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What Next | If Trump Guts FEMA, Are Tornado Victims On Their Own?

Slate News

Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.66K Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

One of the more surprising targets of Project 2025—and now, therefore, the Trump administration—is FEMA. How will proposed changes affect what FEMA can do, as hurricane season begins, and as a changing climate makes weather more unpredictable? Guest: Thomas Frank, editor for E&E News’ climate finance team. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Ethan Oberman, Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Isabel Angell, and Rob Gunther. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

The spring storm season has been deadly and dangerous.

0:09.0

Over the last week, the central United States has been walloped.

0:15.0

108 million people are in the bullseye for tornadoes damaging winds and giant hail.

0:21.4

CBS is Nicole Valdez.

0:24.0

It started out with thunderstorms.

0:26.8

Then tornadoes.

0:28.9

Good morning, Katie.

0:29.7

I can see a lot of damage right there behind you.

0:32.8

More than two dozen people are dead in Kentucky and Missouri, following tornadoes on Friday that uprooted trees, leveled buildings, and flipped cars.

0:41.3

In some sections, the tornado hacked a path that was half a mile wide.

0:46.4

On the eastern side of the forest.

0:47.8

Pictures tried to convey the scale of what happened.

0:52.0

But honestly, when storms travel hundreds of miles from St. Louis, Missouri

0:57.0

to London, Kentucky, it's hard to fit all that destruction in a single frame.

1:04.0

So this is where you hid. This is where we is at, right here. His home of 47 years now scattered across his lawn.

1:16.6

What happens now seems obvious, right? The aid rolls in. It is, or starting to.

1:24.3

But the question is how much the feds are going to kick in. In fact, at this very moment,

1:30.5

there are people on the ground trying to assess whether these storms were destructive enough.

1:36.7

There has to be a survey, on the ground survey, where FEMA officials and state officials and

1:43.0

local officials look at the damage, and they

1:45.7

try to put a number on it. In other words, what's the cost to repair this and to see, does the

1:52.2

number meet a threshold that FEMA sets? Does it have to be a certain kind of expensive to get the

...

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