The question of whether damage from the tornado that tore through 51ºÚÁÏ on May 16 merits a federal disaster declaration shouldn’t really be a question to anyone who has seen the devastation on the city’s north side — five people dead, thousands of buildings damaged or destroyed, countless residents left homeless or housed in undermined and unsafe structures with nowhere else to go. This is exactly what federal disaster designations were designed for.
Yet fully three weeks after the tornado struck, and almost two weeks after Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe formally requested a disaster declaration from the Trump administration, no such declaration has been forthcoming. Meaning the spigot of crucial, even lifesaving federal emergency funding remains closed for the moment.
This federal foot-dragging in response to a natural disaster isn’t unusual by the standards of the new Trump administration. But it is absolutely not normal by any previous modern standards. It is, in fact, the new normal offered by this president: a stingy approach to federal aid that is consistent with his instinct toward shrinking the federal government’s responsibilities to its citizens.
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It is, simply put, your tax dollars not at work. No one should be surprised: This is what happens when an administration sets out to delegitimize government’s legitimate functions, as President Donald Trump has with his DOGE hatchet job and the rest.
As the Missouri Independent reported in a recent analysis, the administration’s slow-walking treatment of what is a continuing, life-threatening emergency in 51ºÚÁÏ stands in sharp contrast with earlier administrations’ approaches to disasters.
The Obama administration, for example, took exactly one day to issue a disaster declaration after the deadly 2011 tornado that struck Joplin. That kicked the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) into action, opening up more than $37 million in individual emergency aid and more than $160 million in recovery and rebuilding funds. This is the federal government doing what no other entity reasonably can in the wake of tragedy.
Compare that to the federal response (or lack thereof) to the recent 51ºÚÁÏ tornado. Even as the tornado struck on May 16, Missouri was waiting on requested federal disaster declarations from not one but two earlier emergencies stemming from storms and flooding in March and April.
Both those declarations finally were made on May 21 — almost 50 days after the initial request. As the Missouri Independent notes, it was the slowest federal response to a Missouri emergency in 15 years.
Every day the administration twiddles its thumbs in response to last month’s tornado, 51ºÚÁÏ victims are missing out on badly needed emergency funding, including potentially individual funds for immediate needs such as food and shelter, home repair costs, federal food aid and unemployment aid.
Those who have cheered on the administration’s attempts to pare down the government (while pushing a budget-busting tax-cut package for the rich) might accept this lack of action as a necessary component of that project. We suspect most 51ºÚÁÏans, however, want their federal government to step up in this crisis.
