Sources revealed a troubling pattern in Donald Trump's second term that has resulted in chaos and delays in approving disaster relief funds.
Current and former officials with the Federal Emergency Management Agency say communication and coordination with the White House and agency leaders has dwindled, which has thrown up obstacles as local managers work to deliver assistance to states hit by winter storms, flooding and other natural disasters, reported CNN.
“This is more than just who gets to tell who," said one longtime FEMA official. "There are regulatory timelines, especially for individual assistance, that are in play, and these delays do affect the delivery of assistance. It is very frustrating to the state and local partners because they think we should be doing things, but without the paperwork we cannot execute on the declaration.”
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Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who had been Trump's press secretary during his first term, was forced to publicly and then personally appeal to the president to reverse his decision to deny her state assistance to help recover from tornados and storms that killed more than 40 people in April, and he finally relented and gave his approval on May 8.
"But, again, FEMA did not get the memo," CNN reported. "The agency was not notified by the White House of the approval until May 13 – five days later."
That five-day lag is "unheard of," said another longtime FEMA official.
"It prevents FEMA from fulfilling its statutory roles,” that official told CNN. “It feels like a way to make it look like FEMA is being slow when we’re not yet authorized to act.”
Acting FEMA administrator David Richardson, a Marine combat veteran and martial arts instructor with no prior experience managing natural disasters, insisted he was joking when he said at a meeting Monday that he was not aware the U.S. had a hurricane season, but he said the agency's plan for that would not be publicly released and would instead revert to last year's response plan.
“The most critical currency during response is time," a FEMA official told CNN. "You never get it back, and we just wasted a whole boatload of it on this goose chase."
Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, whose department oversees FEMA, told lawmakers last month there was "no formalized, final plan” for disaster response during this summer's hurricane season but insisted the administration would be prepared, which a DHS spokesperson told CNN would involve "empowering states to further lead their own disaster response."
But the administration's response to disasters thus far has FEMA officials concerned about the upcoming hurricane season, especially after the White House notified the governors of several red states that assistance had been approved for them long before FEMA was notified.
“It’s one thing for this to happen during these small disasters,” a third FEMA official said. “What if there’s a big one where we are waiting for the green light to mission assign partners to start response? There’s a process for a reason, and if we are left in the dark people are going to suffer.”