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CLIMATEWIRE | The Trump administration is canceling a popular grant program that has given states and communities billions of dollars to protect against natural disasters, according to an internal document obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News.

Federal Emergency Management Agency acting Administrator Cameron Hamilton wrote in a memo Thursday that the agency will not allocate the $750 million that was planned this year for Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grants. The BRIC program funds local projects that reduce damage from flooding, tornadoes, and other weather-related events.

FEMA also will stop funding projects that were previously approved for BRIC grants and are still underway, Hamilton wrote.

The cancellation is the Trump administration’s latest blow to FEMA, which provides tens of billions of dollars a year in disaster aid and grants. The administration has also frozen $10 billion in disaster aid for nonprofits, including hospitals, as it scrutinizes FEMA programs for potentially helping undocumented migrants.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has floated shrinking or dissolving the agency, saying in March, “We’re going to eliminate FEMA.”

Although the agency has faced criticism — notably from President Donald Trump — for its response to major disasters, BRIC drew wide praise as an effort to make communities better able to withstand natural disasters and climate impacts.

BRIC has distributed $5 billion in grants since it began in 2020 during the first Trump administration, FEMA records show. The grants typically pay 75 percent of a project’s cost and have given some projects as much as $50 million.

The program was so popular that FEMA had to reject nearly 2,000 applicants seeking $13 billion in BRIC grants. The agency itself touts BRIC for helping states, localities, and native tribes “reduce their hazard risk” and “build capacity and capability.”

But Hamilton wrote Thursday that “BRIC grants have not increased the level of hazard mitigation as much as desired, and may supplant state, local, tribal and territorial capital investment planning.”

“With that in mind, I am providing new direction for the BRIC Program,” Hamilton added in his two-page memo.

Former senior FEMA officials expressed concern over the decision to stop releasing previously approved BRIC grant money.

“All of those things that were selected but had not begun will get canceled,” said one former senior official who asked not to be named to avoid alienating FEMA. The cancellation could apply to entire projects or to the second half of a project that is halfway completed.

“That will crush projects that are underway,” a second former senior FEMA official said.

Although BRIC is supported by Congress and coveted by states, the program has become a target of the Trump administration because of its focus during the Biden administration on addressing climate change and promoting equity.

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