A person walks previous an space flooded by the results of Hurricane Helene close to the Swannanoa river, Sept. 27, 2024, in Asheville, N.C.If there’s one factor the Trump administration loves, it’s utilizing any means accessible to pressure compliance with President Donald Trump’s uniquely hateful imaginative and prescient for the USA—and federal Emergency Administration Company funds are perfect for this. Disasters are unpredictable, so states and cities can by no means know after they would possibly want support from the federal authorities. However now, if they need a bit of $1.9 billion in grants for issues like search and rescue gear and backup energy techniques, affected states and cities should chorus from “limiting commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies.”
So, about that: There’s somewhat factor referred to as the First Modification, and it protects each freedom of speech and freedom of affiliation. The federal government can’t compel you to affiliate with folks with whom you disagree on ideological or non secular grounds, nor can it pressure you to have interaction in speech that you just object to. Certainly, that’s the whole basis of evangelical Christian courtroom circumstances demanding that they be allowed to refuse service to same-sex {couples} or actually anybody else that offends them.
Associated | Trump crew retains discovering thrilling new methods to weaponize FEMA
Texas tried this gambit on the state degree again in 2017, requiring any candidates for Hurricane Harvey rebuilding funds to say they wouldn’t boycott Israel. The ACLU needed to step in to remind Texas of that pesky proper to free speech. Moreover, because the ACLU of Texas authorized director defined, such a requirement is “reminiscent of McCarthy-era loyalty oaths requiring Americans to disavow membership in the Communist party and other forms of ‘subversive’ activity.”
The administration retains utilizing fealty to Israel as a cudgel, equating any opposition to Israel’s actions as antisemitism. Nevertheless it’s a hole assertion belied by the administration’s personal actions. Presumably, a real dedication to combating antisemitism would require not tapping overtly antisemitic folks for high-level jobs within the administration.
As a substitute, we’ve received Paul Ingrassia as head of the Workplace of Particular Counsel—regardless of Ingrassia’s connections to extremist troll Andrew Tate, who routinely engages in antisemitic rhetoric and has carried out Nazi salutes. Ingrassia can also be an enormous fan of Nick Fuentes, who’s only a skilled racist and Holocaust denier. We’ve received the communications director for the Workplace of Administration and Finances, Rachel Cauley, who gave an extended interview to Counter-Currents, an overtly white nationalist web site whose editor-in-chief wrote a guide about Adolph Hitler’s significance to the white nationalist wrestle.
How about FBI Director Kash Patel, who went on Holocaust denier Stew Peters’ podcast eight occasions? Joe Kent, who simply received confirmed by the Senate as the top of the Nationwide Counterterrorism Heart, additionally enjoys giving interviews to Nazi sympathizers. Nevertheless, the fiction that the administration is laser-focused on combating antisemitism has given it cowl to do no matter it needs, so we simply should fake Trump isn’t stocking his administration with Nazi-adjacent sorts.
A person walks previous an space flooded by the results of Hurricane Helene close to the Swannanoa river on Sept. 27, 2024, in Asheville, North Carolina.
This isn’t the one means that Trump has weaponized FEMA funding. In July, FEMA instructed states that they’re required to spend a part of their allotted federal terrorism funds to arrest migrants as a substitute. There’s additionally the truth that the administration took FEMA cash Congress had allotted to shelter migrants and is utilizing it to construct migrant prisons as a substitute. And naturally, there’s the selective distribution of support, which one way or the other at all times goes to purple states whereas being withheld from blue ones. Nicely, states with Democratic governors have gotten some reduction, however solely in states that voted for Trump in 2024.
This isn’t remotely how authorities is meant to work. States aren’t obliged to agree with the president in an effort to get cash when a catastrophe strikes. However on condition that Congress appears to have abdicated its position in overseeing the ability of the purse, who’s going to cease Trump from making {that a} precondition for something and every little thing?
