Seven months after a devastating tornado ripped through northeastern Arkansas, the town of Cave City is slowly piecing itself back together. Its only grocery store is on the cusp of reopening, and construction crews are finally breaking ground on a new funeral home.
Yet, like countless other communities reeling from recent catastrophes, Cave City has been left largely to its own devices, according to Mayor Jonas Anderson.
The Trump administration rejected Cave City’s appeals for financial assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to aid its recovery. This forced Mayor Anderson to proceed without federal backing, accumulating an estimated $300,000 in expenses—a sum that could consume 15 percent of the small town’s yearly budget.
While some of Cave City’s nearly 2,000 residents did receive federal assistance, with FEMA covering repairs for over 50 damaged or destroyed homes after 165-mph winds hit in March, and the state also committing relief funds, Mayor Anderson notes that the town is shouldering a disproportionately large share of the recovery burden.
“We’re achieving a remarkable recovery, not thanks to a substantial FEMA reimbursement, but rather in defiance of its absence,” Mayor Anderson stated, highlighting the extraordinary resilience of his community.
This scenario might well represent the future for many communities nationwide, reflecting President Trump’s broader vision for emergency management: to delegate disaster recovery responsibilities primarily to states, reserving federal intervention only for the most severe cataclysms. For many areas, this vision is already their lived experience.
FEMA has been systematically deferring disaster declarations and aid disbursements to local communities. The agency has also introduced new barriers to accessing certain grant programs and curtailed funding explicitly aimed at enhancing resilience and mitigating future disaster impacts.
Across the nation, emergency managers and elected officials are grappling with a new reality. They can no longer rely on the consistent federal disaster aid they once expected from FEMA, an agency originally founded in 1979 to streamline and professionalize disaster response. Instead, they are forced to strategize for future emergencies without crucial FEMA grants, resort to private fundraising to fill federal funding gaps, and lobby state governments for increased preparedness support. In some areas, this void has even led to the emergence of grassroots volunteer recovery teams.
In an official email, FEMA spokesman Daniel Llargues confirmed that the agency has indeed withheld certain disaster relief funds, ostensibly to preserve them for future needs. A summer spending report, for instance, revealed an $11 billion holdback for projects linked to a coronavirus pandemic disaster declaration—funds states had anticipated by September 30. Agency officials clarified that these payments are not canceled but merely deferred into the new fiscal year, a measure taken to maintain the solvency of the government’s disaster aid fund.
“Under President Trump’s direction, FEMA remains steadfast in its commitment to assisting disaster survivors,” Mr. Llargues asserted. He further explained that the agency is managing disaster funding strategically, prioritizing both immediate response and sustained recovery.
However, critics warn that these funding delays inevitably lead to communities being less equipped and more vulnerable when the next disaster inevitably strikes.
“The administration is fulfilling its pledge to transfer this burden to the states, but without providing states the necessary time or resources to adequately prepare,” commented Sarah Labowitz, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who closely monitors national disaster recovery spending.
Fortuitously, a less active hurricane and wildfire season than anticipated has offered a reprieve, allowing FEMA to extend its disaster relief fund beyond initial projections. Though the fund was expected to be depleted by now, it reportedly held over $2 billion at the end of September, a significant drop from the $22.5 billion Congressional infusion in March.
Since January, President Trump has authorized 32 federal disaster declarations, which unlock various federal aid programs for affected communities and individuals. This figure is considerably lower than the average of over 60 declarations per year between fiscal years 2015 and 2024, as reported by the Congressional Research Service. Additionally, Mr. Trump has denied close to a dozen state requests for FEMA assistance this year, a rate consistent with rejections during both his first administration and President Joe Biden’s term, according to FEMA’s own data.
A persistent backlog of pending disaster aid requests has accumulated this year, tallying a dozen as of Tuesday. In stark contrast, previous administrations typically faced only a handful of outstanding requests at any given time.
Typically, Congress would allocate tens of billions of dollars to replenish the disaster aid fund at this point in the year. However, with a government shutdown entering its third week, discussions around disaster funding on Capitol Hill have been minimal. Meanwhile, a bipartisan House bill proposes elevating FEMA to a Cabinet-level agency, separating it from the Department of Homeland Security, in an effort to streamline its payment processes and accelerate investments in national disaster resilience.
Representative Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey, emphasized the critical role of a robust FEMA in coordinating efforts among states, especially given their varying capacities to manage crises.
“Disasters often span multiple states,” Mr. Pallone explained. “Expecting individual states to handle everything on their own simply won’t work, as they lack the comprehensive expertise and resources required.”
Conversely, advocates for a scaled-back FEMA contend that excessive federal aid can disincentivize communities from investing in their own preparedness. Dominik Lett, a budget policy analyst at the right-leaning Cato Institute, suggests that state and local governments are better positioned to understand and address their communities’ specific needs, and should be equipped to manage more common and foreseeable disasters.
However, in areas still grappling with the aftermath of historic disasters, FEMA’s sluggish and inconsistent support starkly reveals the limitations of such decentralized approaches. In western North Carolina, a year after Hurricane Helene and four years following severe flooding from Tropical Storm Fred, the town of Canton is still functioning from temporary trailers, awaiting federal funds promised for a new town hall and police station, as reported by Mayor Zeb Smathers.
“Recovery shouldn’t feel like winning a raffle,” Mayor Smathers lamented. “It ought to be a streamlined, efficient, and reliable process. Currently, it is anything but.”
Camille Rivera, president of La Brega Y Fuerza, a nonprofit serving the Puerto Rican diaspora across the U.S., warns that further shifting FEMA’s responsibilities to states and territories will disproportionately harm impoverished communities. This impact is already visible in Puerto Rico, where frequent blackouts and lingering damage from storms like Hurricane Maria in 2017 are commonplace. Many residents, Ms. Rivera noted, are now bypassing FEMA entirely, turning to crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe for aid.
“There are still people living under tarps who haven’t been able to rebuild,” she stated. “Many communities have simply given up on the federal government.”
Concurrently, the Trump administration has either suspended or outright canceled grant programs specifically designed to bolster communities’ resilience against future disasters.
Erik Thorsen, CEO of Columbia Memorial Hospital on the Oregon coast, shared his urgent struggle to secure $14 million in alternative funding. This comes after a promised FEMA grant for a $300 million expansion—designed to fortify the hospital against powerful earthquakes and tsunamis—was rescinded, even as construction proceeds.
A collective lawsuit from 20 states is currently pushing to reinstate the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program. They argue that since its inception in 2018, during President Trump’s first term, the program’s approximately $4.5 billion in investments have averted an estimated $150 billion in disaster-related damages.
Back in Cave City, with plans for a new park and community center shelved due to the town’s commitment of tax revenue to tornado recovery, Mayor Anderson acknowledged the President’s rationale for greater state involvement in disaster management, recognizing that local governments often have the clearest understanding of their residents’ immediate needs.
However, he cautioned that an abrupt shift in responsibility creates profound uncertainty, hindering local officials’ decision-making and leaving countless livelihoods precariously balanced.
“This will undoubtedly require a significant adjustment,” he concluded, emphasizing that “no one entity possesses the vast resources available to the federal government.”