Trump's Lies and Dismantling FEMA Is Harming North Carolina 's Recovery From Hurricane Helene

My home state is still recovering from Helene. Trump just made rebuilding harder. / Opinion – Sara Pequeño

Story by Sara Pequeño, USA TODAY. January 30, 2025.

“FEMA has turned out to be a disaster,” Trump said at a briefing. “I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away and we pay directly – we pay a percentage to the state.”

@RalphHightower: Trump issued an executive order establishing a Council to Assess the Federal Emergency Management Agency look at getting rid of FEMA, or reforming it. Trump exposes the vendetta that he has with Biden by narrowing the focus to the previous four years. Why not evaluate prior administrations, going back to Hurricane Katrina? States aren’t equipped for large scale disasters. Hurricane Hugo devastated the Lowcountry of South Carolina, even doing severe damage in Sumter, part of the Midlands. Hurricane Joaquin in 2015, didn’t make landfall. It sat off the coast of South Carolina sending an atmospheric river of rain, causing numerous deadly dam breaks. It breached the Columbia Canal taking their water system to the brink of failure.

That’s a bold recommendation when California is still on fire and winter storms are around the corner. People are still recovering from last year’s “once in a generation” storm in the Appalachian Mountains; entire towns are having to rebuild. Instead of improving disaster response, completely transforming FEMA is more likely to create chaos at the state level.

@RalphHightower: During Trump’s 2024 campaign he claimed that he knew nothing about Project 2025. By now, people should recognize that Trump lies.

FEMA is vital – and a constant target of misinformation

@RalphHightower: Trump depends on spreading misinformation and fear to divide the nation.

Sara is from near the parts of North Carolina hit by Hurricane Helene, which led to 104 deaths in the state and caused at least $60 billion worth of damage. So far, FEMA has approved $320 million in funds to help more than 146,000 households.

While FEMA isn’t a perfect organization, its personnel are the first people to respond when a natural disaster hits. A functioning disaster response agency is a necessary function of government.

Misinformation about FEMA relief services started shortly after Helene made landfall late September. These incorrect social media posts may have influenced Trump’s stance against FEMA in the months since.

Sara saw it on her own Facebook feed from people back home: everything from an AI-generated image of a girl and a puppy being rescued to accusations that FEMA’s financial resources had been rerouted to help undocumented immigrants, a lie that Trump repeated in the weeks following the hurricane.

@RalphHightower: Actually, there is a ring of truth to Trump’s claim that money was diverted from FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund for undocumented migrants. Except it wasn’t the Biden administration, it was the Trump 1.0 administration that diverted $155 million; [Trump admin pulling millions from FEMA disaster relief to send to southern border. NBC News. Aug. 27, 2019, 2:48 PM EDT

At one point, FEMA had to pause part of its disaster relief work due to reports of militias potentially targeting the agency’s employees.

FEMA overhaul is key component of Project 2025

Completely overhauling FEMA was laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 – meaning this is something Trumpians have been considering for years.

Meanwhile, Texas, Louisiana and Florida – all red states – have received the most individual assistance payments from FEMA since 2015 till last April. Axios, based on numbers from the Disaster Dollar Database collected by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, reports that those states received more than $7.12 billion altogether.

This isn’t the first government agency on the chopping block in Trump’s second term. On the campaign trail, the president proposed dismantling the Department of Education.

Trump used his appearance in North Carolina to announce that he would appoint Trumpian National Committee Chair Michael Whatley to assist in the state’s recovery. Sure, Whatley is from North Carolina. But if Trump’s problem with FEMA is that it isn’t local enough, why is the solution to add another federal bureaucrat to recovery efforts?

Nothing makes things run smoother than adding a layer of Trumpian oversight.

While Trump seems to think everything is best handed back to the states, he ignores the real repercussions of his decisions. States do not have the infrastructure to do what FEMA does. States need a federal government that will assist in times of crisis.

@RalphHightower: States can’t anticipate all disasters that may happen. Sure, Tornadoes are expected in the state’s that are in Tornado Alley. Southern states on the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic are expected to get hurricanes. California gets earthquakes and wildfires spread by the Santa Ana Winds. South Carolina in on a fault line, but we haven’t had a devastating earthquake like Charleston experienced in 1886.

A president should respect the essential functions of government instead of trying to dismantle the systems we have in place for a reason.

Then again, we all know Trump is a president who doesn’t respect the country.

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