How will Project 2025 treat Helene’s survivors?

The second Trump administration’s conservative plan is to weaken the government’s response to disasters by cutting public recovery money and ending federal flood insurance.

This could deprive survivors of disasters like Hurricane Helene of the financial assistance they need to rebuild their homes, as rising temperatures and increasing development increase the costs of disasters across the United States.

Project 2025, a sweeping policy manual written by former President Donald Trump’s allies and former advisers, will end disaster preparedness grants, pause or reduce aid after smaller and more widespread natural disasters, and phase out a program that provides almost all of the nation’s flood insurance under Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“You are gutting FEMA,” said Brett Hartl, director of government affairs at the Biological Diversity Action Center, who endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

“The poorest among us would never have access to flood insurance. They would be left out, they would be out of luck and they wouldn’t be able to rebuild,” Hartl said of the proposal to end the National Flood Insurance Program and leave flood coverage to a reluctant insurance industry.

The devastation caused by Helene raises new questions about the disaster policies Trump may adopt if he wins the election. His campaign renewed efforts to sideline Trump from Project 2025 in the wake of the hurricane, and his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, launched attacks on Republicans who proposed cutting disaster aid.

On Friday, the Harris campaign publicized a sprawling documentary that took Helene through the southern United States amid deadly downpours, releasing a video titled: “Project 2025 author and former Trump official says their plan is to cut aid for hurricane victims.”

It shows Ken Cuccinelli, Trump’s former senior homeland security official, who wrote the section on FEMA, saying the goal is to “reduce FEMA and focus on its mission of supporting countries. People think of it as a first responder. This is not a first aider.”

Project 2025 says FEMA should “focus on large, widespread disasters.”

Trump campaign senior adviser Danielle Alvarez said in a statement to E&E News POLITICO that the former Republican president “has made it clear that only President Trump and the campaign, and NOT any other organization or former employees, represent second-party politics.” term of office.

Project 2025 devotes only two of its 922 pages to FEMA. Other sections suggest scaling down or eliminating the National Weather Service and commercializing the forecasts it currently provides for free.

“Americans rely on weather forecasts and warnings provided by local radio stations and universities, which are produced not by the NWS but by private companies such as AccuWeather,” Project 2025 says.

However, private weather companies, including AccuWeather, often rely on National Weather Service data to create their own products.

Michael Mann, a distinguished climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said closing the weather service “would cause all kinds of confusion, uncertainty and disruption” around the NWS National Hurricane Center, which predicts and tracks tropical cyclones.

“The idea that the NHC could continue to fulfill its mission is absurd,” Mann said.

“Unrealistic Goal”

The most dramatic disaster proposal in Project 2025 would be to end FEMA’s flood insurance program. The document calls for replacing it with “private insurance, starting with the least risky areas currently identified in the program.”

“It’s an unrealistic goal,” said Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers. “There are areas where the private (property insurance) market is almost non-existent because of the risks there.”

FEMA’s national flood insurance program was created in 1968 after private sector insurers refused to cover flood damage. It now provides almost all flood protection in the U.S. and has paid $80 billion in property repairs, according to FEMA. Flood insurance is purchased separately from home insurance.

“The private sector doesn’t want this,” said Craig Fugate, who led FEMA during the Obama administration, referring to the extent of the flooding.

Carolyn Kousky, a leading flood insurance expert and vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund, said eliminating the insurance program “would be devastating to millions of households across the country who would lack the financial resources needed to rebuild.”

Congress and FEMA have taken steps in recent years to encourage insurance companies to offer flood policies. The FEMA program, launched under Obama and revived by the Biden administration after Trump delayed it, sharply raises FEMA flood premiums, bringing them in line with rates charged by private insurers.

Joshua Sewell, director of policy and research at Taxpayers for Common Sense, said the Project 2025 plan for FEMA “is an area where ideological desires appear to outweigh political pragmatism” and “oversimplifies a very complex and critical challenge.”

Soaring costs of disasters

FEMA’s proposed change comes as the agency struggles to cover costs and says it cannot repay $20.5 billion borrowed from the U.S. Treasury after three devastating hurricanes in 2017.

FEMA’s difficulties stem in part from Trump’s decision, and his as president, to designate every state a major disaster in 2020 due to the pandemic. It was an extraordinary move that tested the limits of disaster law while stripping tens of billions of dollars from a fund that FEMA uses to help communities rebuild after disasters.

FEMA’s rising costs have drawn scrutiny from government auditors and raised concerns that the agency is spending too much money and time on weather-related events that cause only a few million dollars in damages and could be handled entirely by the state. In 2019, E&E News reported that FEMA wasted more than $3 billion in disaster relief and misused thousands of workers while responding to smaller disasters.

“For a long time and increasingly, the costs (of disasters) have been borne by the federal government. We know that states and communities must bear their share not only of the costs, but also take actions that can reduce the risks,” said Berginnis of the Association of State Floodplain Managers.

During both the Obama and Trump administrations, FEMA proposed an overhaul of disaster assistance to limit the flow of money to states after the least costly weather events.

One of Project 2025’s ideas is taken directly from the 2016 FEMA proposal during the Obama administration.

Fugate, then the FEMA administrator, said he “wanted to create incentives” for states to limit future damage by adopting more stringent building codes.

The idea died after it sparked widespread opposition from states.

Hartl admitted that “not every thing in Project 2025 is really radical.”

But by eliminating or minimizing FEMA aid after small disasters, Hartl said, “All you’re doing is making it harder for communities to recover.”

Fugate said “other things” in Project 2025 “are more concerning,” such as eliminating annual grants to states that began after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to improve homeland security and preparedness.

“A lot of mobile communications systems and search and rescue teams — that’s what you were buying with homeland security grants,” Fugate said.

Reporter Avery Ellfeldt contributed.