Well, they can do things that normally US americans never do: look at what other countries do.

High tides aren't new, and there are areas in the world that battle them since decades. E.g. at the north sea in Germany.

The the governments gave money to their universities and they made studies: how would a high tide impact the area? Some of the impact was obvious, since there have been disastrous floods. But some are not, e.g. of the economical impact. And then they again put money into universities, to let them study hydrology and water-related civil engineering to a much higher degree.

And so we got more modern versions of dams, the harbours and naval bases were protected. Even the rivers were protected, since a high tide travels upwards the river. See for example the https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidersperrwerk (sorry, didn't find an english version -> look at the pictures, learn a foreign language, use LLM translation)

But ... all of this is weak compared what the Dutch did regarding hydrology. They not only made protection buildings, but they also made buildings to convert ex-ocean into arable and livable lands. One large example is e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Works

So if you look for people that are good at studying the impact of floods (civil and economically) and that are good at doing anything against ... there are possibilities.

You must however tame your ICE. No dutch engineer is willing to work in the USA if the ICE puts him randomly in deportation camps, like they even did for a Swiss journalist of a conservative (!) outlet.

Allocate money is the first step.

But this isn't Florida; California is an enemy state, so that won't happen.