Fact check: Trump repeats debunked lies about FEMA’s hurricane response during North Carolina visit

By Daniel Dale, CNN

Washington (CNN) — Former President Donald Trump used a Monday visit to North Carolina to repeat debunked lies about the federal response to Hurricane Helene.

Speaking to reporters in a hard-hit community near Asheville, Trump kept repeating a false claim that was widely debunked when he made it earlier in October – his assertion that the Federal Emergency Management Agency took money that was supposed to go to disaster relief and instead spent it on migrants who entered the country illegally, leaving the agency with no funds to help Americans.

“It’s all gone. They’ve spent it on illegal migrants,” Trump said. He also said: “Why did they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on something that they were not supposed to be spending it on?” And he said, “They were not supposed to be spending the money on taking in illegal migrants. Maybe so they could vote in the election, because that – a lot of people are saying that’s why they’re doing it. I don’t know, I hope that’s not why they’re doing it.”

The Republican presidential nominee said in the same remarks that now “they don’t have any money for the people that live here.” And at a rally later in the day in Greenville, he said, “You didn’t get the proper support from this administration. They spent their money on illegal migrants, they spent their money. They didn’t have any money left for North Carolina.”

These claims are false in at least four ways.

First, there is zero basis for Trump’s suggestion that FEMA or the Biden administration might be running some sort of scheme to get undocumented immigrants to vote illegally in the 2024 election.

Voting by noncitizens in federal elections is a felony, and Trump has provided zero evidence for his repeated assertions and insinuations about the Biden administration or FEMA supposedly trying to get undocumented people to vote in 2024.

Second, it’s not true that FEMA disaster assistance money was improperly reallocated to migrants.

Here’s what actually happened.

Congress appropriated $650 million in the 2024 fiscal year to fund a program that helps state and local governments house migrants. It instructed US Customs and Border Protection to transfer that $650 million to FEMA to administer the program.

But here’s the key: this $650 million pot is entirely distinct from FEMA’s much larger pot of disaster relief funds. As the Department of Homeland Security, the White House and some congressional Republicans noted earlier this month, they’re just two separate things funded separately by Congress – and Congress appropriated more than $35 billion in disaster relief funds for fiscal 2024, according to official FEMA statistics.

One of the Republicans who has debunked this Trump claim is Rep. Chuck Edwards of North Carolina, who was standing with Trump as the former president repeated the claim on Monday. Earlier this month, Edwards published a fact sheet that said, among other things, “FEMA has NOT diverted disaster response funding to the border or foreign aid.”

Third, it’s not true that FEMA’s money is “all gone.”

FEMA is not out of cash. As of last Tuesday, its Disaster Relief Fund had about $8.5 billion remaining, FEMA told CNN’s Ella Nilsen. FEMA officials have made clear that it has enough money for the immediate needs of people affected by Hurricane Helene – though the large number of disasters around the country this year, from tornadoes to wildfires to flooding to the recent hurricanes, means the agency might have to ask Congress for additional disaster relief funding sooner than expected.

Edwards wrote in his fact sheet: “FEMA is NOT going to run out of money. FEMA officials have repeatedly affirmed that the agency has enough money for immediate response and recovery needs over the next few months.”

It is true that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said early in the month that with another hurricane expected after Helene, “we do not have the funds, FEMA does not have the funds, to make it through the season.” But he said in the same comments that they were able to “meet immediate needs,” although “that doesn’t speak about the future”; he certainly didn’t say, as Trump did, that FEMA’s money was “all gone.”

Fourth, it’s not true that the Biden administration “didn’t have any money left for North Carolina.”

The Biden administration has provided various forms of assistance to North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene. The White House says more than $300 million has been approved so far.

As of last Tuesday, FEMA in particular had approved more than $102 million in Helene-related assistance to individuals in North Carolina, the agency says, in addition to tens of millions in assistance to local governments in the state.

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