Of course Trump is politicizing disaster aid

I suppose one could argue that red states’ need is vastly greater, as their governance is so incompetent and corrupt. But that’s clearly not what this is about.

Lawmakers are condemning President Donald Trump for politicizing disaster aid after he denied Democratic-led Rhode Island’s request for blizzard recovery assistance last week while approving millions in funds for Republican-leaning states.

In a series of Truth Social posts on June 30, Trump announced more than $846 million in disaster aid to states that voted for him in the 2024 presidential election. Such aid — granted in response to several extreme weather-related disasters, including wildfires, severe storms, and flooding — is generally approved by presidents and administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on a nonpartisan basis.

According to an Urban Institute analysis examining disaster aid approvals since Trump began his second term in office, over 84 percent of requests from states that voted for him in the 2024 election have received approvals, while only 41 percent of requests from states that voted for Democratic candidate Kamala Harris have been approved. Red states also appear to receive approvals twice as fast as blue states do, the analysis found. - Truthout

The private sector takeover of disaster recovery

This has been going on for a while. But it’s accelerating now.

But even before President Donald Trump took office with an eye toward diminishing the agency, recovery funds couldn’t keep up with victims’ needs. Now, as the administration slashes FEMA funding, withholds aid, and puts more of the onus of recovery onto individual states, victim-assistance organizations feel that they’ve been left totally unprepared, with too few case managers to go around. All of these issues are likely to grow more severe in the coming year, as a review board appointed to reform the agency prepares to make its recommendations…

The private sector’s creeping influence over disaster recovery has been noted since at least 2007, when Naomi Klein published The Shock Doctrine, the book that injected the term “disaster capitalism” into a broader lexicon. But as climate change accelerates and hammers the United States with more billion-dollar catastrophes than ever before, privatization has become more common — and complicated. Private interests can quickly mobilize huge volunteer networks, giving campaigns, and rebuilding efforts in the wake of extreme weather. But, whatever their intentions, such measures are a consequence — and sometimes a cause — of the corrosion of public institutions originally intended to safeguard Americans. - Grist

FEMA employees tell it like it is

This is a gutsy, principled thing.

Nearly 200 employees and ex-employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) signed an extraordinary letter sent to Congress on August 25, denouncing the current administration’s erosion of their work and warning that it risks the occurrence of another Hurricane Katrina-sized disaster. More than 30 provided their names; the rest signed anonymously.

Named the Katrina Declaration, the letter was one of the most powerful written so far by beleaguered federal employees attempting to salvage their agencies from a predatory administration seemingly intent on bulldozing basic government functions. They have followed up on this by asking people around the country to join them in their protest by endorsing the letter…

The authors didn’t pull punches, arguing that the administration is violating the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, which Congress passed in 2006 to improve FEMA’s performance after the agency’s dismal failures following the devastation the hurricane wrought upon New Orleans twenty years ago this week. The Trumpified Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the parent department to FEMA, is slashing funding to vital FEMA services. And the department is insisting that all grants and spending in excess of $100,000 be personally approved by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem — a choice that has created a huge backlog in contracts. - Truthout