It’s difficult to imagine a more noxious betrayal of public duty: A Federal Emergency Management Agency supervisor told her underlings assessing the damage from Hurricane Milton in Florida to skip homes with Donald Trump political signs in front of them.
That much is uncontroverted. Less clear is whether there’s anything to the now-fired FEMA worker’s subsequent claim that she was merely carrying out an agency directive.
The supervisor deserves more than firing. If there’s any plausible way to file criminal charges against her, authorities should do so; this appears on its face to qualify as malfeasance, after all.
Additionally, the issue requires an exhaustive congressional probe to determine whether this is the isolated incident that FEMA claims. There’s not been any evidence so far that it goes beyond one very bad apple in a large bureaucracy, but public trust in federal emergency response demands a thorough and public investigation.
People are also reading…
As first reported last week by The Daily Wire, the FEMA supervisor texted her underlings a “best practices” memo in the hurricane’s aftermath that included the line, “avoid homes advertising trump.” Federal employees told the website that at least 20 homes in devastated areas were bypassed — meaning they weren’t offered FEMA assistance — with workers on the ground explaining the bypasses with system messages like, “Trump sign no entry per leadership.”
The supervisor, identified as Marn’i Washington, was subsequently fired for what FEMA said in a statement was “reprehensible” conduct that violated “FEMA’s core values and principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation.”
Washington reportedly initially denied she ordered any homes to be skipped. She later said she did in fact give such an order, while claiming it was merely in keeping with a standing FEMA protocol for avoiding “hostility” in the field.
An embattled federal employee seeking to spread blame for her inexcusable actions doesn’t in itself implicate the Biden administration for politicizing a disaster. But of course that’s not how allies of President-elect Donald Trump see it. The MAGA-verse is treating the story as an “a-ha!” moment — proof of what Trump had earlier, baselessly claimed was a White House conspiracy to deny emergency aid to his supporters.
Trump has long employed what the psychologists call “projection”: The casting of one’s own traits, foibles and dark motives onto adversaries. Ex-Trump aides and others have testified to how Trump, as president, sought to deny federal aid to Democratic areas during natural disasters, including California’s wildfires. Early in the pandemic, Trump infamously declared that if blue-state governors wanted federal help, they would have to “treat us well.”
That has long been Trump’s way. There’s been no evidence indicating it’s President Joe Biden’s way — but if there is any, it must come out. A thorough congressional investigation is merited.
