Latest news with #DOGE-imposed
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's radically regressive plans for FEMA's future come into sharper focus
Within days of his second inaugural, Donald Trump sent an unmistakable signal about the future of the Federal Emergency Management Agency: As far as he was concerned, FEMA's days were numbered. 'FEMA is getting in the way of everything,' the Republican president argued, failing to explain what that meant. Trump soon after said he saw the agency as an unnecessary department that should be 'TERMINATED.' In the weeks and months that followed, Trump and his team not only failed to properly respond to domestic national disasters, they also fired their own acting FEMA chief after he had the audacity to tell Congress that he believed his agency should exist. It was against this backdrop that The Washington Post reported on the White House's plans, which are now coming into sharper focus. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that his administration plans to 'wean' states off Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance after this year's hurricane season, offering in the most explicit terms yet his plans for states to respond to natural disasters and other emergencies on their own. 'We're moving it back to the states, so the governors can handle,' Trump told reporters, seemingly indifferent to the fact that state governments lack the resources and wherewithal that only the federal government can provide in the wake of a disaster. 'We're going to give out less money,' the president added. 'We're going to give it out directly. It'll be from the president's office. We'll have somebody here.' Those comments were hardly reassuring: Trump seemed to suggest that White House officials, instead of federal disaster relief officials, will be exercising control over which communities receive assistance. A Reuters report noted, 'Distributing funds directly from the White House would ... mark a departure from current protocols, under which FEMA oversees the dissemination of financial aid to the states following the president's declaration of a disaster.' It's not like this won't open the door to problems, right? Trump concluded that the administration will 'start phasing it [FEMA] out' after hurricane season, which ends in the November. Between now and then, the agency is likely to struggle to tackle its important work as a result of recent FEMA job losses and DOGE-imposed cuts. This might not have been what Americans thought they were voting for last year, but it's apparently what they're getting. I won't pretend to know what's likely to happen once communities nationwide start struggling, looking to a Trump administration that decides to start ignoring disaster relief requests, but it's worth appreciating where this idea comes from. As Axios reported earlier this year, Project 2025 suggests 'reforming FEMA emergency spending to shift the majority of preparedness and response costs to states and localities instead of the federal government.' Evidently, Trump is inclined to agree. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Leaked audio suggests Trump's new Social Security chief had to Google his own job
When Senate Democrats tried to defeat Frank Bisignano's nomination to serve as the commissioner of the Social Security Administration, they had plenty of rhetorical ammunition to work with. After all, as recently as February in an interview with CNBC, Bisignano described himself as 'fundamentally a DOGE person,' which were four words the party seized on throughout the confirmation process. Bisignano took steps to distance himself from DOGE-imposed changes at the Social Security Administration, though Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon produced a statement from a purported whistleblower, who claimed that Bisignano had personally intervened to get key DOGE officials involved at the agency. The Senate's Republican majority didn't care, and Bisignano was confirmed earlier this month on a party-line vote. Now that he's been sworn in, the former businessman with no government experience is introducing himself to his new colleagues, though as ABC News reported, he appears to have gotten off to a shaky start. The newly sworn-in head of the Social Security Administration told agency staff this week that when he was first offered the job in the Trump administration, he wasn't familiar with the position and had to look it up online. Frank Bisignano, a former Wall Street executive, said during a town hall with Social Security managers from around the country on Wednesday that he wasn't seeking a position in the Trump administration when he received a call about leading the SSA. According to an audio recording of the meeting obtained by ABC News, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, Bisignano said: 'So, I get a phone call and it's about Social Security. And I'm really, I'm really not, I swear I'm not looking for a job. And I'm like, 'Well, what am I going to do?' So, I'm Googling Social Security. You know, one of my great skills, I'm one of the great Googlers on the East Coast.' He added, 'I'm like, 'What the heck's the commissioner of Social Security?'' A spokesperson for the agency made no effort to deny the accuracy of the quote, instead saying that Bisignano was merely 'poking fun at himself.' Perhaps. But the fact that the new Social Security commissioner, up until recently, had no idea what the Social Security commissioner's responsibilities entailed does not inspire confidence. And right about now, some additional confidence about the Social Security Administration would go a long way. As the Republican administration imposed significant personnel cuts and closed Social Security offices, The New York Times reported last month on the intensifying 'mess' within the system. The Washington Post reported a day earlier that retirees and disabled people are 'facing chronic website outages and other access problems.' The Wall Street Journal added that people who show up at Social Security offices are confronting multi-hour waits. It doesn't help that the administration is misusing the Social Security system in legally dubious ways; Elon Musk is slamming Social Security as a 'Ponzi scheme'; and JD Vance is using his vice presidential platform to peddle discredited claims about the system. Trump might've promised voters that Social Security would go untouched if he returned to the White House, but it's already clear that the Republican White House has destabilized the system to a degree without modern precedent. This post updates our related earlier coverage. This article was originally published on
