Breaking: Noem Delayed And Texans Died

In taking three days to approve FEMA hurricane relief aid, Noem could've singlehandedly increased the death toll in Texas

Four officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency just reported they couldn’t efficiently respond to the deadly floods in Texas because of a new rule that Homeland Security Secretary Kristy Noem implemented that requires her approval for all agency expenses over $100,000. With hurricanes, relief funds can often be billions of dollars, and Noem didn’t sign off on flood relief until Monday — three days later — making thousands of Texans wait for search and rescue teams, aerial imagery, and more.

On top of Trump’s FEMA cuts that have destroyed FEMA’s ability to support states after a disaster, Noem being particularly bad at her job has now resulted in aid being withheld from those that need it most in Texas — and potentially caused a higher death toll. FEMA's lifesaving urban search and rescue teams that find and treat survivors of disasters weren’t deployed until 72 hours after the floods — victims that needed help could’ve died in the time it took Noem to approve these allocations. Typically, those teams are preemptively deployed in a disaster zone to be in place for urgent requests. In Texas, they couldn’t be deployed during the flooding at all.

Texas also requested FEMA’s aerial imagery, which is used to assess flood damage and map recovery efforts — a request that was also dependent on Noem's approval, and therefore delayed. Additionally, many FEMA officials were surprised by how little the agency was able to help in the immediate aftermath of the flooding — likely due to both Trump’s FEMA budget cut’s and Noem’s inability to do her job.

The DHS fired back at CNN for reporting on Noem’s delay, predictably calling it ‘fake news,’ but we know what’s really going on. They’re covering up how bad Noem is at her job and how her inability to keep Americans safe has now resulted in thousands of victims waiting for aid for DAYS after devastating flooding, and how disaster relief methods that have been successful in the past have been stripped away. When time mattered and an urgent response was needed, Noem and the Trump admin floundered for days and over 100 people died — a stark reminder that the Trump admin’s astounding inadequacy will continue to claim the lives of our fellow Americans, and that they do not care about you.

DHS is running defense now but we need to keep calling them out for their callousness and stupidity that’s leading to more unnecessary deaths. Saying you want to make America great again but leaving Americans for days to die alone after climate-change-induced weather, cutting funding for the relief they need to save lives, and reducing investment in the science required to accurately predict and prepare for these natural disasters is carelessness, irresponsible, and outright hypocritical.