Climatewire | The Trump administration is reducing a multi -million dollar program that has been the backbone of state efforts to protect homes, hospitals and other flood structures, hurricanes and earthquakes.
President Donald Trump ceased to approve new allocations at the beginning of April of a federal program that has a source of higher financing to protect people and disasters since 1989. The Risk Mitigation and Subsidy Program has been homes or safe rooms and Strod-Pron buildings in hurricane or earthquake areas.
The program, supervised by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has been crucial for states such as Florida, Oklahoma, California and Missouri. Louisiana has received $ 2.5 billion to protect 10,000 properties, according to the records.
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“It is an extremely important program for hazard mitigation,” said Anna Weber, a senior policy analyst for climate adaptation in the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Instead of simply rebuilding, we are creating resilience, so we are avoiding future damage, deaths and injuries.”
The program has allocated almost $ 18 billion to the states to safeguard 185,000 properties, according to an analysis of the Fema records for Policro’s news.
In approximately one third of the properties, flood -prone buildings were demolished and the land was vacant as part of local efforts to reduce flood damage.
More than $ 11 billion have been used to strengthen medical facilities, power plants, roads and bridges to continue operating disasters, according to the analysis.
The measure is Trump’s last step to reduce federal disaster spending and weaken FEMA, since he considers abolishing or reducing the agency. On Monday, Trump appointed 13 members to a council that he accused of reviewing the agency and editing coatings.
Trump’s expenditure stops from the Risk Mitigation Program occurs week after he canceled another multi -million dollar FEMA subsidies program, increasing Conerns that states and localities will stop efforts to minimize the damage of future disasters. Fema mitigation programs have been widely praised for reducing long -term disasters.
“HMGP is more profitable in the long term because it helps communities to reconstruct the strongest disasters than before,” said Virginia Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner in a statement to the news of E&E from Poly.
Trump’s action will not affect approximately $ 11 billion in risk mitigation funds that have been approved but not spent. North Carolina, for example, still has $ 1.7 billion that was approved by the then president Joe Biden after Hurricane Helene caused great damage to the rolling band last year.
The Trump administration has not announced changes in the Danger Mitigation Subsidies Program. Neinder Fema or the White House responded to comments requests.
But an internal FEMA document and Trump management of two recent disasters show the new administration approach.
On April 4, in a seemingly routine decision, Trump approved a disaster statement for Virginia to help him recover from recent floods.
But while Trump agreed to help 16 counties to rebuild, he touched the very unusual step to reject a request from the governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, for the money of risk mitigation as part of the disaster aid package.
It was the first time in at least 27 years that a president had denied the request for a state of risk mitigation money while approved his application for disaster declaration, according to the FEMA records that date back to 27 years. The governors routinely request, and the presidents routinely approve the mitigation money for disasters.
Trump himself approved the mitigation mitigation money when he declared disasters in Kentucky, West Virginia and Oklahoma in February and March, the first three statements of his second term. In his first term, Trump approved $ 4.7 billion in risk mitigation grants.
“We are deeply worried, the communities will have few resources avias to protect against the impacts of extreme climatic events,” said Kaine and Warner in their statement, pointing to Trump’s recent cancellation from another FEMA mitigation program.
The Virginia Emergency Management Department said in an email: “FEMA has informed us that your application is still in the review process.”
Trump’s “redesign” mitigation
On April 12, memorandum to the White House, the interim administrator of FEMA, Cameron Hamilton, suggested that Trump “does not automatically approve the risk mitigation program” by declaring a disaster.
“This is an action that the president already has tasks,” Hamilton wrote to the Office of Administration and Budget in an apparent reference to Trump’s mitigation denial funds for Virginia. “This will serve as a precursor to evaluate and redesign more mitigation subsidies.”
The six -page memorandum, first reported by CNN, suggests making other cuts to FEMA programs, such as denying smaller disasters and snowstorm storms.
Trump indicated his intention to follow Hamilton’s recommendation about the mitigation program when he approved a second disaster statement for Kentucky on April 25 without including mitigation money.
“When I saw Kentucky, I saw that there is now a pattern, and this is consistent with the recommendation that Hamilton made to OMB,” said former Fema Cabinet Chief Michael Coen, referring to the Office of Administration and Budget of the White House.
The governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, a Democrat, applauded FEMA for approving the help of disasters for homes affected by recent floods and did not answer E&E questions about the absence of mitigation money.
A risk mitigation subsidy is usually equal to 15 percent of the amount of money that Fema projects that will spend on an individual disaster.
Last year, the Biden administration altered the program to help states to spend their risk mitigation subsidies. The program had been the subject of scrutiny for its complexity, which turned out that the states did not spend billions of dollars in which they were assigned.
Trump has said that his FEMA review aims to give states more financial and logistics responsibility for disaster recovery, a position adopted by some experts and former FEMA leaders.
But states are not likely to replace the money mitigation money of FEMA, said Kelly McKinney, former attached commissioner of the emergency management of the city of New York.
Many state programs are strongly supported by defenders that “weigh in a very large and noisy way” to protect spending, McKinney said. “There are many interested parties for mitigation.”
The states would also have difficulty setting up a legal challenge to reverse Trump’s freezing of risk mitigation expense because the Government is not obliged to administer the program, according to Weber of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
In early April, Trump canceled another FEMA mitigation program, called the construction of infrastructure and resistant communities, and froze $ 3.6 billion not indicated funds that had been approved for the states. Althegh Fema created the Trump first term, the agency recently described it as a “politicized and ruthless subsidies program.”
Reprint of E&E news With permission from politician, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.
