The funding was for hotels and other ‘shelter services’ for illegal immigrants, and FEMA had to know that the Trump admin was scrutinizing federal expenditures.
President Trump’s Homeland Security Department has announced the firing of four Federal Emergency Management Agency employees it says were responsible for what the administration describes as “egregious payments for luxury N.Y.C. hotels for migrants.”
The New York Times reports that the firings include FEMA’s chief financial officer.
A dispute lingers regarding what happened here. On Monday, Elon Musk, who is heading up Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — which actually is a component of the Executive Office of the President, no matter how many times Democrats and their trial lawyers belittle it as the “so-called” DOGE — posted on X/Twitter that FEMA had recently sent $59 million to pay for “high end hotels” for “migrants.” The agency’s acting director, Cameron Hamilton, quickly reacted by vowing that responsible personnel would be “held accountable” and announcing that the payments “have all been suspended” — even though, the Times says, “most of the money had already been disbursed.”
The Times, in its “news” story, opines that Musk’s post is “misleading.” Maybe — as you’re about to see, I think he’s more right than wrong — but the Times description of his post as “misleading” is the now familiar departure from even the pretense of objective journalism when Trump (or, increasingly, Musk) is involved. A Democrat who claimed, say, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” or that his son had not made any money from China, would never be described as speaking “misleadingly” by the Gray Lady, even if everyone knew such statements were five-alarm whoppers.
According to the paper, New York City government officials claim that FEMA properly allocated the funds under an authorization from the Biden administration, and that the money “was not a disaster relief grant and had not been spent on luxury hotels.”
This is babble. In reality, although the funds came out of another DHS pot — the Customs and Border Protection agency — they were directed to be administered by FEMA, which exists, with an astronomical budget of $33 billion in taxpayer funds, to provide disaster relief (e.g., hurricanes, floods, devastating terrorist attacks). The American people do not underwrite FEMA to provide “migrant” services. Yet, in this instance, the fund Congress allocated to DHS included a staggering $650 million fund for FEMA to dole out as “shelter services” for illegal aliens.
Of this, the Biden administration approved the $59 million in question for FEMA to support illegal aliens in New York City, where they poured in by the hundreds of thousands due to the Democrats’ sanctuary policies. If you wade down far enough in the story, the Times concedes that “about $19 million” of the $59 million was spent on “hotels” (so is it the word “luxury” the Times and Democrats are quibbling over?). The paper adds that the other $40 million “was used to pay for food, security and congregate shelters,” according to city officials.
Much better, right?
DHS spokeswoman Tricia Laughlin said that the four employees in question were fired “for circumventing leadership to unilaterally make” the payments (emphasis added). The Times objects to the word “unilaterally” because the FEMA funds were “previously allocated by Congress.” But all funding provided by agencies is allocated by Congress; it’s obvious that McLaughlin was saying the employees acted “unilaterally” in the sense that, before transmitting the grant to the city, they didn’t run it by executive officials who should have been consulted. The employees — in particular, FEMA’s now-terminated CFO, Mary Comans — had to have known that this was a very large grant and that the Trump administration has been freezing federal grants so their propriety can be assessed.
Beneath it all, the Left is in a snit because the Trump administration is exposing spending information that outfits like the Times should have been reporting all along — but didn’t because doing so would have stirred public protest and set back the progressive open-borders project.