- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
Summary
Trump signed an executive order shifting disaster preparedness responsibility from FEMA to state and local governments.
The order calls for reviewing infrastructure policies, creating a National Risk Register, and prioritizing state-led risk reduction.
Critics warn this weakens U.S. disaster readiness, noting Trump’s administration has cut 1,000 FEMA staff and withheld funds from state projects.
Experts fear the order forces states to make costly infrastructure investments without clear federal support, leaving communities more vulnerable to disasters like wildfires and hurricanes.
I’m skeptical that this is a good idea. Disasters happen infrequently. If you have one federal agency, you can move it around to deal with whatever is at issue. If you do it at state level, you need to replicate that so that any given state can have emergency management capability. That’s probably wasteful, because you don’t expect to have a concurrent emergency in all 50 states.
Consolidation itself brings funding benefits too.
Remember during covid when states were fighting with hospitals, who were fighting other hospitals and other states, for PPE? When it got scarce, fucking surgical masks needed an armed escort and seemingly disappeared from dockyards anyway. This will be your water, your fuel, your air support during the next katrina or paradise fire or Kentucky flood like this year, because agencies will be fighting to keep contracts by scarce providers selling to the highest bidder – all managed by first-timer contractors hired FOR an event but let go in the intervening 3 years.
Trump said he thought he could shut the White House pandemic office and rehire the staff as needed.
Actually, he wanted to fire the admiral in charge of the office because the admiral was friends with Gen. Miley who Trump hated.
This is a good idea BECAUSE the current federal government is thoroughly corrupt and inept. He accidentally did the right thing. Really, it’s an official endorsement for the Balkanization of the US.
States can cooperate to share infrastructure directly.
I feel like they already did that.
Like group up and pool our money… all 50 states … possibly call it something… I think emergency something administration. 🤔 idk there used to be smart people for this sort of thing.
Yeah, sure, so long as they’re all getting along with each other, and so long as they can coordinate who has what and what might be needed, and so long as no one state tries to cut costs on emergency planning and rely on other states bailing them out, yeah, we might end up with a much more expensive system that with almost the same capacity to clean up disasters as our current one