Federal judge orders FEMA to restore billions in canceled disaster mitigation funding

A federal judge in Massachusetts on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to restore billions of dollars in canceled FEMA disaster mitigation funding, siding with 22 states and the District of Columbia that sued over the canceled grants this summer.

President Donald Trump's administration said in April it was ''ending'' the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, which helped communities with predisaster projects to harden infrastructure and improve resilience against the increasing threats of climate change.

The administration called the program ''wasteful and ineffective'' and said it would halt $3.6 billion in funding awarded but not yet paid and would not award $882 million in grants for the following fiscal year.

The program's disruption upended projects across hundreds of communities in both Republican- and Democratic-led states, thwarting plans to improve stormwater drainage, harden electrical lines and even help relocate households living in areas most vulnerable to disasters.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told The Associated Press Thursday that DHS ''has not terminated BRIC,'' but did not elaborate on the program's status.

''The Biden Administration abandoned true mitigation and used BRIC as a green new deal slush fund,'' the spokesperson said, referring to a Democratic plan to combat climate change. ''It's unfortunate that an activist judge either didn't understand that or didn't care.''

The order comes at a time of profound uncertainty over FEMA's future and on the same day that a long-awaited meeting of the FEMA Review Council to present a report recommending reforms to the agency was abruptly canceled by the White House because it had not been fully briefed on the latest version of the report, according to a White House official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The program was criticized by some for being difficult to access for rural and less wealthy communities due to a complicated application process and cost-sharing requirements. But even Republican lawmakers like Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana opposed the cancellations and called for BRIC's reinstatement.

''It protects families and saves taxpayer dollars in the long-run,'' Cassidy said on the Senate floor a week after the funding cancellation. ''That's efficient in my book.''

Judge Richard G. Stearns found that FEMA's actions were unlawful since Congress appropriated the money specifically for the grants and that there was an ''inherent public interest in ensuring that the government follows the law.''

''The BRIC program is designed to protect against natural disasters and save lives,'' Stearns wrote in the court order.

The Trump administration has slashed disaster preparedness dollars across multiple FEMA programs this year as part of its campaign to transfer more responsibility for disasters to states.

Emergency preparedness grants that states and local governments rely on to staff emergency management agencies and buy equipment are currently frozen after 12 states sued the Trump administration over unprecedented grant stipulations related to the administration's immigration agenda.