How will Fox Cities fare when Trump determines if relief is warranted: Are we red or blue?

Cut to: President Trump gathered around his aides, their faces buried in their laptops, their fingers furiously scrolling.

“Well?” the President urgently asks.

“Still doing the numbers on Menasha, Mr. President,” Steven Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, says. “But the Appleton numbers are in. And that’s a no-go. Kamala won that city.”

Trump, fuming: “They’re gonna regret that. No FEMA funds for Appleton!”

Offended yet?

You should be. But not by satire over the terrible tornadoes that surged through the Fox Cities this week. It barely qualifies as satire, after all. 

In what should no longer surprise us, internal emails between state and federal officials show an undeniable pattern of favoritism for red states over blue states when it comes to the Trump administration’s dispersal of federal disaster aid. The examples are endless.

States with all-Democratic congressional delegations were approved 23 percent of the time while those with all-Republican delegations received aid for 89 percent of their requests. Further, it has taken twice as long for aid requests from blue states to be processed.

While this decision-making seems to be state-by-state and not as granular as the opening scenario, it’s hard not to wonder if, in a purple state like Wisconsin, Trump might actually be torn and choose to disperse aid by county and city demographics. It might explain why the floods in Southeast Wisconsin last August went ignored by the administration while the ones in Shawano County received swift relief. Did the President reject those earlier floods that actually caused significantly greater damage when he saw the Milwaukee in Milwaukee County? Who would answer, No?

This, sadly, is not conjecture or snark. It is the guiding principle of this White House. If you doubt that, just look at how many federal judges have ruled he has violated the Fifth Amendment by withholding, even cancelling, everything from disaster relief to clean energy projects to funding grants based entirely on how that state voted in presidential elections. 

Still think this is hysteria? Ask California Gov. Newsome, who continues to request – and continues to be gleefully denied – federal relief from the catastrophic wildfires last year that cost billions in damages. 

I lived in New Jersey when Hurricane Sandy rolled through. It was devastating but it resulted in what is considered today a hallmark of bipartisan cooperation. President Obama provided the most immediate disaster relief on record to a state run by a Republican governor who had been unsparing in his criticism of the President.

Famously, Chris Christie highly praised Obama’s response. It nearly sparked a bromance as the two toured the state side by side, even hugging at one point. 

That is how it is supposed to be. The President is supposed to be the President of all the states, not a select and partisan few. But we are through the looking glass now, dependent on a President who is guided not by regard for need but by the opportunity to dispense pain or largesse based on his own personal grievances. 

There’s another story here about how the administration’s massive cuts to the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration have seriously depleted our preparedness for storms like Monday’s in the Fox Cities. Was it just bad luck that the tornado warning wasn’t issued until it had already formed? Or was it more likely the result of those 2,300 fired NOAA workers? 

In other words, on both sides of storms now – both civil alert and disaster relief – the President is failing us through wanton neglect and mean-spiritedness. Let us hope that he sets aside such unforgivable pettiness and works to make the Fox Cities whole. When people say this is not who we are, they are wrong. It is who we currently are. 

It’s just not who we’re supposed to be.