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Quick Take
Social media posts misleadingly claim that “Trump’s Project 2025 will end” the Federal Emergency Management Agency and provide “ZERO federal help” to disaster victims. Project 2025 is not former President Donald Trump’s plan, and there is no evidence that he would “end” FEMA. In fact, his administration spent tens of billions on disaster aid when he was president.
Full Story
Hurricane Helene, which made landfall on Sept. 26 in northwest Florida, caused destruction across six southeastern states and has claimed at least 231 lives, making it one of the deadliest hurricanes to strike the U.S. mainland since Hurricane Katrina.
Federal assistance for Helene exceeded $344 million by Oct. 9, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency has deployed thousands of personnel, assessed damage and provided essential aid, including meals, water, generators and tarps, to the affected regions. The extent of the damage will require “a multibillion-dollar, multiyear recovery” effort, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said.
As Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida’s western coast on the evening of Oct. 9 with what the National Weather Service called a “life-threatening” storm surge, FEMA is in the eye of a misinformation storm. (The spread of false claims has become so pervasive that the agency has launched a dedicated “Rumor Response” page for Hurricane Helene, following similar pages launched during the COVID-19 pandemic and previous disasters.)
Recent social media posts have made misleading claims about the future of FEMA if former President Donald Trump returns to the White House.
“Trumps Project 2025 will end FEMA,” an Oct. 2 Threads post claimed.
“If Donald Trump were president today, he would tell North Carolina they’re on their own and getting ZERO federal help. How do we know this? It’s in Project 2025,” another Threads user wrote.
Project 2025, which is being led and funded by the conservative Heritage Foundation, is a detailed plan to reduce the size and scope of government under “the next conservative President.” We have written extensively about the project and have debunked false and misleading claims about it.
Although portions of it were developed by former Trump aides, Project 2025 isn’t a Trump campaign document and the former president has distanced himself from it.
“I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump said during the Sept. 10 debate. “This was a group of people that got together, they came up with some ideas. I guess some good, some bad. But it makes no difference. I have nothing to do [with it].”
There also is no evidence to support the claim that Trump would “end FEMA” or provide “zero federal help” if he gets back into office.
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told us in an email that the social media claims are “fake news.”
During his presidency, Trump authorized tens of billions in disaster assistance through FEMA. From fiscal years 2017 to 2020, a period spanning part of former President Barack Obama’s tenure and most of Trump’s time in office, FEMA spent nearly $94 billion from the Disaster Relief Fund, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In FY2018 alone, the agency allocated nearly $23 billion for recovery efforts following three major hurricanes in the 2017 hurricane season: Harvey, Irma and Maria.
FEMA said the number of applications for assistance during Harvey was “one of the highest in FEMA history.” Within just 30 days, more than $1.5 billion in federal aid was distributed to Texans affected by the storm, covering assistance grants, low-interest disaster loans and advance payments for flood insurance, according to FEMA.
Contrary to social media claims, Trump also has made comments during the current presidential campaign that indicate he will continue to support federal disaster assistance.
Trump has criticized the Biden administration for not doing enough during Hurricane Helene. Trump posted on Truth Social on Oct. 9, saying, “They can’t get anything done properly, but I will make up for lost time, and do it right, when I get there.”
Project 2025 isn’t calling for the elimination of FEMA, either, although experts say the changes it proposes would undermine the agency.
“Rather than ‘cutting’ FEMA, Project 2025 is advocating for a realignment of the agency’s mission and focus – away from DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] and climate change initiatives and restoring it to that of helping people before, during, and after disasters,” a Project 2025 spokesperson told us in an email.
The project’s policy agenda, which was published online in “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” proposes changes to FEMA in a chapter written by Ken Cuccinelli, who served as acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration. It recommends that FEMA “be moved to the Department of the Interior or, if combined with the [Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency], to the Department of Transportation.”
“FEMA is the lead federal agency in preparing for and responding to disasters, but it is overtasked, overcompensates for the lack of state and local preparedness and response, and is regularly in deep debt,” Project 2025 says.
The plan calls for “reforming FEMA emergency spending to shift the majority of preparedness and response costs to states and localities instead of the federal government, eliminating most of DHS’s grant programs.”
Experts: Project 2025 Would Weaken FEMA
Experts say claims on social media that Project 2025 will “end FEMA” are not accurate, but the plan’s proposed changes to FEMA’s structure could undermine its ability to effectively respond to disasters.
“This idea that Project 2025 and Trump would eliminate FEMA is just not true,” Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told us in a phone interview. “There clearly is a role for FEMA. It’s just a reduced role in a reduced capacity, which I think would not be good for equity, would not be good for the increasing hazards that we face.”
“I think what [Project 2025} would do was really bring it back to where it was at the time of Hurricane Katrina. … And we all know how that worked out,” Schlegelmilch said, referring to FEMA’s failures in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005.
FEMA was established in 1979 by then-President Jimmy Carter to coordinate the federal government’s response to disasters and emergencies. Initially, it was an independent agency focused on disaster response and recovery efforts. In 2003, FEMA was transferred to the newly created Department of Homeland Security as part of a broader effort to streamline and enhance national security and emergency management after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“So at that time, FEMA had been moved under the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Homeland Security became much more terrorism-oriented, much more infrastructure-oriented. And FEMA was sort of demoted, kind of within that structure,” Schlegelmilch said.
Dr. Samantha Montano, assistant professor of emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, was also critical of Project 2025’s proposals for FEMA.
“There is nothing in Project 2025 that aligns with the policy recommendations that come out of the empirical research that we have on what makes emergency management effective,” Montano told us in a phone interview.
“So currently, it’s within DHS, which is not effective, and moving it to another agency, whether it’s [the Department of] Interior or the Department of Transportation, would not solve the problem. It would just shuffle it into another agency,” Montano said. “It is the belief of many in emergency management that FEMA is most effective when it is an independent cabinet-level agency.”
Regarding Project 2025’s proposal on shifting most of FEMA’s preparedness and response costs to the states, Montano said, “I think this would be absolutely devastating, especially for small, poorer communities and states. The vast majority of states do not have the resources to fund their own responses and recoveries.”
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Facebook has no control over our editorial content.
Sources
Congressional Budget Office. “FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund: Budgetary History and Projections.” November 2022.
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Trump, Donald. “Western North Carolina, and the whole state, for that matter, has been totally and incompetently mismanaged by Harris/Biden. They can’t get anything done properly, but I will make up for lost time, and do it right, when I get there.” Truth Social. 9 Oct 2024.
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