My home state is still recovering from Helene. Trump just made rebuilding harder. | Opinion
Republican states have benefitted greatly from FEMA's efforts. Why would Trump want to do away with that?
Last week, while visiting areas ravaged by Hurricane Helene in my home state of North Carolina, President Donald Trump proposed “getting rid” of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Then he signed an executive order establishing a task force to decide the agency's fate.
“FEMA has turned out to be a disaster,” Trump said at a briefing. “I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away and we pay directly – we pay a percentage to the state.”
That’s a bold recommendation when California is still on fire and winter storms are around the corner. People are still recovering from last year’s "once in a generation" storm in the Appalachian Mountains; entire towns are having to rebuild. Instead of improving disaster response, completely transforming FEMA is more likely to create chaos at the state level.
It’s a decision straight out of the Project 2025 playbook, and it feeds into misinformation about the agency. It coincides with the United States leaving the Paris Agreement on climate change and other actions that will lead to worse natural disasters. It is the wrong decision for our country, but it’s the decision Trump is making on our behalf.
FEMA is vital – and a constant target of misinformation
I’m from near the parts of North Carolina hit by Hurricane Helene, which led to 104 deaths in the state and caused at least $60 billion worth of damage. So far, FEMA has approved $320 million in funds to help more than 146,000 households.
While FEMA isn't a perfect organization, its personnel are the first people to respond when a natural disaster hits. A functioning disaster response agency is a necessary function of government.
Misinformation about FEMA relief services started shortly after Helene made landfall late September. These incorrect social media posts may have influenced Trump’s stance against FEMA in the months since.
I saw it on my own Facebook feed from people back home: everything from an AI-generated image of a girl and a puppy being rescued to accusations that FEMA’s financial resources had been rerouted to help undocumented immigrants, a lie that Trump repeated in the weeks following the hurricane.
At one point, FEMA had to pause part of its disaster relief work due to reports of militias potentially targeting the agency’s employees.
FEMA overhaul is key component of Project 2025
Completely overhauling FEMA was laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 – meaning this is something Republicans have been considering for years.
Meanwhile, Texas, Louisiana and Florida – all red states – have received the most individual assistance payments from FEMA since 2015 till last April. Axios, based on numbers from the Disaster Dollar Database collected by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, reports that those states received more than $7.12 billion altogether.
This isn’t the first government agency on the chopping block in Trump’s second term. On the campaign trail, the president proposed dismantling the Department of Education.
Trump used his appearance in North Carolina to announce that he would appoint Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley to assist in the state's recovery. Sure, Whatley is from North Carolina. But if Trump's problem with FEMA is that it isn't local enough, why is the solution to add another federal bureaucrat to recovery efforts?
Nothing makes things run smoother than adding a layer of Republican oversight.
While Trump seems to think everything is best handed back to the states, he ignores the real repercussions of his decisions. States do not have the infrastructure to do what FEMA does. States need a federal government that will assist in times of crisis.
A president should respect the essential functions of government instead of trying to dismantle the systems we have in place for a reason.
Then again, we all know Trump is a president who doesn't respect the country.
Follow Paste BN columnist Sara Pequeño on X, formerly Twitter: @sara__pequeno