Kentucky, destined by its geographic positioning and global climate change — a verboten subject owing to the Commonwealth’s unyielding devotion to a coal industry that never returns the love — has become a magnet for violent weather.
Just last week in my old London-Corbin stomping grounds, at least 19 people were killed when tornados struck a devastating blow that left the landscape appearing as if the Enola Gay had dropped its load on a significant swath of Southeastern Kentucky.
In the past in times of crisis, like when twisters destroyed portions of Mayfield and Dawson Springs in 2021, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, could be relied on to provide aid and physical assistance as residents of those shattered areas dug themselves out. The response wasn’t always a thing of beauty, addressing catastrophe rarely is, but at least the feds showed up to lend a hand, generous or not.
Now, perhaps, not so much.
President-cum-Dictator Donald J. Trump, who received 64.47 percent of the Kentucky vote in the 2024 presidential election, is looking to substantially reduce FEMA appropriations in the next federal budget and eventually kill the agency altogether, leaving individual states to address disasters on their own.
In an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox Non-News last January shortly after his inauguration, Trump mused, “…FEMA is going to be a whole big discussion very shortly because I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems.”
The Trump budget proposal calls for more than $646 million in cuts for FEMA. He has inked Executive Order 14239 streamlining the agency while deflecting greater disaster responsibilities to the individually affected states.
In other words, as is normal with El Presidente, chaos reigns just as the nation enters the hurricane, not to mention the tornado, season. Axios reports that internal governmental rumblings fear that the agency is “understaffed, underfunded and underprepared” as disaster season looms. About 1,000 staffers have left the agency and roughly a dozen agency leaders have exited as a result of the DOGE cuts.
It represents the old, tired, destroy-the-village-in-order-to-save-it routine. Unable to find a way to make money off the tragedy of others, Trump is washing his hands of FEMA and is looking for ways to pay off his ill-conceived tax cuts so they don’t add too much to the nation’s $36.9 trillion national debt, a sum he has managed to contribute to considerably.
Earlier this month, Trump, as is his wont, fired his FEMA chief Cameron Hamilton after Hamilton told a congressional committee that eliminating the agency would not be “in the best interests of the American people.” Hamilton’s interim replacement, David Richardson, a Marine Corps veteran who previously served as Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, has already proved to be a real beaut.
Richardson has no experience dealing with disasters so he is helping to create one, for practice perhaps. During his first meeting with staff, he threatened personnel who maintain different views of FEMA “I will run right over you. I will achieve the president’s intent,” he said in a tape obtained by CBS News.
“All I need is the authority from the president to put me in here as some degree of acting and I will make sure that his intent gets completed,” he said, according to CBS. “I don’t stop at yield signs… I, and I alone in FEMA, speak for FEMA.”
Such a graceful introduction.
Richardson acknowledge during that sterling intro that, ready or not, the Trump administration intends to shove the responsibility for addressing natural disasters down the throats of the states, most of whom don’t have the wherewithal to comply.
“We’re going to find out how to push things down to the states,” Richardson said. “That should be done at the state level. Also going to find out how we can do more cost sharing with the states.”
FEMA, often a target for criticism, particularly from Republicans, manages as many as 100 disasters at a time each year and distributes about 45 billion in aid annually. Trump in the past has complained that the tab for the federal government is too high and he thinks the states should suffer from their own calamities. That would prove exceedingly difficult for notoriously poor spots like Kentucky that don’t have the millions of dollars nestled in their pockets to rebuild places like London.
It’s not as if the Commonwealth is conjuring up natural disasters just for the heck of it.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear estimates, to this date, damage from the May 16 tornadoes has reached $59 million and he is requesting assistance for Caldwell, Christian, Laurel, Pulaski, Russell, Trigg, Todd and Union counties. There’s no way Beshear can manage to pull that sum out of his hat. That’s what FEMA is there for and why it’s necessary.
But the line for states and localities seeking public assistance is already backed up around the block. There are 17 official requests – including the one from Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear – sitting on Trump’s desk that he has yet to act on. According to Scientific America, 11 of those 17 requests were submitted more than a month ago.
Beshear dispatched a letter to Trump on May 20 asking him to expedite a major disaster declaration for the Commonwealth that will funnel money to those in need post haste. The state is sheltering more than 800 people whose residences were either destroyed or rendered uninhabitable.
The Commonwealth’s congressional delegation, consisting of seven Republicans and one Democrat, is on board, including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green, who in the past has opposed aid for other regions recovering from disasters.
So far, the president-cum-dictator remains just twiddling his thumbs. Even if he caves in and provides the Commonwealth with the help it needs this go-round, it’s unlikely FEMA and the federal government will similarly make itself available for future disasters.
FEMA has issues, that’s not even debatable, mostly dealing with efficiency and rapid response. Residents of western North Carolina, who suffered from severe flooding last October, are still waiting for needed assistance. But slicing the FEMA budget, ousting personnel and looking to offload responsibility is hardly the best way to address ongoing issues.
Regardless, providing an update of the recovery effort in Bowling Green on Thursday, Beshear vowed that those suffering won’t be left in the lurch.
“To those affected by this weekend’s severe weather, our promise to you is the same one we’ve made to each and every family impacted by natural disasters these past few years — we will rebuild every home and every life. We will keep showing up over and over. We will walk this road of recovery together,” Beshear said.
We’ll wait to see if Trump walks with them.