States To Face Natural Disasters Alone

 

The Malignant Fascist's regime has ostensibly declared war on its own people, as they face a summer of tornadoes, floods, hurricanes and fires.  His gutting of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and plans to shift responsibility for responding to natural disasters to the ill-prepared States is causing major concerns, as ProPublica reports:

"Upheaval at the nation’s top disaster agency is raising anxiety among state and local emergency managers — and leaving major questions about the whereabouts of billions of federal dollars it pays out to them.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency still has not opened applications for an enormous suite of grants, including ones that many states rely on to pay for basic emergency management operations. Some states pass on much of that money to their most rural, low-income counties to ensure they have an emergency manager on the payroll.

FEMA has blown through the mid-May statutory deadline to start the grants’ application process, according to the National Emergency Management Association, with no word about why or what that might indicate. The delay appears to have little precedent." (our emphasis)

"Rural, low income counties" contain the core of the MF's base, and while the strong temptation is to say "FAFO," the MF's reckless policy will inevitably affect other communities, specifically those of color and in coastal areas whose demographics aren't especially Trumpist.  Agricultural and other resource losses will affect a broader community, too.  More from ProPublica's report:

"In April, the agency abruptly rescinded a different grant program that county and local governments were expecting to help them reduce natural hazard risks moving forward. The clawback of money included hundreds of millions already pledged. FEMA also quietly withdrew a notice for states to apply for $600 million in flood mitigation grants.

On top of that, on June 11, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem began requiring that she review all FEMA grants above $100,000. That could slow its vast multibillion grants apparatus to a crawl, current and former FEMA employees said." (our emphasis)

We know that HHS Secretary Cosplay Barbie will do her best to take the MF's cruelty and recklessness to the limits in order to impress him, as she has with her ICE goons.  In the meantime, the full dismantlement of FEMA has been promised by the MF starting this fall after hurricane season, but not before other natural disasters have hit and have destroyed communities that will have, at best, a diminished FEMA to rely on.

(photo: States can kiss this response goodbye. Eduardo Martinez / FEMA)