Trump-Vance Project 2025 Agenda Ends NWS Free Weather Forecasting, Cuts Assistance for Hurricane Victims, and Imperils FEMA’s Ability To Provide Aid Arrow

Former Trump Official Turned Project 2025 Architect Ken Cuccinelli Even Called to Shrink FEMA, Threatening Its Ability To Provide Aid

As hurricane season ramps up and Project 2025 threatens to gut the NOAA, eliminate the NWS' federal weather forecasting, and slash FEMA aid for natural disaster response, DNC National Press Secretary Emilia Rowland released the following statement:

"Donald Trump and his Project 2025 cronies' plans are quite literally a matter of life and death - Trump's Project 2025 agenda contains plans to end federal weather forecasting at the National Weather Service, eliminate disaster loans for families and small businesses rebuilding after storms, cut assistance for hurricane victims, and slash FEMA aid for natural disaster response as we know it, leaving communities to deal with the catastrophic consequences of hurricanes on their own. This is nothing new for Trump - as president, he botched hurricane responses, spread outlandish misinformation about dangerous and extreme weather events, and personally blocked disaster-stricken areas from receiving lifesaving aid. Americans deserve a leader who understands the critical role that NOAA and the federal government play in supporting communities through their recovery from traumatic weather events, and Donald Trump has proven time and again that he's not up to the task."

Trump's Project 2025 agenda would gut the NOAA, including eliminating federal weather forecasting, while restricting FEMA's ability to deliver aid after disasters - even eliminating disaster loans for families and small businesses rebuilding after storms

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Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership, pg. 674-5: "This industry's mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized."

Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership, pg. 675: "Focus the NWS on Commercial Operations. Each day, Americans rely on weather forecasts and warnings provided by local radio stations and colleges that are produced not by the NWS, but by private companies such as AccuWeather."

Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership, pg. 664: "The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories."

Center for American Progress: "Relatedly, in its section on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Project 2025 proposes the agency increase the threshold for disaster declarations, thereby making it more difficult for states and localities-and, by extension, the families and businesses that call them home-to qualify for federal aid after disaster strikes.

"Even still, Project 2025-a far-right road map that would gut the country's nearly 250-year-old system of checks and balances-proposes, on page 750, an 'end to SBA direct lending,' the only instance of which is the disaster loan program. Project 2025 suggests privatization as one potential solution and claims, without evidence, that loan availability 'reduces individuals' incentives to purchase disaster-related insurance.'"

Former Trump official and Project 2025 architect Ken Cuccinelli has called to shrink FEMA, threatening its ability to help communities deal with the fallout of natural disasters and eliminate disaster preparedness grants.

Ken Cuccinelli, former Trump official and Project 2025 author: "On shrinking FEMA… people think of it as a first responder, it's not a first responder… If we focus them [FEMA] more narrowly when they are deployed, they will do a better job."

Verify: "Project 2025 also recommends replacing the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) with private insurance and eliminating preparedness grants for states, localities and special-interest groups. Cuccinelli wrote the plan would incentivize state and local governments to be more proactive in preparing for disasters. Cuccinelli wrote that FEMA employees in Washington, D.C., should not determine how 'billions of federal tax dollars' are allocated for local needs.'"

PolitiFact: "Project 2025 outlines changes to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, including reducing the federal government's share of local disaster relief contributions from 75% to 25%, privatizing flood insurance, terminating FEMA's grants and raising the per capita threshold for providing FEMA public assistance. Experts told PolitiFact the changes, if adopted, would reduce FEMA's support to state and local governments and hinder disaster response."

Project 2025's plans to gut NOAA and eliminate the National Weather Service's federal weather forecasting could lead to disastrous impacts, exposing communities to greater storm risks as they are denied critical life-saving forecasts.

Capital B News: "Project 2025's Aim to Gut NOAA May Make Storms Like Helene Even More Devastating"

"'What NOAA, and the National Weather Service, do is really lifesaving in terms of providing data and making it freely accessible to vulnerable communities,' said Rachel Cleetus, policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. 'Project 2025 is trying to remove these public health safeguards, and it is going to have a disproportionate effect on our communities that have a greater exposure to these kinds of environmental risks.'"

National Weather Service: "NOAA's National Weather Service forecasts, warnings, and the associated emergency responses result in a $3 billion savings in a typical hurricane season. Two-thirds of this savings, $2 billion, is attributed to the reduction in hurricane related deaths, and one-third of this savings, $1 billion, is attributed to a reduction in property-related damage because of preparedness actions."

HuffPost: "The National Hurricane Center is the lead federal agency for forecasting and tracking tropical weather, which Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said is 'critical to coordinating evacuations and emergency response.'"

NOAA: "NOAA has a long history of leading hurricane observing, research, and forecasting. Advancements in atmospheric and aircraft operations have led to considerable improvements in forecasting hurricane tracks, providing critical information on where and when a storm will make landfall…NOAA uses a suite of tools and observing platforms to monitor ocean features that play a role in hurricane intensification to improve models and forecasts."

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