Flooding on Chicago’s Southwest Side is nothing new, but Ald. Marty Quinn was shocked by the damage last July’s storms caused.

The July 25 deluge dumped 3.25 inches of rain on Midway Airport in one day, with some areas of the city receiving 5 to 6 inches. The downpour quickly overwhelmed the city’s sewer system, and even the regional network of deep tunnels and reservoirs couldn’t keep up.

“All along 59th Street, the power of the water was popping off manhole covers in the middle of the street,” the 13th Ward alderman said. The flooding even dislodged two sewer covers over deep shafts that were so big it took a city crew with a backhoe to reset them. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

More than 4,200 Chicago residents called 311 to report basement floods. When the sewers filled, water mixed with raw sewage and the toxic mixture backed up into people’s homes, destroying floors, walls and appliances and leaving behind mold, foundation damage and destroyed vehicles. Many had to leave their homes or stay home from work. Most lacked insurance to cover the costs, officials later said.

The storms hit the south suburbs and broader Illinois hard, too, with state officials tallying nearly 5,000 structures affected. The state of Illinois put the average household damage at $16,784 and asked Washington for federal disaster relief.

But President Donald Trump said no.

In fact, on the same day, Trump said no twice, denying Illinois’ request for the July storms and rejecting a second request for August storms that hit many of the same areas and caused even greater damage.

Now, following a week in which high winds and rain again battered the Chicago area, another storm season is underway. Trump’s rejections cast a long shadow — not just over Illinois but over the entire federal disaster-response system — which critics say the president has bent to serve political ends.

“The federal government’s decision was devastating,” Quinn said. “We’ve been targeted on many fronts by the current president of the United States. … We just continue to plow forward on behalf of the residents. We can’t get caught up with that on the local level.”

The skepticism isn’t limited to Chicago. When a tornado tore through the Kankakee area in March, damaging about 500 structures, including schools, a courthouse and a medical center, Gov. JB Pritzker chose not to pursue a presidential disaster declaration, even though he had previously signaled his intention to seek “federal resources.”

State and county officials ultimately concluded the damage had a “low likelihood of meeting (Federal Emergency Management Agency) thresholds as we’ve previously understood them,” according to a Pritzker spokesperson, and the state instead sought Small Business Administration loans for affected residents.

It was a notable development given that the Democratic governor just months earlier had accused Trump of making “a politically motivated decision that punishes thousands of Illinois families in a critical moment of need” when the president denied the August aid request.

“Playing politics with disaster relief funding is a new low, even for the Trump administration,” Pritzker said in February, after Trump rejected an appeal for help with the August storms. “Ignoring the realities of widespread damage speaks volumes about the federal government’s vindictive priorities and complete disregard for American livelihoods.”

FEMA, which oversees the federal disaster response, disputed that politics played a role in denials.

“Any suggestion that disaster decisions are politically motivated does not reflect how this process works or how FEMA carries out its mission,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “FEMA continues to process federal declaration requests and deliver assistance promptly, supporting state and local governments to invest in their own resilience before disaster strikes.”

‘Incredibly concerning’

But Illinois is hardly alone in questioning the process, and the pattern of who gets help and who doesn’t has drawn growing scrutiny nationwide.

Trump denied both of Illinois’ requests on Oct. 22, in the middle of the federal law enforcement incursion known as Operation Midway Blitz and just weeks after Trump said Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson “should be in jail for failing to protect” ICE officers.

“Illinois is the poster child of this,” said Kenny Stancil, deputy research director at the Revolving Door Project, a left-leaning watchdog group. “Previous administrations didn’t use the disaster declaration process to settle partisan scores or punish perceived enemies for alleged disloyalty.”

An analysis by Politico/E&E News in March found that Trump approved just 23% of disaster funding requests from solidly blue states — defined as having both a Democratic governor and two Democratic U.S. senators. By comparison, Trump approved requests from solidly red states 89% of the time.

What’s more, Trump took an average of 80 days to decide on requests from solidly Democratic states, which is more than twice as long as he took for solidly Republican states, according to the analysis.

Trump has rejected declarations from Colorado and Maryland, both states with Democratic governors who supported Harris. He also rejected requests from Arizona and Michigan, which backed him in 2024 but have Democratic governors. And Trump denied an aid request from New Hampshire, a Harris state with a Republican governor.

Republican-led states have not been completely immune.

Trump initially denied relief to Arkansas after tornadoes in March 2025, then reversed course following a phone call with Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, his former White House press secretary. Trump turned down Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia’s request to extend Hurricane Helene aid to local governments — a decision that came after Trump and Kemp clashed over the president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. And Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, said Trump had promised the federal government would cover 100% of recovery costs from October storms, only for the administration to later offer 75%; Dunleavy is now appealing for a 90-10 split.

“It really seems to be dependent on the president’s mood towards your governor, for the most part, or maybe members of your congressional delegation, and not the actual suffering on the ground or the need,” said Zoe Middleton, a climate policy expert from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The spokesperson from FEMA noted that the second Trump administration has approved declarations for California, Maryland, Texas, Virginia, Oregon, Hawaii, Washington, D.C., and Louisiana, and said the total number of state requests dropped from 135 in 2024 to 75 in 2025.

“The lower number of declarations reflects fewer incidents, not a change in FEMA’s commitment to supporting communities,” the spokesperson said.

“It’s incredibly concerning when you see any disaster declaration denied,” said Shana Udvardy, another Union of Concerned Scientists climate policy expert, because a denial means a governor has determined their state lacks the capacity to fully respond on its own. “To see the president snub states on a very confusing and illegible basis is really worrying.”

“In disaster response, everything falls apart,” Middleton added. “What you need is an effective, reliable system. If the very first part of that system is suddenly capricious or volatile, that does not help state and local governments respond effectively and it doesn’t help disaster survivors get on what is a very, very long road to recovery.”

Numbers on the ground

Federal disaster aid for individuals is a “financial lifeline” for storm victims, Middleton said — not a full reimbursement, but enough to help people get back on their feet. It can cover repairs, hotel stays, meals and laundry for those displaced from their homes, and it can help people make ends meet if they lost income while dealing with the aftermath.

Illinois’ requests seemed to meet the numbers, although no strict threshold is laid out in law. FEMA and Illinois officials estimated damage from the August storms at more than $88 million and from the July storms at more than $54 million. The state reported a damage-to-wealth ratio of 75.2 for the August storms — among the highest in the past two decades — and 46.1 for the July storms. According to the Politico/E&E News analysis, no state had previously been denied when that ratio reached at least 12.5.

In a letter to Trump, Pritzker estimated that more than 8,100 households needed federal help from the August storms, with average payouts of $4,000 to $4,500, and that 4,900 households suffered significant damage from the July storms, with average payouts of $3,800 to $4,200.

Although Trump rejected those applications, the Small Business Administration declared disasters for both storm systems without requiring presidential approval. That opened access to low-interest loans for homeowners, businesses and nonprofits but not grants for personal expenses like temporary housing.

Relatively few Illinois residents have sought that help. In Cook County, where the bulk of the damage was concentrated, only about 450 people had applied for SBA loans as of late May, resulting in $837,000 in assistance.

“This is (a) significantly lower turnout than what we would likely have seen had we been approved for disaster declaration assistance from the federal government,” said Kaila Lariviere, the associate director of emergency response and recovery operations for Cook County Emergency Management and Regional Security.

State lawmakers responded by unanimously approving a bill during the recently completed legislative session allowing flood-stricken residents to receive rebates of up to $1,000 through the Southwest Home Equity Assurance Program, an initiative originally designed to protect homeowners from declining property values. That bill is on Pritzker’s desk.

“The federal government turned their back on us, but we still have a responsibility to do what we can to try to provide some relief to our voters who really got blindsided by the flood,” said Quinn, the Chicago alderman.

The Kankakee decision reflected the same grim considerations, with the governor’s office noting that the criteria for getting federal approval for individual assistance are “ambiguous.” The Pritzker spokesperson said a “joint decision” with county officials was made to pursue SBA loans rather than a presidential declaration after reviewing the damage and assessing insurance coverage.

The same storm system moved through Indiana, where Republican Gov. Mike Braun also declined to seek a presidential declaration, saying local and state emergency response efforts had been sufficient. Unlike Illinois, Indiana has a state disaster relief fund for storm victims.

A Pritzker spokesperson said the governor “remains undeterred by previous denials when a new request is appropriate” and “will always fight for all available and appropriate federal disaster resources needed most by our communities.”

FEMA’S future

While they worry about tornadoes and flooding, state and local leaders also have to keep track of changes afoot in Washington that could permanently shrink the federal role in disaster response.

Those possibilities range from eliminating FEMA altogether to raising the thresholds states must meet to get federal help. Trump has already slashed the FEMA workforce by 20% during his second term and kept top positions at the agency — including the administrator overseeing the region Illinois is part of — vacant.

Trump recently announced that he would nominate Cameron Hamilton to lead FEMA, which hasn’t had a Senate-confirmed leader since Trump returned to the White House last year.

Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL, led FEMA on a temporary basis last year but lost the job after he told Congress he did not believe FEMA should be eliminated, a goal that Trump has sometimes signaled support for.

Markwayne Mullin, a former U.S. senator from Oklahoma, took over as homeland security secretary in March after Trump removed Kristi Noem. FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Mullin won early praise for speeding up FEMA relief payments to states, which Noem had slowed by requiring her personal sign-off on expenditures exceeding $100,000.

Last month, the Trump-appointed FEMA Review Council released a long-awaited report for overhauling the agency. Its central argument: Americans rely too heavily on Washington when calamity strikes.

“As it stands today, most of the public’s first instinct during a major natural disaster is to rely on or expect the federal government to complete a whole-of-government national response irrespective of whether that incident necessitates any federal response,” the Trump-appointed panel wrote. Allowing state and local governments to “manage the mitigation, response and recovery of disasters effectively returns the federal role from leading to supporting,” they added.

By the administration’s own estimates, the proposed changes would result in 16 fewer major declarations per year and roughly $113 million less in annual funding. Its analysis found 29% of disasters declared between 2012 and 2025 would not have met the proposed new threshold.

“Not every state is created equal. Not every state is like Texas or Florida when it comes to their emergency management department or agency,” said Udvardy. “You’re going to expect these communities to just staff up and provide the resources and do what FEMA does? It’s just a lack of reality.”

Pritzker also pushed back on the recommendations.

“The recent recommendations from the FEMA Review Council suggest fewer federal assets on the ground following a disaster and an increased need for self-reliance in areas like training delivery and management of community service programs,” his spokesperson wrote. “Such an approach would only further exacerbate the need for federal support to help the state effectively manage these responsibilities.”