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Why Would Trump Gut FEMA and NOAA? -- The American Prospect
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-06-04-why-would-trump-gut-fema-and-noaa/Robert Kuttner
Destroying American weather science will create a perfect storm of disaster.
Not perverse - just profiteering and destroying the country.
June 1 marked the beginning of hurricane season, a period whose existence was news to Trump’s head of FEMA, David Richardson, who had no prior experience managing disaster relief. Richardson was appointed to replace FEMA acting chief Cameron Hamilton, who was fired summarily after telling a congressional subcommittee that he didn’t think FEMA should be shut down.
Trump’s attack on FEMA goes beyond even the Project 2025 design, which proposed to cut FEMA and turn some of its functions over to the states. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in March that she wanted FEMA shut down entirely (she later backpedaled and spoke of shrinking and reforming it). But most states have nothing like FEMA’s capacity or experience, and don’t want FEMA reduced or closed.
. . .
This is occurring as FEMA’s much-depleted sister agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is predicting as many as 19 hurricanes this summer and fall, including three to five major ones likely to cause massive damage. To add injury to insult, Trump has rejected bipartisan requests to continue the Biden policy of covering 100 percent of the costs of relief and recovery operations after major disasters. The usual split is 75 percent federal, matched by 25 percent state.
. . .
Cutting funding for NOAA’s forecasting and research is perverse policy, but at least it has ideological logic. Having private companies sponge off of public expertise financed by taxpayers and claim superior “efficiency” is the standard Republican playbook.
As our colleague Gabrielle Gurley points out in this piece, companies like AccuWeather have nothing like NOAA’s in-depth expertise, and profit by packaging and selling what NOAA provides for free. At one point, AccuWeather was lobbying to prohibit NOAA from providing weather forecasts at no charge. And in Trump’s first term, he appointed the CEO of AccuWeather, Barry Myers, to head NOAA. But NOAA is such a valuable public good that it has survived basically intact—until Trump II.
FEMA is a whole other story. When the first major hurricane hits, and a depleted FEMA is not equal to the task, Trump will get the political blame—and most hurricane-prone areas are in red states. So the gutting of FEMA makes no political sense. But then, that describes most of Trump’s savaging of government’s valuable services.
Trump’s attack on FEMA goes beyond even the Project 2025 design, which proposed to cut FEMA and turn some of its functions over to the states. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in March that she wanted FEMA shut down entirely (she later backpedaled and spoke of shrinking and reforming it). But most states have nothing like FEMA’s capacity or experience, and don’t want FEMA reduced or closed.
. . .
This is occurring as FEMA’s much-depleted sister agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is predicting as many as 19 hurricanes this summer and fall, including three to five major ones likely to cause massive damage. To add injury to insult, Trump has rejected bipartisan requests to continue the Biden policy of covering 100 percent of the costs of relief and recovery operations after major disasters. The usual split is 75 percent federal, matched by 25 percent state.
. . .
Cutting funding for NOAA’s forecasting and research is perverse policy, but at least it has ideological logic. Having private companies sponge off of public expertise financed by taxpayers and claim superior “efficiency” is the standard Republican playbook.
As our colleague Gabrielle Gurley points out in this piece, companies like AccuWeather have nothing like NOAA’s in-depth expertise, and profit by packaging and selling what NOAA provides for free. At one point, AccuWeather was lobbying to prohibit NOAA from providing weather forecasts at no charge. And in Trump’s first term, he appointed the CEO of AccuWeather, Barry Myers, to head NOAA. But NOAA is such a valuable public good that it has survived basically intact—until Trump II.
FEMA is a whole other story. When the first major hurricane hits, and a depleted FEMA is not equal to the task, Trump will get the political blame—and most hurricane-prone areas are in red states. So the gutting of FEMA makes no political sense. But then, that describes most of Trump’s savaging of government’s valuable services.
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