Fox obtains fact sheet from GOP-led House committee debunking Trump’s FEMA claims

Fox News “obtained a fact sheet assembled by the majority side of the House Appropriations Committee” that debunked several false claims made by Donald Trump and his supporters, Senior Congressional Correspondent Chad Pergram reported Tuesday.

Trump continues to capitalize on a double-whammy of catastrophic hurricanes pummeling the southeastern United States. Last month, Hurricane Helene — a massive Category 4 hurricane — slammed into Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, killing at least 230 people. Now, Hurricane Milton — which was upgraded Wednesday back to a Category 5 hurricane — threatens Florida’s Gulf Coast in areas already devastated by Hurricane Helene.

As the federal government mobilizes to respond to the storms, Trump has taken to the campaign trail to claim the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) doesn’t have enough money to assist in rescue and recovery operations because the Biden Administration has “[stolen] FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for illegal migrants.”

According to Pergram’s account of the fact sheet, the GOP-led House Appropriations Committee, chaired by Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), is debunking those false Trump claims.

The “fact sheet” obtained by Fox, Pergram reports, “says that FEMA ‘has enough funding in the short-term to address immediate needs for both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.’”

"It also declares there is ‘no funding connection between’ the migrant shelter program and the Disaster Relief Fund.’” Pergram wrote in a tweet.

The House Appropriations Committee fact sheet also undermines an op-ed published Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal by Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH).

“Federal Emergency Management Agency staff are working hard,” Vance wrote. “The agency’s response to Helene has been praised in some quarters and criticized elsewhere. But it too has been the victim of misplaced Biden-Harris political priorities. Under Ms. Harris and Mr. Biden, FEMA has funneled millions of dollars to nongovernmental organizations whose stated goal is facilitating mass migration into the U.S. The effort stems from a White House directive to reorient FEMA’s institutional focus away from U.S. citizens and toward aliens who either have no legal right to be here or whose legal status depends on the say-so of the Biden-Harris administration.”

But as the the fact sheet explains, there is “no intermingling of funding between these two programs.”

“The only connection is that both programs are administered by FEMA,” the fact sheet reads, according to Pergram.