Opinion: Trump accused Biden of abandoning NC after Helene. Now, he’s doing just that

Right now, under Trump, we are seeing a fundamental change in the way we do disaster relief in America. It’s going to hurt states like North Carolina the most.

The late President Ronald Reagan, who President Donald Trump once claimed to admire, fantasized that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.’” 

Right now, in North Carolina and any other state recovering from a disaster, we’re finding out it’s a lot scarier when the government doesn’t show up at all.

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Last month, the Trump administration touted about $28 million in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) relief that it says will help rebuild western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene’s rampage through the Appalachians in September 2024. 

The announcement ignored the obvious: Helene didn’t do millions of dollars in damage. It did about $60 billion. And, while big numbers can seem like they all run together, this is a reminder that every billion is a thousand million. 

“Those kinds of resources don’t exist in western North Carolina to respond,” North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein said in August after touring the region, which is still a patchwork of recovery almost a year later. 

“Heck, our state two-year budget is $66 billion,” Stein added, “so essentially we would have to forgo the entire two-year budget just to get western North Carolina back to where it was before.”

As of last month, the federal government had put in under $5 billion for the state’s recovery, about 8% of what’s needed. The state legislature invested another $1 billion. You do the math. 

Under Trump, we are seeing a fundamental change in the way we do disaster relief in America. Funds are coming in fits and starts, and when they do come (if at all), they’re not nearly enough.

MAGA Republicans characterize FEMA as a poster child for government bloat. Trump, who loves to attack the weak, has indicated he wants to do away with it altogether and leave disasters to the states. But the most important question isn’t who leads disaster relief so much as who pays for it.

And Trump views disasters like no president in the last 75 years. To him, they are a local problem—unless, perhaps, you voted for him or say something nice about him. Recently, he accompanied an announcement of disaster aid in Indiana by noting that he “won BIG” there three times. This is the worst game show ever. Somebody tell Trump that North Carolina went red for him three times. 

Trump has also suggested on multiple occasions that he would withhold aid to liberal states—a staggering betrayal of the office. 

He’s not stopping there. The president also wants to reallocate federal dollars meant to help local communities prepare for disasters. And he’s gutted FEMA’s funding and staffing.

If this is where we’re headed, it’s going to hurt the most in the rural, working-class states—like North Carolina— that voted for him in 2024. 

In this March 2025 photo, a storm damaged apartment in a landscape scarred by Hurricane Helene near Swannanoa, North Carolina. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

We take care of our own

Helene was a once-in-a-generation disaster in western North Carolina, which is rugged, mountainous, and in many places, hard to get to. The storm’s rains, which followed a wet September, brought historic flooding. Entire towns were wiped off the map.   

In some parts of the state, it’s a painful sight a year later, but most folks will never see it. 

The camera crews come for the catastrophe. They’re long gone when the local business owner closes months later, after the waterlogged inventory, structural repairs, and lost business are totaled. 

Stein said that he is making the case for more aid to the White House and to Congress, although neither seems particularly keen to help. Even Stein, a moderate Democrat who prefers a lighter touch, sounded fed up last month, saying that the federal response “has not met the moment.” 

North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein speaks at the Land of Sky Regional Council, Aug. 20, 2025, Fletcher, N.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

If the federal government exists for anything though, it’s to be there when disaster strikes. The idea is that, in the richest country in the world, we take care of our own—but that means everyone regardless of political affiliation. 

Before FEMA was created in 1979, catastrophes in the US were met with a hodgepodge of state, local and federal relief. Aid could be disjointed, uncoordinated, and inconsistent. Congress responded to disasters—like a devastating 1900 hurricane in Galveston, Texas; and the Chicago fires of 1835 and 1871—on a case-by-case basis. 

But the Cold War’s threat of nuclear annihilation meant the country needed to get serious about disaster relief. FEMA grew out of that. Its unified federal response, although imperfect, helped the country respond to disasters in the 1980s and 1990s, like hurricanes Hugo and Andrew, and the Oklahoma City bombing.

Of course, the agency has had its problems. In 2005, FEMA’s response to Katrina’s flooding of New Orleans was its own kind of disaster, prompting a flurry of reforms meant to make FEMA more responsive. 

Perversely, in an open letter to Congress this month, hundreds of FEMA staffers wrote that the Trump administration’s “streamlining” of FEMA has only made the agency more inefficient, more reminiscent of the Katrina days. 

There’s an even more cruel irony to all of this. 

When Helene hit, just weeks before Election Day, Trump claimed that his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, along with the Biden administration had abandoned the people of North Carolina because a lot of Republicans live there. Trump and his allies told a lot of lies about the relief.

Now Biden is gone, and because the people affected by Helene can’t Constitutionally vote for Trump again, Trump is gone too. It’s cruel and stupid, and the end result is predictable—two Americas, one of them punched full of holes. 

None of this inspires confidence for the future of disaster management—the next hurricane, earthquake, wildfire, or other such calamity—all inevitable. 

It’s North Carolina today. It might be your state tomorrow. Good luck to us all. We’ll need it. And ask not what your country can do for you, because your country might not answer.