Congress to question FEMA about hurricane relief

(NewsNation) — Congress will perceive from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Tuesday, pursuing reports that the bureau withheld hurricane betterment assistance from supporters of President-elect Donald Trump.

The Subcommittee connected Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management volition clasp a proceeding astatine 10 a.m. ET with FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell. Questions volition absorption connected the agency’s preparedness and effect to caller disasters, including Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

NewsNation volition watercourse the lawsuit unrecorded here.

A FEMA worker was fired earlier this month aft she directed others helping hurricane survivors not to spell to homes with gait signs supporting President-elect Donald Trump, according to the agency’s leader.

“This is simply a wide usurpation of FEMA’s halfway values and principles to assistance radical careless of their governmental affiliation,” Criswell said successful a connection astatine the time. “This was reprehensible.”

The fired employee, Marn’i Washington, is accused of telling her subsister assistance squad not to spell to Florida homes with pro-Trump gait signs. Washington told NewsNation she believes she’s being utilized arsenic a scapegoat for a communal bureau practice.

The acquisition to debar definite houses with definite run signs came from her nonstop superior based connected erstwhile squad encounters, Washington said, adding that “safety precautions are not politically driven.” 

Several caller hostile encounters happened astatine homes with Trump run signs, she said.

“I’m being framed. There’s nary usurpation of the Hatch Act,” Washington said. “I was simply pursuing orders.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.