ICYMI: Weekend Round Up

Trump Voting States Are Getting Their FEMA Funding Revoked

Florida

Nearly $300 million in federal aid meant to help protect Florida communities from flooding, hurricanes and other natural disasters has been frozen since President Donald Trump took office in January.

Now, the money has been fully revoked, leaving dozens of projects in limbo, from a plan to raise roads in St. Augustine to a $150 million effort to strengthen canals in South Florida.

FEMA Director Cameron Hamilton ended the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, program, calling it a “wasteful, politicized grant program.”

The cancellation of the program comes as the Trump administration says it may scrap FEMA altogether and give funds directly to the states to deal with disaster response as they see fit, which would be a nightmare for non-compliant states like New York and California.

Hamilton canceled all BRIC grants from 2020 to 2023, so any approved but not-yet-used money cannot be spent and must be returned to the federal government.

Florida will lose $293 million of the $312 million Congress okayed for hurricane relief and flood mitigation efforts.

North Carolina

FEMA has ended 100% coverage for North Carolina recovery efforts. Six months after the remnants of Hurricane Helene devastated a large swath of western North Carolina, federal officials have ceased providing full funding for storm recovery efforts there.

"Today, I learned that [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] refused our request to extend its 100% reimbursement period for another 180 days," North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein said Friday in a news release.

"I got this news while I was in Newland with families who lost their homes in the storm," Stein said. "The need in western North Carolina remains immense -- people need debris removed, homes rebuilt, and roads restored."

He said he is "extremely disappointed" and urged President Donald Trump to reconsider FEMA's decision.

Utah

When Utah Iron shut down its mining operations seemingly overnight, some were quick to point fingers at President Donald Trump, blaming his tariff policies for the closure. But one of the mine’s owners, George Adams, says that narrative is not only wrong — it obscures the real problem.

“They’re not ‘Trump’s tariffs.’ These aren’t tariffs imposed by the U.S. government,” Adams said. “They’re tariffs China puts on anything coming from the U.S., and when they doubled them overnight, we couldn’t absorb the hit.” One has to then ask - why did China make these large tariffs in the first place? Oh right, Trump.

“What Trump’s trying to do is get balance,” he said, like an idiot. “We can’t keep living with these huge trade imbalances. Hopefully this brings everybody to the table and we get equal and fair trade.”

“I’m going to support our president,” he said. “But that doesn’t change the heartbreak for the men and women who lost their jobs. That’s the part that really hurts.”

Ohio

Josh Yoder, a fifth-generation farmer in Ohio, has been watching Donald Trump escalate his trade war with China. Yoder, doubling down on his support for Trump is also getting nervous about whether the president’s strategy is going to pay off. (It won't.)

“The world is trying to figure out if Trump is playing chess or checkers,” said Yoder, a 39-year-old who voted for the president in the past three elections.

China is, by and large, the biggest global buyer of soybeans. Soybeans are the highest-value US agricultural export, with sales last year of nearly $25 billion. Roughly half of that revenue was thanks to China alone.

If that trade slows or stops, it's going to devastate the agricultural economy in America’s farmland. “It’s going to be a year in general where guys are tightening their belts,” Yoder said. It's cute that he thinks this will sort itself out in a year.

This week, China scooped up an unusually large amount of Brazilian soybeans, purchasing at least 40 cargoes from them in the first half of this week.

Louisiana

Louisiana Senator, Bill Cassidy of Baton Rouge, called from the Senate floor Thursday evening begging FEMA to reverse its decision to end a program that helped Louisiana raise levees, elevate homes, and otherwise brace for hurricanes and floods.

FEMA announced last week it was ending its BRIC grant program, calling it “wasteful and ineffective.” FEMA stated that the agency would cancel all BRIC applications received in 2024, and stop paying for projects approved from 2020 to 2023.

Congress established BRIC under Donald Trump’s first administration in 2018 and directed funds to reduce flood risks by investing in pre-disaster mitigation efforts. Congress under Democratic President Joe Biden, who took office in 2021, added billions of dollars more using some of the funds set aside to address human-caused global warming, which Trump has called a hoax.