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TRUMP TO DISASTER VICTIMS: DROP DEAD  
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Paul Krugman
December 3, 2025
Paul Krugman Substack
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_ Sorry, but we don’t help the little people _

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The Mississippi flood of 1927
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was one of America’s greatest natural disasters. Some 27,000 square
miles were inundated, in some cases by 30 feet of water. Hundreds,
maybe thousands, died — many of the victims were poor and Black, and
their deaths went unrecorded. Around 700,000 people were displaced —
equivalent to about 2 million people today, adjusting for population
growth.

How did America respond? Initially, President Calvin Coolidge was
adamantly opposed
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to any federal role in disaster relief, declaring that “The
Government is not an insurer of its citizens against the hazard of the
elements.” His refusal to provide aid was, however, deeply
unpopular, and he eventually gave in to demands from Congress to
deliver government aid.

Ever since that catastrophic flood, providing government aid to the
victims of natural disasters has been an integral part of the American
Way: federal aid to disaster victims became the norm after the
Mississippi flood. Yet it was often a haphazard, uncoordinated process
until 1979, when the federal response to natural disasters was
consolidated under the Federal Emergency Management Agency
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Since then FEMA has become a well-established part of the American
social safety net, especially in the face of worsening climate
catastrophes. Americans have come to rely on FEMA as a first line of
support after disasters. And when FEMA was seen to be falling down on
the job, as it did after Hurricane Katrina virtually destroyed New
Orleans in 2005, Americans were angry. The fact is, they want FEMA to
be better, not smaller. In a July poll
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only 9 percent of Americans wanted to see FEMA eliminated, and only
another 10 percent wanted to see its budget cut.

Donald Trump, however, believes that he knows better than the majority
of Americans. In June he announced his intention to dismantle FEMA
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and force the states to assume responsibility for disaster relief.
While Trump publicly backed down after an intense public backlash, in
practice he is gutting FEMA nonetheless. He is drastically scaling
back federal emergency aid, even for communities in which the need for
federal assistance is overwhelming.

The latest example of Trump’s stiffing those in need is in rural
northern Michigan
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where the power grid suffered severe damage from an ice storm last
March. Rebuilding the power lines will cost thousands of dollars for
each household served by the region’s power cooperatives. Without
outside help, that cost will have to be paid by the cooperatives’
customers, a huge burden on a relatively poor part of the state. Yet
FEMA has turned down the state’s request for aid, in an
unprecedented break with past policies.

Adding further injury to Michiganders, who – by the way – voted to
deliver the presidency to Donald Trump in 2024, the Trump
administration has ordered another Michigan utility to keep an aging,
unneeded, highly polluting coal-fired power plant operating, at a cost
to ratepayers of $113 million so far
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and ongoing at $615,000 per day.

Trump tried, unsuccessfully, to withhold wildfire aid from California
unless it adopted voter ID
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He has also tried to divert aid away from states that, in his view,
aren’t cooperating with his immigration policies, although the
courts stopped him
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But the storm-hit areas that he is currently refusing to help are, or
plausibly “were”, Trump country. The map on the left shows the
areas covered by different Michigan electricity utilities; #3 and #7
are the utilities seeking FEMA aid. The map on the right shows the
2024 presidential vote by county, with deeper red corresponding to a
higher Trump share:

 

[A map of michigan with different colored squares</p> <p>AI-generated
content may be incorrect.]
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Since this is not another case of Trump’s political retribution,
what lies behind the denial of aid? I believe that it is a knee-jerk
dominance display on Trump’s part. Whenever someone comes to him in
need, whether its Volodomyr Zelensky, helpless African children
dependent on USAID, or rural Michiganers, his cruelty is activated.
And he likes surrounding himself with those of the same ilk: Stephen
Miller, Pete Hegseth, and Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland
security, who impeded and slow-walked
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the emergency response to deadly Texas flooding back in July.

But that’s not all: there’s also an ideological component. The
pre-Trump typical conservative argument against government aid
restricted itself to programs like food stamps. The usual suspects
fulminate against those who need help putting food on the table,
asserting that it’s because they have chosen to be poor
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In the conservative ideology of Ronald Reagan, helping the poor
relieves them of individual responsibility and only makes them lazy.

But those old-time conservatives also recognized a difference between
being the victim of a natural disaster and being impoverished. In
their view, nobody chooses to have an ice storm or a hurricane. And
helping to re-build entire communities didn’t, in their view,
encourage sloth.

But that was conservatism then and this is Trumpism now. The fact is
that disaster relief runs counter to the libertarian ideology
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embraced by tech bros like Peter Thiel. In the world of the
libertarian tech broligarchy, who believe that they should be running
things rather than be constrained by democracy, selfishness is a
virtue. Hence they don’t believe that their tax dollars should be
used to help others, even when those others are victims of
circumstances beyond their control. Oh, that is, unless you are a
wealthy Silicon Valley type with deposits at the failed Silicon Valley
Bank [[link removed]].
They apparently had no problem with a federal bailout of SVB.

In fact, the libertarian tech broligarchy is opposed to the very
impulse to care about other people. “The fundamental weakness of
Western civilization,” declared Elon Musk
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last March, “is empathy.”

And let’s not forget — because conservatives never do — that
there’s a deeper strategy at play: if you want people to despise and
hate government, you don’t want them to see the government doing
anything that clearly helps people.

So American victims of natural disasters are being abandoned by Trump.
That abandonment reflects his personal cruelty and that of those
around him, as well as the ideological allegiance to cruelty among the
libertarian tech broligarchy. And the resulting message is clear.
Trump to disaster victims, wherever they live and whoever they voted
for: Drop dead.

 

* natural disasters
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* FEMA
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* Trump
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* social cruelty
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