As misinformation about the federal response to natural disasters hampers relief efforts in the southeast U.S., several Iowa Republicans have seized the opportunity to spread lies about the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Echoing “pants on fire” claims from former President Donald Trump, U.S. Representatives Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01) and Ashley Hinson (IA-02) have repeatedly asserted that FEMA lacks the resources needed to help those harmed by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, because it has spent too much supporting undocumented immigrants. Representative Zach Nunn (IA-03) and U.S. Senator Joni Ernst have likewise claimed Americans are being shortchanged due to FEMA’s allegedly excessive spending on migrants.

Those lies are part of a national effort by Trump supporters and the leading pro-Republican cable news network to assist Trump’s campaign. For Iowa Republicans as well, the false talking points direct voters’ attention toward immigration and border security, topics perceived to boost GOP candidates up and down the ballot.

Nunn, Miller-Meeks, and Hinson all invested in election-year messaging about immigration long before the hurricanes made landfall.

BLAMING MIGRANTS FOR AMERICAN SUFFERING

Hurricane Helene has claimed more than 230 lives and destroyed countless homes and businesses. The footage of the damage is heartbreaking. FEMA began providing assistance promptly, just like the agency did after tornadoes and floods devastated some Iowa communities this spring and summer. GOP governors across the affected region have praised the federal response to the hurricanes.

To hear Iowa Republicans tell the story, though, the Biden administration has made things worse for victims, and undocumented immigrants have used resources Americans need.

Nunn got the ball rolling with an October 3 post from his official X/Twitter account: “After spending millions of taxpayer dollars on handouts for illegal immigrants, Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas now claims FEMA doesn’t have enough money left for hurricane season. The Biden-Harris open border crisis is costing Americans too much.”

The following day, a blog post on Nunn’s Congressional website further developed the idea that hurricane victims are “without the help they need” because undocumented immigrants have been “bleeding out” taxpayers. (emphasis in original)

Can you believe this? Today, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that FEMA doesn’t have enough funding to support Americans through the rest of this hurricane season. What happened to these funds? They spent hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds on illegal migrants. […]

In the last two years, FEMA spent millions on programs to take care of migrants – including free hotel rooms, free meals, and free healthcare.

This is the Biden-Harris Administration’s border policies at its worst. It’s insulting that the federal government spends billions on illegal immigrants, while even in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, American citizens are stranded and without the help they need.

Bottom Line: We must secure our Southern Border so that illegal immigrants stop bleeding out the U.S. taxpayer, especially when it’s at the expense of Americans in need.  

Miller-Meeks piled on during her speech at Governor Kim Reynolds’ annual fundraiser on October 5. KCRG-TV’s Conner Hendricks broadcast an excerpt:

And as our hearts and our prayers go out to those hurricane victims in our eastern seaboard, we also know that part of the problem is the Biden-Harris administration. Part of the problem is FEMA running out of money because they’re housing illegal immigrants with almost 1 billion dollars.

Several fact-checkers have explained what’s wrong with this framing. Congress authorized FEMA spending on migrant support services in 2019, during the Trump administration. That funding “comes from Customs and Border Protection, and is separate from FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund that’s used to respond to natural disasters.”

When Hendricks brought those facts to the attention of the Miller-Meeks team,

The campaign acknowledged that FEMA funding streams are separate, but questions why federal money would be used to re-settle undocumented migrants.

“I echo Speaker [Mike] Johnson’s comments about the frustrations of millions of Americans over any government funding of illegal aliens. While the FEMA funding streams are separate, the question remains: why are FEMA funds being used at all for re-settling illegal immigrants?,” Miller-Meeks said.

She should ask Trump, who signed the 2019 legislation authorizing such spending.

“PUTTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS FIRST”

As Trump and his allies continued to lie about the disaster response, some Republicans tried to push back this week. U.S. House Republican Chuck Edwards of North Carolina, who represents some of the counties hardest hit by Hurricane Helene, addressed many “outrageous rumors.” Edwards noted in an October 8 news release, “FEMA has NOT diverted disaster response funding to the border or foreign aid. Disaster response efforts and individual assistance are funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts.”

Meanwhile, Republican staff on the House Appropriations Committee produced a fact sheet debunking several of Trump’s claims. Chad Pergram, senior Congressional correspondent for Fox News, reported on October 8 that the fact sheet

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. It adds there is “no intermingling of funding between these two programs.” It adds that “the only connection is that both programs are administered by FEMA.”

Hinson should understand how this works, since she serves on the House Appropriations Committee. Nevertheless, she used her official X/Twitter account to claim on October 8, “FEMA has spent hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars supporting illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, Americans impacted by horrific natural disasters – like Hurricane Helene – are left in the lurch.”

Hinson added, “The Administration can try & spin it all they want, but there’s no excuse for spending tax dollars bailing out sanctuary cities or incentivizing illegal immigration. FEMA should be solely focused on helping Americans.”

She should take it up with Trump and the members of Congress who voted for this use of resources in 2019.

Ernst also used her official social media to suggest that assistance for migrants takes money away from Americans. She posted on October 8, “Biden & Harris misspent hundreds of millions of tax dollars provided to FEMA on illegal immigrants but are coming up short for Americans in need. Time to stop this nonsense and start putting Americans first.”

The Cedar Rapids Gazette reported that Hinson defended her posts when speaking to some Iowa media on October 9. (She doesn’t allow Bleeding Heartland to participate in her press calls.)

Hinson expressed concern about taxpayer dollars being used to support illegal immigration and the need for FEMA to focus solely on helping American citizens. She cited examples of resources being diverted to the Southern border, such as federal air marshals and doctors from the VA. She said the intention behind her posts was to highlight these issues.

“And the contrast here is that I don’t think a taxpayer dollar, a single one, should be spent bailing out sanctuary cities or incentivizing illegal immigration,” Hinson said on a weekly press call. “And I think programs like what they’ve mobilized under FEMA continue to support that mission of supporting illegal immigration.

“ … Americans are tired of this administration putting illegal immigrants first while families are suffering, and that’s the intention behind my tweets.”

Speaking of suffering families, reporters with access should ask Iowa Republicans about accounts from former Trump administration officials, who have said he slow-walked federal disaster declarations when he believed those living in affected areas had not voted for him.

But I digress.

The ugly attempt to pit U.S. citizens against newer arrivals is not subtle. And it didn’t spontaneously appear because of any natural disaster.

REPUBLICANS WERE ALREADY PLANNING TO RUN ON IMMIGRATION

While the hurricanes provided a convenient peg for anti-immigrant rhetoric, Republicans across the country have long planned to scapegoat immigrants as a central 2024 campaign message. We saw it in September when Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance, insisted that Haitian migrants who are authorized to live and work in Ohio are “illegal aliens” eating people’s pets.

Months ago, Miller-Meeks, Nunn, and Hinson all used taxpayer funds for mail, Facebook ads, radio commercials, or text messages seeking to convince voters that Biden’s “border crisis” harms Iowa families.

In August, telephone polls tested anti-immigrant messages against Christina Bohannan and Lanon Baccam, the Democratic challengers in Iowa’s first and third Congressional districts. According to eastern Iowa sources who received the call aimed at IA-01 residents, the survey asked listeners whether they would be more or less likely to vote for Bohannan after learning she enabled asylum access for illegal immigrants and wanted to reduce funding for or abolish ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

I received the anti-Baccam call myself and recorded the noteworthy questions (listen here). The survey described the Democrat as a “strong supporter of President Joe Biden and his agenda,” and wrongly asserted Biden’s policies had raised taxes and produced “record-setting inflation, rising crime rates, and the highest levels of illegal immigration ever recorded.” Another question characterized Baccam as backing Biden’s “open border policies,” which supposedly cost Iowa taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars used to provide education, health care, and other services for undocumented immigrants.

I wasn’t able to determine which campaign or GOP-aligned group paid to test these messages. The phone number provided at the end of the survey was not a working number.

Miller-Meeks and Nunn are now considered among the most vulnerable House Republican incumbents. Inside Elections and the Cook Political Report both rate the IA-01 and IA-03 races as toss-ups.

During a recent interview with WHO-TV’s Zach Fisher, Miller-Meeks complained that it was a “disservice” to elevate abortion “to a top issue” in the campaign when people are “reeling from high prices” and “we’ve got a wide-open border that the cartels are in control of.”

Several minutes later, she spoke at length about the Biden administration’s failure to secure and police the border, finishing up with the misleading connection between migrants and disaster aid.

And one other thing: you know, to have FEMA say that they’re running out of money, when we have a massive hurricane at the level of Hurricane Katrina, and FEMA slow to respond because it’s overwhelming. But to find out that almost 1 billion dollars went to housing for illegal immigrants, but yet we don’t have the money to help hurricane victims in these six states.

I think that that is unconscionable. And this is something the Biden-Harris administration did. They slipped in in 2022.

WHO cut to a commercial with no pushback from the interviewer, and Fisher raised a new topic after the break. So viewers would have no idea that FEMA does have the money for immediate needs and is giving hurricane victims food, water, and other assistance.

This week, Nunn’s campaign launched two television ads that prime viewers to blame Baccam and undocumented immigrants for unrelated hardship facing Americans. In one spot, veteran Brad Trullinger of Ankeny says,

I am proud to have served our country, but it pains me to watch politicians turn their back on our veterans. Thousands of veterans are homeless and battling addiction without help, all while Lanon Baccam and the Democrats support spending our tax dollars on hotel rooms and hot meals for illegal immigrants.

That’s why I’m voting for Colonel Nunn. He fights for veterans and stands up to the open border insanity.

Leaving aside the fact that federal funding for veterans’ programs or addiction treatment has no connection to assistance for migrants, it’s bizarre to accuse Baccam of turning his back on veterans. Not only is he a veteran himself, he served as the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Military Veterans Agricultural Liaison during the Obama administration. In that role, he oversaw USDA programs that helped veterans work in farming or agricultural industry.

The other new Nunn campaign commercial, launched on October 9, pushes a similar frame with more race-baiting. It contrasts white people struggling to cope with high inflation with darker-skinned migrants. A menacing voice-over accuses “Biden administration crony” Baccam of backing “policies that gave illegal immigrants free hotel rooms.” Addressing the viewer, the male voice concludes, “Higher inflation for you—more handouts for them. Lanon Baccam and Joe Biden ripped you off.”

Congressional reporter Jamie Dupree observed in his Regular Order newsletter that the furious reaction against Edwards, the North Carolina Republican trying to dispel falsehoods about Hurricane Helene, “reminds me of what happened after the 2020 election. When Donald Trump repeatedly tells your voters that there was a conspiracy – but there really wasn’t – it’s going to result in some cognitive dissonance for your voters.”

Iowa GOP candidates may see a short-term advantage in converting sympathy for disaster victims into resentment against migrants and by extension Democrats. A key goal of political advertising is to prime voters to think about issues that play to your strengths as they weigh their options.

In the longer term, embracing a false narrative about FEMA may become a litmus test for the GOP establishment, just like Trump’s big election lie. Even now, not one prominent Iowa Republican—including those who endorsed other presidential contenders before the Iowa caucuses—will say publicly that Biden beat Trump fair and square, with no significant fraud in any state.

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Top photo of Ashley Hinson with Zach Nunn was initially published on the Nunn campaign’s Facebook page on June 27, 2024. Top photo of Mariannette Miller-Meeks with Joni Ernst was first published on the Miller-Meeks campaign’s Facebook page on October 10, 2024.