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Notes -
Does FEMA need additional funding? Use of the fund was approved yesterday and as far as I understood it the damage, while severe and tragic, hit mostly relatively low density areas. This isn't a hurricane Katrina situation, right?
Partly I am taking a shot at the claim that comes up every time there's some kind of disaster in the US (see also: Hawaii, East Palestine, wildfires, etc...) that foreign aid has somehow compromised our disaster response capabilities - often by the same people who oppose funding disaster preparedness - when in fact the US has capabilities for disaster relief so we don't have to respond in an ad hoc manner like we do with foreign events. When the question comes up: why aren't we doing X grand gesture of relief, the answer is usually that we have something more practical but less grandiose that we're already doing.
But also, apparently yes..
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