Trump’s Lies About the Hurricane Response Are Getting More Outrageous
In 2019, Donald Trump’s administration approved taking over a quarter of a billion dollars from the nation’s national disaster relief coffers to fund his plans for the southern border. Now, the former president is attempting to malign the federal response to Hurricane Helene by lying that the Biden administration “stole” Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds to support operations at the border.
At a Thursday rally in Saginaw, Michigan, Trump claimed that the Biden-Harris administration “stole the FEMA money like they stole it from a bank so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.”
There are multiple falsehoods in this sentence alone. For starters, undocumented migrants and non-citizens cannot vote in elections, and very rarely even attempt to. Second, no money was stolen from FEMA. In August, the Department of Homeland Security announced “the allocation of over $380 million through the Shelter and Services Program (SSP).”
“Through the SSP, DHS directly supports communities that are providing critical support such as food, shelter, clothing, acute medical care, and transportation to noncitizens recently released from DHS custody and awaiting their immigration court proceedings,” DHS wrote in a statement. The department also reallocated $259.13 million in federal funds in April.
The practice of using federal disaster funds to address the needs of migrants did not begin with the Biden administration, it began under Trump — albeit with a slightly different end goal. In 2019, the Trump administration redirected $271 million in disaster relief funding to pay for the creation of additional migrant detention centers, and temporary asylum processing centers.
FEMA’s budget is measured in billions, not millions. The Hurricane Helene recovery effort is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars. Any funding shortfall is not the result of spending a few hundred million already allocated to immigration, but Congress’ failure to significantly increase FEMA’s funding in a stopgap spending bill passed last week to avoid a government shutdown.
The continuing resolution passed in September contained an additional $16 billion in funding for FEMA. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned on Wednesday, however, that the funds would not be enough should a second major natural disaster strike before the bill expires in December.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas told reporters. “We are expecting another hurricane hitting — we do not have the funds, FEMA does not have the funds, to make it through the season.”
In a Tuesday letter to congressional leadership, a bipartisan group of 12 senators wrote that “it is clear that Congress must act to meet the unmet needs in our states and address the scope and scale of destruction experienced by our constituents. This may even require Congress to come back in October to ensure we have enough time to enact legislation before the end of this calendar year.”
As other lawmakers pull together to aid communities affected by the storm, Trump is falling back on lies to politicize the tragedy. Earlier this week, Trump baselessly claimed that “the Federal Government, and the Democrat Governor of [North Carolina are] going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas,” ahead of a visit to a disaster zone in Valdosta, Georgia. The former president also falsely asserted that Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp had been unable to reach President Joe Biden, a notion Kemp dispelled.
The praise for Biden from governors whose states were affected by Helene has been bipartisan. Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster described the federal mobilization as “superb.” Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, also a Republican, thanked Biden on Monday during a press conference and added that he was “incredibly appreciative of the rapid response and the cooperation from the federal team at FEMA.”
Trump, who has a storied history of linking aid for communities affected by natural disasters to the region’s political leanings, could only hope for such praise.
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