Kristi Noem also is failing at directing FEMA

By Mark Gongloff / Bloomberg Opinion

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is in trouble because her boss’ attempt to use her agencies to occupy Minneapolis has been a tragic disaster. Gaining less attention, for now, is her equally problematic oversight of several other disasters that weren’t created by ICE. It’s less of an affront to democracy than what’s happened in Minneapolis but a greater threat to leave millions of Americans immiserated.

Along with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol, Noem is in charge of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which she and President Donald Trump have often mused about destroying. Though it survived the first year of Trump’s second term, FEMA came through it significantly weakened. Noem has overseen the departure of about 20 percent of the agency’s staff and plans to further cut its workforce in half.

Worse, Noem is holding up about $17 billion of the relief funds FEMA awards to people and places that have suffered disaster losses, The New York Times reported this week. That’s more than the $12 billion FEMA spends in an average year. Some of these are payments for disasters that took place as long ago as 2017, early in Trump’s first term.

And the tally keeps rising: The winter storm and deep freeze that hammered much of the country this week, causing dozens of deaths, destruction and about a million power failures, will generate new FEMA claims. Private forecasting service AccuWeather has estimated total economic losses from the storm to be at least $105 billion.

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