Your tax dollars at rest

FEMA hasn't bothered to check on St. Louis since Friday's killer tornado. Maybe Wednesday.

This is what you might call an unnatural disaster.

It has been four days and counting since a killer EF-3 tornado devastated St. Louis – killing five people, injuring dozens more, destroying more than 5,000 buildings and wreaking more than $1 billion in damages. It’s one of the most severe tornadoes to hit the U.S. in recent years.

But the one radar the storm has not landed upon is that of the Trump Administration. The decimated Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) hasn’t mustered a yawn in response to the tragedy. Not a peep.

FEMA has had its famous ups and downs over the years, but in 2011, when another killer Midwestern tornado – admittedly an even deadlier one – annihilated Joplin, FEMA was on the ground in less than 24 hours coordinating an awesome relief effort. Of course, there was a grownup in the White House back then.

Let’s be clear: What’s happened to FEMA in the past four months is not the stuff of normal partisan discord. It’s part of a full-scale assault on the very notion that the federal government should care for the most vulnerable people it purportedly serves; rather than only those who invested wisely in ownership of ruling politicians.

In related news, world’s richest man Elon Musk giddily inflicted a chainsaw massacre on unfavored parts of the federal government before slinking away. Don’t think for a second that this very partial list of his DOGE treachery isn’t directly related to the new normal felt today by the victims in St. Louis:

· Roughly 20% of FEMA’s staff is gone. Thanks to DOGE’s layoffs and buyouts, the agency lost over 1,000 experienced emergency workers in recent months.

· $646 million was cut from FEMA’s preparedness and state grant programs. That includes funding Missouri communities rely on to train first responders, modernize emergency systems and prepare for exactly this kind of disaster.

· Hazard mitigation funding was pulled back for the first time in nearly 30 years. Trump’s FEMA decided this spring to stop automatically providing post-disaster mitigation funds — which help communities rebuild stronger and safer. That policy is now the default, even as tornadoes and floods intensify, and St. Louis is about to understand what that means.

· FEMA Corps was eliminated. The youth-led AmeriCorps program that deployed to disaster zones is gone. That’s hundreds of would-be helpers who will never be dispatched to St. Louis or anywhere else.

This is just a sampling of the damage inflicted by Trump’s “Project 2025” ideological surrogates — all in the name of “returning primacy” to the states to handle disasters. Pretty ironic that one of the first states punished severely for the arrogance of these heartless bastards is also one of America’s Trumpiest: Missouri.

Gov. Mike Kehoe faces an uphill battle at best to meet the challenges facing St. Louis — not because he won’t try, but because it’s hard to imagine that he can muster the needed resources. That’s in part because of his Republican Party’s obsession with shrinking state government, but more broadly it’s a consequence of FEMA having checked out.

And, of course, the fact that President Donald Trump most assuredly doesn’t give a rat’s ass about any of this. Trump hasn’t paused for a second from his tweet-raging even to acknowledge the tragedy in St. Louis.

Both Kehoe and Mayor Cara Spencer have been left to plead publicly for the Trump administration to do something. Reportedly, FEMA officials are planning to mosey out Wednesday so the administration can start thinking about whether it might get around to having Trump make a major disaster declaration. What’s the hurry? Maybe wait for some nicer weather.

In contrast, back in 2011, President Barack Obama visited Joplin less than a week after it was hit, displaying the leadership, empathy and compassion Americans formerly expected from their Oval Office occupants. For his part, it’s hard to imagine Trump showing up unless his political handlers decided to throw together a ceremony to honor the local contingent of January 6 criminals.

That’s cool. St. Louis is too busy lifting itself back up to host a paper-towel toss.

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