Kristi Noem Fucked Up FEMA’s Response to Texas Floods
Noem took more than three days to sign off on additional FEMA requests for rescue efforts in Texas—a needless hurdle she herself implemented—then called CNN "absolute trash" for questioning the delay.
Screenshot: Fox News Politics
As the Beatles once famously sang, “When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me…” Unfortunately for Texas, they got Kristi Noem instead.
The Homeland Security Secretary, whose department oversees FEMA, is under fire for inexplicably taking an entire weekend to sign off on extra FEMA-requested resources amid the deadly flooding in Texas, according to CNN. Worse still, the delay stemmed from a new rule ICE Barbie recently implemented herself, allegedly to eliminate government waste.
Specifically, the rule requires that any contract or grant over $100,000 has to get her personal signature before the money is released. FEMA officials told CNN this threshold is ridiculous since $100,000 is “pennies” compared to disaster response costs, which regularly soar into the billions. So when the flash floods in Texas devastated multiple towns over the Fourth of July weekend, FEMA had to wait on Noem before deploying critical search and rescue operations. The agency sent its requests on Friday. Noem didn’t sign off until Monday. CNN reports:
For example, as central Texas towns were submerged in rising waters, FEMA officials realized they couldn’t pre-position Urban Search and Rescue crews from a network of teams stationed regionally across the country