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FACT SHEET: Trump Cut Funding For Lifesaving Climate Disaster Forecasting And Response

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Last Updated: 6/10/26

The Trump administration has hollowed out the nation’s disaster response. His administration has slashed FEMA funding and staff, halted grants, bottlenecked aid approvals, and has even proposed completely overhauling FEMA and shifting costs onto survivors and states. Those cuts, along with leadership failures at FEMA and NOAA, have degraded forecasting, extreme weather response, and the ability to rebuild and prepare.

TRUMP GUTTED THE FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY

• In May 2026, Trump’s FEMA Review Council recommended raising the threshold for disasters to qualify for federal assistance and shifting more financial and administrative burden for recovery and preparedness onto states – which may not have the needed resources to support individuals impacted by extreme weather disasters.
  • Under the changes proposed by the FEMA Review Council, 29% of disasters declared between 2012 and 2025 would not have met the new threshold to receive federal aid, and would have resulted in roughly $113 million less in annual funding. 
  • 94% of Americans live in a county that has received disaster aid from FEMA since 2011.
• Just a few days after 40 people died in storms across the Midwest, Trump signed an executive order shifting the responsibility for disaster preparations to state and local governments.
  • State and local officials have stated that they would be unable to make up the funds from federal disaster aid in the event of radical budget cuts. Trump’s policies will cost local governments and disaster victims more in the long run.
• The Trump administration directly caused delays in emergency management funding to state and local agencies.
• Trump warned states to expect “less money” from FEMA for disaster recovery.
  • In the first year of his second term, Trump denied and delayed disaster aid for 18 states: Oregon, Maryland, Kansas, Missouri, West Virginia, Michigan, Kentucky, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Washington, Georgia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Illinois, Colorado, Vermont, Alaska, and Wisconsin.
  • As of early February 2026, pending disaster applications for FEMA were sitting longer on average than at any other period during the previous 37 years.
• Trump’s FY27 budget proposal included cutting $1.3 billion in FEMA funds for state and local emergency preparedness.
  • Trump’s FY26 budget proposal would have cut $646 million from FEMA programs.
• Trump’s federal funding cuts paused nearly $10 billion in FEMA disaster aid for nonprofits working to rebuild and rehouse after climate disasters. 
• States were waiting on more than $1.3 billion in FEMA mitigation grants that had not been approved for declared disasters since March 2025. 
• In February 2026, FEMA ordered a stop to all awards under $100,000 “until further notice.”
• By June 2025, FEMA had lost more than 2,400 employees under Trump.
  • In 2025, DHS drafted plans to cut FEMA’s workforce by more than 50%, which would have resulted in the loss of more than 11,500 jobs. 
  • DOGE made cuts to AmeriCorps, which impacted states that relied on the program for disaster response, including red states.
• In early 2026, the DHS terminated hundreds of staffers from FEMA’s Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery (CORE) Teams, and planned to terminate 1,000 total.
  • CORE staffers are disaster-specific workers who partner directly with state and local officials to support ongoing disaster response and recovery. 
  • In May 2026, FEMA began bringing back some of the same CORE staffers it had let go. In total, 200 had lost their jobs.
• Trump canceled FEMA’s $1 billion Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program and called for an immediate return of awarded funds, threatening hundreds of resiliency projects in communities nationwide.
  • In December 2025, a federal judge found FEMA’s actions were unlawful and ordered the reinstatement of BRIC. In March 2026, FEMA was forced to reopen program applications following an order requiring funding to be made available.
    • However, even after the court ordered the program be reinstated, states were still waiting for funds to arrive, and FEMA did not provide a timeline on their distribution.
    • Once BRIC was reinstated, FEMA shortened the application timeline, required that funding only go to “shovel-ready” projects, and no longer funded hazard mitigation planning and non-financial direct technical assistance.
• Trump stopped approving new allocations from FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation and Grant Program, becoming the first president in at least three decades to deny governors’ requests for funding that’s meant to protect people and property.
• FEMA closed its Individual and Community Preparedness Division (ICPD), which helped millions of Americans become more prepared for extreme weather events.
• During a deadly tornado outbreak in March 2026, the Trump administration left search and rescue teams without a real-time tornado tracking tool after failing to renew a $200,000 contract, forcing them to operate with a less accurate picture of where lives were most at risk.
• In March 2026, FEMA canceled all of its emergency manager trainings, except those related to the FIFA World Cup.
• In March 2025, FEMA said it was reviewing all disaster relief programs that could directly or indirectly help undocumented immigrants.
• According to an internal agency review in May 2025, FEMA was “not ready” ahead of hurricane season and was months behind schedule in its preparations. The agency also reduced emergency training for state and local emergency managers just before the start of hurricane season.
• After St. Louis experienced the most destructive tornado to hit an American city in over a decade, the Trump administration’s cuts to FEMA’s disaster workforce meant the city received fewer inspectors, slower casework, and stalled demolition projects.
• FEMA missed 58% of helpline calls during 2025 Texas Hill Country flooding, and those who did connect had to wait an average of 25 minutes.
• In July 2025, the head of FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue branch, Ken Pagurek, resigned after bureaucratic hurdles put in place by the Department of Homeland Security delayed the agency’s response to flooding in central Texas. 
• The Trump administration canceled FEMA’s door-to-door program nationwide, a program that was meant to help disaster victims apply for federal aid.
  • Door-to-door canvassing connected some of the most vulnerable to assistance, including rural residents, disabled people, older adults, and those without internet access or reliable transportation.
  • In 2025, locals had to canvass neighborhoods when FEMA refused to after St. Louis experienced the most destructive tornado to hit an American city in over a decade
• Under Trump, FEMA canceled most of its National Fire Academy (NFA) firefighter training courses, including those that train wildfire fighters. The NFA trains 100,000 people per year, mostly in smaller and volunteer departments.
• FEMA cut payments that local fire departments responding to wildfires outside their jurisdictions were eligible for, which firefighters said would prompt some departments to stop answering calls for help. 

TRUMP HAS POLITICIZED DISASTER AID AT A HISTORIC LEVEL DURING HIS SECOND TERM

• As of March 2026, it was three times harder for Democratic-led states to be approved for federal disaster aid. Trump approved just 23% of disaster aid requests from Democratic-led states, compared to 89% for Republican-led states. The denials have blocked blue states from receiving a total of $250 million in disaster aid that would’ve been approved by every previous administration (including Trump’s first term).
  • In FEMA’s 47-year history, this is by far the highest rate of rejection for blue states.  Every president since Ronald Reagan has approved at least 67% of requests from Democratic-led states.
  • Trump has taken an average of 80 days to approve or deny requests from blue states, compared to 39 days for red states.
  • Eight out of 10 of Trump’s denials in blue states came despite FEMA having documented significant damage after FEMA inspections. Other presidents rarely denied aid for events that caused as much damage as those eight denials.
• While states Trump won in 2024 saw disaster declaration approval rates on par with past administrations, states that went for Harris had requests rejected at more than twice the usual rate.
• FEMA slowed the distribution of grants intended to help states prepare for and prevent wildfires, targeting fire-prone blue states including California and Colorado.
  • California was waiting on $1.68 billion in Hazard Mitigation Grant funding, after receiving just $830,000 between July 2025 and April 2026.

POOR LEADERSHIP AT DHS AND FEMA WAS HAMPERING DISASTER RESPONSE

• Former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem required her personal approval on all FEMA expenses exceeding $100,000, causing delays in delivering aid around the country, from St. Louis, to Texas, and even North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.
  • In April 2026, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin reversed Noem’s approval policy, which had held up 1,034 contracts, grants, or disaster assistance awards.
• Noem’s requirement that she personally approve all expenditures over $100,000 created a $17 billion bottleneck at FEMA that deprived states of critical funding for disaster mitigation and response.
  • The bottleneck caused aid delays in communities across the country – from Missouri, Texas, New Mexico, Alabama, Arkansas, and even North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene recovery continues.
  • As of January 2026, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas were the states with the most pending mitigation grants, which included $500 million for flood mitigation, $100 million for emergency power generators, and $75 million for community “safe rooms” that offered protection from tornadoes and hurricane-force winds.
• Noem’s $100,000 review policy delayed disaster aid approval by an average of three weeks, leaving hundreds of FEMA projects in limbo.
• One of Trump’s former acting FEMA administrators, David Richardson, said he did not know the U.S. had a hurricane season. 
• A senior FEMA official who worked with Richardson on hurricane planning said Richardson was “not qualified” to do the job. 
• Richardson was unreachable for about 24 hours in the early aftermath of deadly flooding in the Texas Hill Country, one of the deadliest flash flood events in decades.
  • Two former FEMA officials said Richardson was “not a big fan of cellphones” and that he frequently put his phone in a box when he got home. 
• Trump hired election denier and QAnon conspiracist Gregg Phillips to lead FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, an office responsible for overseeing and managing billions in recovery funding and making recommendations on disaster declarations, despite Phillips having no official experience managing emergencies. 

TRUMP GUTTED THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE

• The National Weather Service lost nearly 600 employees due to cuts from the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s DOGE.
  • Firings and early retirements left the NWS with open jobs in regions that face high risk from weather and climate disasters.
  • NWS headed into the 2025 hurricane season with 30 of its 122 (24.5%) weather forecast offices lacking a meteorologist-in-charge.
  • Due to the mass exodus of staff, NWS attempted to fill 76 meteorology vacancies by the end of May 2025, including in hurricane hot zones along the Gulf and South Atlantic coasts and in southernmost Florida.
  • In September 2025, current and former NWS staffers warned that the Trump administration’s cuts were pushing the agency to its breaking point.  Some forecasters at NWS were working double shifts to keep forecasting offices open, while others operated under a “buddy system” to help monitor severe weather in understaffed regions. 
  • In September 2025, NWS staff reported that hundreds of positions at the agency remained open as the Atlantic hurricane season peaked and wildfires ramped up in the West. 
  • A NWS staffer in an Eastern U.S. office said that, as of September 2025, his office had lost nearly half a dozen meteorologists and had been understaffed for months.
  • At the start of the 2025-2026 winter weather season, the NWS remained constrained by staff shortages caused by the Trump administration. NWS offices in more than half a dozen states had vacancies for meteorologists, technical experts, and scientists. Some NWS offices had nearly half of the meteorologist roles vacant while the agency struggled to hire staff. 
• Because of the Trump administration’s massive layoffs, NWS eliminated or reduced vital weather balloon launches, which degraded forecasts during storms.
  • Data from weather balloons helped meteorologists determine when to issue timely weather warnings that help save lives. Any weather forecast made available via broadcast news, a commercial app or other media is derived from data and model computations made by these weather balloons.
• In March 2026, NWS failed to issue a tornado watch for a Southern Michigan city ahead of tornadoes that caused at least four deaths.
• In April 2026, NWS failed to forecast five tornadoes that hit the Kansas City area, and issued a tornado watch only a half hour before the first tornado hit.
• Four NWS offices in California, Kentucky, and Kansas no longer operated 24 hours per day, curtailing extreme weather warnings, while another four offices across the country planned to close overnight.
• NWS staffing and funding cuts could impact air travel, which depends on weather observations and forecasts, ships that rely on forecasts to avoid dangerous conditions, and farmers who rely on seasonal forecasts to plant and harvest.
• The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Trump administration’sFEMA cuts could “exacerbate existing challenges and impact the federal government’s readiness to respond to future disasters.”
• Due to Trump’s staffing and funding cuts, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the NWS did not adequately provide multilingual weather alerts, a significant issue since an estimated 26 million U.S. residents had limited English proficiency. 
• In 2026, NWS Director Ken Graham said that the agency was “on a path to go broke” and warned of a “bumpy” road ahead. 
• OBBBA included provisions that cut weather forecasting and research funding for programs that would have improved forecasting, monitoring, and public communication of hazardous weather.

TRUMP GUTTED THE NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION

• Trump’s FY27 budget proposal included cutting the NOAA budget by $1.6 billion, eliminating climate adaptation partnerships and resilience grants.
  • The House Appropriations Committee passed a bill to fund NOAA with fewer cuts, but was still $300 million short of FY26 funding.
  • Trump’s proposed FY26 budget would have cut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s budget by nearly 30% (more than $1.5 billion), virtually eliminating the agency’s research functions for weather, limiting ocean data observations, and gutting funding for new satellites.
• The Trump administration was holding up NOAA grant funding, jeopardizing the operations of atmospheric research informing weather forecasts.
  • The Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences reported that it had to furlough 42 lab employees while NOAA grant actions were on hold.
• In June 2026, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to strip the National Center for Atmospheric Research of its supercomputing center.  
• Trump fired and planned to cut about 2,300 workers at NOAA, including hurricane hunters and researchers at the National Severe Storm Laboratory, in addition to terminating some of the agency’s building leases.
• NOAA scientists said Trump’s cuts to the agency undermine critical hurricane forecasts.
• NOAA announced it would no longer track the number of climate disasters that cost over $1 billion, leaving insurance companies, researchers, and policymakers without key information to help understand major disaster weather patterns.
• Trump fired nearly the entire content production staff at climate.gov, causing the website to cease publication of new content.
  • Climate.gov served as the gateway website for NOAA’s Climate Program Office and provided public education on climate science. 
• In June 2025, the Department of Defense stopped distributing data products from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, a move meteorologists said endangered the quality of hurricane forecasts.
  • NOAA provided operational support to the program and distributed the program’s data to the public.
• In November 2025, Trump’s NOAA ended a contract with the Alaska Earthquake Center that maintained seismic stations used for tsunami warnings, which will lead to less timely and less accurate tsunami warnings across the West Coast. 

TRUMP GUTTED THE U.S. FOREST SERVICE

• In April 2026, the Trump administration announced its plans to “reorganize” the USFS, which was responsible for public land access, sustainable management, conservation, and wildfire management.
  • The restructure involved moving its headquarters to Salt Lake City, Utah, replacing nine regional offices with much smaller state offices.
• Under the Trump administration’s reorganization, the USFS was shuttering 57 of its 77 research facilities across 31 states, threatening scientific research on wildfires, drought, pests, and the effects of climate change on forests.
  • Closing research facilities will drive scientists away from the sites they manage, resulting in data loss.
  • USFS research consolidation will undermine the timely implementation of new fire suppression technologies and strain relationships between fire protection personnel and researchers.
• Trump’s FY27 budget proposal would eliminate the entire $309 million USFS research and development budget and cut all 1,215 of the agency’s scientific positions.
• Between 2024 and 2025, Trump’s chaos and cuts at USFS led to reductions of 44% in prescribed burning and 40% in fuel-reduction work – two leading strategies for wildfire prevention.
• In 2025, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) lost approximately 5,000 employees, or 15% of its workforce, due to reductions implemented by the Trump administration, resulting in personnel being diverted from frontline firefighting to focus on administrative duties. 
• In February 2025, the Trump administration laid off about 700 employees who supported wildland fire operations, and while many were rehired, the administration then pushed Forest Service employees to accept deferred resignations and early retirements. 
• As of July 2025, more than 4,500 Forest Service firefighting jobs, as many as 27%, remained vacant.  
• A survey by Forest Service fire managers in California found 26% of engine captain and 42% of engineer positions were vacant as of July 2025. 
• In July 2025, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said that the 2025 Fire Year was proving to be “extremely challenging” as resources outpaced availability.  
• A crew leader on an Oregon fire reported that her team went hungry for several days, ran short of medical supplies, and had to scrounge for chainsaw fuel after support staff quit the agency during two rounds of “fork in the road” buyouts that the Trump administration offered.
• USFS employees said the loss of thousands of foresters, biologists, trail builders, and campground managers under Trump was having knock-on effects on firefighters. 
• Retired USFS Fire Chief Riva Duncan said firefighters were being used to answer phones, clean toilets, and mow lawns because of gaps left by job losses under Trump. 
• USFS support staff in the Pacific Northwest were told they had to meet the Trump administration’s increased timber sales and oil and gas production targets before helping firefighters. 

THE SPRING 2026 DHS SHUTDOWN UNDERMINED FEMA OPERATIONS AND ADDED TO ITS BACKLOG

• In February 2026, Noem said FEMA would halt disaster aid to states for long-term rebuilding projects due to the partial government shutdown, creating uncertainty for states.
• Trump and congressional Republicans blocked FEMA funding for 76 days, the longest funding lapse in history, and allowed FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund to hit critical lows.
  • During the 76-day DHS shutdown that ended in April 2026, FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund was drained to emergency levels, triggering Immediate Needs Funding protocol that sharply narrowed spending.
  • Immediate Needs Funding delayed FEMA reimbursements and longer-term recovery projects.
  • FEMA scaled back its work with state and local partners during the DHS shutdown.
  • FEMA curtailed trainings for tens of thousands of emergency managers and first responders and missed national emergency management coordination events.
• Even after Congress ended the shutdown and replenished the Disaster Relief Fund, the shutdown caused an operational backlog that was estimated to take FEMA months to clear.

THE FALL 2025 GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN IMPACTED AGENCIES PIVOTAL TO DISASTER PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE

• Speaker Mike Johnson said FEMA would not be funded during the shutdown. 
• FEMA said there was no guarantee that new or additional disaster declarations or funding would be available during the shutdown.
• FEMA was unable to underwrite new NFIP policies during the government shutdown.
• Current and former FEMA staff warned that the disaster relief fund was running critically low amid the shutdown.
• State emergency officials said cuts to federal grants and funding delays were posing a growing risk to their ability to respond to crises, especially amid the government shutdown.
• NOAA hurricane hunters flew into Hurricane Melissa without pay amid the shutdown. 
• NOAA websites and social media accounts were not updated during the shutdown.
• NWS meteorologists were working without pay during the government shutdown. 
• The government shutdown meant the NWS had to suspend longer-term research and upgrades to forecasting tools. 
• The NWS canceled a winter weather preparedness class it was set to host in McCracken County, Kentucky, because of the government shutdown.  

THE FALL 2025 GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN FURTHER THREATENED DISASTER PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE

• Experts believed the government shutdown would disrupt storm preparedness efforts for hurricanes and other disasters. 
• The shutdown was likely to slow down hiring at NOAA, as large staff cuts and layoffs by the Trump administration were already wreaking havoc on agency personnel. 
• FEMA administrative and support teams at headquarters and regional offices were likely to be sidelined or forced to work without pay during the shutdown. 
• The Republicans’ government shutdown pushed NWS, the already understaffed and underfunded agency,  to the breaking point.  

• Trump used federal workers as political pawns in shutdown negotiations, threatening mass firings that could make it harder to monitor extreme weather, putting coastal communities at risk. 

• Millions of Americans were at risk of losing their flood insurance coverage under the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) due to the government shutdown.