Sunday, December 8

FEMA chief to face questions about government’s response to Hurricanes Helen and Milton

WASHINGTON The administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Deanne Criswell, is set to face questions from House lawmakers Tuesday about the federal government’s response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton that caused catastrophic damage in the Southeast.

Criswell will testify before a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee first, at 10 a.m. ET, and then the House Oversight Committee at 2 p.m. ET.

House Republicans are expected to grill the FEMA chief about revelations that an agency worker said she was told by higher-ups to skip over houses with Trump signs in Florida. Criswell fired the worker and said she found the employee’s actions reprehensible.” But the worker, Marn i Washington, has gone on Fox News and other news outlets to allege there was a directive from her superiors not to go to homes with Trump signage as a way to avoid conflict.

Three House committees are investigating the reports, including the House Homeland Security Committee, which wants to speak to leaders in the FEMA regional office.

While today s hearing will focus on FEMA, the issue at hand is part of a larger problem: the urgent need to hold the unelected, unaccountable federal workforce accountable to the American people and to the duly elected President of the United States,” House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., is expected to say, according to excerpts from his written remarks.

Comer is expected to say that people in Highlands County, Florida needed help, but at least one FEMA official used her power to make help harder to get.”

And FEMA leadership didn t take action against this supervisor until the press exposed this discrimination,” his remarks say. “More importantly, FEMA officials did not immediately end the discrimination.

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In a statement earlier this month, Criswell said that Washington’s directive about Trump supporting homes was a “clear violation of FEMA’s core values and principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation.”

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody filed a lawsuit against Criswell and Washington last week over the incident.

Democrats, meanwhile, could focus their questioning on the impact of President-elect Donald Trump’s remarks and conspiracy theories regarding FEMA and its response to the natural disasters. Trump, then a presidential candidate at the time,spread false claims about FEMA’s disaster funds, claiming that they were being used on undocumented immigrants instead of aiding people in the hurricane recovery.

Meanwhile, states are still reeling from the destruction caused by the hurricanes this fall, and the Biden administration submitted a new funding request to Congress on Monday of nearly $100 billion for the government’s ongoing response.

More than220 peopledied fromHurricane Helenein late September, which hit Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. At least17 people diedduring Hurricane Milton, which hit Florida hard in early October.

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