Hello, this is Michael Moss. Heather Cox Richardson is traveling today, and her travel

arrangements did not allow her time to read today's letter, so I will be reading it in her place.

July 12, 2025. On July 5th, the day after the Texas floods hit, the Federal Emergency Management

Agency, or FEMA, received 3,027 calls from survivors and answered 3,018 of them, about 99.7%, according to Maxine Josselo of the New York Times.

But that day, Homeland Security Secretary Christine Ome did not renew the contracts for four call center

companies that answered those calls. The staff at the centers were fired.

The next day, July 6, FEMA received 2,363 calls, and answered 846, or about 35.8%.

On Monday, July 7th, FEMA received 16,419 calls and answered 2,613, around 15.9%. In a statement, a spokesman

for the Department of Homeland Security said, when a natural disaster strikes, phone calls surge, and wait times can subsequently increase.

Despite this expected influx, FEMA's disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and

efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance.

Marcy Wheeler of Empty Wheel notes that one reason Noem has been cutting so ferociously at FEMA

is because she has run through the money Congress allocated for HHS with her single-minded

focus on immigration. In May, Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat of Connecticut,

called out Nome's expenditure of $200 million on an ad campaign pushing Trump's agenda,

and $21 million to transport about 400 migrants to Guantanamo Bay, only to have many of them transferred back out.

Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut, told Nome, you are spending like you don't have a budget.

You are on track to trigger the Anti-Deficiency Act.

That means you're going to spend more money than you have been allocated

by Congress. This is a rare occurrence, and it is wildly illegal. Your agency will be broke by July,

over two months before the end of the fiscal year. You may not think that Congress has provided

enough money to ICE or immigration and customs

...