One year after devastating hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida exposed major issues with FEMA's disaster response, there is new evidence those issues were worse and more widespread than originally thought. An internal DHS review of the problems after those storms finds that FEMA workers withheld aid from victims based on politics on multiple occasions, and workers collected political intelligence on storm victims before assessing whether to serve them. At issue is FEMA's operations guide, which gave broad leeway to workers to avoid any situation where they felt "threatened" or they may encounter "hostile" individuals. This resulted in workers skipping over homes with pro-Trump political signage or other pro-Republican or conservative indicators, over a general fear of being uncomfortable or encountering hostility.
This policy was just one of the many problems with FEMA the Trump administration encountered when taking office earlier this year. "We've been very up front that FEMA is broken," says Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem in a recent Fox News Radio interview. "President Trump, as soon as he came into office, said to me Kristi, eliminate FEMA in the way that it works today."
"It's politicized, and it has been a woke agency that hasn't responded to people when they have a crisis in their life."
One of Noem's first actions was clawing back a $59 million FEMA payment made to house illegal aliens at New York City hotels. She has since fired or punished several FEMA employees for political bias, and overhauled how the agency delivers aid. "Under the old policies, people would wait days, weeks, months for relief, and we saw that unfold in North Carolina last year," said Noem. "And then to see how they targeted people politically---giving a response if they supported their politics, but if they weren't supportive then going past their house."
"President Trump said fix it," she continues. "I am, and we have...and this is such a game-changer from when Joe Biden was in office and how FEMA operated before."
Photo: AFP