Is FEMA withholding aid to victims? Over the last few days, Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump has claimed in campaign rallies that the current administration is intentionally withholding aid to victims of Hurricane Helene, which destroyed vast swaths of the Gulf as well as eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.
"The Harris-Biden administration says they don't have any money [for hurricane relief].…They spent it all on illegal migrants," Trump added. "They stole the FEMA money just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them." He also implied that the current administration is withholding money from red states.
The former president alleged that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had run out of money because so much of the funding had gone toward the needs of illegal immigrants who had recently crossed into this country. He also drew a contrast between the money offered to people whose homes had been destroyed and the amount of federal funding given to people in humanitarian crises abroad.
"They're offering them $750 to people whose homes have been washed away," Trump said Saturday at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. "And yet we send tens of billions of dollars to foreign countries that most people have never heard of. They're offering them $750. They've been destroyed. These people have been destroyed."
"FEMA has run out of money for the rest of hurricane season because Kamala Harris used the funds for free giveaways to illegal immigrants," Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign's press secretary, told Newsweek, sticking with the Trump line. "This is inexcusable and yet another example of Kamala Harris putting Americans LAST!"
"There's a lot of mis- and disinformation being pushed out there by the former president about what is available, particularly to the survivors of Helene," said Vice President Kamala Harris, Democratic contender for president, to reporters yesterday. "It's extraordinarily irresponsible. It's about him. It's not about you."
A few things: FEMA has not run out of money, but the agency is facing a wild staffing shortage and being battered by an extremely intense hurricane season that does not appear to be letting up. And Trump is, predictably, wrong about the FEMA/illegal immigrants claim, but that doesn't mean the federal government is shelling out obscene amounts of money to pay for those who've crossed into the country illegally.
Trump is probably referring to the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), which gives grants to nonprofits as well as state and local governments to take care of immigrants who have come here illegally; the funds for that program are distributed by FEMA but they don't come from its budget—they come from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection budget. "Congress boosted the budget from $360 million in fiscal year 2023 to $650 million in fiscal year 2024," reports The Washington Post. "The program's 2023 annual report says it provides shelter, such as hotel/motel services, food and transportation, including plane tickets up to $700 a person." (Even if that $650 million were being borrowed from the FEMA budget, it would be a minuscule drop in the budget since we have $35 billion allocated toward disaster relief each year.)
As for the $750 per person dollar amount, Trump was referring to FEMA's Serious Needs Assistance—"an upfront, flexible payment to help cover essential items like food, water, baby formula, breastfeeding supplies, medication and other emergency supplies," per the agency's website. "There are other forms of assistance that you may qualify for to receive and Serious Needs Assistance is an initial payment you may receive while FEMA assesses your eligibility for additional funds." So it's not that disaster victims are left high and dry because, say, the U.S. government is too busy funding the war effort in Ukraine or development assistance in Somalia; people whose homes were in the hurricane's path will get additional payments later on, beyond the $750.
Is FEMA screwed, though? Hurricane Milton is currently barreling toward Florida, forcing another round of evacuations while many are still recovering from Hurricane Helene. Last night it was looking like Milton might possibly become a Category 6, though it's now looking more like a Category 4 storm; since it hasn't made landfall yet, we're not totally sure what it will do. Regardless, its path is not too different from Hurricane Helene's, which made landfall about two weeks ago and has caused horrific destruction (at least $250 billion dollars' worth) and more than 200 deaths, with many people still unaccounted for.
"This could result in a significant strain on FEMA's resources," Daniel Kaniewski, a former deputy administrator at the U.S. disaster response agency, tells Bloomberg. "A major hurricane hitting a highly populated area would certainly be a worst case."
Tampa, where Milton is expected to hit, has 3.2 million residents. Damage might be quite severe. FEMA is stretched thin because of wildfires, flooding, and other hurricanes so far this season, and it projects a $3 billion deficit by February. In fact, just 9 percent of the agency's personnel (1,217 people) were available to respond to the hurricane or other disasters right now; compare this with the agency's staff reserves at this point in October in 2017 (the busiest hurricane year in the past decade, with Hurricanes Maria and Harvey hitting Puerto Rico and Houston), when 19 percent of FEMA's staff was on deck.
In the past two weeks alone, FEMA's staff has also "respond[ed] to flooding and landslides in Vermont, tornadoes in Kansas, the aftermath of Tropical Storm Debby in New York and Georgia and the Watch Fire in Arizona," reports The New York Times. "In a report last year, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that 35 percent of FEMA's positions were unfilled, partly because of 'rising disaster activity during the year, which increased burnout and employee attrition.'" Of course, agencies always have an incentive to engage in some handwringing about how they need more money; the more they convince the public of this—and, more importantly, Congress—the higher the likelihood they'll get more when it's appropriations time.
An inconvenient truth: The cherry on top of this whole thing is that the Trump administration in 2019, during peak hurricane season, pulled $271 million from Department of Homeland Security programs—with $155 million coming from FEMA's disaster fund—to pay for "immigration detention space and temporary hearing locations for asylum seekers who had been forced to wait in Mexico," per The Washington Post. "The monthly reports issued by the FEMA disaster fund show $38 million was plucked and given to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in August that year—just before the prime storm period of September and October."
Of course, trying to scale up capacity to process ever-larger numbers of asylum hearings arguably makes more sense than paying up to $700(!) per migrant plane ticket. That money has to come from somewhere. But Trump should not claim his opponents are misdirecting FEMA funds or abandoning Americans during their hour of need when that isn't the case.
Scenes from New York: New Jersey's government has been shelling out to market the state to European tourists, which is kind of a hilarious (read: disturbing) use of taxpayer dollars.
QUICK HITS
- How disaster relief is actually going in Asheville, North Carolina, from Kevin D. Williamson.
- Inside the minds of Nevada's double-hater voters.
- Interesting observations (from 2018, but enjoying a resurgence due to Marginal Revolution) on Deng Xiaoping vs. Xi Jinping, from one of China's art museums:
I went to China's national museum of art today & saw something interesting. At the exhibit for the 40th anniversary of reform & opening, Deng Xiaoping was hardly to be seen. Xi Jinping — and his father — stole the show. (1/ ) pic.twitter.com/qNi51R8SPN
— Benjamin Carlson (@bfcarlson) August 7, 2018
- "If Israel does attack Iran's oil production, the ramifications of that alone would be minimal for the global economy, analysts say," per The New York Times. "Iran is a major oil producer, pumping out nearly four million barrels a day, or about 4 percent of the global total, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. But other Persian Gulf states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates could expand production to make up that volume, easing pressures on international prices, experts say."
- Obviously:
Ta-Nehisi Coates would be disgusted at the idea of someone taking a quick field trip and becoming a self-styled expert on American race relations, yet that's exactly what he did to consider himself qualified to lecture people on the Middle East.
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) October 7, 2024
- True:
As far as I can tell, one of the biggest changes across organizations over the past few years is simply the rise of distraction. The default often appears to be a kind of continuous partial attention. I'm not sure whether it's good or bad. Maybe people were suboptimally stuck…
— Patrick Collison (@patrickc) October 7, 2024
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