Trump tours US disaster zones, says he will order FEMA overhaul

US President Donald Trump said on Friday he plans to sign an executive order to overhaul or eliminate the main federal agency that responds to natural disasters, during a visit to storm-hit areas of North Carolina. Trump, on his first trip since reclaiming the presidency on Monday, accused FEMA of bungling emergency relief efforts in North Carolina, which was devastated by flooding from Hurricane Helene in September. He said his executive order would begin the process of fundamentally overhauling or eliminating the agency. “FEMA has turned out to be a disaster,” he said during a tour of a neighbourhood destroyed by Helene where trees were downed and homes had boarded-up windows. “I think we recommend that FEMA go away.” FEMA brings in emergency personnel, supplies and equipment to help areas begin to recover from natural disasters, and funding for the agency has soared in recent years as extreme weather events increase the demand for its services. The agency, which has 10 regional offices and employs more than 20,000 people across the country, was run for the last four years by Democratic US President Joe Biden’s administration. During a briefing about recovery efforts, the Republican Trump promised to speedily help North Carolina “get the help you need” to rebuild. He said he would prefer that states be given federal money to handle disasters themselves rather than rely on FEMA to do the job. FEMA was a target of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term prepared by the president’s allies that the president distanced himself from during the election. The plan called for dismantling DHS and relocating FEMA to the Department of Interior or the Department of Transportation. In addition, it suggested changing the formula that the agency uses to determine when federal disaster aid is warranted, shifting the costs of preventing and responding to disasters to states. Democrats voiced support for FEMA. Democratic US congresswoman Deborah Ross of North Carolina, in a social media post on Friday, said FEMA has been a crucial partner. “I appreciate President Trump’s concern about Western NC, but eliminating FEMA would be a disaster for our state,” she said. Trump complained that Biden did not do enough to help western North Carolina recover from the hurricane, an accusation the Biden administration rejected as misinformation. While the president emphasised his desire to help North Carolina, a battleground state that has voted for him in all of his presidential campaigns, he was much less generous toward California, where he arrived to visit wildfire-ravaged Los Angeles later in the day. Trump was greeted by California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Trump critic whom the president frequently disparages. The duo chatted amiably and gestured toward working collaboratively. “We’re going to need your support. We’re going to need your help,” Newsom told Trump. “You were there for us during Covid. I don’t forget that, and I have all the expectations we’re going to be able to work together.” Newsom has praised Trump before when looking for help from the federal government. In the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, he called Trump “thoughtful” and “collaborative”. In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Trump had threatened to withhold aid to California and repeated a false claim that Newsom and other officials have refused to provide water from the northern part of the state to fight the fires. His Republican colleagues in Congress also have threatened to withhold disaster aid for the region. “I don’t think we should give California anything until they let the water flow down,” Trump said. He has falsely claimed that Newsom, a Democrat, prioritised the preservation of endangered fish over public safety. Newsom has said there is no connection between the fish and the fire. Trump has accused Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass – who was out of the country when the fires broke out – of “gross incompetence,” pointing to what he called a lack of preparation and ineffective or harmful water management policies. Water shortages caused some hydrants to run dry in affluent Pacific Palisades, hindering the early response. When the fires broke out, one of the reservoirs that could have supplied more water to the area was empty for a year. Officials have promised an investigation into why it was dry. Mayor Bass and fire officials have said the hydrants were not designed to deal with such a massive disaster, and stressed the unprecedented nature of the fires. Trump has focused some of his criticism on California’s complicated policies for sharing the plentiful water supply found in the northern part of the state with the parched south. The diversion results in the discharge of some water into the ocean, something Trump has depicted as a callous waste. Newsom has dismissed those attacks as groundless, and experts have said that the diversions, in part designed to protect agricultural interests, have played little or no part in the difficulties encountered in fighting the fires. Since the fires broke out on January 7, they have killed 28 people and damaged or destroyed nearly 16,000 structures, authorities say. Much of Southern California remains under a red-flag warning for extreme fire risk due to strong, dry winds. Additional reporting by Associated Press

Trump tours US disaster zones, says he will order FEMA overhaul

The US president is visiting storm-hit North Carolina and California areas ravaged by wildfires