Donald Trump is playing favorites at a major cost.
Whether or not a state receives federal disaster aid under the Trump administration appears to boil down to their vote in the 2024 presidential election.
Donald Trump unlocked Federal Emergency Management Agency aid for several states this week, including Alaska, Nebraska, and North Dakota, but he denied it to others seemingly along party lines.
In multiple posts to Truth Social over the course of the week announcing the aid, Trump boasted that he had “won BIG” in Alaska and was honored to extend federal financial assistance to the “incredible Patriots” of Missouri.
Meanwhile, three states that recently voted blue received nothing: Vermont, Illinois, and Maryland.
Trump pledged $25 million to Alaska to deal with the aftermath of Typhoon Halong, which ravaged the state’s western coast, displaced some 2,000 residents, and killed at least one person. Severe flooding in the wake of the storm lifted houses off their foundations and obliterated some coastal villages.
“It is my Honor to deliver for the Great State of Alaska, which I won BIG in 2016, 2020, and 2024—ALASKA, I WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!” Trump wrote on Truth Social Tuesday.
North Dakota and Nebraska received aid approval to deal with fallout from multiple storms and tornadoes in August. Trump said Thursday he granted North Dakota $3 million, emphasizing on social media that he “won THREE times in 2016, 2020, and 2024.”
Trump also granted FEMA aid to the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in Minnesota, which is still dealing with thousands of felled trees on tribal lands from a June storm, reported the Associated Press.
The president denied four requests for federal disaster relief. That included Maryland’s appeal for reconsideration to deal with massive flooding that affected the state’s western region in May, despite damages that nearly tripled the qualifying threshold for assistance.
In a statement, Maryland Governor Wes Moore said that Trump’s denial was “deeply frustrating,” leaving residents to deal with the wreckage on their own.
“President Trump and his Administration have politicized disaster relief, and our communities are the ones who will pay the price,” said Moore.
Vermont officials similarly underscored that damages caused by July storms far exceeded what locals could afford to fix on their own.
“It’s well over the annual budget or two years’ budget (of some towns), to fix those roads,” Eric Forand, Vermont’s emergency management director, told the Associated Press.
I wonder if the political situation at the national level could be improved by reversing the long trend of increasing federal power. Reduce federal spending, reduce federal taxes, and let states manage their own policies on both economic and social issues to the greatest extent that is reasonably possible. They can handle disaster relief using the money that would go to state taxes instead of federal taxes. Many of the battles being fought on the national level now would simply go away. There will still be people unhappy with their state's policies, but moving to another state is a lot easier than moving to another country.
(It won't happen.)
It'd probably be disdavantageous to Republican voters, ironically.
From 2020:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/biden-voting-counties-equal-70-of-americas-economy-what-does-this-mean-for-the-nations-political-economic-divide/