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.
This would require states to pick up their own slack. And even the bluest of blue states seem loathe to inherit the responsibilities of the federal government. California doesn't want to implement its own national health system. Vermont doesn't want to implement Single Payer. Massachusetts doesn't want to make state universities free of charge. Colorado and Virginia don't want to cut their policing budgets or implement public housing and jobs programs. Washington State won't match its minimum wage to the state cost of living.
All of these governments are run by corporate oligarchs. Some of them wear a liberal veneer, financing parades for the wealthiest members of the LGBTQ community or issuing land acknowledgements for the destitute native populations sequestered on their reservations. But actual socialist policies - publicly owned utilities, publicly owned and distributed agriculture products, fully democratic school boards, free-at-point-of-service mass transit - are vanishingly rare in practice.
The biggest draw to a given state is employment with wages in excess of cost of living. Texas continues to bring in lots of people abroad because the O&G industry pays very well and the cost of living is comparatively cheap. People are fleeing NYC in droves largely because the cost of living exceeds even the unusually high local wages. Meanwhile, West Virginia is emptying out with the death of the coal industry while Utah balloons its population with California retires and Silicon Valley tax dodgers.
State policies that fixate on economic growth do far more to drive migration than any kind of social policy, because you can't eat social policy. If Florida has transgender people drawn and quartered, but their real estate market and entertainment districts can land 20-year-olds into the six-figure income range, more people will continue to move there. If New Hampshire launches a full blown secession movement from the tyrannical Trump Regime, but its townships keep getting overrun by bears, you're not going to see an influx of new residents.