Definitely not beautiful data visualization on the surface, but the data is extremely meaningful to me and helps me try to make meaning of what's going on in the country. Immigration enforcement has been front and center in the news for so long, and now weather disasters have returned with the tragedies in TX, NM, and other areas. I was curious which area is more of a risk to try to mitigate with federal funding. It was the first time I used ChatGPT to really assist me with exploring data and sources. The data tell a story that supports funding NOAA and FEMA more than immigration enforcement agencies. Is this data what you expected? Is this common knowledge? If so, why are we funding immigration enforcement at a rate 4X that of disaster research, prediction, preparation, and recovery?

Posted by Outside-Abalone-3933

4 comments

  2. It’s really sad that the same people who bang on constantly about migrants being a threat are the same people who constantly and consciously [make the problem worse](https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/trump-one-big-beautiful-bill-act-most-anti-environment-bill-history).

    One of the largest drivers of human migration [is climate change](https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/climate-migration/index.html) and people have been pointing this out for [decades](https://www.unhcr.org/us/news/stories/climate-change-could-become-biggest-driver-displacement-unhcr-chief). Look at this [report from 2010](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-10770674) which found “Climate change ‘will increase Mexico-US migration'”.

    But instead of listen to scientists or even the [US military](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver), Republicans have a long history of opposing any and all policies which promote a clean energy revolution while doubling down on sweetheart deals for the highly destructive fossil fuel industry at the root of this problem.

  3. I think this does a great job of demonstrating how warped our national perception of reality is. Fundamentally, this disconnect between problems and solutions is why I stopped being a conservative as a young adult in 2014-2015. My values didn’t really change I just finally started looking at the data and asking myself “Is this really a problem? Is what my side is proposing actually going to fix this?” The overwhelming amount of people (left and right) just never get past the talking points to ask any questions.

    I don’t know how we get past this. We have all the information to be the most informed voters ever at our fingertips (even more with AI tools!) and it just seems like we are getting more lazy, more partisan, and just plain dumb.

  4. Figure would be better with weather on the left and immigration on the right at the bottom (to match the top 2). Just visually, it looks like the government has started spending more on the bigger problem.

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