Under the Biden administration, Fox used extreme weather and climate-fueled events including the L.A. wildfires in 2025, Hurricane Helene in 2024, and the Lahaina, Hawaii, wildfires in 2023 to attack the administration’s (or, in some instances, blue states’) climate change policies and disaster response. In the case of the L.A. wildfires, Fox News and right-wing media personalities also blamed diversity, equity, and inclusion and state water policies that had no relation to the city's ability to contain the fires. 

Here are some examples of Fox News coverage of extreme weather events during the Biden administration:

• On Hannity, former Fox News contributor Leo Terrell attacked “DEI nonsense that that LA Fire Department chief supports,” and he baselessly claimed that the LAFD has “no intention of putting out these fires.” [Fox News, Hannity, 1/8/25]

• Fox’s Laura Ingraham claimed that Trump is the real leader for going to Georgia while Biden and Harris managed the crisis from afar. She said: “Harris couldn't give up a day on the trail to pretend to care. Yet hours after Trump showed up with truckloads of supplies, speaking to first responders and volunteers, Kamala showed up at work. … Of course, the government should be mobilized to help. But that does not change the fact that Biden and Kamala Harris were not at the White House driving our federal preparedness.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 9/30/24]  

• Fox’s Sean Hannity praised Trump for going to Georgia while criticizing Biden and Harris for not being in the disaster zone. He said, “This is by every measure a national emergency and today Donald Trump, he flew to Valdosta, Georgia, to witness the devastation up front and personal and firsthand and meet with disaster relief specialists from Franklin Graham himself and Samaritan’s Purse. … Noticeably missing on the ground, the current president, Joe Biden, vice president, Kamala Harris." [Fox News, Hannity, 9/30/24]

• Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany said Biden gave a delayed and insufficient response to the Hawaii wildfires. “We're now learning President Biden is finally going to address the tragic and deadly wildfire in Hawaii. It happened about a week ago. There are discussions underway at the White House about Biden making a visit to Maui. So why now? He was silent when we learned 99 people were confirmed dead. He was silent when we saw these devastating images of heartbreak and loss. And he wouldn't even say one word to the victims when a reporter confronted him. So why now, Mr. President?” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 8/15/23]

• Appearing on The Ingraham Angle, conservative commentator Victor Davis Hanson lambasted Biden's response to the Hawaii wildfires and insisted he doesn’t care about wildfire victims. Hanson said: “Joe Biden is the president of the United States. He should get off the beach. He should fly out to Maui. He should have C-17s coming in every hour with a big airlift and treat these people much like they are American citizens. … And this is just shocking that he’s going to go from, as I said, from one vacation to another and from one beachside to a lakeside, while people in Maui have no beach. They’re destroyed. Their lives are destroyed. And he doesn't seem to care.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/14/23]

• During coverage of Hurricane Ian in 2022, Fox host Jesse Watters mocked Biden's disaster response. Watters said, “Maybe the reason Joe isn't talking with the leader of the state that's about to be devastated by this natural disaster is because he's already got the whole thing covered with the Inflation Reduction Act. Sen. Amy Klobuchar laid it out for us clearly. There's no need to worry, people, because the Inflation Reduction Act and voting for Democrats is going to stop hurricanes.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 9/27/22]

• After dozens of deadly tornadoes ripped through six states in 2021, anchor Harris Faulkner took specific aim at Biden and Deanne Criswell, then-administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for raising the specter of climate change so soon after the tragedy. (Criswell had told CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union, “This is going to be our new normal.”) Faulkner suggested Criswell’s comments showed FEMA’s approach was “blame before we save.” [Media Matters, 12/15/21; Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 12/13/21]

• Fox News host Sean Hannity said of Hurricane Ida, “The left is blaming climate change for the heavy rainfall, severe weather and using it as another pretext to push their Green New Deal socialist agenda.” [Fox News, Hannity, 9/2/21]

This spring's extreme weather, including record tornado activity, has impacted a number of states, including Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee and Texas, and resulted in dozens of  fatalities and billions of dollars in damages. Impacted states received initial federal assistance that allows FEMA to help coordinate immediate needs like evacuation, shelter, and other resources. But governors also made multiple requests for declarations of major disasters from the Trump administration to unlock more assistance and resources for the overburdened states. Much of this aid was slow in coming, with approval sometimes delayed by over two months.

In mid-March, a violent tornado outbreak across multiple states in the Midwest and South killed at least 40 people. Among the hardest-hit states were Arkansas, Missouri, and Mississippi. 

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders applied for major disaster relief on March 21. According to Snopes, the former Trump White House press secretary sent at least two more requests and a letter on April 18 after relief for Arkansas was denied “appealing FEMA's denial for relief funds for the damage caused by tornadoes on March 14 and 15.” According to Rolling Stone, “the declaration was finally issued on May 13, almost exactly two months after the storms hit the state, and a month after Huckabee wrote to the president.” The governor's office stated that the president approved the relief after a direct call with Huckabee Sanders.

Notably, Sanders appeared on Fox News’ The Faulkner Focus on April 3 to discuss damage to the state and recovery efforts but did not mention her request to Trump or the lack of federal assistance. Host Harris Faulkner offered prayers to the region and asked, “Is there anything you’d like to tell people at this point? How can we help?” Huckabee Sanders requested prayers and urged people in the state to follow the direction of local officials.

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe requested FEMA assistance for 23 counties on March 18. Then  Missouri was battered by more storms and tornados in April and May. During a hearing on May 20, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) confronted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about the three pending federal disaster declaration requests for the state of Missouri and told her, “We are desperate for assistance in Missouri.” That assistance ultimately came three days later. Neither the delay in response on part of the Trump administration nor Hawley’s direct plea to Noem has been mentioned in Fox’s coverage of Missouri extreme weather, including the storm in May that claimed seven lives. 

In Mississippi, nearly 20 tornadoes left seven people dead and hundreds of destroyed or damaged homes. Gov. Tate Reeves requested federal support on April 1. More than two months later, Mississippi stopped recovery efforts while still waiting for federal assistance. From The Associated Press:

Another wave of severe weather hit southern Texas on March 28, dumping over a half-year’s worth of rain and causing at least four deaths and forcing at least 100 water rescues near the U.S.-Mexico border. In response, both Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. John Cornyn called on “the president to provide federal disaster relief funding for those affected by the flooding.” 

Beginning April 2, severe storms and tornadoes swept through several states including Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee. On April 22, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee formally requested a major disaster declaration to make federal assistance available for counties affected by severe weather and flooding. 

On May 16,  severe storms swept through parts of the Midwest and South, killing more than two dozen people and battering many of the states still recovering from storms in March and April. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear requested FEMA assistance for multiple counties after the May tornadoes, which the government fulfilled.

On May 23, the Chicago Tribune reported that Trump “green-lit disaster relief for eight states on Friday, assistance that some of the communities rocked by natural disasters have been waiting on for months.” Those states were  Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas. The report also noted that  “FEMA did not immediately respond to questions about what prompted the flurry of approvals.” It appears that the Tennessee request is still pending a response. 

Trump’s FEMA has also denied federal assistance for flooding in West Virginia and damage from a bomb cyclone in Washington state and refused North Carolina’s request for extended recovery assistance in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

Ten of Fox’s 110 segments on extreme weather events mentioned that Trump had approved initial emergency assistance for some states — but not that many of the impacted states were asking Trump to declare a major disaster declaration. Such a declaration “unlocks federal resources and financial aid for long-term recovery efforts, including rebuilding infrastructure and providing individual assistance to residents.” The majority of these mentions were made by correspondents covering the disasters on the ground. 

Only 3 of Fox’s hosts or anchors engaged with the issue of federal response during these segments. 

A question from Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich on The Big Weekend Show on April 6 during coverage of storm and tornado outbreaks across Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee that claimed at least 16 lives is an example of the wildly different tone the network set on federal response during these events as compared to its approach during Hurricane Helene, when Fox News and other right-wing media outlets and personalities demanded that the federal government was not doing enough.  Pavlich specifically was called out for pushing the narrative that FEMA was not only abandoning hurricane survivors but actively turning away some of those seeking help.

None of Fox News’ segments covering extreme weather events between March 18 and May 27 included any mention of the administration’s vow to eliminate FEMA or any of the recent actions that bring into question the agency’s ability to respond to disasters under Trump. Here are some details on those statements and actions:

• Trump's executive order telling state and local governments to “play a more active and significant role” in disaster management, and his comments about possibly getting rid of FEMA, have  raised significant concerns among emergency management experts. Smaller and poorer states — particularly red states — often lack the resources  to manage large-scale disasters independently. Emergency management professionals warn that such a shift could leave many communities vulnerable during major disasters, as state resources may become quickly overwhelmed. [NPR, 3/21/25; The Guardian, 1/23/25] 

• Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noam informed Trump during a Cabinet meeting that the department would move to “eliminate” FEMA. [Semafor, 3/24/25]

• FEMA has already laid off 20% of its staff, and the head of FEMA, Cameron Hamilton, was fired on May 8. According to Politico, “The firing occurred a day after Hamilton testified before a House Appropriations subcommittee, where he seemed to contradict recent comments made by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about potentially eliminating FEMA.” Hamilton has been replaced by a Trump official with seemingly no disaster-response experience while “roughly 1,000 workers" are leaving the agency, including “FEMA leaders responsible for response plans, operations and disaster recovery.” [Politico, 5/8/25; CNN, 4/23/25]

• According to an internal document obtained by CNN, “FEMA is not ready” for hurricane season. “As FEMA transforms to a smaller footprint, the intent for this hurricane season is not well understood,” the document states. “Thus FEMA is not ready.” According to the internal assessment, preparations for hurricane season have been “derailed” and issues abound at the agency, “including a general uncertainty around its mission, lack of coordination with states and other federal agencies, low morale and new red tape that will likely slow responses.” [CNN, 5/15/25]

• An increase in extreme weather disasters is already taxing FEMA’s workforce, and the agency could run out of money as soon as July. As reported by the Los Angeles Times, “A 2024 report from the independent Government Accountability Office found that mounting disasters have ‘stretched FEMA’s workforce in unprecedented ways.’ The number of disasters the agency manages at the peak of hurricane season has more than doubled over the last seven years, from 30 in 2016 to 71 in 2023, the report says.” [Los Angeles Times, 5/14/25]

Media Matters searched transcripts in the Snapstream video database for all original programming on Fox News Channel for any of the terms “tornado,” “storm,” “FEMA,” “disaster,” “Federal Emergency Management Agency,” “flood,” “fire,” “wildfire,” “wild fire,” “debris,” “outage,” “hail,” or “wind” within close proximity of any of the terms “Mississippi,” “Arkansas,” “Missouri,” “Kentucky,” “Georgia,” “Alabama,” “Oklahoma,” “Ohio,” “Tennessee,” “Kansas,” “Texas,” “Virginia,” “Wisconsin,” “Midwest,” or “South” from March 18, 2025, when governors in affected states first requested assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, through May 27, 2025.

We included segments, which we defined as instances when recent extreme weather events were the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of recent extreme weather events. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a segment on another topic discussed recent extreme weather events with one another.

We did not include mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned recent extreme weather events without another speaker engaging with the comment, or teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about recent extreme weather events scheduled to air later in the broadcast.

We did not include weather reports, which we defined as instances when the extreme weather event or forecasted event was mentioned in a weather report by a meteorologist in front of a green screen.

We then reviewed the identified segments to determine whether any speaker mentioned that the impacted state had requested assistance from the FEMA or whether any speaker mentioned that the impacted state had been denied federal assistance or was still waiting on a response from the federal government. We also reviewed segments to determine whether context about the current state of FEMA or the administration’s vow to eliminate the agency was included.