A federal judge has ruled that the Trump Administration unlawfully ended a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) program designed to help states prepare for and mitigate the effects of natural disasters.

Twenty state attorneys-general, including Maine attorney-general Aaron Frey, had sued the Trump Administration in July over canceling FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program. The BRIC grant program was established after Hurricane Katrina to give states funding to proactively prepare for disasters, like building floodwalls, evacuation shelters, and fire prevention.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency had announced in April it would end the BRIC program, calling it ineffective, wasteful and politicized.

A 2019 FEMA study had found that for every $1

See Full Page