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On Saturday, Alabama Senator Katie Britt sent a letter to Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
The charged letter revolves around a recent event where a FEMA supervisor reportedly told staff not to assist homes with Trump campaign signs during the ongoing hurricane recovery efforts in Florida. Britt’s letter says that “at least 20 houses with Trump flags or campaign signs” were initially overlooked due to this instruction.
“It is simply outrageous that any FEMA personnel, let alone a supervisor, would condition aid to victims based on their political views,” Britt averred.
Criswell released a statement on Saturday calling the employee’s behavior “a clear violation of FEMA’s core values and principles” and “reprehensible.” She also stated that the employee in question had been fired and the incident referred to the Office of Special Counsel.
“I appreciate that Administrator Criswell has condemned these actions and fired the supervisor, but the American people need answers regarding how this happened and if anyone else was complicit, as well as assurance it will not happen again,” Britt said in her public statement.
“Any disaster funding provided by Congress must be made available to all Americans who are victims of presidentially declared disasters, and cannot be conditioned or delayed based on their political views,” she declared. Britt has not publicly commented, though, on President-elect Donald Trump’s attempts during his first term to distribute disaster funding to states based on perceived support for him.
Last month, E&E News reported that President Donald Trump had resisted approving aid for California in 2018. Trump’s onetime senior director for resilience policy, Mark Harvey, told the outlet that staffers “went as far as looking up how many votes [Trump] got in those impacted areas” just to convince him to approve aid.
The first Trump administration also delayed releasing HUD disaster aid to Puerto Rico, the U.S. territory recently called a “floating island of garbage” by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at a Trump rally.
Britt’s letter specifically asks Mayorkas and Criswell to clarify FEMA’s policies on political affiliation and bypassing homes as well as any information about the event in question and any potential previous such occurrences.
The letter makes sure to state that Britt has “worked to ensure that FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) has sufficient resources.” Britt is the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Appropriations for Homeland Security, which is the department FEMA is under.
In the immediate aftermath of the recent hurricanes, many Republicans were criticized for voting against H.R. 9747, the last minute funding bill passed in September to avert a government shutdown. One section of the bill authorized “funding for [FEMA’s] Disaster Relief Fund at the rate necessary to carry out response and recovery activities.”
Britt voted against the bill when it made it to the Senate floor. When she defended her vote at the time, she said it was “past time to restore regular order to appropriations and achieve accountability when it comes to government spending.”
Seventeen other Republican senators and 82 Republican representatives also voted against the bill. However, despite Democrats using these votes as a partisan bludgeon following Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, as a general purpose appropriations package, the bill also included funding for programs as varied as payments to the heirs of late members of Congress, extensions to a homeless veteran grant program, and funding for the presidential transition.
Britt’s letter demands a response from Secretary Mayorkas and Administrator Criswell by November 15.
