FEMA – COOPER GENERAL NEWS

U.S. President Joe Biden visits Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) headquarters to receive a briefing on the Atlantic hurricane season, in Washington, U.S., May 24, 2021.

Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Monday announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would double the funding available to help cities and states prepare for extreme weather disasters, to $1 billion this year from $500 million in 2020.

Biden also announced the launch of a new NASA initiative to more closely track how the climate is changing, and the impact of these changes on local communities, both in the near term and farther into the future.

The president revealed the additional funding during a visit to FEMA headquarters, where he received a briefing on the upcoming Atlantic hurricane season and delivered remarks to agency employees.

“Now is the time to get ready for the busiest time of the year for disasters in America,” Biden said following the briefing. “Hurricane season in the South and East, and the fire season out West.”

“We all know that the storms are coming, and we’re going to be prepared,” he added. “We have to be ready.”

The United States endured last year 22 separate weather and climate-related disasters that each caused more than $1 billion in damages, according to a White House fact sheet. Taken together, the damages from these 22 disasters — primarily wildfires, hurricanes and snowstorms — amounted to nearly $100 billion.

The newly announced funds will be distributed through FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program. Created in 2018, BRIC awards grants to states, local communities and tribes to undertake pre-disaster hazard mitigation projects.

Monday’s actions are the latest in a series of initiatives launched by the Biden administration to help measure and prepare for extreme weather events, which have increased in both frequency and severity as the climate has warmed over the past few decades.

Last week, Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to conduct a broad assessment of the financial risks posed by climate change to both government and the private sector

The order gives Biden’s top economic and climate advisors four months to produce an estimate of how much it would cost to achieve a U.S. economy with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

From the start of his presidency, Biden has made tackling climate change an integral part of his governing strategy.

A centerpiece of his climate strategy, a clean electricity standard, is part of the $2.3 trillion infrastructure package currently being negotiated by the White House and Senate Republicans.

The standard would require fossil fuel-burning power plants to gradually adopt carbon free methods of generating power, like wind and solar. Under the standard as currently written, the deadline for making electricity carbon free would be 2035.

WASHINGTON – Biden’s government is instructing the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help process an increasing number of children and teenagers who have occupied detention centers on the southwest border as the treatment of young migrants has come under increasing criticism.

FEMA, which usually provides financial assistance during natural disasters, will help find shelters and provide “food, water and basic health care” to thousands of young migrants, said Michael Hart, a spokesman for the agency, in a statement.

The government also urged Homeland Security officials to volunteer to “look after and assist unaccompanied minors” held in border prisons run by Customs and Border Guard.

Previous administrations also sent FEMA to help migrants cross borders. However, the Biden administration cannot use disaster relief to assist in processing migrants in Texas after crossing the border without the consent of Republican Greg Abbott. The states must apply to the federal government for funding.

A spokeswoman for the governor did not immediately respond to questions about whether he would apply.

More than 3,700 young people were in customs and border protection facilities this week, more than the around 2,600 children and young people who were detained in such detention centers in June 2019. Troy Miller, the acting commissioner for customs and border protection, said last week that 9,457 children, including teenagers, were detained at the border without parents in February, up from more than 5,800 in January.

The Biden government has so far failed to process the young migrants quickly and move them to emergency shelters managed by the Department of Health and Human Services, where they will be held until the government matches them with a sponsor. The administration has made efforts to expand the capacity of these shelters, which have held around 8,500 migrants this week. The Biden government recently ordered shelters to return the children to normal capacity despite the coronavirus pandemic.

“A border guard is not a place for a child,” said Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security minister, in a statement on Saturday. “Our goal is to have unaccompanied children brought to HHS as soon as possible.”

Mr Abbott and other Republicans have characterized the rise in border crossings as a direct result of Mr Biden’s aim to roll back President Donald J. Trump’s restrictive immigration policies. But Mr Biden has maintained a pandemic-pandemic emergency rule that allows border officials to quickly turn away migrants at the border, with the exception of unaccompanied minors.

“They express surprise and shock at the fact that they are overwhelmed when the Border Patrol and everyone here in Texas knew this was coming,” Abbott said.

Updated

March 14, 2021, 5:06 p.m. ET

New York Republican Representative John Katko said if FEMA was involved, “by definition, it is a disaster.”

“I have serious concerns that this will strain an already tight FEMA workforce and budget,” he said, “with an ongoing pandemic and Atlantic hurricane season in less than three months.”

The spate of crossroads increases the pressure in a divisive political struggle that has also faced the last three governments.

Mr Biden’s critics have moved swiftly in recent days to blame him for the surge in arrivals which they say jeopardize the security, economic recovery and health of the country as the coronavirus pandemic continues Thousands of lives claimed.

Many of them seem eager to draw attention from the president’s handling of the pandemic and his publicly well-received $ 1.9 trillion stimulus plan on an issue that unites the Republican Party as opposed to Democrats could.

The spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi described the influx of migrants, especially children, on Sunday as “a humanitarian challenge for all of us”. But she was determined to blame Mr Trump and his policies, as well as the longstanding unrest in Central America that had driven waves of migrants north.

“What the administration has inherited is a broken system on the border, and they are working to correct that in the interests of the children,” she said in “This Week” on ABC.

Representative Veronica Escobar, Democrat of Texas, who also referred to the Trump administration, said she found the situation “unacceptable” at a processing facility she visited in El Paso on Friday.

Nicholas Fandos and Chris Cameron contributed to the coverage.