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Trump/Musk backstabs FEMA to begin financial conflict against NYC [Updated] [1]

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Date: 2025-02-13

Trump hates FEMA, for… reasons, I guess? And while he might not be willing to dive directly into the optics of shutting it down entirely, he and/or Musk have started another front in their attack on benevolent governance by stealing money already paid out through it.

News on this got rolling yesterday, when, as part of an unhelpfully-brief statement, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander said this:

This morning, my financial team shockingly uncovered that President Trump and his crony Elon Musk illegally executed a revocation of $80 million in congressionally-appropriated FEMA funding from New York City’s bank accounts late yesterday afternoon. This is money that the federal government previously disbursed for shelter and services and is now missing. This highway robbery of our funds directly out of our bank account is a betrayal of everyone who calls New York City home.

Well. That’s horrifying, but it’s a little light on the details. However, the New York Times and New York Post have both covered the story, and made it much clearer what’s going on.

New York City received two grants — one for $58.6 million and one for $21.9 million — to cover the costs of providing temporary accommodations to migrants in 2024, as part of the Shelter and Services Program. That program is actually dual-funded by FEMA and CBP, but FEMA makes the actual payments (because FEMA obviously has a better grant payout system). These grants were applied for last year, and approved by the Biden administration, but hadn’t been disbursed until last week.

But note the important point there. These weren’t still pending in the FEMA/CBP system. Last week, the money was disbursed. It was transferred to NYC. NYC had the money.

And then Trump and Musk took it back.

The big question — well, one of the big questions — is how. At some point late Tuesday night, apparently at the direction of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the Trump administration withdrew that $80.5 million dollars from NYC accounts, without informing anyone. The NYC Comptroller discovered it the next morning, and here we are. Lander, again, in his statement to the Post:

If you had asked me yesterday, “Does the federal government have the capability of seizing money back from the City of New York’s bank accounts?” I would have said, “I’ll have to get back to you.”

But apparently they do.

Musk has made statements that I am not going to link to, claiming that he “discovered” millions of dollars of fraud in which New York paid inflated prices to house illegal immigrants in luxury hotel suites, and… Look, you don’t need me to tell you that’s not what was happening here, right? The FEMA grant offered $12.50 per night per person for housing reimbursement, representing a fraction of the total grant. The rest funded security, food, transportation, and so forth, and still falls immensely short of the total costs NYC paid as part of migrant management.

This is yet another chapter in the constitutional crisis that is not coming. It is here. These are funds that were approved by the government, as part of a program that was approved by the government. Further, these are funds that had already been paid, not merely a promise or contract to pay in future. If Trump and Musk (and apparently Kristi Noem) can reach into the bank accounts of the City of New York and take $80 million dollars, then there’s every reason to think they can reach into whatever other bank accounts they want to take whatever money they think “shouldn’t” have been paid.

Various NYC officials have vowed to fight this. But make no mistake, this is the start of open financial warfare between the Trump administration and Blue America.

Update: Just in case there was any question about what’s going on here, Kristi Noem has issued a statement about what happened. This Washington Examiner link is probably paywalled for most people, but it’s better than linking to the F-tier Fox story or the Daily freaking Mail:

I have clawed back the full payment that FEMA deep state activists unilaterally gave to NYC migrant hotels. FEMA was funding the Roosevelt Hotel that serves as a Tren de Aragua base of operations and was used to house Laken Riley’s killer. Mark my words: there will not be a single penny spent that goes against the interest and safety of the American people.

So, yeah.

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