FEMA Is Forcing Towns to Fend for Themselves, and Trump Opens ‘Gold Card’ Visa Applications

0:02From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, December 11th. Here's what we're covering.

0:13Back in May. Some of the heaviest rain out to the west in western Maryland. Flash floods there and more flooding risk today. A slow-moving storm system moved over the small town of western Port, Maryland. And as the rain poured down, floodwaters rose. Cars and debris seen floating in the school parking lot. Soon, the elementary school was swamped, the town hall was flooded, and books from the city library were scattered across town amid the debris. Everything here is mud. Look, there goes a truck loaded down with the mud that they've just scraped up off the street. With so much destruction, state officials put in a request to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for financial support.

0:54FEMA's response? Denied. Local officials assumed that was some kind of bureaucratic mix-up, so they submitted a more thorough damage report that estimated cleanup costs at about$30 million. FEMA's response? Denied again. That situation is becoming more and more familiar for communities across the country, as FEMA, under the Trump administration, has become much less willing to fund disaster recovery. Aid has been significantly scaled back, and in some cases, payments that are approved have been delayed. President Trump has made it clear he wants to shift more of the burden of disaster recovery to states, even floating the idea of shuttering FEMA altogether at one point.

1:39But he's also used federal assistance as a political weapon, trying to punish states that refuse to cooperate with his immigration crackdown by blocking disaster funding. On the same day that FEMA denied funding to Maryland, a blue state, Trump approved federal aid for Alaska, Nebraska, and North Dakota, all states that supported him in last year's presidential election. Maryland's governor told The Times he thinks the flood recovery request was denied because it's a Democratic-controlled state, and a county commissioner representing the town of Western Port, who is a Republican, agreed, saying, quote, We're strictly a victim of ideology.

2:17In a statement, FEMA said it had analyzed the damage information and that the data didn't support sending aid. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has just appointed a new official to oversee the office at FEMA that weighs in on whether federal disaster aid should be sent to communities. The appointee, Greg Phillips, has worked in state human services agencies, but his LinkedIn profile doesn't list any professional experience in emergency management. Phillips has been a leading proponent of election fraud conspiracies. According to the fact-checking site PolitiFact, unsubstantiated claims about millions of non-citizens voting, which Trump himself amplified, can be traced back to Phillips.

3:04Now, three other quick updates on the Trump administration. As you probably know, we've just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, a large tanker, very large. President Trump announced that the U.S. took control of a ship carrying oil yesterday, providing no specifics other than saying that it was seized, quote, for a very good reason. Footage shared by the administration appeared to show U.S. forces rappelling down from a helicopter onto the deck of the tanker. U.S. officials tell The Times it was carrying Venezuelan oil and that the seizure is part of the administration's ongoing pressure campaign on Nicolas Maduro, the leader of Venezuela, whose country is highly dependent on oil revenue.

3:48According to an official, a federal judge recently issued a warrant for the seizure because the vessel had been used in the past to smuggle oil from Iran. Also, applications are now officially open for an expedited visa the U.S. government plans to offer for$1 million, dubbed the Trump Gold Card. Basically, it's a green card, but much better, much more powerful. The White House has framed the visas as a way to raise billions of dollars for the government and attract what it calls the best people, like entrepreneurs and investors. Critics say the new program will unfairly prioritize wealthy individuals who will be able to get U.S.

4:30residency potentially just weeks after applying. To be eligible for a gold card, applicants will have to pay a$15 ,000 processing fee that's non-refundable. And last update, the Environmental Protection Agency is reassessing the risks of certain chemicals, starting with formaldehyde. The cancer-causing gas is used in the production of a lot of consumer goods, paints, plastics, furniture, clothing, and it's even used in some hair-straightening treatments. Now, the Trump administration is proposing to almost double what's considered a safe level of exposure, upending earlier findings that said basically any exposure to the chemical is dangerous.

5:13The shift is a big win for the chemicals industry, which has been lobbying against strict regulations on formaldehyde for years. It's argued that new limits on the gas would be expensive for businesses, and that workers can instead be protected by things like respirators. Under Trump, the top two officials overseeing chemical safety at the EPA are former directors of a chemicals industry group.

5:42We judged it appropriate at this meeting to lower our policy rate by a quarter percentage point. At the Federal Reserve yesterday, the chair Jerome Powell announced that interest rates will be lowered once again. But it was a contentious decision, with the policymakers split on how to proceed. Powell acknowledged that they're facing down two different economic threats that call for two different strategies. Continued shakiness in the job market might require cutting rates more, while growing inflation might mean raising them. So what do you do? You've got one tool. You can't do two things at once.

6:18So at what pace do you move? What size moves do you make? And that kind of thing. And what's the timing of them? It's a very challenging situation. Ahead of the decision, the Fed had less visibility into the health of the U.S. economy than usual because the government shutdown disrupted or delayed the gathering of key inflation and labor market data.

6:41In Paris, investigators revealed new details about the jewelry heist at the Louvre and the security lapses that allowed it to happen. Originally, the museum's director said the thieves had managed to get in undetected because a key security camera was facing the other way. Now, investigators say the crime was caught on camera, but the security guards weren't watching it because there weren't enough screens in the control room to see every surveillance feed simultaneously. It took eight minutes for them to toggle over to the right feed. In testimony to the French Senate yesterday, investigators also said police might have been able to catch the thieves before they escaped, but that museum staff didn't give them the information they needed.

7:25The officers originally went to the wrong side of the building, wasting precious time. They got to the correct spot 30 seconds after the thieves had made their getaway. While multiple people have been arrested in connection with the heist, a Paris prosecutor said recently that the$100 million of stolen jewelry had yet to be found.

7:51And finally, Fern Michaels, the best-selling author of more than 200 romance novels and thrillers, has died at age 92. She only became a writer, she said, after a blunt nudge from her husband. She was a self-described New Jersey housewife, raising five kids, when she said, my husband told me to get off my ass and get a job. Those were his exact words. So she gave writing a shot and went on to sell an estimated 150 million copies, according to her publisher, bodice rippers along with family dramas and mysteries. Guess what, she said, I don't have that husband anymore. At first, she worked with a writing partner on the books, and they shared the pen name, Fern Michaels, though she later took full control of it.

8:41Her real name was Mary Cushkier, but she was inspired by a giant plastic fern she had in her living room. Over the course of her career, she built a fiction empire. Even in her 90s, she was still publishing four books a year. While she was proud of her success, she never claimed to be a literary phenomenon. Is Fern Michaels a good writer, she wrote on her website? No. Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, Times political reporter Robert Draper explains the cracks that are starting to show inside the MAGA movement. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts.

9:22I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow with the latest and the Friday News Quiz.