This year will be a big one for Atlantic hurricanes. That’s according to Colorado State University’s tropical forecast team — among others. It’s not yet predicted to be bigger than the monster year we had last year, but still largely above average.
And yet, our Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem wants to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency — FEMA. Her big, shiny idea is to move financial responsibility primarily to the states. The states, she says, are better able to manage their own disasters.
Is that right, Kristi Noem? Let’s consider 2023, a year in which the US experienced 28 separate billion-dollar disasters, according to NOAA (which, by the way, is also being gutted). That was a new record.
Without a coordinated federal response to this global house fire, states would have been left with a patchwork of underfunded, uncoordinated, piecemeal efforts to save lives and protect property. Most states — if any — have the financial might or emergency infrastructure to respond on their own to a SINGLE catastrophe. What happens if a state — I’m looking at you, Florida — has the misfortune of seeing multiple disasters in a single year?
The view from MAGA-land that some states (RED) are somehow more deserving of assistance or attention than others (BLUE), or that weird libertarian-adjacent vision that we’re all just responsible for own little corners, fuck everyone else, misses the point that a fire in the kitchen will not just burn down the kitchen. In some cases, it’ll take the whole neighborhood.
Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz has a lot to say about this, and he’s an expert. He led emergency response in his home state of Florida during COVID and other disasters, and knows exactly what a breakdown in federal leadership would mean for millions of us who will one day depend on it.
He also has a lot to say about the midterms, Democratic strategy, and how absolutely essential it will be to refer to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries as Mr. Speaker in ‘26.
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