Mark Gongloff: Soon we will all know Sarah Huckabee Sanders' pain

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas has never done anything bad to President Donald Trump, as far as we know. In fact, she was his loyal White House press secretary for nearly two years. She runs a state that voted for Trump over Kamala Harris by a 30 percentage point margin.

But after a mid-March outbreak of tornadoes, high winds and hail that killed three people, injured many more and damaged hundreds of homes and businesses in Arkansas, Sanders wrote to her former boss and asked him to help by declaring a disaster that would unlock federal aid. She called the recovery “beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments.”

Trump’s answer: Sarah Huckabee who?

He denied Sanders’ request, a decision she appealed in April, noting Arkansas had subsequently suffered another barrage of storms that was even more destructive than the first, doing at least $25 million in damage to infrastructure alone. Arkansas’ congressional delegation, as red-pilled a group as you’ll ever encounter, backed up her request.

Maybe these appeals will finally move Trump to help his many Arkansas voters. But they’re a taste of what’s to come as his administration hacks away at the size and capability of federal disaster response and preparedness, even as climate-fueled catastrophes are on the rise — and another busy hurricane season is about to begin. State and local governments will be left to handle tasks for which many lack the ability, delivering yet another self-inflicted wound to the country’s health, safety and economy.

Trump has sent hostile signals about his plans for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Homeland Security arm that helps states prepare for and recover from disasters and manages the National Flood Insurance Program. He’s mused about making FEMA “go away.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said she wants to eliminate it.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for Trump’s second term, calls for whittling the agency’s focus down to merely responding in the short term to disasters. To that end, Trump has already shut down FEMA grants for making places more disaster-resilient — an investment that Sandra Knight, a deputy administrator at FEMA under President Barack Obama, told me has a return of $8 for every $1 spent.

To be sure, FEMA is still alive after 100 days, which is more than you can say for some government offices in the crosshairs of Project 2025 and Elon Musk’s chaos agents at the Department of Government Efficiency. Trump did seem to back down from his “go away” position in March, when he issued an executive order calling for a 240-day review of FEMA’s resilience.

Still, the blows FEMA has suffered are more than heavy enough. It has fired 200 probationary workers, losses it could ill afford when it already faced a “staffing gap” of 35%, according to a 2023 review by the Government Accountability Office. FEMA is about to lose another 1,000 longtime workers, CNN reported last week, or roughly 20% of staff.

Trump froze FEMA grants for disaster recovery, adding to the pain of places still trying to rebuild from last year’s Hurricane Helene and other, even older disasters. The funding freeze also defeats the purpose of making state and local governments take over disaster response: They don’t have the money to do so. Meanwhile, they’re being forced to lay off workers who would have helped react to new catastrophes.

And in another Project 2025-inspired idea, FEMA’s Trump-appointed administrator has proposed drastically raising the bar for relief, CNN also reported. FEMA typically recommends relief when the ratio of the aid’s cost to the local population (aka the Per Capita Indicator) is $1.89. FEMA would jack that up to $7.56, effectively barring places like Arkansas from getting help for anything less than a catastrophe.

“The most vulnerable rural counties will be the ones that hurt the most,” Knight said, “because they don’t have the expensive homes or infrastructure that amounts to a total cost per person that might meet that threshold.”

The timing for all of this couldn’t be worse. Colorado State University forecasters expect 17 named tropical storms during this year’s Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June to November, citing a combination of freakishly warm ocean water and neutral El Niño conditions. They expect nine storms to become hurricanes and four to be “major” ones, meaning with wind speeds greater than 111 miles per hour. In March, the private weather forecaster AccuWeather said it expected 13 to 18 named storms, 7 to 10 hurricanes, 3 to 5 major hurricanes and 3 to 6 storms making landfall in the U.S. If these predictions are accurate, then this season will be busier than the 30-year historical average.

The six storms that made landfall in the U.S. last year took hundreds of lives and inflicted $500 billion in damages and economic losses, by AccuWeather’s reckoning. The most destructive, Helene, caused up to $250 billion in economic damage. And for some victims, the disaster never ended — partly because of that FEMA funding freeze.

A chaotic climate, along with Americans’ desire to keep moving into harm’s way, have increased the destructive potential of storms. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — another agency on Trump’s chopping block — last year predicted wider swings between active and inactive hurricane seasons because of rising ocean temperatures and drastic wind-pattern shifts. In other words, active hurricane seasons will get really active as the planet keeps heating.

But tornadoes and windstorms are becoming more destructive too, and few of those ever reach the multibillion-dollar level that might get the attention of some future Trumpified FEMA. That will leave poor, rural communities on the hook for rebuilding, potentially stretching the economic devastation of such catastrophes out for many months longer than necessary.

As I’ve written before, FEMA could stand some reform. Its response functions need streamlining, and it should be a cabinet-level agency that doesn’t have to compete with the rest of the Homeland Security Department for money. But “reforming” FEMA by killing it would be like healing a toe blister by chopping off your foot.

FEMA was born just after the nuclear meltdown at Three Mile Island reinforced a long-brewing need for a federal agency to respond to disasters that overwhelmed local officials. Trump’s assault on FEMA sets the stage for a tragic reminder.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Mark Gongloff is a Bloomberg Opinion editor and columnist covering climate change. He previously worked for Fortune.com, the Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

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