Hurricane season starts today. According to Politico, FEMA is not ready; its budget and staff have been cut aimlessly, its leadership is a shambles, and its mission is unclear. Trump wants to reduce its footprint and throw more responsibility to the states, but he hasn’t decided exactly what comes next. It is a recipe for disaster.
Trump presumably is gambling on El Nino to reduce hurricane impacts this year, but as the meteorologists love to tell us, it only takes one. If his guess is wrong, we will be flooded with TV images of deaths and desperate refugees shortly before the midterms. That won’t exactly endear him to the voters in Florida, Texas, and North Carolina.