The Consequences of One of Project 2025’s Most Surprising Attacks Are Becoming Clear – Slate

By Mary Harris, May 24, 202511:30 AM

Over the past week, the central United States has been walloped. It started out with thunderstorms. Then, tornadoes. Pictures tried to convey the scale of what happened, but honestly? When storms travel hundreds of miles—from St. Louis, Missouri, to London, Kentucky, it’s hard to fit all that destruction into a single frame.

What happens now seems obvious, right? The aid rolls in. It is, or is starting to. But the question is how much the feds will kick in.

According to Tom Frank, who reports on disaster relief for E&E News, this has changed in the past few months. If it were business as usual with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, states could count reliably on the federal government to pay 75 percent at least of the cost of cleaning up debris, repairing public facilities, and so forth. But now, the federal government has started flouting its own guidelines for sending aid and is becoming less reliable during these times of crisis.

On a recent episode of What Next, host Mary Harris spoke to Tom Frank about how the Trump administration’s disaster management system has become a disaster itself. This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Mary Harris: Last year, when Hurricane Helene hit the Southeast, you did some reporting that warned about how a second Trump administration could handle disaster response differently. Why did you want to write that article? 

Tom Frank: It’s an issue that was getting no attention. There was no focus in any of the presidential debates, press conferences, or rallies on climate change, about disasters. And if you read Project 2025, there were some major plans to change how the federal government responded to disasters.

Source Links: FEMA help might not be coming this year for tornadoes, hurricanes.