Fact check: As wildfires rage, Trump lashes out with false claims about FEMA and California water policy
CNN
Fact check: As wildfires rage, Trump lashes out with false claims about FEMA and California water policy
Another natural disaster, another series of false claims from President-elect Donald Trump. For years, Trump has littered his statements on California wildfires and other disasters with inaccurate assertions. He did it again on Wednesday as wildfires raged in Los Angeles County. Here is a fact check. Trump claimed on social media Wednesday that President Joe Biden is leaving him “NO MONEY IN FEMA.” Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Though FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund was depleted last year by a series of major disasters, Biden signed a bill in December that replenished the fund. “The current balance of the Disaster Relief Fund is approximately $27 billion,” FEMA told CNN in an email on Wednesday. That sum may well prove inadequate to meet the needs created by every disaster that ends up happening this year, but it’s not “no money.” The December bill approved $29 billion in new money for the Disaster Relief Fund – Biden had asked Congress for $40 billion – plus billions more in other new disaster-related funding.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.
If nothing else, the controversy over the Trump administration’s second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean has surfaced a long-overdue debate about its already legally dubious first strikes.
Two top House lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.
Authorities in Colombia are dealing with increasingly sophisticated criminals, who use advanced tech to produce and conceal the drugs they hope to export around the world. But police and the military are fighting back, using AI to flag suspicious passengers, cargo and mail - alongside more conventional air and sea patrols. CNN’s Isa Soares gets an inside look at Bogotá’s war on drugs.
Young Americans are “a generation under profound strain” with little confidence in institutions and widespread economic concerns, according to a Harvard Institute of Politics survey of adults younger than 30 released Thursday.
As lawmakers demand answers over reports that the US military carried out a follow-up strike that killed survivors during an attacked on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, a career Navy SEAL who has spent most of his 30 years of military experience in special operations will be responsible for providing them.
The murder trial of Brian Walshe, who is accused of killing and dismembering his wife in 2023 continues. Follow for live updates.
The FBI arrested a person Thursday who investigators believe planted pipe bombs near the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters the night before the 2021 US Capitol riot.
Lawyers for the New York attorney general’s office are expected to appear in federal court in Albany on Thursday to try to disqualify a US attorney from investigating the state’s civil case against President Donald Trump.
A new poll shows more than 70% of Republicans with Obamacare coverage don’t want their enhanced premium subsidies to expire.
A safety volunteer accused of fatally shooting a man taking part in a “No Kings” protest last June in Salt Lake City while firing at another man he believed to be a potential mass shooter has been charged with manslaughter, prosecutors announced Wednesday.
The specter of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown looms over the Somali diaspora in the Twin Cities – home to the nation’s largest Somali population.
Honduras’ former President Juan Orlando Hernández thanked US President Donald Trump for pardoning his US drug trafficking conviction amid criticism from lawmakers that the pardon undermines the White House’s efforts to stop drug trafficking.