Facing a New York Times report citing documents showing that thousands of calls to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) went unanswered in the days following the devastating Texas floods earlier this month, Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem deployed a favored strategy among Trump and his cronies: cry fake news.
“False reporting, fake news,” Noem told NBC’s Kristen Welker on Sunday’s Meet the Press responding to the Times report. “It’s discouraging that during this time when we have such a loss of life, and so many people’s lives have turned upside down, that people are playing politics with this. Because the response time was immediate. And if you talk to anyone in Texas that was there, that was a part of this operation, they would say the federal government and President Trump immediately responded.”
The Times reported that FEMA answered all nearly calls from disaster survivors on July 5 following the storms. But the next day, the agency only answered 846 out of 2,363 calls. On July 7, FEMA answered just 2,613 out of 16,419 calls.
The calls went unanswered, according to Times sources, because Noem implemented a new policy requiring her signature on any contract worth more than $100,000, and she had not signed off on contracts with the call centers. On July 8, a FEMA official wrote in an email to colleagues, “We still do not have a decision, waiver or signature from the DHS Secretary,” referring to Noem’s failure to renew contracts with four companies that run...
Police said there were no injuries and no shots fired after false reports of an active aggressor at the Kentucky Expo Center and Kentucky Kingdom on Sunday.