IE 11 Not Supported

For optimal browsing, we recommend Chrome, Firefox or Safari browsers.

Trump Threatens Withholding Disaster Funds for California

Note that authority, power and judgment are all important elements in governing.

President Trump has once again threatened to withhold disaster funds for California due to his perceived mismanagement of forest lands in the state. As the story below points out, 60% of forests in California are under federal management. Read President Trump warns he'll cut off FEMA money for California fires.

As noted, this is not the first time he has made the threat to not pay for damages in California. Is it because it is by-and-large a Democratic/Blue state? I've been blogging on disasters for a very long time and I recall studies being done about how presidential declarations are handed out and how the frequency and threshold seems to become more often and lower around election time. So, playing politics with disaster funding is not totally new.

Yet, I don't remember any president calling out a state like Trump is doing with California.

I think to be consistent, he should do the following:

  • Call out all coastal states for allowing new construction near the ocean. Florida especially should get extraordinarily humiliating tweets
  • Washington state for totally ignoring their No. 2 state status for seismic risk. "If you have an earthquake — we are not coming to help!"
  • New York City for allowing development like they have in Manhattan — "If Trump Tower floods, I'm suing you!"
  • North Carolina for allowing development on barrier islands
  • Tennessee for not having statewide building codes — some areas with no building codes
  • Anyone else for the list?
Claire Rubin, The Recovery Diva, who knows more about disaster recovery than President Trump will ever know about — much — shared the link above.

Eric Holdeman is a contributing writer for Emergency Management magazine and is the former director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management.