A pair of Democratic governors criticized President Donald Trump for not approving federal disaster relief for states led by those he has political disagreements with.

Both Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD), whose state was recently denied disaster relief for severe flooding with little explanation, and former Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA), whose state was denied disaster relief in June for bomb cyclones, voiced their frustrations with the Trump administration. 

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In both cases, President Trump eventually denied disaster relief for communities in our states,” the pair wrote an op-ed published in The Hill. 

“The federal government’s job is clear: to protect people from disaster and help communities recover. At Trump’s direction, FEMA has done the opposite, abandoning its responsibility and shifting the burden onto states like Maryland and Washington,” they added.

The denial of aid to Maryland and Washington came at the same time as the Trump White House approved disaster relief for storms that hit Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, and West Virginia.

The Trump administration has told states to create their own agencies to handle disaster relief as it considers the agency’s future, and Trump proposed eliminating FEMA after the 2025 hurricane season. The governors wrote that their states “already strained by tight budgets, cannot realistically respond to multimillion-dollar disasters by themselves.”

“Rather than fulfill his duty, Trump has a record of politicizing aid and withholding it from states that did not vote for him, regardless of the harm suffered by their communities,” Inslee and Moore wrote.

In his first administration, Trump had a perceived tendency to deny federal assistance to states led by those he saw as his political enemies. 

Trump was accused of withholding aid to California amidst disagreements with Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), who the president has frequently targeted, during his first term. Newsom at the time claimed Trump withheld disaster aid to California “on multiple occasions” over political differences.

“He was very threatening,” Newsom told Politico at the time. “He was telling me right before the [2020] election … ‘You better work with me now, because I’m going to get reelected, and you’re going down on this.’”

Most recently, Gov. Josh Stein (D-NC) said Monday much of that money approved in 2024 under the Biden administration for Hurricane Helene recovery was still being blocked by the Trump administration.

HOW STATES SECURE FEMA FUNDING UNDER AN ADVERSARIAL TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

In previous natural disasters, the federal government provided the majority of disaster relief funding. The federal government paid for more than 70% of the recovery costs related to Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina under the Obama and Bush administrations, respectively. 

“In contrast, not only is Trump denying requests for disaster aid — he is actively dismantling the systems meant to protect us,” Moore and Inslee wrote.