FEMA Katrina Declaration

TO: Members of Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council

Twenty years ago, Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane, claiming an estimated 1,833 lives, leaving millions homeless, and causing approximately $161 billion in damage.  Hurricane Katrina was not just a natural disaster, but a man-made one: the inexperience of senior leaders and the profound failure by the federal government to deliver timely, unified, and effective aid to those in need left survivors to fend for themselves for days, and highlighted how Black, Indigenous, and low-income communities are disproportionally affected by disasters.  These failures prompted Congress to pass the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006 (PKEMRA), which introduced safeguards to ensure such shortcomings of disaster preparation and response would not be repeated.  However, two decades later, FEMA is enacting processes and leadership structures that echo the conditions PKEMRA was designed to prevent.

1) We oppose the reduction in capability of FEMA to perform its missions. 

2) We oppose the ongoing failure to appoint a qualified FEMA administrator, as required by law. 

3) We oppose the elimination of life- and cost-saving risk reduction programs.  

4) We oppose interference with preparedness programs that build capacity for our SLTT partners. 

5) We oppose the censorship of climate science, environmental protection, and efforts to ensure all communities have access to information, resources, and support.

6) We oppose the reduction of FEMA’s disaster workforce.

The signatories of this letter are FEMA employees from across the United States who are dedicated to helping people before, during, and after disasters, and who are members of the communities we seek to support.  In addition to named signatories, we include anonymous signatories who share our concerns but choose not to identify themselves due to the culture of fear and suppression cultivated by this administration.

-- "The FEMA Katrina Declaration" (25 August 2025), four days before the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

All Others

"In God we trust.  All others must use data."

-- Mary Walton, The Deming Management Method (1986) Chapter 20 "Doing It with Data" p. 96

Stagflation

Mr. Trump's tariffs are now clearly fueling inflation, particularly in goods such as home appliances, cars and food.  In the first six months of the year, real (that is, inflation-adjusted) consumer spending, the main driver behind business cycles and robust economic expansion, barely grew, after rising 3 percent last year.  G.D.P. growth slowed by about half, to 1.2 percent this year from 2.5 percent last year.  When overall growth falls that sharply, the labor market tends to follow, which is precisely what happened: Job growth, at 35,000 per month on average between May and July, is dangerously close to stall speed.

While presidents always take credit for good economic news and try to deflect bad news (in this president's case, by firing the messenger who delivered it), it's often hard to link what's going on in the economy to the current administration.  Not this time.  Whether it's historically high tariffs that never quite seem to stabilize, deportations that threaten to seriously disrupt labor supply in sectors like construction and health services, or a reverse-Robin Hood, budget-busting bill that takes money away from those most likely to spend it, Mr. Trump's policies have pushed economic uncertainty to levels last seen during the onset of the pandemic.  This uncertainty has damped investment, hiring and consumption, while the tariffs increase prices.  In other words: stagflation.

-- Jared Bernstein, chair of President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Advisers from 2023 to 2025, and Ryan Cummings who served the council as an economist from 2021 to 2023, New York Times, "The Economy Is Starting to Pay for Trump’s Chaos" (10 August 2025)

Up Is Down

WASHINGTON -- Total violent crime for 2024 in the District of Columbia is down 35% from 2023 and is the lowest it has been in over 30 years, according to data collected by the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and announced by United States Attorney Matthew M. Graves.  A breakdown of the data is available here

In addition to the overall violent crime reduction, homicides are down 32%; robberies are down 39%; armed carjackings are down 53%; assaults with a dangerous weapon are down 27% when compared with 2023 levels, with the District reporting the fewest assaults with dangerous weapons and burglaries in over 30 years.

-- Department of Justice press release from U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Columbia, "Violent Crime in D.C. Hits 30 Year Low" (3 January 2025) h/t JSA

In Related News

Trump just took his attack on reality to a different level, by firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Why?  Because he did not like the job numbers her agency produced.

In related news, we just saw the last credible BLS data for the rest of the Trump administration.

-- Don Moynihan, Professor of Public Policy at University of Michigan, "Trump Shoots the Messenger", at Moynihan's Can We Still Govern? Substack (1 August 2025)

USAID

Background
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is the largest funding agency for humanitarian and development aid worldwide. The aim of this study is to comprehensively evaluate the effect of all USAID funding on adult and child mortality over the past two decades and forecast the future effect of its defunding.

Findings
Higher levels of USAID funding -- primarily directed toward low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly African countries -- were associated with a 15% reduction in age-standardised all-cause mortality and a 32% reduction in under-five mortality. This finding indicates that 91 839 663 all-age deaths, including 30 391 980 in children younger than 5 years, were prevented by USAID funding over the 21-year study period. USAID funding was associated with a 65% reduction in mortality from HIV/AIDS (representing 25·5 million deaths), 51% from malaria (8·0 million deaths), and 50% from neglected tropical diseases (8·9 million deaths). Significant decreases were also observed in mortality from tuberculosis, nutritional deficiencies, diarrhoeal diseases, lower respiratory infections, and maternal and perinatal conditions. Forecasting models predicted that the current steep funding cuts could result in more than 14 051 750 additional all-age deaths, including 4 537 157 in children younger than age 5 years, by 2030.

Interpretation
USAID funding has significantly contributed to the reduction in adult and child mortality across low-income and middle-income countries over the past two decades. Our estimates show that, unless the abrupt funding cuts announced and implemented in the first half of 2025 are reversed, a staggering number of avoidable deaths could occur by 2030.

-- Daniella Medeiros Cavalcanti, PhD et al, The Lancet "Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030: a retrospective impact evaluation and forecasting analysis" (30 June 2025)

Eligible And Qualified

All right.  So what do I tell 663,000 people in 2 years or 3 years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding is not there anymore, guys?

I think people in the White House, the amateurs advising the President, are not telling him that the effect of this bill is to break a promise. ...

It is inescapable that this bill, in its current form, will betray the very promise that Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office or in the Cabinet room when I was there with Finance, where he said: We can go after waste, fraud, and abuse on any programs. ...

I am telling the President that you have been misinformed.  Your supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid.

-- Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), speaking on the Senate floor during debate on the "Big Beautiful Bill", quoted from the Congressional Record, p. S3646 (28 June 2025)

Someone Has To Pay

Increases in tariffs, this year, are likely to push up prices and weigh on economic activity.  The effects on inflation could be short-lived, reflecting a one-time shift in the price level.  It’s also possible that the inflationary effects could instead be more persistent. ...

Because someone has to pay for the tariffs, and it will be someone in that chain that I mentioned, between the manufacturer, the exporter, the importer, the retailer, ultimately somebody putting it into a good of some kind or just the consumer buying it.

All through that chain, people will be trying not to be the ones who can take up the cost, but ultimately, the cost of the tariff has to be paid.  And some of it will fall on the end consumer.

-- Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell at a press conference after the Federal Reserve declined to lower interest rates, nj.com (18 June 2025)

Getting There

It is not knowledge, but the act of learning, not possession but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.  When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again.  The never-satisfied man is so strange; if he has completed a structure, then it is not in order to dwell in it peacefully, but in order to begin another.  I imagine the world conqueror must feel thus, who, after one kingdom is scarcely conquered, stretches out his arms for others.

-- Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777 - 1855), German mathematician, astronomer and physicist, Letter to Farkas Bolyai (2 September 1808)

Real GDP

Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 0.3 percent in the first quarter of 2025 (January, February, and March), according to the advance estimate released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.  In the fourth quarter of 2024, real GDP increased 2.4 percent.

-- U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Gross Domestic Product, 1st Quarter 2025 (Advance Estimate), 30 April 2025

A Different Story

As Donald Trump took the oath of office on Jan. 20, he was flanked by some of the world's wealthiest people.  The billionaires present that day -- including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg -- had never been richer, flush with big gains from frothy stock markets.

Seven weeks later, it's a different story.  The start of Trump's second term has delivered a stunning reversal for many of those billionaires sitting behind Trump in the Capitol Rotunda, with five having lost a combined $209 billion in wealth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

-- Dylan Sloan writing for Bloomberg, "Billionaires at Trump's Swearing-In Have Since Lost $209 Billion" (10 March 2025), written before the Dow Jones and S&P 500 lost another 3% on Monday and Tuesday of this week

As He Threatens

President Trump gave the economy another jolt of uncertainty on Monday when he signed executive orders imposing 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports.  His advisers say these tariffs are economically "strategic" rather than a bargaining chip for some other goal.  Is the strategy to harm U.S. manufacturers and workers?

That's what his first-term tariffs did, and it's worth revisiting the damage of that blunder as he threatens to repeat it. 

-- Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, "The Truth About Trump's Steel Tariffs" (10 February 2025)

That's Not It

That's not it.  That's not it at all.  You always have a tendency to add.  But one must be able to subtract too.  It's not enough to integrate, you must also disintegrate.  That's the way life is.  That's philosophy.  That's science.  That's progress, civilization.

-- Eugène Ionesco (26 November 1909 - 29 March 1994), Romanian playwright and dramatist, The Professor in The Lesson (1951)

Theory And Practice

If you find that you're spending almost all your time on theory, start turning some attention to practical things; it will improve your theories.  If you find that you're spending almost all your time on practice, start turning some attention to theoretical things; it will improve your practice.

-- Donald Knuth (1938 -), American computer scientist, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, and winner of the 1974 Turing Award, quoted in: Arturo Gonzalez-Gutierrez (2007) Minimum-length Corridors: Complexity and Approximations. p. 99

Quiet Life

The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.

-- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), German-born theoretical physicist, Out of My Later Years : The Scientist, Philosopher, and Man Portrayed Through His Own Words (1950) Chapter 16

I Discovered Something

This summer I have discovered something totally useless.

-- Peter Ware Higgs FRS FRSE (29 May 1929 - 8 April 2024), British theoretical physicist and emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh, writing to a colleague about his proposal for a particle at the origin of mass (1964), as quoted in The Hunt for the Higgs Boson, Science Scotland, issue no. 3

Leap Day

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
February eight-and-twenty all alone,
And all the rest have thirty-one:
Unless that leap-year doth combine,
And give to February twenty-nine.

-- Return from Parnassus (London, 1606)

Too Important

The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.

-- Robert R. Coveyou (1915 - 1996), American research mathematician, "Random Number Generation is too Important to be Left to Chance" (1969)

Laws Of Motion

Laws of Motion, I: Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon.

Laws of Motion, II: The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.

Laws of Motion, III: To every action there is always opposed an equal and opposite reaction: or the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.

-- Sir Isaac Newton (1643 - 1727), English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a "natural philosopher"), Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)

Hello, 2024

The world population grew by 75 million people over the past year and on New Year's Day it will stand at more than 8 billion people, according to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday.

The worldwide growth rate in the past year was just under 1%.  At the start of 2024, 4.3 births and two deaths are expected worldwide every second, according to the Census Bureau figures.

The growth rate for the United States in the past year was 0.53%, about half the worldwide figure.  The U.S. added 1.7 million people and will have a population on New Year's Day of 335.8 million people.

-- Mike Schneider, "World population up 75 million this year, standing at 8 billion on Jan. 1", Associated Press, 28 December 2023