What did Donald Trump do today?
He walked back a plan to exempt cities he doesn't like from FEMA aid the same day he got caught with it.
On Friday, in a statement governing disaster relief aid, the Department of Homeland Security posted rules requiring states and cities to rewrite their own internal policies to conform with Trump's anti-immigrant policies, attacks on gender and minority equality, and foreign policies. Failure to do so would, according to the DHS, render any such location ineligible for disaster relief.
States enjoy sovereignty under the United States Constitution and are not required to govern their own internal affairs according to the president's whims.
Reuters reported on the language this morning, and on its obvious consequence: Trump could simply refuse to provide urgent disaster relief for any place he wanted to punish for political reasons. This is something he's explicitly threatened to do before—and he has, at times, carried out that threat.
Within hours, Homeland Security walked back the new policy.
It is possible that Trump himself didn't specifically know about the details of the plan. In fact, it is possible that Trump doesn't know that "he" backed down the moment there was reporting about it, either. Even more so than in Trump's first term, he seems content to delegate much of his actual responsibility to political attack dogs, cronies, or anyone willing to put money in his pocket.
But many of the people Trump put in charge of the executive branch were affiliated with Project 2025, a blueprint for radically reshaping American government so politically toxic that Trump denounced it on the campaign trail and swore he had nothing to do with its "bad ideas." Project 2025 calls for gutting FEMA and other forms of disaster aid.
Why does this matter?
- Political litmus tests to decide whether Americans' lives are worthy of being saved in an emergency is evil even by Trump standards.
- It is not "discrimination" to disagree with Donald Trump about anything.
- Policy that can't survive a single day exposed to the light is bad policy.
- No matter how much he wishes he was, Donald Trump is not a king.