“The Blizzard of 2026 certainly achieved a pinnacle ranking in the memories of those who experienced it and climatologically in the historical rankings of snowstorms,” said a NOAA report confirming Rhode Island met the requirement for disaster aid.
Presidents retain sole authority over granting federal disaster aid to states, but it’s highly unusual to deny a governor’s request after FEMA field offices have verified that damage estimates exceeded preestablished levels, according to a former agency official who worked under Republican and Democratic administrations.
“I can’t think of a time a declaration was denied” for a state that met FEMA and NOAA standards, said the former FEMA official who was granted anonymity to speak about internal decision making.
The emails and documents, which haven’t previously been reported, shed new light on Trump’s decisions to reject an overwhelming number of requests for disaster aid from Democratic-led states, even as he has approved nearly 90 percent of requests from states that are governed by members of his own party. The revelations also offer a fuller picture of Trump’s tenure over the most partisan distribution of FEMA aid since the agency was created in 1979.
Trump’s recent rejections involving snow diverge from the actions of other presidents, including Trump in his first term, who routinely approved similar requests from governors of opposing parties.
Presidents since George W. Bush approved all 69 state requests for snow assistance that met FEMA standards except for a 2016 request from New Mexico, which was being investigated for mishandling FEMA funds, according to a POLITICO analysis of agency records.
The four states sought $227 million in aid altogether after the paralyzing February storm dumped record snowfall over areas of the East Coast, leading to unprecedented snow-removal costs. POLITICO obtained the emails and state documents through open records requests submitted to New Jersey, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. New York officials said federal agencies also validated their request for aid, but POLITICO could not independently confirm that.
President Donald Trump arrives at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on Monday. | Alex Brandon/AP
The Trump administration defended its denials. Neither FEMA or a White House spokesperson answered questions about why the states’ requests were rejected after meeting federal thresholds that historically have triggered the disbursement of aid.
“There is no politicization to the President’s decisions on disaster relief,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. Trump handles disaster requests “with great care” to ensure state aid is used “to supplement — not substitute, their obligation to respond to and recover from disasters.”
A farming couple works the land. (Photo by Michael DeYoung via Getty Images)
Along with my controversial view that dogs aren’t people, a subtly significant claim I believe to be accurate and consequential is that farms aren’t nature.
I think the vast majority of people, including people with a healthy appreciation for the value of economic growth, think there’s an important role for public policy in preserving nature. The exact nature of that role is, of course, controversial. You don’t see Donald Trump pushing to sell the Grand Canyon to build a golf course or California YIMBYs calling for midrise apartments in Yosemite. But outside of the most obvious examples, people have somewhat different intuitions as to what nature even is.
For example, London (like other British cities) is surrounded by an extensive green belt in which housing development is heavily restricted. This is obviously a costly economic policy given the country’s acute housing shortage. What I think is not clear from the map is that the “green” in the green belt is not parks or woodland but mostly farms with a smattering of golf courses and other sports facilities.
In the United States, we don’t typically have policies like that. One exception, though, is that Montgomery County in the D.C. suburbs has an extensive Agricultural Reserve where, similarly, suburban sprawl is banned.
But what you get in exchange for the development ban is not parkland or nature preserves but (mostly) small farms that absent regulation would not be an economical use of the land. Many of these appear to be hobby farms or derive the majority of their revenue from use as wedding venues or the like. Regardless, the Agricultural Reserve is, in effect, a kind of super-duper large-lot zoning, not a “conservation” policy as I would understand it.
Freddie deBoer called me out the other day for some intemperate remarks on British cultural and political attitudes toward housing, and I think he had a basically fair point. I try to advocate for pragmatic, non-expressive politics, and when it comes to the United States of America I think I do a pretty good job of it. Since I don’t actually live in Britain or cover British politics professionally, it can be fun to mouth off. But it’s bad practice. So I’ll say that I do not really understand the culture, legacy, or history of these British green belts. I will simply observe that in the United States of America, we do not normally understand farms to be part of the category of “nature” that we are trying to protect with environmental law, and this is a strength of American society. But we do have exceptions, and I’m a bit concerned that these exceptions are growing.
I’m writing from Maine, a state renowned for its natural beauty.
It’s also a state that after decades of population decline has seen rapid population growth since Covid, which is creating a lot of pressure on housing prices. That’s especially true because the places where remote workers want to live — and therefore where people who want jobs doing locally facing services for remote workers want to live — are not necessarily the mill towns that lost population during the decline years. The state has passed some major YIMBY laws to address the housing crisis, but I think common sense says that the state will also want to take measures to ensure the preservation of the aforementioned natural beauty.
In a conservation easement, a landowner stipulates that future development will be restricted on all or part of a property. Enforcement of the conservation easement falls to one of the various land trusts that exist around the state. The restriction reduces the fair market value of the property, which generates an income tax deduction (and, if applicable, estate tax savings) while also lowering the landowner’s property-tax liability. In exchange, the status quo is preserved.
This broadly makes sense to me. The former owner of a property I can see across the water from my house placed it under a conservation easement in partnership with the Maine Coast Heritage Trust. It is nice to look at from afar and makes for a fun, easy hike to take visitors on.
But there’s no legal requirement that a conservation easement involve opening the land to the public like this. What’s more, there’s not even a legal requirement that it be a nature preserve! From a tax standpoint, what’s going on is that by forswearing development rights, you are reducing the value of the land.
Nearby, the Blue Hill Heritage Trust has a Farmland Forever program that encourages people to create conservation easements that stipulate that land cannot be used for future housing development because it’s going to be a farm.
It’s of course true that if you take a parcel of land that could potentially be valuable if subdivided into housing and say “nope, this is going to be a farm forever,” this reduces the economic value of the land. But is giving a person a tax break for doing something economically perverse with a parcel of land really a good idea? What if a plumber had agreed in 2002 to stipulate that his plumbing business would never use cell phones or email or launch a website? That would reduce the value of the business. But you wouldn’t want the tax code to encourage people to run their businesses in a dumb way.
You can even go to fundraising dinners at the local country club where upscale residents will, I guess, donate money to the cause of encouraging people to get tax breaks for restricting housing development on their land.
It seems like it’s basically just NIMBYism with a vague high-minded gloss.
Blue Hill Heritage Trust grimly warns that “as land values rise and properties are subdivided, agricultural land can quickly be converted to housing and other uses. Once these productive soils are developed, they are effectively removed from agricultural use forever.” That may or may not be true, but it’s absolutely true that once land is placed under a perpetual conservation easement barring residential development, it is (by definition) removed from residential use forever. And for what? Small-scale New England farms haven’t been a major part of the American economy since railroads were built in the late 19th century.
Which, of course, is not to say that people shouldn’t be allowed to operate farms in Maine or wherever else they want to. I like farmers’ markets and paying a premium for fresh local produce as much as the next upscale liberal.
But I also want people to have places to live and reasonable commutes. I want builders and the people who manufacture the stuff that goes into homes to have jobs. I want towns to have tax revenue so they can support schools and roads. Bearing an economic cost to preserve nature seems reasonable to me. But part of how you get there is you allow more development so your town has a larger revenue base. That lets your town acquire more choice parcels for parkland rather than just freezing random small-scale developments in amber.
The big tradeoff
Cutesy farms in cutesy coastal towns are a kind of funny edge case for both nature conservation and agriculture.
What I think is underappreciated, though, is the tradeoff around the large commercially viable farming operations that genuinely underpin the American agricultural sector and, to some extent, the entire global food system.
These farms are mostly not cutesy, and people express relatively little desire to preserve them. Indeed, they often express the desire to have less nasty “agribusiness” and more cutesy farms.
The problem with this is that, as Michael Grunwald’s great book on agriculture from last year points out, the big nasty commercially viable farms are the way they are because they are dramatically more efficient. A single cutesy farm in a cutesy town looks nice, but it’s not producing enough food to feed the town. Agriculture that is less intensive, less efficient, and more localized would require widespread deforestation. And yet even with relatively intensive modern methods, the national footprint of agriculture is much larger than all the cities and suburban subdivisions and strip malls combined. Over a third of federally owned land is used for grazing.
I’m not going to say that this is bad; obviously, it’s good to have food.
But it does underscore that biofuels subsidies are a crazy agricultural policy. Shrinking the footprint of nature in order to grow more corn in order to turn corn into a gasoline additive is ridiculous — especially if you keep in mind that farms aren’t nature.
I heard Bill McKibben tell Ezra Klein recently that America doesn’t need more energy because “we already use huge quantities of it, and we use it strangely.” This is wrong, though. If we had much more abundant energy, then vertical farming would be economically viable for at least some crops and we could get by with much less farmland — and much less pesticide — and have more room for homes and for nature.
And that’s the general point. If you’re interested in the subject of human activity encroaching on the natural realm, then agriculture is by far the main way in which this happens. If you adopt a kind of anti-urban, anti-housing politics whereby farmland is conceived of as a form of nature, you not only end up engaging in costly forms of farmland preservation, but you ultimately undermine the goal of preserving actual wild landscapes, wildlife habitats, and recreational amenities.
President Donald Trump holds a printed copy of a post from his Truth Social account about the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act as he speaks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on June 4, 2026.Brendan Smialowski—AFP/Getty Images
As Republicans—one of us represented Wisconsin in Congress, the other served as governor and attorney general of Pennsylvania—we come from different states with different election systems, but we share the same conviction: only eligible American citizens should vote in American elections, and the public must have confidence that our elections are secure.
That is why we must demystify local election administration and build trust in the people and processes that make our elections work. And it is precisely why we are concerned about the SAVE America Act.
The bill’s central premise is popular: noncitizens should not vote. We agree. However, federal law already prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections. Pennsylvania and Wisconsin laws, like those of other states, already require voters to be U.S. citizens. Election officials in both states already use multiple safeguards to verify eligibility, maintain voter rolls, and investigate potential violations.
The real question is not whether noncitizens should vote. The question is whether this federal bill solves a real election-administration problem in a careful, workable way—or whether it creates new problems for millions of eligible citizens and the local officials who run our elections.
This is where the SAVE America Act falls short.
The legislation would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, along with photo identification to vote. In practice, that means a standard driver’s license would often not be enough. A REAL ID may not be enough either, unless it indicates citizenship. Voters would generally need a passport, passport card, birth certificate paired with photo identification, naturalization papers, or another qualifying document.
That sounds straightforward—until one considers how Americans actually live.
A young voter registering for the first time may not have a passport. A married woman whose legal name no longer matches her birth certificate may need to produce additional documentation. A rural voter may have to travel a long distance to an election office. A low-income worker may struggle to take time off during business hours. A service member stationed away from home may face barriers that civilians never encounter. A citizen who has voted for decades may suddenly need to produce paperwork simply because they moved, changed names, or updated their registration.
These are not theoretical concerns. They are ordinary facts of everyday American life.
Wisconsin already has one of the more stringent voter ID systems in the country. Voters must present an acceptable photo ID when voting, and voters registering in Wisconsin must provide proof of residence. The state’s system is administered locally by municipal clerks who know their communities and are accountable under state law.
Pennsylvania takes a different approach, but it, too, has safeguards. To register in Pennsylvania, a person must be a U.S. citizen, a resident of the commonwealth, and at least 18-years-old by Election Day. The state’s automatic voter registration system at PennDOT is designed so that only applicants whose records document eligibility are presented with voter registration screens, and county election officials review applications before registration is finalized.
Plus, there is another key concern that Republicans should not dismiss. Our Constitution leaves election administration largely to the states, within a framework set by federal law. Wisconsin and Pennsylvania do not run elections the same way. Nor do Arizona, Georgia, Michigan or North Carolina. That diversity is not a defect. It allows states to build systems suited to their laws, populations and traditions while still meeting national constitutional standards. It is crucial that Republicans stand up for states' rights—including now.
In Pennsylvania, a divided government has not prevented election reform. Harrisburg currently has a Democratic House and a Republican Senate, and the legislature has passed bipartisan changes to the election code after extensive input from county governments. That is how election policy should be improved: through state-level experience, local feedback and practical reforms shaped by the officials who actually administer elections.
A rushed federal overhaul would impose one blunt solution on thousands of local jurisdictions. It would also ask election officials—already strained by turnover, threats and public mistrust—to implement complicated new requirements. That is not a recipe for confidence. It is a recipe for confusion.
We understand why many voters worry about election integrity. Through our work with the nonpartisan civic education organization Keep Our Republic in battleground communities, we have heard real skepticism and frustration from citizens, election officials, lawyers and local leaders. Those concerns should be taken seriously. But taking voters seriously does not mean endorsing every bill labeled “election integrity.” Some proposals strengthen trust. Others create confusion, burden eligible voters and weaken the state-based systems that already protect our elections.
Real election integrity requires accuracy. It requires transparency. It requires telling voters what is true even when the truth is less politically useful than the fear.
Noncitizen voting is illegal. When it happens, it is investigated and punished. States should continue strengthening their safeguards. But the evidence does not support the claim that noncitizen voting is occurring at a scale that justifies burdening millions of eligible Americans or overriding state election systems with a sweeping federal mandate.
We believe Republicans can be the party of secure elections, limited federal power, competent administration, and personal responsibility. The SAVE America Act, as written, does not live up to those principles. The American people deserve election laws that make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.
Election confidence is built by facts, transparency, and trustworthy administration—not by panic, paperwork, and political ultimatums.
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