ICYMI: E&E News: Deadly Heat Is Coming. But Funding To Save Lives Is Not.

Donald Trump is canceling funding for extreme heat resilience, and Republican-led states are paying the price 

Washington, DC – As Americans prepare for a “Super El Niño” that experts predict will cause record heat across the country, funding to help protect communities against the deadly impacts of extreme heat is evaporating thanks to Donald Trump. The nation’s hottest cities, many of which are located in states with Republican-controlled legislatures like Florida and Arizona, are particularly vulnerable to Trump’s funding cuts. 

Trump and congressional Republicans are gutting extreme heat resilience initiatives at the same time that energy demand from data centers soars, straining grids and making them more vulnerable to blackouts. To make matters worse, for the second year in a row, Trump is proposing eliminating funding to help low-income Americans pay for cooling costs as electricity prices spike by 18% under his watch. 

E&E News: Deadly heat is coming. But funding to save lives is not.

Urban officials had just begun grappling with the deadliest kind of weather — extreme heat — when President Donald Trump stopped them in their tracks by canceling a range of grants and adaptation programs last year as part of his broader attacks on climate policy.

Now, as sweltering U.S. metropolises prepare for summer heat that historically kills more people than hurricanes, floods and wildfires, heat officials say they’re learning how to work within a system that rejects their agendas.

It often occurs in Republican-led states where climate-related funding can’t be relied on to fill gaps left by vanishing federal money.

“The context in which we operate, there’s always gonna be headwinds,” said one local official who works in a red state. “And we just have to expect there’s not gonna be a regulatory environment that supports sustainability initiatives.”…

The federal government doesn’t define heat waves as a disaster, even as events with fewer victims, like hurricanes and floods, qualify for Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance. So money is short, no matter who’s president. But they said it’s gotten worse under the Trump administration, which has canceled grants ranging from long-term resilience funding from FEMA to tree-planting support from the Forest Service…