During the last administration, “The federal government was withholding aid against Americans in crisis based on their political beliefs,” announced Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem this week. “This should horrify every American, regardless of political persuasion.”
A new DHS report concluded that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) under Joe Biden was effectively weaponized against his political opponents.
So much for his promise to “be a president for all Americans — whether you voted for me or not.”
According to Noem, “[FEMA] deliberately avoided houses displaying support for President Trump and the Second Amendment, illegally collected and stored information about survivors’ political beliefs, and failed to report their malicious behavior. We will not let this stand.”
Some of that isn’t news. Our Mark Alexander wrote about this happening during the relief efforts after Hurricanes Helene and Milton devastated several states in 2024.
What’s new is the comprehensiveness of the DHS report, including the finding that FEMA violated the Privacy Act of 1974 in its data collection. The biased response also went on far longer than we knew. According to the report, “Biden’s FEMA administrator, Deanne Criswell, insisted to Congress, under oath, that this was an isolated incident. However, an internal investigation ordered by Secretary Noem has revealed that these abuses were widespread, systematic, and occurred during multiple disasters dating back to Hurricane Ida in 2021.”
The discrimination included managers’ instructional notes to FEMA responders. For example:
Avoid homes advertising Trump.
Trump sign, no contact per leadership.
There are Republicans on the grounds with guns so please be careful.
…a lot of explicit political flags, posters, etc. “F*** Joe Biden” “MAGA 2024” “Joe Biden Sucks” “Trump 2024” We do not recommend anyone visiting this location.
Just one FEMA employee was fired in 2024. Criswell said last year’s revelations showed “a clear violation of FEMA’s core values and principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation,” but she insisted, “I do not believe that this employee’s actions are indicative of any widespread cultural problems at FEMA.”
That employee — Marn’i Washington — begged to differ, making numerous media appearances to assert, for example, “My orders came from my superior.”
The DHS report has six recommendations to fix this issue and ensure it never happens again, but FEMA is a big agency with many career employees. As Alexander said last fall, “The problem is not concern for the safety of those in the field, but a bias so endemic to bureaucratic culture that some FEMA employees are oblivious to it.”
Indeed, this sort of bias is endemic to bureaucratic culture. You see, it’s not just a problem with FEMA over a period of four years. Think back to Barack Obama’s administration and the weaponization of the IRS against Patriot and Tea Party groups. Democrats led by Obama excused that scandal because he didn’t personally “order the code red,” so to speak. But that’s precisely the point — Lois Lerner knew what to do without him telling her.
The same could be said for weaponizing the Justice Department against pro-lifers, Catholics, parents of kids in public schools, and — oh yeah — a guy named Donald Trump. Perhaps neither Barack Obama nor Joe Biden (nor his autopen) gave the specific order to target any of those people. Yet the endemic bias and activist mindset of so many leftists make it all but inevitable.
The result of opening Pandora’s Box is, to mix metaphors, that what goes around comes around. Trump is not above turning the tables with the DOJ, and Democrats are almost amusingly warning about it with the IRS just this week.
The FEMA report is a reminder of which side broke all the “norms” and now wants to cry about it.
