St. Louis’s tornado was months ago, but it’s still waiting for hundreds of millions in federal recovery funds to arrive. It’s part of Trump’s plan to shift responsibility to the states and shrink the agency.
ST. LOUIS—Minutes after a mile-wide tornado struck this city on an otherwise beautiful day this spring, Ali Rand heard her husband shout as he surveyed the devastation surrounding their tony neighborhood of historical homes. “Everything is gone,” Rand, 38, remembers him saying.
The tornado, packing winds of 152 miles an hour, hit the city with blunt force, killing five people. In the weeks following the storm, Rand and other private citizens mobilized teams of residents whose neighborhoods had been destroyed to clean up debris, remove fallen trees and rebuild shattered homes.
Largely missing from the recovery efforts, according to Rand, city officials and other residents: the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“I’ve never seen someone from FEMA out on the streets,” Rand said.
That is by design.
The Wall Street Journal
By Scott Patterson and
Tarini Parti
Sept. 28, 2025 9:00 pm ET