NEWS: Trump caught weaponizing emergency aid

Hit by disaster? Your politics might determine whether the feds help out.

Bottom Line Up Front:

The Trump administration just got caught trying to turn FEMA aid into a political weapon. DHS quietly put in place a policy that would restrict disaster funds to any U.S. states or cities that boycott Israeli companies. Then they walked it back after getting caught, but that’s not the end of the story.

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WHAT HAPPENED

I’ve warned for years that Donald Trump plans to tie political strings to America’s disaster relief funds. In other words, if you’re hit by a tornado or wildfires, he wants you to support his policies before he releases the money to help out.

Then Axios revealed yesterday that DHS had snuck in new requirements for FEMA disaster relief money. According to the report, funds would be withheld from states or cities if they boycotted Israeli companies. Don’t stand with Israel? You won’t get your aid money.

The provision appeared in the April version of the FEMA grant terms. Then after being exposed in the news, DHS hastily updated the language on its website and denied there was any “requirement” tied to Israel.

That walk-balk only raises more questions. Why was the condition there in the first place? Why wasn’t it announced publicly? Why did it take a media investigation for DHS to walk it back? And most importantly, will political requirements like this come back?

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WHAT IT MEANS

This is a flashing red warning. As I wrote weeks ago: Trump wants to funnel all disaster relief decisions through the White House — in fact — through him personally. In June, he said that emergency aid decisions would soon be made directly from “the president’s office,” not FEMA. This latest episode shows he intends to use that power to punish enemies and reward allies.

Trump has openly bragged about cutting disaster funds to places that didn’t support him. During my time in the first administration, he tried to withhold aid from California, Puerto Rico, and other localities in order to put pressure on Democratic governors and extract concessions. All while people’s homes were flooded or burning.

Back then, we blocked those schemes from the inside because they were unethical at best and illegal at worst. But the President now has a team willing to look the other way.

As he brings FEMA more directly under presidential control, disaster relief will become a form of political currency. This is a much bigger deal than people realize. For decades, federal emergency assistance was handed out without any partisan conditions whatsoever. If your house is flooded by storms, who the hell cares who you voted for? Soon that will change, and it will depend on whether you’re in the President’s favor.

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WHAT’S NEXT

Expect more litmus tests. The Israel example was just a trial balloon. It’s not terribly hard to imagine other iterations. Blue states with gun safety laws? No wildfire funding. Cities that host refugee communities? No hurricane recovery. Mayors who criticize Trump? No tornado shelter grants.

If this latest FEMA stunt taught us anything, it’s that they’re already trying to condition life-saving aid on ideological alignment. That idea is out in the wild now, and the infrastructure to enforce it is being built in real time.

I cannot emphasize this enough. Disaster relief is supposed to be nonpartisan. Instead, Trump is quietly building a system to politicize FEMA, in which your politics could determine whether you live or die after a crisis.

This wasn’t a “mistake.” The language about Israeli boycotts didn’t somehow get dropped into FEMA documents as a copy-and-paste error. It was a soft launch, and the President is planning more sweeping conditions for U.S. states and cities that cry for help in crisis. We’re running out of time to stop it.

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