LWVAC is launching a "What You Can Do" (WYCD) campaign where we share a series of action plans. With so much happening on the national stage, these action plans are intended to encourage you to respond to the daily breach of the rule of law and the separation of powers. Read more about this campaign here. 

To receive the What You Can Do actions directly, please email info [at] lwv-alachua.org (subject: What%20You%20Can%20Do)  with "What You Can Do" in the subject line. Request to be added to the email list. Messages come out about once a week. 

CURRENT ACTION TOPICS: 1) NOAH/FEMA funding cuts 2) Vets loss of home loans rescue 3) NPR/PBS funding cut 4) June 14 military parade 5) June 14 protest

Call your legislators and ask for answers. Some suggestions follow.  We want our messages to be laser focused, please feel free to use some or all these questions or any others of your own choosing.   Choose a couple questions for today, use others in the next couple days. Or, call them about a topic of your choosing and interest. Just call!

Senator Rick Scott: (202) 224-5274Senator Ashley Moody: (202) 224-3041Representative Kat Cammack: (202) 225-5744

1) NOAH/FEMA funding cuts 

 Hurricane season begins June 1, 2025. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hurricane Prediction Center predicts 17 named storms, nine hurricanes and four major hurricanes. According to NOAA, 40% of all hurricanes each year hit Florida and 60% of severe storms hit Florida or Texas. Roughly 20% of full-time permanent staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—including civil servants responsible for disaster response and recovery operations—are expected to take voluntary buyouts offered by the “Department of Government Efficiency”. The administration is further looking to raise the threshold for states to qualify for federal assistance as part of a drive to shift costs to state and local governments. A $5 billion FEMA program has ended that funded local risk mitigation efforts, the Building Resilient Infrastructures and Communities (BRIC) program. (Please see below for details and references.)

Questions for legislators:

1. Tell your legislators a personal story about how you/family/friends were helped by storm prediction or storm recovery.
2. Last year Florida had three back-to-back hurricanes. Harm to people and property was lessened by storm predictions and evacuation recommendations from NOAA. Four severe storms are predicted for the 2025 hurricane season. 20% of NOAA employees are leaving the agency. The budget for weather satellites may be cut. With less staff and less resources, what is your (name of legislator) plan to prepare and protect Floridians during the current and future hurricane seasons?
3. Florida has some 1,000 miles of coastline* and some 76% of Floridians live in a coastal county**. That makes Floridians and their property exceptionally vulnerable to harm from hurricanes. Budget cuts to FEMA will make it harder to rebuild. Do you approve of budget cuts to FEMA? If so, what are you (name of legislator) doing to help Floridians recover from severe weather? (*Department of Environmental Protection, **Employment Security Commission)

2) Vets loss of home loan rescue

A year ago, a home loan rescue program was launched to help vets avoid foreclosure by providing financial assistance. It has been stopped, leaving vets unsure if they will be able to pay their mortgage. In the VA, 83,000 jobs, or 17% of the workforce, is proposed to be reduced. Many of the VA staff are veterans. (Veteran’s Guide, PBS)

Question for legislators: Many people who join the armed services do so because of the promise of benefits. With the closure of the home loan rescue program and the firing of a significant number of VA staff, the promises to vets are broken. Do you (name of legislator) approve of the funding cuts to veterans? If not, what are you doing to restore the promise of benefits to vets and their families?

3) Funding cut to PBS/NPR

An executive order was issued to stop funding, approved by Congress, to the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB) for support of PBS and NPR. The order is questionably legal since CPB is not a federal entity. PBS and NPR provide research-based programming and emergency alerts at no cost to millions of people across the nation. Especially for rural areas, this may be the only source of factual, urgent information. (USA Today, PBS)

Question for legislators: The current administration has ordered that funds for public broadcasting be stopped. Floridians and people across the country depend on the free service of public broadcasting for education, entertainment and emergency alerts, including in rural areas. Emergency information from NOAA is hampered by the firing of staff. Now emergency alerts from public broadcasting are threatened. How are people supposed to prepare for severe weather when the agencies that give us information are being unfunded?

4) June 14 military parade

June 14 is the administration’s birthday. It coincides with flag day and with June 14, 1775 when the Continental Congress authorized the enlistment of expert riflemen. The administration is planning a four-hour military parade at a cost of tens of millions of dollars. (Robert Reich substack, NBC, ABC, PBS)

Question for legislators: At a time when so many services are being cut to veterans and non-wealthy Americans, it is offensive that the administration is planning to spend tens of millions of dollars on a military parade. Legislators are voting on a budget that would reduce food on the table and health care to millions of people. Do you approve of spending millions on a military parade while cutting funding for food, health care and benefits to veterans?

5) PROTEST! On June 14 from 10am – noon

There will be a No Kings! protest on South Main and Depot Avenue. Create a sign, bring a friend, and line the streets with positive energy to stand up for democracy! 

Details of Destruction of FEMA and NOAA

TOPIC:

Hurricane season begins June 1, 2025. For 2025, the NOAA Hurricane Prediction Center predicts 17 named storms, nine hurricanes, and four major hurricanes. According to NOAA 40% of all hurricanes each year hit Florida and 60% of severe, Category 3 and above, storms hit Florida or Texas each year. Fortunately for Florida citizens, previous administrations have been strong supporters of both NOAA which predicts the strength and track of storms and FEMA which helps people before, during and after disasters.

For example, Florida has received more direct relief dollars from FEMA than any other state since 2015, including more than $1 billion in 2024, according to an October, 2024 report in Energy and Climate. And in 2024 when Hurricane Helene was bearing down on Florida, thanks to cutting-edge advancements in hurricane modeling and forecasting, National Hurricane Center forecasters were able to provide the most accurate and timely predictions in history, offering communities crucial extra hours to prepare.

However, the present administration is endangering both. According to the New Republic, as hurricane season looms, the White House is making dramatic cuts to federal disaster response (FEMA) and preparedness (FEMA and NOAA).

Roughly 20 percent of full time permanent staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—including civil servants responsible for disaster response and recovery operations—are expected to take voluntary buyouts offered by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. The administration is further looking to raise the threshold for states to qualify for public assistance as part of a drive to shift the burden for those costs to state and local governments. It’s also already ended funding for a $5 billion program to fund local risk mitigation efforts. On Tuesday (April 24th), the White House announced appointees to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Review Council. Tasked with “reforming and streamlining” emergency management and disaster response, it will be chaired by Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem (she has promised to eliminate the program) and Defense secretary Pete Hegseth.

According to The Guardian, 20% of NOAA employees will leave the agency and most of the remaining are demoralized as staff have been fired, rehired, and threatened with refiring during the Administration’s first 100 days. In addition, NOAA’s budget for weather satellites is allegedly proposed to be cut by 44 percent. This will completely upend the planning and development of next-generation weather satellites, which provide key weather forecasting and research information. Even private services like the Weather Channel rely on NOAA for raw weather data. Even before these cuts according to a report-March 21, 2025, Energy and Climate, the launching of weather balloons has been suspended at two US locations and reduced at 6 more.

In defense of these cuts, the administration has argued that FEMA was spending billions to welcome illegal aliens and were biased against Trump supporters. No data support either accusation and according to Politico on 4-29- a recent investigation revealed there is “no evidence” of a systematic effort to ignore homes owned by Trump supporters.

FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructures and Communities (BRIC) program was called wasteful and ineffective. The facts are that many of the affected projects were in Republican-dominated communities and disaster-prone regions with the goal of making these communities safer. Residents from some of the communities who lost funding say they were a vital use of government resources to proactively protect lives, infrastructure and economies. For example, money would have gone toward strengthening electrical poles to withstand hurricane-force winds in Louisiana, relocating residents in Pennsylvania’s floodplains and safeguarding water supply lines in Oklahoma’s Tornado Alley. According to the Tampa Bay Times, Florida will lose $293 million of the $312 million of the BRIC money Congress okayed for hurricane relief and flood mitigation efforts.

The administration wants to return FEMA’s activities to the control of local emergency managers who will “Make America Safe Again.” Can the states go it alone? Major disasters require federal resources, and state and local governments cannot cope on their own, said Shana Udvardy, senior climate resilience policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “With the summer danger season of extreme weather, including climate-fueled disasters, getting underway soon, these attacks on FEMA could not come at a worse time,” Udvardy said. "Congress must push back assertively on these egregious plans in a bipartisan way ‒ disasters do not discriminate based on politics.”

The administration threatens to privatize NOAA functions such as storm prediction. Such an approach makes prediction a commodity with potentially severe consequences for those unable to pay. Understanding climate has always been a service and NOAA data are used world-wide by both private and public sectors. For example, according to Energy and Climate, March 21, 2025, “The private sector has used NOAA information often as foundational to what it does.” Making prediction a commodity and destroying decades of private-public partnerships seems unwise and potentially harmful.

ACTION:

Call your legislators and let them know that that FEMA and NOAA are important to you and should be preserved and restored. Feel free to use some of the suggestions that follow, and as usual feel free to create your own.

Try to avoid absolutes. We all know that the administration has made vague promises to restore money and personnel so take those promises into consideration even if you feel as we do that they are empty. Our goal is to let our elected representatives know we are informed, outraged, and determined.

Senator Rick Scott: (202) 224-5274
Senator Ashley Moody: (202) 224-3041
Representative Kat Cammack: (202) 225-5744

1. Tell your legislators a personal story about the difference storm prediction and recovery have made in your life or that of a family member, friend or community.
2. Urge them not to turn life and property saving information into a commodity by privatizing NOAA or FEMA functions.
3. Help them understand that the on-going disruption of community resilience efforts is a waste of money because the withdrawal of funds means projects will sit uncompleted.
4. Ask them they would respond to this from Rob Moore: According to Rob Moore, senior policy analyst at NRDC “FEMA staff are some of the most critical and needed in the federal government”  “slashing these employees indiscriminately will put more Americans in harm’s way, and means we will have slower and less-coordinated recovery efforts”  Evidence of the criticality is that in February of 2025 the NRDC reports that FEMA is currently managing 1, 057 incidents across the US, and according to GAO the number of disasters FEMA is managing has more than doubled from 30 disasters in 2016 to 71 in 2023. Additionally in 2024 FEMA obligated $35 Billion to state and local governments for immediate disaster relief, $29 billion to repair public buildings and infrastructure and billions more in direct payments to disaster survivors.