"2025": Hurricane Trump

Chapter 11: How Project 2025 Guts Extreme Weather Prediction and Response

At the very moment American communities are facing increased risk and damage from extreme weather events, Project 2025 undermines the federal government’s ability to predict and respond to such disasters, along with providing relief to victims.

Chapter 11 of “2025” explores the damage done by these reckless changes:

Introduction and Chapter 1: Protester Deportations

Chapter 2: Banning Abortion and IVF

Chapter 3: Gutting Civil Service (Schedule F)

Chapter 4: No Vaccines in Schools

Chapter 5: “Revenge” and a Weaponized DOJ

Chapter 6: Mass Deportation

Chapter 7: Brutal Attacks on Workers and Unions

Chapter 8: The Attack on Public Education

Chapter 9: The Insurrection Act

Chapter 10: The Attack on “Woke”

Onto Chapter 11….

November

“Capitol Monthly”

“Buck Bryce”

By Calvin Stegman

TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA

Hurricanes weren’t supposed to hit Florida in November.

But with the Atlantic and Gulf warmer than ever, that was changing.

Still, versus the peak of the hurricane season, at least November hurricanes were smaller. Inconveniences as opposed to emergencies.

So with Hurricane Timothy churning northwest over the straits of Florida, Governor Buck Bryce stood confidently before the podium. One of the president’s closest allies, the telegenic governor was bracketed by emergency officials who appeared equally at ease.

“We have been in communication with the White House for the past week,” he explained at the press briefing, outside Florida’s Emergency Ops Center. “I can’t remember such a smooth preparation.”

As smooth as the preparation was, it was for a Category 1 storm, even though some in the news media were warning the storm might strengthen in the Gulf.

Several reporters asked him about the discrepancy.

Bryce laughed them off.

“If I shut down Florida every time an old-time weatherman tries to boost his ratings, this state would be in permanent lockdown. It’s almost Thanksgiving, fellas. Most forecasters are predicting at most a Cat 1 storm, so there’s no need for panic. Florida is ready. I also just got off the phone with the president, who assured me they have our back if we need them.”

With his 6’3” frame, rugged good looks, and swagger, Buck Bryce lived up to the hype of a potential successor to the president.

That is, until the direst warnings proved accurate.

* * *

Fueled by sky-high Gulf temperatures, Timothy came ashore two mornings later as a monster Category 4 hurricane. It crashed into Florida’s West Coast just north of Naples, with winds topping out over 150 mph. It then headed north and east, bear-hugging the coastline. A wall of water surged into Sarasota and over the long, heavily populated keys to the north and south. As it followed its coastal path, the storm slowed, dumping feet of rain all the way past Tampa.

Eyes red and cheeks wan, Governor Bryce looked ten years older than two days before as he sat behind his thick oak desk. His usually immaculate salt-and-pepper hair was a tousled mess.

His young chief of staff, Gabe Shields, faced him from the desk’s other side. Both men stared at a speaker as Florida’s emergency director, a retired general named Phil Unger, briefed them from an operations center in St. Pete.

“Sir, what we’re seeing is devastating. Timothy’s just raking the coast—as bad as any storm we’ve ever seen. And since no one was ready for it, we’ve got people trapped in houses and high rises for miles, without power and without food. There will be a significant death toll here, particularly seniors.”

Bryce already knew this, but his face twitched as he heard the words.

“How the fuck did they get it so wrong?” the governor barked. He’d been assured by Washington that things would be okay. That the few meteorologists who’d raised alarms were fossils—not tapped into the latest data.

“When they gutted the National Weather Service, along with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, they thought the private sector could pick up the slack,” Unger explained in a hoarse voice.

“Looks like they got that wrong too,” the governor said.

“They sure did. Turns out, almost all those private companies were relying on NWS and NOAA data. So once you gut the government data, the new for-profit system they threw together is rickety as hell.”

“Rickety is an understatement,” the governor snarled as he clenched his fist. “The whole thing toppled over.”

“But one other factor made it worse,” Unger said. “New federal policy excludes data that takes sides in the climate debate. So they discounted all the models showing that warmer water temperatures might fuel a far stronger November storm than is typical.”

“Excluding data?” the governor yelled out. “A lot of Floridians are paying the price for that bone-headed decision.”

Of course, the governor had long played down the ways rising air and water temperatures were impacting Florida. Had even removed climate science from Florida universities and colleges. Unger’s long silence suggested he recalled that as well.

Unger finally chimed back in. “I’m afraid they are, sir.”

“So what are we going to do about it? Are we still waiting on the declaration of emergency?”

“We are, sir.”

“Half our west coast is underwater! Some of the most valuable real estate in the country. What the hell are they waiting for?”

“They raised the threshold for emergencies, sir. Another new policy. Remember them complaining that there’ve been too many emergencies declared in recent years? That it costing us too much?”

Bryce remembered that well. It was written in the plan for 2025, plain as day. And even as the Governor of Florida, he’d refused to criticize it.

“Businesses are dying from Naples to Tampa Bay. They need relief now.”

“There’s another problem, sir. Even after we have an emergency declared, the loans that used to keep those businesses afloat are no longer available.”

“Huh? Where’d they go?”

“Those were direct Small Business Administration loans. They got rid of that whole program.”

“Even for emergencies?”

“Yes. The direct loan program was for emergencies. Now they have to seek private loans.”

“Who the hell’s going to loan them—” he tailed off, shaking his head. “Never mind. Forget about small business for a second. What about the money to help homeowners and renters dig out from what’s happening?”

“Actually, sir, it’s the same source. Those SBA loans went primarily to families to do just that.”

The governor let out a long breath, rubbing his hand through his hair.

“This is a fucking disaster.”

“Sir?” Gabe Shields’s head had been bobbing throughout the conversation. But this was the first time the chief of staff said anything.

“What now?” the governor barked back.

Gabe nodded toward the chair in the middle of the room where this reporter was sitting.

“Remember, we have media embedded with us. The White House had—”

The governor’s face turned beet red.

“Well, why didn’t you remind me?”

“I’ve been trying to.”

The governor looked over Shields’s shoulder.

“Mr. Stedman, we’re going to need some privacy.”

Shields stood up and escorted this reporter from the room. The governor’s yells carried through the thick door even after Shields closed it.

Author’s Note:

Making dramatic changes across multiple agencies, Project 2025 would decimate the federal government’s capacity to both anticipate and respond to climate emergencies and extreme weather events.

Gutting the NOAA and NWS

As background, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “predicts changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coastlines and provides data that informs lifesaving forecasts such as tracking hurricanes tracking and…intense weather, such as hurricanes.” It includes the National Weather Service, National Ocean Service, The Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, and other agencies.

According to Project 2025, the NOAA "has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.” (p. 675). Its focus, Project 2025 alleges, “seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable.”

That’s right, Project 2025 is against trying to plan for future weather events.

As a result, NOAA “should be broken up and downsized.”

The plan goes on to propose:

• “fully commercializ[ing] [the National Weather Service’s] forecasting operations” (p. 675)

• reviewing the data of the National Hurricane Center and National Environmental Satellite Service to ensure it is “presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate” (p. 676)

• “disband[ing] the preponderance of the climate-change research” of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, because “it is the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism” (p. 676)

• ensuring politicized appointments to lead the NOAA — “Ensure Appointees Agree with Administration Aims. Scientific agencies like NOAA are vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims if political appointees are not wholly in sync with Administration policy. Particular attention must be paid to appointments in this area.” (p. 677)

These proposals greatly risk the nation’s ability to track and predict major weather events. As the LA Times sums up: Project 2025 “urges the demolition of some of the nation’s most dependable resources for tracking weather, combating climate change and protecting the public from environmental hazards.”

As a USA Today analysis stated: “NOAA’s satellites, aircraft, weather stations and meteorologists constantly collect weather data and expertly offer detailed weather forecasts and predictions to residents, researchers and nearly every third-party weather program, forecasting service or app. NWS weather alerts notify us of hurricanes, tornados and flooding. The NWS forecasts fire weather and issues watches, warnings and advisories for high winds, life-threatening rip currents and other hazards.”

More broadly, the proposals “block and make less available information about climate change in order to serve an agenda of climate change denial.”

FEMA

As for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Project 2025 proposes raising the threshold for emergencies before assistance can be granted to victims (page 153). “Alternatively, applying a deductible could accomplish a similar outcome while also incentivizing states to take a more proactive role in their own preparedness and response capabilities.”

As one analysis explained: “In other words, states and localities should bear the greatest financial burden for disaster preparation, response, recovery and resilience and that’s where Project 2025 would put it.

For Southwest Florida, this would be…well, in a word…a disaster.”

SBA Loans

Finally, Project 2025 (page 750) proposes to “end to SBA direct lending” program, “the only instance of which” is the disaster loan program."

These loans are critical for businesses and families in recovering from extreme weather events: “90 percent of this disaster aid serves individuals such as homeowners, as opposed to small businesses. So, while the program is a crucial resource for helping local economies bounce back, the loans play an even more critical role in helping individuals and families begin the long road to recovery.”

Project 2025 eliminates it all.