FEMA is off the chopping block. But disaster aid is still a guessing game.

Filed 53m ago · Via Stateline · The Buffoon Desk

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Umbrella Pants

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: The White House from Washington, DC · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

State officials are relieved that Trump administration threats to dissolve FEMA have quieted, with the Senate confirming Cameron Hamilton as the agency's first permanent administrator under Trump's second term after former Secretary Kristi Noem's departure. Experts describe this as stabilizing, with positions being refilled and programs restored after earlier cuts.

But the deeper problem, according to Harvard's Juliette Kayyem and other emergency-management veterans, is that Trump retains full personal discretion over which disaster declarations get approved. A Politico analysis found Trump approved 89% of requests from Republican-led states versus just 23% from Democratic-led ones, and he overruled his own agencies' recommendations to reject aid for four Democratic states in July.

FEMA has also tied Homeland Security Grant Program funding to compliance with the administration's voting and immigration policies, prompting a lawsuit from states and municipalities. Some officials, including former FEMA chief Craig Fugate, argue part of the disparity reflects a push to eliminate snow-related aid rather than pure politics, but state emergency managers still say they get no explanation when a request is denied.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Calling this ‘regular order’ is like calling a coin flip fair right after you notice it lands heads nine times out of ten for one team. Nobody's asking FEMA to hand out money with no rules, they're asking for the rules to be written down somewhere other than the president's mood that morning. A state that can't tell if its flood money depends on its governor's party isn't looking at stability, it's looking at a lottery with a very obvious thumb on the wheel.

Source: Read the original at Stateline → Scored: Umbrella Pants · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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