ICYMI: POLITICO: Trump’s Disaster Aid Denials Just Got Harder To Track

Since day one, the Trump-Vance administration has gutted federal disaster response and pushed the burden of recovery onto states

Washington, DC – After announcing that they would push the cost of disaster recovery onto cash-strapped states last month, the Trump-Vance administration is taking another step towards weakening our disaster response infrastructure by no longer disclosing federal disaster aid request data. According to POLITICO, Trump’s Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) stopped publishing a list of pending disaster requests that revealed the extent of Trump’s effort to use FEMA aid as a political pawn. From “joking” about withholding federal aid as a punishment for electing Democrats to announcing disaster funding alongside candidate endorsements, Trump frequently played politics with disaster relief funds on the campaign trail. 

Climate Power Communications Director Alex Glass issued the following statement: “First, the Trump-Vance administration said they were going to leave communities on their own to recover from devastating and costly extreme weather disasters, and now, they’re trying to cover their tracks by hiding the data from the American public. By making it harder for us to track Trump’s effort to deny federal aid to states, this administration is hoping that we won’t notice that they are once again betraying Americans by raising costs for states and local communities and leaving them vulnerable to extreme weather disasters.” 

POLITICO: Trump’s disaster aid denials just got harder to track

The Trump administration has stopped disclosing natural disaster data that has shown President Donald Trump favoring Republican states in awarding federal aid.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency last week removed from its daily operations briefing an official list of pending disaster requests that it has published since at least 2012. The publicly available briefing is emailed to thousands of federal employees, and state and local emergency management officials.

In a statement, FEMA said it was an “update” to focus the briefing “on monitoring incidents and supporting disaster operations nationally.”

But analysts who have used the list to examine Trump’s disaster approvals decried its removal.

“This is a very troubling development that’s consistent with the Trump Administration’s broader war on data,” said Kenny Stancil, deputy research director at the Revolving Door Project, which monitors Trump’s handling of disaster aid.

“I’ve relied on it to track patterns including glaring partisan disparities” in Trump’s disaster aid approvals, Stancil said. Concealing disaster requests “could make it easier for the Trump Administration to get away with unequal treatment of disaster victims based on the state they live in.”…

FEMA removed the information the day after POLITICO reported that Trump fast-tracked Florida disaster aid approval just before the midterm elections — while taking no action on earlier requests from other states and from tribal nations…