{"id":19419,"date":"2026-02-27T19:01:49","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T19:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/fema-taps-billions-for-disasters-warning-democrats-of-dire-shutdown-impact\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T19:01:49","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T19:01:49","slug":"fema-taps-billions-for-disasters-warning-democrats-of-dire-shutdown-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/fema-taps-billions-for-disasters-warning-democrats-of-dire-shutdown-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"FEMA taps billions for disasters, warning Democrats of \u2018dire\u2019 shutdown impact"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The Trump administration spent more than half of the balance in the nation\u2019s disaster relief fund this week, pointing to that dwindling aid as means to pressure Democrats into yielding in DHS funding negotiations.<\/p>\n<p>A FEMA spokesperson said Friday that the agency sent out more than $5 billion this week for recovery projects, including for disasters \u201cthat happened more than 15 years ago.\u201d The withdrawal substantially shrinks cash in the disaster coffer that held $9.6 billion as of last week and appears to contradict Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem\u2019s weekend announcement that FEMA \u201cis scaling back to bare-minimum, life-saving operations only.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Accusing Democrats of \u201cplaying political games\u201d with disaster aid amid the DHS shutdown, the FEMA spokesperson warned of \u201cdire consequences\u201d as the disaster relief fund \u201cis being rapidly depleted.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It has been almost two weeks since DHS funding lapsed, and still top lawmakers and the White House are trading offers on policies to curtail the Trump administration\u2019s immigration enforcement tactics, which Democrats are demanding as a condition of voting to fully restore agency operations.<\/p>\n<p>Republicans delivered a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/live-updates\/2026\/02\/27\/congress\/white-house-dhs-funding-offer-00803919\" target=\"_blank\">private counteroffer<\/a> late Thursday, 10 days after Democrats on Capitol Hill sent their last proposal. A White House official granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations also cited diminished disaster relief Friday, challenging Democrats to \u201cmake a move \u2026 before more Americans are harmed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Some Democrats on Capitol Hill have offered plans to fund FEMA and other non-immigration agencies at DHS amid the negotiations over immigration enforcement policy. But top Republicans have rejected that idea.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Trump administration spent more than half of the balance in the nation\u2019s disaster relief fund this week, pointing to that dwindling aid as means to pressure Democrats into yielding in DHS funding negotiations. A FEMA spokesperson said Friday that the agency sent out more than $5 billion this week for recovery projects, including for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19419\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}