Diasterology: April 2025
This newsletter is a compilation of recent disaster ~things~ that I think are cool, important, or otherwise of interest to people who are intrigued with disaster (broadly defined). There’s a little something for everyone!
Greetings Earthlings,
This month, Naomi Klein published “The Rise of End Times Fascism” in The Guardian with her co-author Astra Taylor. This is her first piece since Trump returned to office, and Oh Boy! I think it hits particularly hard for those of us in disaster-world.
The topline take away is that “the governing ideology of the far right has become a monstrous, supremacist survivalism…. the most powerful people in the world are preparing for the end of the world, an end they themselves are frenetically accelerating.”
We are not just dealing with (normal?) fascism. No, no, that would be too simple. Instead, Klein and Taylor argue we are dealing with End Times Fascism. Love that for us. Survivalism is the word that caught my attention most. Those fringe, weird, kind of scary, extreme preppers that our field largely ignores? It turns out that they are a critical part of understanding Washington right now.
What first may come to mind may be the prepping of the Ultra Rich, like Zuckerberg’s nonsense compound in Hawaii. Then there is the extreme prepping among non-millionaires on the far right. You know, the kind of folks who tune into Steve Bannon’s podcast and are swindled by the advertisements for various survival items. As Klein & Taylor write, “End times fascism offers the promise of many more affordable arks and bunkers, these ones well within reach for lower-level foot soldiers.” This is all familiar to those of us in disaster-world, but doesn’t get much more thought than a passing eye roll from most of us. My dismissal has been rooted in how often these extreme prepping activities are not actually effective. I think of the family on that old extreme prepper TV show who was stockpiling guns for when society descended into civil unrest, but then during the show, a wildfire broke out near their house, and they had to evacuate. What were they going to do? Shoot at the fire? These people tend to take the approach of isolationism, which we know is not what makes people able to survive disaster — it’s community.
Of course, this extreme prepping is inspired by a far more sinister message. As they explain, Bannon and other far-right politicians “advances a vision of the United States as a bunker in its own right, one in which Ice agents stalk the streets, workplaces and campuses, disappearing those deemed enemies of US policy and interests. The bunkered nation lies at the heart of the Maga agenda, and of end times fascism.”
What is new and even more distressing is Klein and Taylor’s argument that this extreme prepping is now happening on a national scale -- meaning nations are engaging in this behavior. Specifically, it has become a mission of “the US government to lay claim to whatever resources its protected citizens might need to get through the tough times ahead.” They give examples that tie many recent, seemingly odd decisions together, including “Panama’s canal. Or Greenland’s fast-melting shipping routes. Or Ukraine’s critical minerals. Or Canada’s fresh water.”
They note, “we should think of this less as old-school imperialism than super-sized prepping, at the level of the national state. Gone are the old colonial fig leaves of spreading democracy or God’s word – when Trump covetously scans the globe, he is stockpiling for civilizational collapse.”
Yikes.
Simultaneously -- and most directly relevant to us in emergency management -- the administration is accelerating us towards that collapse (or the like) through the dismantling of the emergency management system and “every structure designed to protect the public”. Their efforts to accelerate our risk in coordination with the dismantling of our frontline systems then strengthen “the case for prepperism at both the high and low ends, all while creating myriad new opportunities for privatization and profiteering by the oligarchs powering this rapid-fire unmaking of the social and regulatory state.”
Seems bad!
They emphasize, too, that we have not experienced “such a powerful apocalyptic strain in government before”. In our language of disasters, “today’s rightwing leaders and their rich allies are not just taking advantage of catastrophes, shock-doctrine and disaster-capitalism style, but simultaneously provoking and planning for them.”
To say our emergency management system is incapable of surviving this feels like an understatement. The theory presented here indicates that we are not just experiencing a shift in our political context, but rather a shift in our entire situational context. That is something much bigger than what I have been talking about here.
We are faced with a fundamental disagreement between the goal of the emergency management system -- to save lives, property, and the environment -- and a federal government that has, as they put it, “made peace with mass death.” Something that is perhaps most immediately obvious in their dismantling of Health & Human Services and introduction of anti-vax and other anti-health policies.
This changes how we should understand the chipping away of FEMA, and the repeated threats of eliminating the agency in its entirety. We should understand this as a much more nefarious effort. This is not just that Trump does not understand what FEMA does and its value. This is not only about minimizing federal spending. This is not only about privatization.
As we work to save what is left of FEMA — and/or do the work of envisioning more robust state and local emergency management agencies and a different future federal agency — we need to be considering the bigger project of the far-right presented here.
Klein and Taylor end their article with the same solution as always: to survive, we must together imagine a better world. Specifically, “we counter their apocalyptic narratives with a far better story about how to survive the hard times ahead without leaving anyone behind. A story capable of draining end times fascism of its gothic power and galvanizing a movement ready to put it all on the line for our collective survival. A story not of end times, but of better times...”
The State of Emergency Management
…is not ready for hurricane season.
Some quick hits from other federal agencies before we get to FEMA: The CDC was gutted, including NIOSH, which is responsible for things like ensuring respirators for firefighters are functioning effectively and investigating firefighter deaths. More broadly, HHS systems are on the brink of collapse because of mass firings. 30 million Americans lost their ability to understand weather forecasts when the contract for language translation services used by NWS was not renewed. NOAA and NWS are also battling data loss and threats of data loss. LIHEAP, which provided life-saving funding for people to heat and cool their homes, was gutted. The National Climate Assessment (mandated by Congress) has been shut down. The full impact of the federal firings and budget cuts for wildfire fighting is coming into view, and it’s brutal.
On the FEMA Front
The big staffing news at FEMA this month is that around 20% of permanent staff are expected to take the voluntary buyout offered by DHS/DOGE.
It also looks like we lost FEMACorps and NCCC after volunteers were sent home unexpectedly this month. If you’re unfamiliar with the program, “Since 2000, AmeriCorps NCCC teams have assisted 20.6 million people in disaster areas, recruited or coordinated nearly 940,000 volunteers, assisted more than 33,000 veterans, served 6.1 million meals, protected more than 1.6 million acres of land through firefighting and fire management, and more.”
As I told Wired, “NCCC and FEMA Corps represent a critical flexible workforce that is able to support disaster mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery efforts across the country…The loss of the people who make up these programs will be felt immediately, and especially in the next major disaster.”
Among the many changes to FEMA, this is one that felt particularly unjust. I have worked with AmeriCorps volunteers all over the country. They have been instrumental in rebuilding communities from New Orleans to Joplin, along with doing other critical community work. FEMA Corps volunteers are often out here doing shitty paperwork gruntwork! These are not glamorous jobs, and people volunteer to do this work for very little money. These are young people who are giving up job opportunities that pay living wages to effectively volunteer their time for public service. That is about as admirable as it comes! As someone who spends a lot of time with college students, losing this pathway into the field is a particularly harsh blow in the context of the broader federal hiring freeze and chaos, which has left their future careers in limbo.
By my latest count, it looks like FEMA has lost somewhere around 2000 people in the past three months.
Bye Bye BRIC
Grist broke the news that the Trump administration would be eliminating BRIC. April really is the cruelest month.
BRIC is the Building Resilient Infrastructure & Communities grant program that FEMA has run since it was created in 2019. The primary goal of the grant funding is to provide states and locals with federal funding to help complete mitigation projects (sometimes, some preparedness gets mixed in too). BRIC was started by Trump during his first administration and subsumed other existing mitigation programs. There were some bumps when BRIC first started, including inequitable distribution of funds across the country. Wealthier communities were more likely to get funding, probably because they had the resources/ capacity to go through the application process, which was extremely involved. Headwaters Economics has done a great job tracking BRIC awards each year, and you can read more about these issues there. These were certainly issues to address, but they were not surprising -- these are common issues for new FEMA grant programs. They were also solvable problems.
The Biden administration increased the amount of available funding via BRIC, and FEMA made some internal changes to address some of the problems with the program. This was good! In fact, the biggest critique of BRIC to be made was that it simply needed more money to give out each year. As you know, for every $1 the federal government spends on mitigation, they save $6 (or up to $13 depending on the hazard) in response and recovery. Talk about efficiency! Given our increasing disasters across the country, the need to invest significantly in mitigation is urgent. Duh.
So, of course, the Trump administration decided to end BRIC and take back money that had already been promised to communities across the country over the past several years. There has been a valiant effort from local journalists across the country explaining the local impacts. Scranton lost $2.5 million for buyouts. North Dakota lost $20 million for water-related infrastructure projects in rural towns. Louisiana is citing a loss of over $700 million in mitigation funding. Crisfield, Maryland, lost $36.2 million for repetitive flood mitigation. Chelsea and Everett, Massachusetts, lost $50 million for flood mitigation. You get the idea…
The press release from FEMA announcing the end of BRIC was titled “FEMA Ends Wasteful, Politicized Grant Program, Returning Agency to Core Mission of Helping Americans Recovering from Natural Disasters”. Very strong “old man yells at cloud” energy. You need to calm down. You’re being too loud. We were also blessed with this beautifully ignorant statement from a FEMA spokeswoman: BRIC “was more concerned with climate change than helping Americans effected by natural disasters.” I am so embarrassed for her! Imagine saying this! LMAO. If I said something this wrong in the Washington Post, I would change my appearance and move to another country! Mortifying behavior!
The FEMA Review Council
On Monday, Trump finally announced the members he has appointed to the FEMA Review Council. I have run out of time and space to address it here, but I will work on getting a blog post written about the people who are on it. The cliff notes are that this is not a group of people who are going to create a more effective, efficient, and equitable FEMA. There are all kinds of problematic people on this Council, and we should continue not to legitimize their work. We’ve also got a weird Chuck Edwards issue to circle back to regarding a report he released on Hurricane Helene recovery. Interestingly, Bob Fenton was appointed to the Council. The Onion infamously told us we’d be safe in his arms. I hope they’re right.
It’s Time You Finally Learn About The Per Capita Indicator
While the FEMA Review Council is still putting on their pants, I would point out that the Project 2025 crowd has already walked FEMA into the abyss. The administration is going ahead and simply implementing the policy recommendations from Project 2025. In this way, I am not sure what the point of the Review Council is, but that’s neither here nor there. This month’s examples of implementing Project 2025 are the cancellation of BRIC. While Project 2025 did not name BRIC specifically, I had a sneaking suspicion they were including it under the heading of “Preparedness Grants” rather than the more appropriate terminology of “Mitigation Grants” BECAUSE THESE PEOPLE DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT. Turns out, I was right.
The other massive change appears to be an increase in the per capita indicator and the elimination of the 100% cost-share option. If you don’t know what those words mean, stop here and go read my Project 2025 blog post. It’s very long, so just do a control find for “per capita indicator” and “cost-share”. I know that you don’t want to learn what that is but I fear you must because they are using it to screw over a lot of disaster survivors.
Prior to Trump taking office again, the FEMA Daily Ops Briefing was one of those emails that I simply deleted without reading each day. Since January, however, it has become a must-read. No one else seems to be pointing this out, but it seems to me, the simplest (and legal) way to effectively shut FEMA down is for the President to simply stop signing declarations. So, the “declarations in progress” page in the daily briefing has become particularly important. Things had been relatively normal on the declaration front until Washington State and Arkansas were denied declarations this month for events that historically likely would have received one based on the amount of damage.
Why were they denied? Well, judging from this memo from Acting FEMA Administrator Cameron Hamilton to OMB, it would seem that the White House has decided to raise the per capita indicator. Oh, you mean like they said they were going to do? Weird! One thing Project 2025 did not clarify about raising the per capita indicator is by how much they would raise it. The memo indicates they will be quadrupling it. Faints.
Trump’s bestie, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is big mad. I am furious that disaster survivors from any state are having their recoveries slowed by this administration. I do not feel bad for Aunt Lydia. As of this writing, Arkansas has submitted its appeal. To me, this is the big one to watch. If Arkansas cannot get this declaration it means they are sticking to the quadrupled indicator and a lot of red state governors are going to be PISSED. It is worth noting that the pending declaration requests include Kentucky, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Missouri, Michigan, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Texas, Tennessee, and poor Hawaii, which is surely feeling out of place on this list. But don’t worry, Mississippi has said they are confident they’ll get a declaration. Godspeed.
If not, what will that backlash be, and will it be enough for the Trump administration to back down? If Arkansas gets the declaration but Washington appeals and does not, then we are looking at a politicization of the declaration process, which is a very different situation from a nationwide redefinition of what qualifies as a disaster.
One thing I do really really need journalists to understand is that the indicator is just made up! It is not a law or based on anything -- FEMA and the White House just decide it on their own, and even so, the President does not need to use it. When the president declines to sign a declaration, no one but the President himself owns that decision. Put another way, Trump single-handedly denied assistance to disaster survivors in Arkansas. It’s not FEMA denying it. It’s not Congress denying it. No law or formula denies it. It is just the President. He owns it. I think it is important that the public -- and especially his supporters -- understand that.
In already declared disaster news. Recovery funding still does not seem to be flowing freely to North Carolina. We need more journalists to be parsing apart which of these delays are a “normal” (albeit problematic) part of the recovery process and which are specifically because of this administration, like this piece from Virginia.
On The DOGE Front
Other than the voluntary buyouts, things have been relatively quiet on the DOGE front this month. ProPublica put together a database of DOGE employees and the agencies they are assigned to dismantle. Edward Coristine is still listed as the person assigned to FEMA. You may know him by the name -- and I apologize for using this language -- “Big Balls”. It is important to me that you know this person is nineteen years old. A child. An actual child has been put in charge of dismantling an agency he can’t possibly understand.
The Resistance (???)
There have been a few op-eds defending FEMA in The Hill, The Orlando Sentinel, Scientific American, and Governing. This piece in Intelligencer stated the situation as plainly as possible: “Destroying FEMA is, perhaps, Trump’s most unhinged goal… there’s no good-faith argument for Trump’s attacks on FEMA. Foisting disaster response onto poorer state governments does nothing but immiserate the vulnerable people (in this case, amazingly, mostly his own voters) recovering from natural disasters.” He should read Naomi Klein.
These are generally good and worth a read. More like these would be good too -- especially in your local papers! You could write one!
A group of congressional democrats finally decided to send a letter to Secretary Noem after her comment last month about wanting to eliminate FEMA. Something similar was put together by a coalition of 40+ organizations. Good! But surely bare minimum stuff.
Finally, NEMA published an open letter to the Review Council. You’ve got to read between the lines a bit, but basically, NEMA is emphasizing the need for comprehensive emergency management -- meaning FEMA needs to be doing mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery. The letter is largely, I assume, a response to the efforts to eliminate FEMA’s role in mitigation (via the shuttering of BRIC), preparedness (via the freezing of preparedness grants), and parts of response and recovery (via the screwing around with declarations). The NGA Report is rolling over in its freshly dug grave!
Things That Aren’t Funny But Made Me Laugh
Acting FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton was given a lie detector test by DHS after several people leaked information from a private meeting about the future of FEMA. DHS is using LIE DETECTOR tests!?! Lmaoooo. Is this a Vanity Fair TikTok? Please be serious! Probably not at all a problem that an agency whose effectiveness is largely rooted in trust is using lie detector tests on its own people!
Questions I would ask Cameron Hamilton if I gave him a lie detector test:
Do you wear so much hair gel because you think it will distract people from all the laws you're breaking?
Do you feel uncomfy walking through the halls of HQ knowing that everyone there thinks you’re a dweeb?
Are you worried about getting forehead wrinkles from all the brow furrowing you do in the field as you pretend you will help disaster survivors recover?
Were you the one who stole Kristi Noem’s purse?
The End Bits
It’d be cool if you forwarded this newsletter to your friends, post it on social media, or undertake any other form of newsletter sharing you deem appropriate. I’ve heard some of you print out the memes to hang in your emergency management offices! Incredible.
In case you signed up for this newsletter without knowing who I am (a bold choice!) you can listen to this interview with me on Ologies. If you really want to dive in you can read my book Disasterology: Dispatches From The Frontlines of The Climate Crisis to catch up (here’s a USA Today review). You can order it here and get it as an audiobook here.
Other places to find me: Blog. BlueSky. Instagram. TikTok.
This newsletter can be accessed for free and I intend to keep it that way because eliminating barriers to disaster knowledge is important. However, there is a “paid subscriber” option for $5 a month, or whatever you’d like to give if you’re interested in supporting this work.
President Biden allowed a Chinese spy balloon to fly over our entire country and hover over out military installations and you wonder why there are preppers. I read some prepper stuff and they say that if the San Andreas goes, Californians will only survive if you have several months worth of supplies. My son lives in SF and he ignores this as all of you seem to. I lived through Superstorm Sandy in NJ, and discovered, to my surprise that our inability to traverse our roads, with hundreds of thousands of trees down, and no power for weeks was of no interest to the federal government. I moved to Asheville for four years, and was fortunate to have moved and consequently was not be there for their 6 months of disaster following Hurricane Helene. FEMA was late to the party, and wasn't remotely up to the task. Neighbors helped neighbors, and people from all over the East Coast sent them supplies. I hope that the San Andreas holds off forever. There is no way to get aid to people, or to get that many people out in the event of the Big One. Samaritan's Purse is a wonderful charity that helps people all over the world, and they are still helping the people of Western North Carolina, if you would like to help people already well acquainted with disasters. (I thought this blog was about disasters as opposed to politics, but do you have any interest. or caring, about the people on the other side of you, politically? ) If the SHTF (prepper lingo), all of us will have to pull together. There are no atheists in foxholes.
Thanks Samantha. I'm a big fan of Naomi Klein - required reading imo