Truth is, federal funding for public media is at risk of being eliminated.

Without federal funds, local public radio stations across the country will struggle to acquire and broadcast marketplace.

That is a big impact on our bottom line as well. So we're turning to you at this critical time.

Individual donations are so important right now. Give to your local station. And if you can, please

donate directly to Marketplace as well. Go to Marketplace.org slash donate. And thank you.

Does it count if you don't count it? The Trump administration moves to stop tallying the costs when

tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, fires, and earthquakes strike.

I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. The federal government will no longer track the cost of the most expensive disasters in the country.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will stop adding dollar damage tallies to its database of events that cause over a billion dollars in damage marketplaces.

Henry App is here with more.

The administration says it's retiring the database to align with, quote, evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes.

What will be lost is a tool that gives the public an idea of the costs of events like storms,

floods, and droughts over time. And there's a clear trend here. Billion-dollar disasters are

happening more frequently. The NOAA counted 27 of these events last year. That's second only to the

year before. The administration notes that wealth gains and population growth in more vulnerable parts of the country are part of that equation, but the number of expensive disasters is also clearly increasing as the climate warms. But now we'll no longer have that tally to reference.

Now, when I cover these terrible stories, I often turn to private sector data. For instance, calculations of insured versus non-insured losses. What did this government data do for us?

Several climate experts quoted in media reports about this move say that this particular database is valuable because of how comprehensive it is.

It relies on data from federal and state agencies, as well as private data from insurance

companies, and it's been kept up for years. It has inflation-adjusted metrics that go back to 1980.

And as global warming continues to impact our economy, climate experts argue that having one less

tool like this weakens our understanding of that impact. And this is also part of a

larger trend in the Trump administration. It's weakened the government's role in climate research.

...