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‘Ridiculous and just plain false’: FEMA administrator knocks Trump’s Hurricane Helene recovery claims

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‘Ridiculous and just plain false’: FEMA administrator knocks Trump’s Hurricane Helene recovery claims
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With the federal response to Hurricane Helene becoming a major focus of the presidential campaign in the home stretch, President Joe Biden’s administration continued to push back Sunday against former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claims about storm recovery.

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell said her agency has all the resources it needs to respond to Helene, which ravaged parts of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and other states.

North Carolina and Georgia are key swing states, which has heightened the political stakes for the recovery effort and the jockeying around it.

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Criswell defended FEMA’s response and shot down Trump’s claims that the agency is short on disaster relief funds because money has been diverted to help undocumented immigrants, and that help is being withheld from Republican areas, calling such assertions “frankly ridiculous and just plain false.”

“This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people,” she added. “It’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people.”

Criswell noted that state and local officials have rebutted “this dangerous, truly dangerous narrative that is creating this fear.”

Trump has made a series of unfounded claims about Helene recovery at multiple events in recent days. He said at a rally in Saginaw, Michigan, Thursday that “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal immigrants.”

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“They have almost no money, because they spent it all on illegal immigrants,” Trump said, adding that “They stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants.”

FEMA does have a housing program, the Shelter and Services Program, that provides “financial support to non-federal entities to provide humanitarian services to noncitizen migrants following their release” from detention facilities, according to its website. It has $650 million in funding this year, but that money is separate from disaster relief funds.

“No money is being diverted from disaster response needs. None,” the White House said in a news release.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters during a White House press briefing last week that FEMA has enough disaster relief money to meet current needs, but not for additional storms.

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“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have,” Mayorkas said. “We are expecting another hurricane hitting.  We do not have the funds.  FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season and… what is imminent.”

Congress recently appropriated $20 billion in disaster funds, but Biden said in a letter this week that more is needed.

“Without additional funding, FEMA would be required to forego longer-term recovery activities in favor of meeting urgent needs,” Biden wrote, saying the Small Business Administration is particularly in need of funds.

Fact Check Image of Donald Trump wading through flood water is AI-generated

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House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., was asked on “Fox News Sunday” about Biden’s letter and said “Congress will provide, we will help the people in these disaster prone areas.”

Johnson was pressed about Trump conflating FEMA funds for the Shelter and Services Program with disaster relief money and conceded that “the streams of funding are different, that is not an untrue statement of course.” But he argued FEMA shouldn’t be spending any money “for resettling illegal aliens who have come across the border.”

Trump continued to criticize the Helene recovery effort at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Saturday. He zeroed in on the $750 payment FEMA offers disaster victims to help them with immediate needs.

“Remember, $750 to people whose homes have been washed away, and yet we send tens of millions of dollars to foreign countries that most people have never heard of,” Trump said. “They’re offering them $750 as they’ve been destroyed. “

The $750 Serious Needs Assistance helps “cover essential items like food, water, baby formula, breastfeeding supplies, medication and other emergency supplies,” according to the White House press release.

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“There are other forms of assistance that you may qualify for to receive, and Serious Needs Assistance is an initial payment you may receive while FEMA assesses your eligibility for additional funds,” the release continues.

Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump, the daughter-in-law of the former president, also answered questions about Trump’s Helene claims during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. Host Dana Bash played a clip of Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., praising the response to Helene.

“I’m actually impressed with how much attention was paid to region that wasn’t likely to have experienced the impact that they did,” Tillis said, adding “I’m out here to say that we’re doing a good job.”

‘Life-threatening’: Milton forecast to become hurricane, target battered Florida

Lara Trump defended the criticism of Helene recovery as “coming directly from people there.”

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“You can go online, you can look at videos of people recording themselves and posting online saying: ‘We need help, no one has come here, we have nothing,” Trump said.

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

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Image from @fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.

The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”

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“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.

The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.

“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.

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Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”

“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”

The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.

While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.

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