The Trump administration has repeatedly denied disaster mitigation funding to states hit by extreme weather events — another step in President Donald Trump’s plan to downsize and phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency — and lawmakers aren’t sure why it keeps happening.
Since March, states including Oklahoma, Missouri, Iowa and Mississippi suffered severe storms, winds or wildfires and requested assistance through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program at FEMA, which provides funds to help protect against future natural disasters. Unlike the Biden administration, Trump is no longer automatically approving these grants and has denied seven requests this spring, according to Bloomberg, while six requests remain under review.
Oklahoma made one such funding request after March wildfires and winds ravaged the state, killing several people and damaging hundreds of homes, according to the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management. These fires burned Gov. Kevin Stitt’s farmhouse to the ground.
FEMA approved several Fire Management Assistance Grants in Oklahoma, which help state, local and tribal governments cover fire-related damage costs, but it denied a request for mitigation funding in early June.
“Well, I’m usually on the side of my state, so we’ll wait and see what happens,” Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma said of the funding denial.
Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford told NOTUS he’d have to see the requests in order to answer questions about the resilience funds. But while disaster aid is often necessary, it’s not simple, he said.
“There’s not a time, obviously, when there’s a disaster — maybe it would be a flood, a wildfire or our famous tornadoes — that we don’t need help from someone,” Lankford said. “But there’s a mixture of private insurance, state funding and federal funding, a formula set up on the federal side, to try to figure out when that actually kicks in. We’ve got to be able to make sure we actually meet that.”
At the beginning of June, the administration denied two requests from Missouri after tornadoes and storms in March and April killed residents and tore up communities.
Sen. Josh Hawley told NOTUS he had talked to Trump about FEMA grants for Missouri in the past, which he was grateful the president had approved. But Hawley supports his state’s request for mitigation funding that Trump has since denied.
“It’s been a really tough spring in our state for natural disasters. We’ve lost almost 20 people, and all across the state, suffered a lot of damage,” Hawley said.
“We may have to go back and ask for more,” he said of FEMA funding. “We’re not able to do the recovery with what we’ve got.”
Bloomberg reported that the state of Oklahoma received other federal funds it could use in a similar way to the HMGP grants and is not appealing the administration’s decision — but Missouri officials were already putting together an appeal.
In late May, the entire Washington delegation wrote to Trump after he denied aid funding for a November bomb cyclone that hit the state. The letter said the state’s request detailed over $30 million in damages, “costs that local governments cannot and should not be expected to shoulder alone,” including mitigation funding.
“Disaster declarations are not symbolic, they are critical lifelines for communities in crisis. Washington state’s first responders, local governments, and emergency management professionals have done everything within their means to begin recovery, but the scale of the damage requires federal support through the Public Assistance Program and the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program,” the letter read.
The administration denied the state’s appeal last week, according to The Seattle Times.
The White House said it’s seeing large amounts of funding “across the board” that haven’t been delegated to any specific project yet, and it wants to decrease that spending.
“The Trump administration is monitoring the approval of HMGP with states’ ability to execute those funds,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “We are working with states to assist them in identifying projects and drawing down balances in a way that makes the nation more resilient.”
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Em Luetkemeyer is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and Oklahoma Watch.