The Trump administration has been taken back to federal court over his inability to respect the separation of power, with 20 states this time combining and filing a major lawsuit in Massachusetts against the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), challenging Trump’s elimination of the Congress-approved grant to help guard communities against natural disaster.
The Texas Hill Country flooding situation has already caused immense pressure on Kristi Noem for making FEMA’s job just a little bit more complex by her decision to cut the employees who were working the emergency call centers. But apparently, that’s not even where the cuts began. According to a report released by CNN, the Trump administration announced that it was unilaterally ending the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program in April.
The program was meant to partly provide grants for a variety of disaster mitigation infrastructural developments, such as safe rooms in times of tornadoes and even vegetation management to reduce situations of wildfires like the recent devastating LA fires. The latter, which Trump himself kept stating could have been avoided if California took care of its dry leaves in their forests. Yet still, Trump has called the programs that were aiming to solve that “wasteful and ineffective.”
During Biden’s administration, the wake of disasters such as Hurricane Helen led them to inject a $1 billion boost towards infrastructure readiness, with FEMA by law being required to have at least $200 million annually for disaster resistance grants from 2022 to 2026.
When Trump canceled this program, his administration stopped some already ongoing works and denied the green light to any new projects. The Trump administration went on to claim that the program wasn’t interested in helping any Americans who have been victimized by natural disasters and that instead, the program was only interested in “political agendas.”
Alternatively, the Attorney General of Massachusetts, Joy Campbell, told the media, “By abruptly and unlawfully shutting down the BRIC program, this administration is abandoning states and local communities that rely on federal funding to protect their residents and, in the event of disaster, save lives.” FEMA, on its part, did not issue any official response.
In the suit, Trump is accused of violating constitutional separation of powers because to fully wind up this program, he would need congressional approval, something he has continually ignored to disastrous results, with additional claims being made that the current acting administrator at FEMA doesn’t have the needed requirements to effectively run the agency.
While it’s 20 states that have banded together in the lawsuit currently, the lawsuit says that every community, regardless of location or party affiliation, has been benefiting from the program. According to reports, Hillside, North Carolina, was waiting on the grant to improve their sewer system, and rural Mount Pleasant was also awaiting a grant to secure an electric system that has since gotten vulnerable and to improve their own storm water drainage. These are communities that largely supported Trump during his reelection campaign and have been left blindsided by his latest decision.
