Another Trump-Voting Town Denied FEMA Aid

Residents in Rancho Palos Verdes have been living in fear that one day their homes might succumb to the nearly 100-year-old landslide. Just when they thought they were going to be receiving funds to help, it was taken away by Trump.

The home of 85-year-old Corinne Gerrard was built on a slippery slope. Every day, she patrols the perimeter of her property and uses a walking stick and a cane to find and fill fissures around her house. Gerrard says some areas around her home have to be filled twice a day.

In Rancho Palos Verdes, a handful of landslides have been moving homes for years, and recently, wet winters have made things worse.

"Morning chores are get up, get the shovels out, get the wheelbarrows out, and start filling the fissures," Gerrard said. Currently, 650 homes are in the landslide. Gerrard says she has sunk thigh-deep into the dirt several times as she tries to save her ill-placed home.

In August 2023, Rancho Palos Verdes was awarded a $23 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to mitigate the Portuguese Bend landslide. But in April 2025, FEMA abruptly canceled the nearly $5 billion Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program nationwide, saying in a press release it was "wasteful" and "ineffective."

During the campaign, Trump spoke to residents and expressed his support to all of the families affected by the landslides of Rancho Palos Verdes. Trump has a golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes. Personally, I think he wants the whole city washed away for the insurance money. But that's just a theory.

John Colich, a long-time Trump supporter, whose construction company built the road outside Trump National Golf Course in Rancho Palos Verdes, said in an interview, "Well, he hasn't done very good on that promise. I like some of those other issues that he's taken care of, but, of course, I wish he would support the neighborhood," Colich said.

Even though Colich feels the president hasn't held up his end of this promise, it hasn't changed his support for him.

The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program was originally created in 2018 during Trump's first term to help vulnerable communities with natural disasters like hurricanes and floods. An analysis of FEMA data revealed that 86 grants had been previously awarded in California, totaling $1.14 billion for projects such as retrofitting and fire prevention. Nearly 95% of them have since been canceled.

Dave Bradley, the current mayor, says his city isn't being singled out because BRIC grants have been canceled across the country, while the federal government has its hands full.

He says the canceled grants will have a ripple effect on the president's golf course.

"It's one of the primary routes that people use to get to the golf course, so if PV Drive South was impassable, I would expect it would have a negative effect," Bradley said. In less than two years, the city has dipped into its own reserves, spending nearly $50 million on repaving the stretch of road leading to Trump's golf course, sometimes twice a day.

"If I could speak to President Trump today, I would say, 'Sir, when you were out here and you saw the landslide a year ago, I hope you remember what you saw because we really are in need here,'" Bradley said.

Both the mayor and the former mayor are registered Republicans who are cautiously optimistic that Washington will step in to help. You can't make this stuff up.