A quick summary of the major legislation that passed out of the Texas legislative section related to the Central Texas floods: open.substack.com/pub/andrewru...

Lemme spell it out. Trump's only leverage over Jimmy Kimmel and ABC came from FCC regulation. His direct power over H1-B visas gives him similar leverage over tech, higher ed, and others.

Sourdough post of the week: spelt flour is pretty

Occasional reminder that Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a story about crushing NIMBYs

Does anyone know why preliminary damage assessment reports are no longer available on FEMA's website? Very much hoping this is temporary... www.fema.gov/om/media-col...

Update: Wisconsin receives major disaster declaration - www.wisn.com/article/trum...

A murderer carving Hell Divers memes onto bullets was not on my bingo card for 2025

The world just got infinitely scarier for the foreseeable future.

Does anyone have an up-to-date org chart for FEMA headquarters or know where to find one?

I can always tell when a new iPhone is dropping because my current one starts running out of battery a few hours earlier each day

Colleagues - could similar changes be coming to FEMA and their translation of disaster information? Are they required in statute to translate materials like IA program information into multiple languages, as they currently do after federally declared disasters? www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/u...

The FEMA Act was passed unanimously out of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and will now go to the full house for consideration. transportation.house.gov/news/documen...

@zoeschlanger.bsky.social from the @theatlantic.com with an under appreciated dynamic in the discussions swirling around FEMA reforms - the role of private sector consultants. Read with this gift link:

FEMA Act markup has begun. Going to summarize key points here: Chairman Graves is opening with comments on his pride in the bill, highlighting the bipartisanship of the bill, and outreach to the emergency management stakeholder community. Ranking member Larsen follows with similar remarks.

Celebrate markup day by reading about the hazard mitigation reforms in the FEMA Act: andrewrumbach.substack.com/p/read-with-...

🚨House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee set to markup the FEMA Act tomorrow transportation.house.gov/calendar/eve...

USA Today poll finds broad support for FEMA across political lines: www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...

Been slacking on sourdough posts:

The benefits of living in DC: I’m pretty sure I’ve run more miles this year than driven.

The Milwaukee floods have the hallmarks of a low-attention disaster...$75 million in damages and 1,500 homes damaged or destroyed, and virtually no public awareness outside of Wisconsin. I spoke with Adam Rife about what is next after the governor's request: www.cbs58.com/news/evers-r...

The Gulf Coast's future with disasters will be more challenging because of climate change. When we look at FEMA's Future Risk Index and measure the share of state population living in the top 10% of the most at-risk counties nationally, we see all Gulf States in the top 10:

My @urbaninstitute.bsky.social colleague @sara-mctarnaghan.bsky.social spoke to @npr.org's Marketplace about the importance - and fate - of hazard mitigation funding: www.marketplace.org/story/2025/0...

When we think of disasters in the Gulf we often think of places like New Orleans and Houston...but the data shows how per-capita damages are often worst in smaller places like Refugio County, Texas ($92k damage per capita from 2005-2024) or Harrison County, Mississippi ($65k).

If you are only going to watch 5 documentaries about Hurricane Katrina this week, here are my recommendations: andrewrumbach.substack.com/p/five-essen...

Hivemind: any recommendations for researchers who study the impact of disasters on educational attainment and workforce development?

Montana is a looker

Disasters have cumulative impacts that are often greater than the sum of the individual events. In the Gulf States, EVERY county has had at least 3 federally declared disasters since Hurricane Katrina, and some have had upwards of 20.

I just ate half a pint of mango sticky rice ice cream before noon how’s your day going

Further coverage of Kilohana, an experiment in transitional housing in Maui after the wildfires. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/a...

Petition for Microsoft Word to automatically update the page numbers to the same font as the main body text.

Here is how an RV park ends up in a floodway. Terrific investigative reporting from the @washingtonpost.com: www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...

I'll be speaking next month at Princeton about think tanks, the value of disaster research, and the future of FEMA in the 2nd Trump Administration: spia.princeton.edu/events/c-pre...

The FEMA Act of 2025 authorizes the agency to do permanent repairs of housing, among many other important changes to the IA program. My summary here: andrewrumbach.substack.com/p/read-with-...

Apropos of nothing, @andrewrumbach.bsky.social and some folks at the Urban Institute have a tool that lets you look at the context of disaster cost and risk on the Gulf Coast on the 20th anniversary of Katrina. Suffice to say, it's not exactly lollipops and rainbows. www.urban.org/stories/disa...

There are so many important Individual Assistance reforms proposed in the FEMA Act of 2025. I try and summarize them here: andrewrumbach.substack.com/p/read-with-...

@urbaninstitute.bsky.social expert Samanths Batko on what the president can do to end homelessness www.urban.org/urban-wire/n...

Phil Knight, a co-founder of Nike, and his wife, Penny Knight, will give $2 billion to the cancer research center at Oregon Health & Science University, a gift the institution billed as the largest single donation to a university in the U.S.

This is one of the most intriguing maps from our Katrina+20 feature, highlighting the counties where the highest levels of social vulnerability and disaster damage intersect. This band of counties are not the places in the headlines, and not where the majority of funding flows.

The academic urge to create more and more unnecessary journals, further digging the hole of overproduction and under delivery of meaningful science

🚨New data-rich resource from our team at @urbaninstitute.bsky.social looks at the last 20 years of disasters and recovery across the Gulf Coast - from impacts, recovery $$, mitigation to future projected losses from climate change. www.urban.org/stories/disa...

Another day, another major news outlet publishing First Street criticism of FEMA whole cloth and without mentioning they are in the business of selling an alternative... www.nbcnews.com/science/envi...

To mark the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina our team is sharing a new data resource to support your analysis, advocacy & storytelling. It includes 30+ visualizations of disasters federal spending in the Gulf since Katrina and datasets at the county level: www.urban.org/stories/disa...

Fascinating report and timing. High-level take: -Love the intent and focus -Many details are wrong or inaccurately understood, thus probably why EPA, FEMA & USDA objected or abstained -We are going the exact wrong direction on advancing recommendations in this space. www.gao.gov/products/gao...

New GAO report on how FEMA, EPA and USDA programs help communities to protect their water and wastewater systems from disasters, with recommendations to the agencies: www.gao.gov/products/gao...

Already seeing hallucinated references in peer-reviewed papers with otherwise good quality, i.e. researchers using AI for literature review portions. Add it to the already massive pile of problems with our publishing norms.

Would any of my generous colleagues have access to Natural Hazards and be willing to send me a PDF?

Besides the headline issue of the delay in approving grants, this article describes a core challenge re: FEMA - the crushing amount of work needed for reimbursement for post-disaster work, and the toll that takes on (often small) local governments www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

Sourdough post of the week: working on pizza crust