency. It’s about consolidating control and punishing opponents.
WHAT IT MEANS
When I worked in the first Trump Administration, he frequently wanted to withhold disaster aid from areas that don’t support him. Democratic cities. Blue states. Whether it was for California wildfires or hurricanes in Puerto Rico, he would try to get us to stop the flow of money to families in need. Why? To put pressure on Democratic leaders to cut deals with him.
I don’t really care what your politics are. This is very obviously wrong. So plainly and completely wrong.
So we’d push back — hard — until he gave up on these schemes.
But now it appears Trump is no longer being met with internal pushback. Indeed, he’s setting up a system where disaster aid flows through loyalty, not need.
In Blowback, I wrote what this would mean for America, starting with an analogy:
“Imagine a burglar enters your home. You call 911. The police answer and tell you that before dispatching the nearest squad car, they have to check your voter registration. Republicans get priority. Democrats have to wait.
Now picture this on a national scale. Under the Next Trump, DHS might automatically respond to emergencies in red states but hold out on blue states unless they capitulate to White House demands. This was how Trump wanted to handle the disbursement of disaster aid to everywhere from Puerto Rico to California.
The possibilities for corruption are limitless. DHS spends billions of dollars every year in federal grants to states for cyber defense, protecting soft targets, breaking up drug networks, and more. DHS has wide discretion to adjust how the money is allocated. During my tenure, we resisted political pressure to manipulate the formulas to favor certain regions over others, but a new MAGA team won’t be so reticent.”
Apparently this is now the case — and with seemingly very little pushback from Congress or the American people. He’s gutting the agency meant to ensure all Americans get assistance in moments of crisis and replacing it with a mechanism he controls.
Put another way: disaster relief will become a loyalty test.
If FEMA disappears, what happens when the next hurricane slams into a Democratic state on the coast? When wildfires rage through liberal suburbs? When the next major flood hits a city that didn’t vote the “right” way?
I don’t think my fellow conservatives want the inverse to happen when a liberal takes the White House. Yet Trump is about to set a major precedent for politicized disaster aid.
Will Americans have to prove political alignment to receive help?
WHAT’S NEXT
If this plan moves forward:
Emergency response will fracture. States will scramble to build their own FEMA equivalents or expand weak state agencies for disaster response. But many simply won’t have the capacity when “a big one” strikes.
Congress will be gridlocked. Disaster aid will become a partisan battlefield, with red-state legislators enabling the president in slow-walking relief for blue-state communities. If you think the acrimony in Congress is bad now, wait until people’s houses are on fire and the federal government is doing nothing.
Lives will be lost. That’s not hyperbole. That’s what happens when coordination breaks down and response is delayed by politics. I would know. I’ve overseen those agencies. And I’ve dealt with a Commander in Chief who wants to turn FEMA’s help into cash favors for friends.
Bureaucracy is not the issue here. Yes, FEMA needs to be better, faster, and cheaper to operate. The issue is whether the federal government still serves all of us — or just some of us. If we allow disaster relief to become political currency, we won’t just be less safe, we’ll be less united as Americans and giving up on a more fundamental value: helping neighbors in need.
The MAGA movement has become pure nihilism. Trump is 79 years old and could care less what kind of world he leaves behind. His wealthy enablers evidently feel the same.
This omelet of a regime talks big, breaks stuff, gets kicked in the nuts, and backs down again. If they believe the hurricane states will take this without a whimper, ... They cannot even get hurricane insurance anymore. Let that sink in.