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austerity
Trump Doesn't Have to Eliminate FEMA to Screw Disaster Victims
Just look at all of the ways the Trump administration has been slowly killing the federal relief agency in practice.
Dec 12, 2025
President Donald Trump’s Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council was scheduled to vote Thursday on a report containing several recommended changes to FEMA. This was supposed to happen during a meeting from 1:00 to 3:00 pm ET. However, I and many others who registered to attend virtually never received links for a meeting that was eventually canceled with no notice or explanation.
CNN reported Wednesday that the review council was planning “to recommend dramatic downsizing and overhaul—but not elimination—of the agency.” Too much is being made of the council’s decision to back away from the earlier demands of Trump and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem for the outright abolition of FEMA. Abolition would require an act of Congress, an institution that (contra Trump and, often, John Roberts) actually does still exist. And besides, the Trump administration doesn’t need to formally eradicate FEMA to destroy it; just look at all of the ways they’ve been slowly killing the agency in practice.
Here’s a fresh stunning example: Starting on December 15, FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery is set to be led by Gregg Phillips, an election-denying conspiracy theorist with no relevant experience. That’s how you effectively demolish an agency without congressional approval. The QAnon-supporting Phillips is one of many examples of profoundly unqualified personnel now calling the shots at FEMA after experienced leaders, along with thousands of rank-and-file staff, were pushed out.
How else? Require every grant over $100,000 to be personally approved by Noem. That’s most grants, to be clear, as the Central Texas flooding disaster revealed in tragic fashion. Much of the Trump administration’s deadly assault on FEMA reflects ideas found in Project 2025, whose main architect is Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought. That right-wing policy road map calls for foisting ever more responsibility for emergency preparedness and response onto states and localities despite the fact that only the federal government has the personnel and financial wherewithal to manage major disasters.
That Trump and his allies, many of whom are openly authoritarian, don’t seem worried about a negative political fallout is ominous.
Making matters worse, Trump is telling governors to step up while Noem and Vought are restricting relevant funding. The Trump administration continues to deprive communities of funding for hazard mitigation and infrastructural resilience even though every $1 invested in risk reduction saves an estimated $6 to $13, not to mention countless lives. As usual, Vought’s obsession with “fiscal responsibility” is a rhetorical ploy to justify slashing programs he doesn’t like.
We won’t know for sure until the final report is voted on, but according to CNN, the FEMA Review Council is expected to promote more of the same old austerity. A draft viewed by the outlet reportedly calls for cutting FEMA’s workforce “in half” and making it harder for states to qualify for federal disaster assistance. A longer draft was produced collectively by the council, but Noem, in her capacity as council co-chair, reportedly took a hacksaw to it, altering it in regressive ways. The forthcoming Noem-authored report should be interpreted as a continuation of the Trump administration’s lethal dismantling of FEMA. So too should the move to put Phillips in charge of the agency’s lifesaving disaster response and recovery work.
Phillips’ appointment comes at a time when the Trump administration is already delaying and denying disaster aid. There’s an apparent pattern of political retribution that warrants congressional investigation. Trump seems to relish opportunities to publicly praise “loyal” states when (partially) approving disaster assistance while punishing perceived enemies (e.g., rejecting requests from Illinois despite record-breaking damage).
That said, Trump’s abuse of the disaster declaration process—one component of Vought’s broader war on the federal government’s pro-social capacities—is harming working people everywhere. Republican-led states (e.g., Arkansas), swing states (e.g. Michigan and North Carolina), and pro-Trump counties in Democratic-led states (e.g., western Maryland) are not immune from the White House’s attacks on FEMA.
It remains to be seen whether Democrats will make Trump and his fellow Republicans pay a political price for abdicating the federal government’s responsibility to care for disaster victims. Ultimately, ignoring people in their moment of greatest need is bad politics. That Trump and his allies, many of whom are openly authoritarian, don’t seem worried about a negative political fallout is ominous; it suggests they don’t think they’ll have to face a fair news environment (hence the fixation on Trump-friendly oligarchs running elite media companies) or a fair election ever again.
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Mamdani's Win Is Proof That an Organized Public Can Defeat Organized Money
The most consistent project of elite politics is to cultivate resignation: Nothing can change, no one like you can win, best not to try. When that illusion breaks, even in a single city, it sends tremors outward.
Nov 06, 2025
Zohran Mamdani’s election in New York City is not simply a local upset. It is a breach in the ideological dam that has kept American politics safely contained for generations.
This victory is historic not because one office suddenly overturns entrenched power, but because it demonstrates that such power can be overturned at all.
For decades, political life in the United States has functioned as a managed marketplace in which both parties advertise different brands, yet deliver the same fundamental product: deference to private wealth, hostility to social investment, and a belief that the public should expect very little from its government beyond punishment and surveillance.
On Tuesday, that spell cracked.
Zohran's win feels like the beginning of the first meaningful challenge to the neoliberal consensus in a generation.
Mamdani won not by courting the wealthy, not by flattering real-estate interests, not by running a campaign tailored to the comfort of cable-news pundits.
He won by naming the obvious: that the city belongs to its people, not to absentee landlords; that housing, transit, childcare, food, and dignity are fundamental rights, not privileges; that a budget is a statement of who matters in society—and it’s long past time a city as wealthy as New York put working people first instead of billionaires and real-estate developers.
The bipartisan establishment will attempt to minimize this moment. They will continue to fund hysterical hit pieces designed to make people afraid of those challenging their rule. But their real fear is that this victory might prove contagious.
If New Yorkers can elect someone who openly challenges concentrated power, asks the wealthy to pay their share, and speaks in plain moral terms about economic justice, then perhaps Los Angeles can. Perhaps Cleveland, Minneapolis, Atlanta, and Kansas City.
The danger, from the perspective of those who currently command the political economy, is that people elsewhere may decide to stop begging for crumbs and begin organizing for a real seat at the table.
Power relies on a population convinced of its own helplessness. The most consistent project of elite politics is to cultivate resignation: Nothing can change, no one like you can win, best not to try. When that illusion breaks, even in a single city, it sends tremors outward.
Across the country, millions watching the election results saw something rare in American politics: Proof that a campaign rooted in solidarity can beat one rooted in capital. They saw a future in which the public is not a spectator to its own dispossession. They saw permission to believe in their own power.
They saw that politics need not be reduced to a stage-managed rivalry between corporations wearing different campaign colors.
As someone who saw this possibility in the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders, who saw our movement defeated by this same bipartisan establishment, this moment gives me a renewed faith in America's capacity to fight back against oligarchy. Zohran's win feels like the beginning of the first meaningful challenge to the neoliberal consensus in a generation.
And that is why this victory matters. Not because one candidate triumphed, but because a barrier was crossed. The belief that the public must endure austerity while wealth accumulates above it has lost its inevitability. The idea that the mass media can manufacture consent for a Wall Street-approved candidate every time has shattered.
The attacks on Mamdani were relentless these past few months. But their hollow and desperate efforts failed. The majority didn't buy it, and they went to the polls to send Andrew Cuomo packing.
For the first time in a long time, the message is simple and electrifying:
The people can win. And if they can win here, they can win anywhere.
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Dismissing Concerns of US Farmers, Trump Claims Argentina 'Dying' to Justify $40 Billion Bailout
"If you're the President of Argentina, Trump gives you a $20 billion bailout. If you're an American whose health care premiums are about to double? Tough luck."
Oct 20, 2025
President Donald Trump's allegiance to Argentina's right-wing government is appearing to undermine his signature claim—for those who ever believed it—that he always puts "America first" in his policymaking, as critics continue to bash the Republican leader for his outsized support for Argentina's failing economy compared to the suffering of US consumers, farmers, and workers.
Asked by a reporter aboard Air Force One on Sunday whether he was concerned about US farmers who feel a $40 billion bailout he has helped orchestrate for the beleaguered South American nation "is benefiting Argentina more than it is them," Trump was dismissive of the reporter and the question.
"Look, Argentina is fighting for its life, young lady," Trump mansplained to the female reporter. "You don't know anything about it—they're fighting for their life. Nothing's benefiting Argentina. They are fighting for their life. You understand what that means? They have no money. They have no anything. They're fighting so hard to survive."
After slashing billions in foreign aid around the world this year, cuts that experts say are costing real lives in some of the poorest nations on earth, Trump went on to claim that it was his duty to help struggling Argentina, currently governed by his far-right friend and ally, President Javier Milei, who has driven the economy into a tailspin with his chainsaw-inspired austerity.
Q: What do you have to say to farmers who feel that the deal is benefitting Argentina more than it is them?
TRUMP: Look, Argentina is fighting for its life, young lady. You don't know anything about it. You understand what that means? They are dying pic.twitter.com/1DMyaHtcTR
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 20, 2025
"If I can help them survive in a free world," Trump suggested he would do just that for Argentina. "I happen to like the president of Argentina. I think he's trying to do the best he can. But don't make it sound like they are doing great. They are dying, alright? They're dying."
Trump admitted last week during a cabinet meeting that the $40 bailout is aimed at helping what he described as a "good financial philosophy" of Milei, the far-right libertarian who has slashed pension payments for retired workers, trashed regulations, and eviscerated public spending in deference to corporate and capitalist profits.
Writing for Jacobin, Branko Marcetic argued earlier this month that what it boils down to is that Trump will find funds to salvage the failed policies of Milei, but not healthcare or other needs for American workers or their families.
"In other words," wrote Marcetic, "Trump is sending billions of Americans’ dollars to a foreign country to prop up a failing president who has run his country into the ground by following Trump’s own policy preferences. If Milei fails, Trump’s own, very similar austerity program will take a major blow too.
Soybean farmers across the US have been outspoken about how much Trump's tariff policies have harmed them this year, with China—historically the largest importer of US soybeans—shutting them out, even as they scooped up Argentinian soybeans at bargain prices earlier this year after Milei cut his nation's export tax.
Trump has promised soybean farmers a bailout of their own, but that process has stalled amid the ongoing government shutdown, which Republicans in control of Congress have maintained despite furious calls that doing so puts the healthcare of tens of millions of Americans at risk of soaring premium hikes or lost coverage.
Leading the charge for Trump's policy on Argentina—including $20 billion in US taxpayer funds to stabilize the nation's currency as well as creating a separate $20 billion fund of private investments—is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has said supporting Argentina is vital to US interests and will continue.
However, underneath the administration's support for Argentina lurks the presence of high-profile US investors, some of them closely connected to members of the administration, including Bessent allies and Wall Street players who have backed Trump.
Popular Information's Judd Legum has reported extensively on the financial interests benefiting most from the bailout scheme— and it's not US farmers or consumers. As Legum noted last week:
While farmers struggle to survive and the federal government is shut down, Milei is riding high thanks to the cash infusion from the Trump administration. “There will be an avalanche of dollars,” Milei said in a radio interview shortly before traveling to the White House. “We’ll have dollars pouring out of our ears.”
Speaking with The New Yorker's John Cassidy, former IMF chief economist Maurice Obstfeld explained that one "worrisome" dynamic when it comes to the Argentina bailout is that Bessent is repeatedly saying we will be there for the long term and we will do whatever it takes. He is effectively saying to foreign investors, ‘You will be able to get out whole.’”
As $20 billion has quickly morphed into $40 billion in financial backing of the flailing economy led by the slash-and-burn ideology of Milei, Trump said the US government is also considering buying up beef exports in an effort to control the price for US producers.
“We would buy some beef from Argentina,” he told reporters aboard the Sunday flight on Air Force. “If we do that, that will bring our beef prices down.”
However, with the government shutdown ongoing and Republicans refusing to budge on Democratic demands that healthcare costs be contained, there's no end in sight for relief when it comes to American families facing massive spikes in monthly premiums or loss of health coverage completely.
As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) noted last week: "If you're the President of Argentina, Trump gives you a $20 billion bailout. If you're an American whose health care premiums are about to double? Tough luck."
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