Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump has been doing all kinds of interviews in order to get out his message to the people, including friendly and unfriendly outlets. He went on the Flagrant podcast with Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh in a free-wheeling interview where they covered all kinds of topics. No teleprompters; you can tell it's just a regular conversation. No talking points needed. So different from the Kamala "interviews."
Trump does particularly well in these kinds of interviews, where his humor and humanity come out more. The difference between his ability and knowledge versus Kamala Harris is stark.
Elon Musk has become a big supporter of Trump, so they asked if Musk was his "favorite African American."
Trump had a good laugh at that one.
He praised Musk for loving the country and "picking a side," noting how now (because of Democrats), you can suffer a cost for supporting the opposition, a troubling turn of events for the country. He mentioned how he had supporters who were hesitant to be supporters publicly for that reason. But Elon has gone "all out," which takes courage. //
Schulz asked about him being a father and about a funny story of Don Jr. asking if he could have five friends over when he thought his father would be out of town. He ended up bringing over 200, and his father showed up. It did not go well. //
He joked how he could never give closure for his son doing that. But then he spoke about what Don had to go through because of being his son. He also praised his daughter Ivanka for her efforts during his administration. //
Trump War Room @TrumpWarRoom
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President Trump reveals the one ability Joe Biden has, that he doesn't: "He has an ability to fall asleep while on camera." 🤣
9:55 AM · Oct 9, 2024
The Supreme Court will not halt Special Counsel Jack Smith’s review of private messages between former President Donald Trump and Twitter, now known as X.
On Monday, the nine-justice panel issued handed down their decision without explanation, declining to consider Trump’s challenge against Smith’s secret warrant.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) first sought the records in January last year, demanding a complete trove of private information including Trump’s search history, direct messages, account settings, and activity under the “@realDonaldTrump” username. According to The Hill, the government obtained a nondisclosure order to bar X from revealing the existence of the warrant, even to the former president.
“The company challenged the order, arguing the records were potentially covered by executive privilege and not being able to tell Trump violated the First Amendment,” The Hill reported. “Court filings show X at one point was fined $350,000 for not timely turning over Trump’s data.”
Attempts to block Smith’s surveillance in the lower courts, however, failed. The Supreme Court ultimately refused to hear another challenge to the warrant in Smith’s criminal case, which is related to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson questioned whether the court should even be involved in addressing the policy in the first place, saying she was concerned about the court “taking over what Congress may have intended for the agency to do in this situation.”
"I think it can't be assumed that the agency exceeds its authority whenever it interprets a statutory term differently than we would such that all we have to do as a part of this claim here today is just decide what we think a firearm is." //
Justice Brett Kavanaugh expressed concerns that the regulation would criminalize ghost gun sellers who might not be aware that they are violating a law, CNN reported.
“This is an agency regulation that broadens a criminal statute beyond what it had been before,” Kavanaugh asked. “What about the seller, for example, who is truly not aware — truly not aware — that they are violating the law and gets criminally charged?”
Prelogar said prosecutors would have to prove that the seller was willfully violating the law. Kavanaugh described Prelogar’s answer as “helpful.” //
Twist Gamma
12 minutes ago
Kavanaugh nailed it at the end.
I was on board with the government's argument up until Kavanaugh made it clear that this was not a law but an interpretation of a law. Interpretations on something like this should absolutely go in the favor of the citizen, so that citizens do not become criminals without realizing it.
If guns are regulated, there is no problem with regulating, in the same way, a kit that has all of the ingredients + instructions to build a gun. It's the same thing, assuming the kit is complete. Any restriction on guns that passes Constitutional muster could equally be applied to a complete gun kit.
However, deciding that they are equivalent is the job of Congress, not the courts. And ESPECIALLY not the job of the bureaucracy.
Whether the restrictions themselves are Constitutional is a separate question, of course.
Presenting the following question to Vance, she said that CBS polling found that “more than 60 percent of Republicans under the age of 45 favor the U.S. taking steps to try and reduce climate change,” and she asked him what the Trump administration would do to reduce the alleged impact of climate change.
I want to isolate that bit about the CBS polling for a moment. I wasn’t able to easily find the poll they were referencing, but I won’t worry over the numbers there anyway, because people can claim to be in favor of the government doing “something” all they want. Yet when real policy hits pocketbooks and people have to see what their virtue signaling actually costs, their tune changes drastically.
For example, a poll conducted by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research (UC/AP) found that only 38 percent of Americans surveyed said that they would be willing to pay a $1 per month carbon fee to fight climate change. As the amount of monthly fee increased, support continued to fall. This same trend is seen in multiple polls, which means it is misleading to suggest that the “someone needs to do something” polling translates to voter support for higher energy costs and Green New Deal radicalism. //
The most astonishing part of this section of the debate, however, came at the very end of the relatively reasonable discussion about energy and foreign manufacturing and emissions, and it did not come from either of the candidates. After a short response from Walz in which he lied, saying that there had been no moratorium on natural gas and oil, moderator O’Donnell cut him off to tell him his time was up and, without even taking a breath, concluded with, “[t]he overwhelming consensus among scientists is that the earth's climate is warming at an unprecedented rate. Margaret?”
And moderator Margaret Brennan seamlessly pivoted to the next question on immigration.
She gave no time for either candidate to respond to her very random injection of the scientific establishment ad populum climate narrative argument, and it really seemed as if it was simply a line she was instructed to say at some point during the question period. //
CBS is partnered with a radical climate propagandist group called Covering Climate Now, which urges journalists to connect everything to climate change and environmental justice, and instructs them to never platform “climate denialists.” Who is a climate denialist? Anyone who balks at their definition of “rapid, forceful action” or anyone who disputes the consensus narrative. It is a nightmare of an organization, baldly propagandistic, and news organizations like CBS News take their marching orders from them. //
Musicman
4 hours ago
The response should always be, “Increased CO2 and temperatures is resulting in a greening of the planet, not its destruction. Yes, it will cause some disruption as the SW deserts become hotter and Canada milder and more fertile, but we humans are ingenious at taking advantage of nature’s bounty.”. //
Adler von Pfingsten
3 hours ago
Trump and Vance would be well advised to answer questions about climate change with a virtual challenge i.e. I followed the “science” of climate change and gender identity to its logical conclusion:
Lysenkoism: In modern usage, the term Lysenkoism has become distinct from normal pseudoscience. Where pseudoscience pretends to be science, Lysenkoism aims at attacking the legitimacy of science itself, usually for political reasons. It is the rejection of the universality of scientific truth, and the deliberate defamation of the scientific method to the level of politics.
The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) is an aggressive domestic program to federally register millions of unsuspecting small business owners under the guise of an “anti-money laundering initiative.”
By the end of this year, Americans will be required to hand over their small businesses’ private data — such as owners’ names and home addresses — to the federal government’s law enforcement database, operated by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), housed under the Department of the Treasury. Such small businesses include limited liability companies, corporations, “and any other entities created by the filing of a document with a secretary of state or any similar office in the United States.” //
The true goal of CTA appears to be setting up yet another new database of citizens to monitor, observe, and punish. The federal government is moving quickly to implement the CTA, as millions of small business owners in the United States have no idea this law even exists (only 13 percent of businesses in California, 5 percent in Ohio, and 4 percent in Pennsylvania have registered). Millions of businesses owners face becoming felons in three months unless they comply.
There are currently seven separate lawsuits challenging the validity of the law. Last year, the House of Representatives passed a bill to give businesses more time to comply, but the bill is sitting in the Senate going nowhere. A recent email from their accountant may have been the first time many businesses realized this law exists. The legal confusion and seeming lack of urgency to inform the public suggest that FinCEN’s true intent is to “catch” millions of small business owners in “non-compliance” so that they can be investigated and audited by Department of the Treasury and punished. Serious criminals will not be concerned about paperwork violations. Mandatory compliance is required by January 1, 2025, or business owners will be subjected to hefty fines of $591 dollars per day (or up to 10 percent of a company’s annual receipts) and up to two years in federal prison. //
President Trump vetoed this unconstitutional power grab, as part of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2021, but his veto was overridden. In an unprecedented act of overreach, the feds are moving to collect data on all small business owners, who make up the backbone of the U.S. economy, for reasons that seem murky at best. And the information collected goes to FinCEN, the counterterrorism arm of the Treasury. Business owners have to register with a terrorism department. This seems to infer criminality on millions of law-abiding citizens.
Under CTA, for-profit business entities with fewer than 20 employees and under $5 million in revenue are in the crosshairs. But businesses that make more than $5 million annually, or employ more than 20 full-time employees, are exempt from this invasive self-reporting requirement that could put owners in prison. That means BlackRock, Amazon, Facebook, Pfizer, etc., can operate “business as usual,” but “Grandma’s Donut Shop” will be required to show her “paper’s please” if she wants to make a living. //
Business registration and entity creation has always been handled at the state level through State Corporation Commissions. With the CTA, even though a business is a registered entity at the state level, if it does not then self-report and register into a criminal database at the federal level, owners will not be able to operate the business. The federal government is overreaching into a state rights issue and creating a massive database in violation of the commerce clause. State attorneys general in every state should be weighing in on this issue. Unfortunately, their silence is deafening.
Judges 12:1-7 (ESV)
The word “shibboleth” comes from this passage in the Bible. It is a word that those in the tribe can say and others cannot.
Every group has words foreign to outsiders—words the others cannot say or will not say. These words set people apart as inside or outside the tribe.
In postmodern Marxist thought, shibboleths give power. The existing powerful people say things, and the way to reverse power is to shut them up and say new things. Get everyone saying the grass is blue and the sky is green, and pretty soon, the sane people are the ones who look crazy.
As I have written before, progressives exist on the left and right. They are about the acquisition and control of power, not ideas. Power is the only idea, and they will say and do anything to gain that power. Part of using that power is tribal control and identity. //
Here’s the tell that we are dealing with idol-worshipping progressives.
One of the very first thoughts uttered by these people was not for the care and concern of American citizens in harm’s way but for the potential to deny them power politically. They made it about Trump and the election. That was their primary reaction.
You need to understand that they don’t care about the truth. They are trying to separate the true believers from everyone else. If you are willing to embrace the absurd with a straight face, you’re on the inside. You can say shibboleth.
If you are unwilling to embrace it, you are on the outside. It is a very Marxist behavior.
They have no guiding ideology and no real principles. They want power. Like progressives on the left, the progressives on the right are willing to grow and wield government power to reward their friends and punish their enemies. And, increasingly, their enemies are those unwilling to side with the absurd idea that the government is conjuring hurricanes to steal elections.
This is, needless to say, unhealthy, and yes, again, this is a rightwing equivalent to the absurd leftwing progressive demands that we refer to girls as boys and, upon transition, retroactively embrace that Caitlyn Jenner always was. The pregnant girl in the movie Juno was actually played by a boy all along. //
Romans 1:21-23 (ESV)
What you need to understand is that the dramatic shift towards foolishness, lust, and mythology does not know earthly ideological parameters. It will happen across the spectrum of people, and we are watching it happen in real-time, including here, as people have given up the worship of God for power. They seek a political savior for spiritual problems and what they’ve done is embrace the spirit of the age as they reject the Holy Spirit.
All of life is theological, whether you acknowledge it or not. When a person gives up the sound theology of God and His sovereignty, they begin to utter the shibboleths of the stupid. As Paul warned Timothy, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” 2 Timothy 4:3 (ESV)
Media Research Center
@theMRC
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Must watch TV as the Press Briefing leads to KJP storming out
Peter Doocy & KJP get heated over Biden sending money to Lebanon without Congressional approval but refusing to do so for North Carolina.
Doocy: "You can't call a question you don't like misinformation."
3:03 PM · Oct 7, 2024. //
But as Doocy pointed out, Biden is "fond" of saying, "Show me your budget and I will tell you what you value.". //
Imagine you're suffering from the hurricane or you have family who are, and you see that, what must you think? Why can't that money be deployed for hurricane relief if it can be deployed for relief for people in Lebanon? And why are you spending it on Lebanon?
Doocy also noted that Joe Biden was posting about how the Small Business Administration disaster loan program was going to be running out of money too, "if Congress doesn't come back."
To most people, Doocy explained, "A taxpayer dollar is a taxpayer dollar is a taxpayer dollar."
"That is not misinformation," he declared. "That is a FACT." //
Froge
30 minutes ago
What is asinine about the money to Lebanon, is the people who need "refugee" money are Hezbollah, their operatives and families who have been defeated by Israel.
So Israel finally gets rid of them and here we are paying for temporary housing for the terrorists. How nice of us.
If one becomes president or vice president, you have to swear to uphold the Constitution.
But while Kamala's Stern interview was airing on Tuesday, guess what her running mate was doing on the same day?
Calling for the end of the Electoral College.
“I think all of us know the Electoral College needs to go,” Walz said at a campaign fundraiser hosted at California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s home on Tuesday, according to pool reporters in the room. “We need a national popular vote that is something. But that’s not the world we live in.” //
bk
an hour ago
"This would be a great country if we could get rid of the Constitution." //
msctex
an hour ago edited
The true bottom-line reality here is that if a rumor could be sufficiently floated today which made Democrats believe the EC could work in their favor, tomorrow it would be hailed as the greatest result of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, and proof of the Founding Father's wisdom.
Yes, they would choke a bit on the last part, but they would run with it. //
Just an old soldier...
32 minutes ago
The Dems hate the Electoral college. It thwarts their schemes of total control. The tyranny of straight democracy is what they want.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner. //
FlorenceNightingale
an hour ago
Good communist that he is, Tim Walz calls himself “a national popular vote guy.” So he prefers a plebiscite, the people’s required stamp of approval on a totalitarian demagogue’s rule. Slavery that you vote for.
The Harris administration and Mayorkas’ department were behind the eight ball from the start in coordinating a response. Why? The agency’s Shelter and Services Program – a program providing grants to communities to deal with the rapid influx of illegals – ballooned from $363.8 million in 2023 to $650 million the following year.
That revelation yielded a stark admission from Mayorkas — that FEMA does not have the funding to deal with disasters going forward.
“We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” Mayorkas said. “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.” //
This is what happens when a man whose top credential is his ethnic background and immigration status as opposed to what he can do to effectively run the DHS. Funds go to pet projects that help aid illegal aliens first, while disaster victims become an afterthought.
And while FEMA allocated over $1 billion in funding to provide housing to illegal migrants, Harris — chosen herself by Biden almost exclusively based on gender and skin color — was announcing that the agency was accepting applications for a small stipend to victims of Helene in Georgia. //
FEMA, in a recent press release, revealed that the agency had disbursed roughly $10 million in "flexible and upfront" assistance as a consolation prize for Helene victims. Since then, they have spent roughly $137 million for the recovery effort. That represents just a tick over 13 percent of the budget allocated for the Shelter and Services Program for illegals.
Victims are 13 percent as important in the eyes of the administration. And the plebians can happily accept their $750 stipends when illegals get their rent paid for up to a year.
Georgians and North Carolinians surely recognize where Harris’s priorities would lie over the next four years.
FEMA, under her and Biden’s purview, has morphed into a DEI experiment gone wrong. And they’ve been bragging about it to the public for years. //
FEMA bowing down to DEI practices hasn’t just been limited to using up funding to aid illegals. A disaster preparedness meeting in March of 2023 saw the agency “focusing efforts on LGBTQIA+” victims.
The Daily Mail reported that FEMA was “prioritizing LGBTQ people” because they are “already disadvantaged.” //
Where disaster aid must be prioritized based on greatest need, Harris wants it prioritized by race.
Prior to this administration, there were laws against such obvious discrimination. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs or activities receiving federal financial assistance.
Now, such discrimination is openly celebrated. People are dying because of it. And Kamala Harris will only amplify the DEI disaster enveloping this nation if she wins in November.
"Politicians, billionaires and grifters who peddle lies during a time of crisis should be held accountable." The first part of that last part stands: Cooper should definitely be held accountable. The "unprecedented response" he crows about had little to do with him and everything to do with billionaires like Elon Musk, the relief organizations, and the incredible Americans who entered the breach and were the first to respond. Instead, Cooper chose to cozy up to FEMA heads and play at CENTCOM from his cushy office and home in Raleigh, while the people he hindered and maligned were the ones doing the work of saving lives and offering hope.
The book, part score-settling memoir and part global threat analysis, at times reads like a Steele Dossier 2.0. He says he uncovered the new tidbits while working for unnamed wealthy individuals in the 2020 campaign cycle and other stuff he dug up while working for corporate clients after Trump was defeated in 2020 by Joe Biden.
Umm, sooo…this supposedly new oppo research is...four years old. And at no time was this searing information ever thought to be so gripping and trenchant that Steele would come forward with the details...until today. This is already shaping up to be about as substantial as his 1.0 beta version of his namesake dossier, and he undersells things even further. //
This is hardly a selling point. In fact, it is the polar opposite. Mueller had established that there was no link between Trump’s campaign and Putin, even as the investigator strained mightily to make any kind of tie possible and tossed out dozens of ineffectual indictments (mostly at Russian figures who would never see the light of a courtroom) ...
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed Tuesday that the Israel Defense Forces eliminated the replacement of former Hezbollah boss Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in late September, as well as another possible successor to the top job. //
Netanyahu appeared on television to speak directly to the Lebanese people:
"Today, Hezbollah is weaker than it has been for many, many years," Netanyahu said in a message tailored directly to the "people of Lebanon."
"We’ve degraded Hezbollah’s capabilities, we took out thousands of terrorists, including [former Hezbollah leader Hassan] Nasrallah himself, and Nasrallah’s replacement, and the replacement of his replacement." //
Netanyahu asked if the residents of Lebanon remembered when the country was called “the pearl of the Middle East.”
“I do,” he continued. What happened? Iran and Hezbollah happened, he explained:
Netanyahu said Iran has "conquered" Lebanon to ensure Hezbollah serves Tehran’s interests in the region by turning it into a "stockpile of ammunition and weapons" serving as a pseudo "Iranian military base" on Israel’s border.
"Now you, the Lebanese people, you stand at a significant crossroads. It is your choice," he continued. "You can now take back your country. You can return it to a path of peace and prosperity." //
anon-7npa
9 hours ago
Recent Babylon Bee headline last week:
"Young Hezbollah Recruit Can't Believe He's Already Made Regional Manager"
He's in line for another promotion //
20th Century Ltd
9 hours ago
Adapting Netanyahu's spot-on comments:
"Netanyahu said Iran has "conquered" America to ensure the Democratic Party serves Tehran’s interests in the world by turning it into a "stockpile of authoritarians, central planners, and DEI betas."
"Now you, the American people, you stand at a significant crossroads. It is your choice," he continued. "You can now take back your country. You can return it to a path of peace and prosperity."
"If you don’t, the Democratic Party will continue to try to fight rural areas from densely populated areas at your expense," the prime minister added. "Free your country from the Democrats."" //
Is Joe Biden - or whoever is pulling his strings (Jill) - trying to sabotage Kamala Harris' presidential campaign? Because if he were, it would be hard to see what he would be doing differently. //
One of two things is happening here: Either the Biden camp (and I think we all know who is really in charge in that group) is demonstrating a staggering display of incompetence in scheduling and they aren't even trying to speak to whoever is in charge of setting up Kamala Harris' string of feather-soft interviews, or the Biden camp is miffed at the way old Joe was shoved rudely aside (for which we can scarcely blame them) and is trying to deliberately sabotage the Harris run for the White House.
Or, we could embrace the power of "both."
Forty U.S. Army soldiers who were in Israel as the advance team for what they thought was a routine training exercise last October 7 suddenly found themselves in the middle of a war, unarmed, and being forced to beg reluctant Pentagon officials to send an Air Force plane to extract them.
Approximately a quarter of the soldiers were just miles from Gaza in off-base housing near the IDF’s Tze’elim base when the attack began. A group of local Israelis – IDF reservists, police officers, and ordinary citizens – got them to the base, which Hamas terrorists were quickly heading toward. With his men in mortal danger, the U.S. team leader requested permission to open the arms locker so they could retrieve their firearms but was denied at the US Central Command level and “denied and/or ignored” at a level above that, according to a military intelligence analyst with knowledge of the mission and exfiltration.
The rest of the soldiers had just arrived in Tel Aviv, where Hamas rockets were hitting near their hotels. //
“With everything going on, with all kinds of indirect fire, with rockets, for a good six, eight hours those [soldiers who were at Tze’elim] were in very mortal danger and the military and civilian leadership [at the Pentagon] was perfectly willing to not even worry about it.” //
Approximately 40 hours after the attacks started, and only after lengthy “conversations at the 3-star HQ level,” a U.S. Air Force C-17 briefly touched down in Tel Aviv to exfiltrate the soldiers.
Hamas fired a barrage of 150 rockets at the airport shortly after the C-17 took off for Kuwait. //
Thanks to three separate military sources – one of whom was personally involved in the mission – who spoke to RedState exclusively, the harrowing and disturbing story can now be told. The sources are not named due to fear of retaliation. //
There’s never been an official acknowledgment that there were U.S. troops in Israel on October 7, but an October 31, 2023, New York Times story states: “But other U.S. officials said the Defense Department has dispatched several dozen commandos in recent days, in addition to a small team that was in Israel on Oct. 7 conducting previously scheduled training.”
“My prediction is, if there is another four years of a Democratic administration, they will legalize so many illegals that the next election, there will be no swing states,” he predicted, forecasting that will lead to “single-party rule.”
To back his stance, Musk cited the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which granted amnesty to millions of migrants in the country illegally.
“Thereafter, California turned very strongly Dem,” he said.
The Golden State voted for Republican presidential candidates in every election between 1968 and 1988 – and has backed none since. //
He said the people who claimed Trump was a "threat to democracy" are themselves a "threat to democracy" since one-party rule is not "democracy."
Climate and energy policies must balance the risks and benefits of a changing climate against growing demand for reliable, affordable, and clean energy. To strike that balance, policymakers must consider society’s values and priorities, its tolerance for risk, equities among generations and geographies, and efficacies, costs, and collateral impacts. This paper reviews the scientific, technoeconomic, and societal facts that should inform policy decisions and draws some straightforward conclusions from them.
While Harris was playing politics and trying to garner headlines by going after DeSantis, just a few hours later, Biden responded by saying he spoke to DeSantis and everything was great. //
She laid the groundwork for a narrative that DeSantis rebuffed federal help and was putting politics above the safety of Floridians, and no sooner than she did, Biden showed up to say the opposite. He could have easily played along and he didn't.
Is that just another coincidence? I can't say for sure, but man, does it feel like he's taking little shots at Harris throughout the campaign. In the last month alone, Biden has contradicted the vice president multiple times regarding her attempt to separate herself from the administration.
Float switches are a reliable and inexpensive solution for the direct control of pumps and regulate liquid levels in tanks, basins and the like.
Gorilla annoys sibling during a heavy rain shower.
Although the Federal Emergency Management Agency told Congress last month that it had $4 billion in its Disaster Relief Fund, officials also warned that the fund could have a shortfall of $6 billion by year’s end, a situation FEMA says could deteriorate in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
While FEMA is expected to ask Congress for new money, budget experts note a surprising fact: FEMA is currently sitting on untapped reserves appropriated for past disasters stretching back decades.
An August report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General noted that in 2022, FEMA “estimated that 847 disaster declarations with approximately $73 billion in unliquidated funds remained open.”
Drilling down on that data, the OIG found that $8.3 billion of that total was for disasters declared in 2012 or earlier.
Such developments are part of a larger pattern in which FEMA failed to close out specific grant programs “within a certain timeframe, known as the period of performance (POP),” according to the IG report. Those projects now represent “billions in unliquidated appropriations that could potentially be returned to the [Disaster Relief Fund].”
These “unliquidated obligations” reflect the complex federal budgeting processes. Safeguards are important so that FEMA funding doesn’t become a slush fund that the agency can spend however it chooses, budget experts said, but the inability to tap unspent appropriations from long-ago crises complicates the agency’s ability to respond to immediate disasters.
