Red States Learning How Callous Trump Can Be In Disasters

Wreckage left behind by one of the tornadoes that 
hit Arkansas in March. The Trump administration 
has turned down disaster assistance that 
would have helped with the tornado destruction. 

 The state of Arkansas has had a rough spring, beset by tornadoes, intense floods and severe weather. 

As is customary in these situations, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee has asked the federal government for help. For good reason. 

As Huffington Post reports:

"Last month, 14 tornadoes struck Arkansas over the course of two days, killing three people and leaving 32 more injured. The deadly outbreak damaged or destroyed 500 homes, cars and businesses, leaving behind more than $8.8 million in storm damage."

Customarily, U.S presidents respond to request like Huckabee's to issue a disaster declaration and that starts the process in which the Federal Emergency Management Agency to begin organizing funds to help the state with its emergency.

In this case it didn't happen. As HuffPost reports:

"But President Donald Trump said no. In a letter from April 11, the federal government said it had 'determined that the damage from this event was not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state, affected local governments, and voluntary agencies."

To be fair, as bad as the March storm was in Arkansas, it's possible it might not have risen to the level of  a declared disaster in any administration. It's honestly kind of borderline. For instance, half of the destroyed homes were insured, so that might have been a mitigating factor. 

Still, Trump has talked about punishing blue states where voters aren't all that enthusiastic about him. Arkansas is a deep red state, and Gov. Huckabee is Trump's former press secretary, so maybe some Arkansas thought they would get the federal aid. 

The Arkansas Congressional delegation is asking Trump to reconsider the denial of aid, but we'll see where that goes.

The Arkansas tornado aid denial might be the beginning of a harsh new policy from FEMA.

Trump has long said he thinks states should pretty much handle their own disasters, though in many cases they don't have the resources to do that. That shift in tone is starting to make its way into official policy. 

As CNN reports:

"A memo from acting FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton, a Trump appointee, obtained by CNN, outlines a long list of recommendations for Trump to follow that could drastically reduce the number of emergency declarations the president approves and the amount of federal assistance doled out to cities and states hit by natural disasters."

CNN says the proposal dramatically raised the threshold for states to quality for public assistance, basically quadrupling the amount of damage a community must suffer to receive federal aid. 

The proposal also reduces the share of recovery costs the federal government will pay, limit the types of facilities eligible for assistance and denying all major disaster declarations for snowstorms. 

To us Vermonters, a snowstorm doesn't sound all that expensive, and they often do more good than harm, given our winter sports industry. 

But in other states, especially those in the South and with a lot of urban areas, large snowstorms can be extremely expensive and disruptive.  

Like so much in the Trump administration, it's next to impossible to figure out if they will follow through with these recommendations, abandon them or make them even worse. It'll change every day, I'm sure. 

Moving quickly on this will be particularly harmful to states, Michael Coen, a former FEMA chief of staff under the Obama and Biden administrations told CNN. "If they were given notice and they could work with their state legislatures, they could prepare and budget to be able to handle the risks they know they have. But doing this without giving states any advance notice would leave them in dire straights."

Even with advance notice, I'm not sure how states would cope.  Here in Vermont, we're already dealing with cutbacks in federal funding that are messing up the state budget.  Property taxes are sky high and getting worse, so increased state budgets would make that crisis worse. We have an aging population in Vermont, which also reduces tax revenue as the relative number of wage earners shrinks. 

If we get hit by another massive flood like we did in 2023 and 2024, and we're screwed.  

It's not just Vermont, of course. Every state that faces a disaster will have so much  more trouble recovering because of Trump.  

Disasters are bad enough. It'll be even worse if the federal government compounds those calamities.