Tag: fema

Trump Officially Begins Phasing Out FEMA: ‘We’re Going to Give Out Less’

One of the more controversial arms of the government under the administration of former President Joe Biden could soon cease to exist as anyone knew it.

Biden’s successor, President Donald Trump, has made that much abundantly clear.

The embattled Federal Emergency Management Agency is going to be “wound down,” per the president’s orders, as described by Reuters.

FEMA, which has an annual budget of about $30 billion, will start being phased out as its responsibilities get doled out to other departments.

For example, federal disaster aid funds will now be distributed directly from the White House.

Trump was speaking to reporters on Tuesday when he made his intentions for FEMA crystal clear.

“We want to wean off of FEMA and we want to bring it down to the state level,” Trump said, according to The Hill. “We’re moving it back to the state so the governors can handle it.”

The president also claimed that federal aid will be tightening up a bit — though he made sure to note that he thinks states will still appreciate what they receive.

“We’re going to give out less money,” he said. “It’s going to be from the president’s office.”

He added, “As an example, I just gave out $71 million to a certain state. They were looking to do about 120 [million], they were very happy with the $71 million.”

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FEMA’s Woke Disaster: $2 Billion Fraud, Reverse Discrimination, and Retaliation Buried for Six Years

For six years, FEMA has quietly buried one of the worst scandals in federal disaster response—a toxic mix of reverse discrimination, fraud, and whistleblower retaliation tied to the Hurricane Maria recovery in Puerto Rico. I led the contractor team that uncovered it firsthand.

In 2018, I deployed as the technical lead of a Lean Six Sigma team made up of straight, older, white veterans and executives.

Our mission was to bring order, transparency, and efficiency to a FEMA operation crippled by dysfunction. What we found was not just inefficiency—it was corruption: theft, favoritism, and rot embedded deep in FEMA’s culture.

We documented widespread violations of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Anti-Deficiency Act.

FEMA leadership stole contractor-developed intellectual property and inflated performance metrics in a $1.5 billion scheme to mislead Congress.

Unqualified personnel were promoted—not for merit, but for checking the right identity boxes. This was not mismanagement. It was deliberate.

FEMA’s culture was dominated by DEI politics—identity trumped merit, and promotions were rigged. One insider told us: “Straight white men are at the bottom here.” That was not just talk. It was policy.

At the heart of it was a tight-knit special interest group dubbed internally by FEMA insiders the “LGBTQ Mafia.”

They wielded outsized influence, shielded by management and FEMA’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and FOIA offices, which buried complaints and blocked accountability.

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FEMA fired three supervisors following probe into crew told to avoid Trump-supporting homes hit by Hurricane Milton

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has fired three more supervisors following an internal probe into claims a crew of disaster relief workers were told to avoid Trump-supporting homes hit by Hurricane Milton in Florida, The Post can exclusively reveal.

Cameron Hamilton, the current acting administrator of the agency, announced in a Tuesday letter to Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) that an “exhaustive investigation” had concluded the supervisors failed to “meet our standards of conduct” or reign in their partisan underlings’ behavior.

“[I]t is essential that the entire workforce understand that this incident was reprehensible, and this type of behavior will not be tolerated at FEMA,” Hamilton wrote.

“Further, in accordance with my commitment, and that of President Trump and [Homeland Security] Secretary [Kristi] Noem, to ensure that Americans receive impartial assistance from FEMA, I have directed a comprehensive additional training for FEMA staff to reinforce that political affiliation should never be a consideration in the rendering of assistance.”

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FEMA Allocated $2.6M for “War on Misinformation” Contract in 2023

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) – an incorporated agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – earmarked $2.6 million to fund a “war on misinformation” contract in 2023, according to data on the usaspending.gov website.

The blanket purchase agreement note lists “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation analysis” as the subjects of the order, with $1.2 million spent, and as much currently listed as the obligated amount.

As noticed by Foundation For Freedom Online, the recipient is the consultancy firm Guildehouse, a government contractor owned by Bain Capital. A post on the company’s website that has since been deleted spoke about Guildehouse engaging with social media platforms to report misinformation (including flagging posts for removal).

Guildehouse also “maintained a proprietary internal database” to track content designated as “misinformation,” and a list of “higher risks” sites that might have published such content.

The case looks like another piece in the puzzle that has been the Big Government-Big Tech collusion to suppress speech in the US, unfolding over the last four years.

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Elon Musk: DOGE Team Discovers FEMA Spent $59 Million Last Week on Luxury Hotels for Illegals in NYC Violating the Current Law – Musk Vows to Recoup the Funds

Elon Musk reported early Monday morning that FEMA sent $59 million just last week to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.

According to Musk, sending this money to these high-end hotels violated the law.  This directly interferes with President Trump’s executive order.

And why is FEMA paying for illegal alien housing when they ignore Americans suffering and living in tents in places like North Carolina?

FEMA funds are meant for American disaster relief and not to fund Joe Biden’s invasion.

Musk says a clawback demand will be made today to recoup the funds.

Apparently, one of the hotels in question is the Roosevelt in Manhattan.

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Wasteful FEMA Spending Topped $9 Billion During the Pandemic

It’s been nearly five years, and the total cost of wasteful COVID-era spending is still being realized. A recent Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) report illuminates several examples of waste, fraud, and abuse at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). 

The OIG found the agency overobligated “at least $1.5 billion in funds for one state’s medical staffing grant.” Additionally, FEMA failed to properly vet funding to the state, leading to $8.1 billion of questionable spending.

During the pandemic, FEMA developed a streamlined process to award reimbursements through its Public Assistance Program. Instead of awarding funding to a project based on actual costs that were comparable to current market rates, the agency offered reimbursements based on cost estimates. The new process, designed to get disaster funding out of the door faster, generated less oversight and more fraudulent spending. 

The state, which the OIG does not name, received about $853 million from FEMA in September 2020 to address staffing shortages at over 200 health care facilities statewide. Over the next year, FEMA incrementally increased funding, eventually awarding over $9 billion, which the state did not need. From May 2021 to April 2023, unspent grant funds reached $4 billion, before falling to $1.5 billion. FEMA was unaware of this until April 2023, when an OIG investigation was conducted. The agency subsequently de-obligated $500 million of the state’s funding. 

FEMA did not “validate cost estimates or determine cost reasonableness before obligating funds,” according to the OIG. One of the cost estimates, which totaled $1.1 billion, was supported by one sheet of paper, which did not include itemized costs and was not conducted by a “cost-estimating professional” (which is required under FEMA guidelines). 

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The Tyler Burleson Story – Tennessee Patriot Sits in Jail Today after He Stopped Everything to Help the Victims of Hurricane Helene

Tyler Burleson is behind bars tonight awaiting an arraignment in Unicoi County, Tennessee, three days past the 72-hour limit required by law. Burleson has been instrumental in bringing relief to those affected by Hurricane Helene over the last four months. Tyler has put his business and life on hold to help serve the community. He helped the community open a distribution area where hurricane victims could come and get supplies they need. This was done due to the lack of response given by FEMA to bring aid to those suffering. He has received pushback from authorities about having a distribution center and not having the proper permission to run such a place for the community. However, This has not stopped him and the other volunteers from providing for their fellow man.

Burleson revealed to Steve Bannon on his Real America’s Voice Warroom show this week that he was arrested on allegations of a bounced check even though he claims the check was made whole and resolved even before the arrest last week. Also, the alleged victim is not pressing charges. Although, there seems to be more to this arrest than meets the eye and some have ideas of why it took place, Burleson just wants to be free of this and continue helping his fellow citizens.

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Where’s the Outrage? Biden Gives SoCal a Blank Check While FEMA Leaves North Carolina Out In the Cold

The nation’s attention continues to be hyperfocused on Southern California as devastating wildfires continue to burn in and around Los Angeles. The fires have displaced thousands of people and destroyed entire towns. There is an overwhelming need for immediate aid, and the recovery from these disastrous fires will take years.

With less than two weeks left in office, President Joe Biden has informed California Governor Gavin Newsom that the federal government will be picking up the tab for California’s recovery for the next six months. Biden has told them to spare no expense.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, the residents of Western North Carolina have been all but forgotten. Thousands remain displaced from flooding caused by Hurricane Helene. Entire neighborhoods were washed away, and many of the buildings that survived the flooding are unlivable because of dangerous mold.

FEMA has been on the ground in North Carolina for months—not that you can tell. Many North Carolinians live in tents because assistance has been scarce, difficult to obtain, or unreachable.

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Homeland Security Inspector General Confirms Audit Of FEMA Over Trump Sign Controversy

The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general this week confirmed it is auditing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) over concerns that its employees avoided homes that displayed signs supporting then-presidential candidate Donald Trump in the aftermath of several hurricanes.

In a letter dated Jan. 6, the office told Reps. Sam Graves (R-Mo.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) that an audit of the disaster relief agency was initiated on Dec. 17, 2024, to “determine how well FEMA followed its policies and procedures when addressing safety concerns and determining community trends that impact disaster survivor assistance in response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton.”

Two months ago, a now-terminated FEMA employee, Marn’i Washington, allegedly told a FEMA team in Florida to bypass homes that display Trump signs. After reports surfaced that FEMA workers were told to avoid those homes, FEMA Director Deanne Criswell announced that the employee, Washington, was fired.

“I want to be clear to all of my employees and the American people, this type of behavior and action will not be tolerated at FEMA, and we will hold people accountable if they violate these standards of conduct,” Criswell said in a statement at the time.

But Washington later said in several media interviews that the policy was systemic and that she was being scapegoated. FEMA officials “were already avoiding these homes, based on community trends, from hostile political encounters,” she told Fox News at the time, adding that the policy had “nothing to do with the campaign sign, it just so happened to be a part of the community trend.”

“Firstly, I’m being framed,” she told NewsNation in mid-November 2024.

“There’s no violation of the Hatch Act. I was simply following orders.”

On Dec. 3, 2024, Graves and Perry, two lawmakers who sit on the House Transportation Committee, called for an investigation into the claims made by Washington and other reports “of the deliberate avoidance of homes with Trump campaign or political signs” during FEMA’s response to the two hurricanes.

“The actions taken by FEMA supervisors in directing employees to avoid homes that displayed Trump campaign signs or flags are disturbing and raise serious questions about the culture and political bias that permeates FEMA leadership,” they wrote, adding that the committee is also concerned about whether the practice was “more widespread than reported” and could have harmed hurricane victims.

In November 2024, Criswell testified before a House subcommittee and said that not providing aid to people due to political beliefs is “completely at odds with FEMA’s mission,” stressing that the incident wasn’t part of a broader FEMA trend.

FEMA had faced criticism late last year after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Criswell suggested the relief agency would run out of funding needed to last the remainder of the 2024 hurricane season.

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In Miami-Dade County, Federal Funding For “Affordable Housing” Displaces Working Class Minorities Of New Republican Coalition In Li’l Abner Trailer Park

One problem with trying to raise opposition to federal funding is that it’s hard to trace bureaucratic causes to human effects. That’s not the case this month in the city of Sweetwater, part of the greater Miami metropolitan area in Miami-Dade County. Here, in a neighborhood where glittering Christmas lights overlap with “Trump/Vance” signs in a county which Trump carried with 55% of the vote, and a state he carried with 56%, around 3,000 people are about to be displaced due to the Washington bureaucracy that Trump ran against. Matters are so bad that talk is that Washington might have to solve the homelessness problem that it helped to cause by using FEMA—an unsettling thought now that we know how FEMA treats Republican voters.

The formal displacer is Raul F. Rodriguez of CREI Holdings, the owner of Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park in Sweetwater, founded by his father, a Cuban immigrant who had grown up in a mobile home himself. But bigger forces are also at play. The main one is amped-up federal funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to Miami-Dade County, justified because of the seemingly endless and mostly better-off new arrivals escaping failing Democrat cities in New York, Illinois and California. New developments have to be built to house them, sometimes by tearing down buildings, and housing also has to be provided for the working and middle class locals that they are displacing. These new arrivals drive up general costs as well as property taxes, which pushes more locals out and raises the demand for cheaper housing s.

Enter “affordable housing,” which, like “diversity” and “ equity,” is a helpful-sounding phrase that benefits bureaucrats, Democrats, and the better-off. Not surprisingly, in Miami-Dade, “affordable housing” is allowing federal money to flow to citizens who need it the least , even as it supports the projects of well-placed contractors and government bureaucrats . The people most hurt by the funding, in the meantime, are like those in Sweetwater: working class people with nowhere to go. The specifics of the crisis this Christmas in Sweetwater give a sense of just what’s being lost, and why, and what it might mean for Miami-Dade.

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