Dem
47
GOP
53
Sec. of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said she was going to eliminate FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She did not explain why, but Donald Trump cheered her on saying "That's great." In January, Trump said: "I think, frankly, FEMA's not good."
South Dakota does not have a lot of natural disasters, so the secretary may not be aware that they occur all over the country, such as tornados in the Midwest and hurricanes in Texas, Florida, and all over the South. Maybe she is thinking only about wildfires in California and has no problem letting the state burn. It is also possible that Noem and Trump see getting rid of FEMA as a way to push costs off the federal budget and onto the budget of the states, so as to make bigger tax cuts possible. For a rich state like California, fending for itself might be doable, but hurricanes also hit Alabama and Mississippi regularly and they are ill-equipped to deal with them alone. Climate change is making disasters more common, but the strategy here may be to simply deny that disasters exist. Of course, Trump is taking a gamble here. If a major disaster occurs in a red state after FEMA has been eliminated or eviscerated, a lot of folks there won't be so happy.
Noem is probably unaware that FEMA not only helps people after a disaster, but also helps people in disaster-prone areas to plan for them in advance in an attempt to mitigate the worst outcomes. That also happens in red states. This goes to show that Noem and Trump have no empathy at all even for their own voters.
Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) thinks eliminating FEMA is a terrible idea. He wrote: "The Trump Administration's grand plan for victims of natural disasters is to abandon them—and it's a complete non-starter." (V)