The Trump administration has denied a funding request from the city of Asheville, North Carolina, to help its recovery from Hurricane Helene.
“The Trump administration recently denied a funding request from the city of Asheville, North Carolina, to help its recovery from Hurricane Helene, telling the city it must cut a program meant to aid female and minority contractors.”
www.yahoo.com/news/trump-a… [image or embed] — Jonathan Cohn (@jonathancohn.bsky.social) March 15, 2025 at 6:00 PM
During the presidential campaign, Donald Trump often pointed to the widespread damages inflicted by Helene on North Carolina as a way to denigrate the Biden administration’s recovery efforts. As recently as January, Trump declared he’d be “taking strong action to get North Carolina the support that you need to quickly recover and rebuild.” What Trump didn’t say was “strong action” would have strings attached. More from MSNBC:
On Monday, Trump’s secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Scott Turner, denounced Asheville’s 125-page funding plan because of one line, in a section touting the plan’s benefits for vulnerable populations, that said some of the funds to support small businesses would help the city “prioritize assistance for Minority and Women Owned Businesses (MWBE) within the scoring criteria outlined within the policies and procedures.”
“Once again, let me be clear DEI is dead at HUD,” said Turner in a statement. “We will not provide funding to any program or grantee that does not comply with President Trump’s executive orders.”
Nothing in the funding plan said women- and minority-owned businesses would be the primary beneficiaries of any federal funding Asheville receives. This past Wednesday, Asheville Mayor Ester Manheimer announced the city has now “modified” the funding plan language in hopes of gaining funding approval. So, minority and women owned businesses just lose out because of who they are.
The USDA has notified the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services earlier this month that it would terminate the agreement for the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, which is one of the programs NC food banks participate in.
www.wunc.org/news/2025-03… [image or embed] — WUNC News (@wunc.org) March 14, 2025 at 12:03 PM
In related North Carolina news, Trump’s Department of Agriculture dispatched a letter to the NC state agriculture office that it will no longer receive funding for local food banks. Statewide, that’s a loss of $11 million for needy folks. #SoMuchWinning
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