The news coming out of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under Trump 2.0 only gets more surreal as we move into the height of Danger Season, the months between May and October when we see a rise in wildfires, killer heat, hurricanes and other extreme weather and climate change-related impacts.
You may recall that in April, FEMA ended its own Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program and canceled applications from 2020-2023, putting $4 billion in BRIC funding in jeopardy. BRIC is FEMA’s grant program to help communities become more resilient before disasters. FEMA awards BRIC funding to state, local, Tribal, and territorial governments for a range of projects: from large infrastructure projects such as a microgrid to help communities become more resilient to hurricanes, a levee setback to adapt to inland flooding, and including smaller projects such as implementing building codes, nature-based solutions for hazard mitigation, or to help support resilient land use planning. The shutdown is having a devastating impact on communities that have been planning on these projects for years, which means they are facing a higher risk from extreme weather and disasters.
Ending BRIC was just one of the many attacks on FEMA since the start of President Trump’s second term, part of the administration’s goal to “eliminate FEMA’s role in funding long-term rebuilding efforts and halt multibillion-dollar grants programs that help communities prepare for disasters.” In response, on July 16, twenty states brought a lawsuit against FEMA for unlawfully terminating BRIC.
In the first development since that lawsuit, last week on August 5, US District Judge Richard Stearn issued a preliminary injunction stopping FEMA from spending funds from the BRIC grant program for non-BRIC purposes. This appears to ensure funding will continue to be allocated to the BRIC program, and that funding allocated to state projects will be preserved. This represents a big win—and perhaps a hopeful telltale sign for what’s to come.
The July 16 lawsuit against FEMA by those 20 states cited three legal reasons for the case:
- The cancellation of BRIC is contrary to Congress’s statutory direction to FEMA when they established the program under law in 2018 during President Trump’s first administration, and therefore violated the core principle of the separation of powers;
- By refusing to spend funds that Congress directed to BRIC (or trying to spend them on other programs), FEMA violated the Constitution and Congress’s power of the purse; and
- Neither of the two acting administrators under the Trump administration, Cameron Hamilton nor David Richardson, were lawfully appointed to run FEMA and therefore lack the authority to terminate the BRIC program.
So, what’s so surreal?
In Judge Stearn’s 15-page August 5 ruling, he found that acting FEMA administrator David Richardson was obfuscating the truth to the court when Richardson’s defense was that FEMA was only “evaluating whether to end or revise the BRIC program.” In fact, Judge Stearn presents four pieces of evidence demonstrating exactly the opposite—an explicit intention to end and cancel BRIC. Judge Stearns names:
- two FEMA internal documents: a press release on April 4 and a FEMA Advisory on April 16;
- the cancelation of the FY 2024 Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO); and
- FEMA’s actual deposit of $4 billion in funds from the BRIC account into FEMA’s Disaster Resilience Fund (DRF).
Thank goodness for the way back machine internet archive and organizations like ASFPM that saved these documents to their official sites. All of these documents were the smoking guns.
For example, former Acting FEMA Administrator Cameron Hamilton’s April 4 memo entitled “FEMA Ends Wasteful, Politicized Grant Program, Returning Agency to Core Mission of Helping Americans Recovering from Natural Disasters” stated that “FEMA is ending the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program.” And the April 16 memo stated that, “As the program is concluding, the Fiscal Year 2024 BRIC funding opportunity is cancelled, no applications submitted will be reviewed and no funds will be awarded. In addition, for all BRIC applications from Fiscal Years 2020-2023, if grant funds have not been distributed to states, tribes, territories and local communities, funds will be returned either to the Disaster Relief Fund or the U.S. Treasury.”
Additionally, Judge Stearns was not convinced that Congress gave any discretion to FEMA to reallocate BRIC funds. Judge Stearns also underscored that the states demonstrated “a realistic existence of irreparable harm,” and if the funds are spent on other purposes, they’d be “lost forever.” The judge went on to state that the BRIC program is “designed to protect against natural disasters and save lives.”
Lives are indeed at stake, and state, local, Tribal and territorial governments are practically running in place trying to prepare for extreme weather and climate change-related impacts. According to the July 16 lawsuit, “Over the past four years, FEMA has selected nearly 2,000 projects from every corner of the country to receive roughly $4.5 billion in funding.” The lawsuit also notes that before the Trump administration unlawfully ended the BRIC program, FEMA was on target to fund the following projects:
- Upgrades to electrical infrastructure in Iowa (~$11million), Nebraska (~$25 million), and Kentucky (~$6.4 million) so that residents can maintain power and heat during storms;
- Flood mitigation in Ohio (~$24 million), Montana (~$7 million), Idaho (~$7 million), West Virginia (~$7 million), and Indiana (~$6.2 million), to reduce injuries and property damage; and
- Pump stations in Pennsylvania (~$100 million) to protect infrastructure during severe storms; and a pump station in North Dakota (~$7.1 million) to provide a small community with a reliable water source during low river flows.
These are comparatively small investments with the high return of saving lives. Those of us working in the preparedness, protection, response, recovery, and mitigation space are exhausted from the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle FEMA to the detriment of communities across this nation.
One hopeful note: while we won’t know what the final ruling will be, I’m optimistic that the law is on the side of the 20 states and they will win their case. This would be a win for all states, and the $4 billion in BRIC funding would again start flowing for critical mitigation projects to reduce risks from wildfires, flooding, and other hazards.
There is an outsized need and very little funding for risk mitigation nationwide. It’s infuriating and insulting to witness this administration sideline Congress and shortchange communities in the face of increasingly frequent and severe climate change-fueled disasters. We must continue to urge Congress and state attorney generals to hold the Trump administration accountable as it tries to destroy FEMA’s capabilities and lie when asked to account for its dysfunctional disaster response and recovery actions.