Elon Musk revoked $80M in FEMA funding from NYC bank accounts

42 points by fcq 5 months ago | 17 comments
  • CalRobert 5 months ago
    I'm curious about the mechanism used here.

    There was some discussion of this on bluesky. What I'm not clear on is whether the payment was effectively cancelled/taken back/etc. or if they just went and took it out of the bank account. Either is a problem of course but the latter is truly disturbing.

    I believe ACH transfers can be reversed for 5 business days, and I think this action was 5 business days after the initial payment, so maybe they used that mechanism?

    • muddi900 5 months ago
      Why is this post flagged?
      • renegade-otter 5 months ago
        Hey, the United States government is being destroyed by a tech billionaire. LET'S TALK ABOUT TAILWIND INSTEAD.

        Ugh.

        • jimswhims 5 months ago
          Yep.
          • polski-g 5 months ago
            > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
            • muddi900 5 months ago
              A constitutional crisis in the world's biggest nuclear power clearly an interesting phenomenon. Whether new or not remains to be seen.
              • matsemann 5 months ago
                An unelected tech oligarch having the ability to take money from arbitrary government accounts I think would count as "interesting new phenomenon".
            • nainzelliam49 5 months ago
              if they fund on homeless people may this is good idea
              • TacticalCoder 5 months ago
                [dead]
                • armitron 5 months ago
                  [flagged]
                  • dashundchen 5 months ago
                    Falling for their propaganda again, maybe intentionally.

                    This is congressionally appropriated money for FEMA to administer a program, by DHS.

                    Congress and the Supreme Court have ruled impoundment is illegal. You are supporting a sprint into fascism where an unchecked executive has no push back on anything they do, violating the courts, law or constitution.

                    If you can't see why this is a problem, understand that it can and will be used to harm you too.

                    • lannisterstark 5 months ago
                      Oh please. Funding you disagree with isn't "waste, fraud, abuse." I don't think there's a single citizen anywhere that agrees with everything the government spends on.

                      Musk has yet to provide a single line item that does so. If "no need for FOIA, everything is transparent" is so transparent, let us have every single line item, why he thinks it should be removed (the real reason, not "WFA"), and a method to submitting public comments that he then goes over and actually makes decisions like how rule changes are proposed, commented, and finalized in federal registers.

                      "I dun wan it" isn't a good enough reason.

                      • leonewton253 5 months ago
                        Years ago I was borderline Republican, now you would have to pay me whatever JD gets to vote for one.
                        • vFunct 5 months ago
                          Can you confirm that this money was somehow “waste” and “graft”? I am not familiar with the details. What was this money allocated for? Who was going to spend it? How was it going to be spent?

                          Please confirm details.

                          • ckemere 5 months ago
                            I think in this particular case, it was to help recoup some of NYC's costs for housing the 100Ks of migrants (some undocumented, some with pending asylum cases, some with humanitarian parole work authorizations) that were being bussed from TX in 2023/24. From my understanding, because NYC has a "right-to-shelter" law, they needed to house people, and apart from building a giant tent-city, once the standard homeless shelters filled up much of the housing had to be done in hotels. I think total cost to NYC was i the $5-10B range. It's unclear what the exact "fraud" or "waste" claim is. I think people are upset because they consider some hotels in NYC "luxury". Personally, I'd suggest staying in a $200/night hotel in NYC, and then staying in, e..g, the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise at $2k/night before concluding that the migrant hotels were "luxury".
                            • ckemere 5 months ago
                              Tremendous respect, btw, to the New Yorkers I met last year. Some of them were unhappy about things like, e.g., having no soccer fields or having the libraries closed on Sundays. But for the most part, the large majority of folks I talked with did not begrudge the migrant families a place to stay even though this $$ was coming mostly from NYC taxes (and only a little bit from the Federal government).
                              • vFunct 5 months ago
                                Thanks for the background. That’s pretty cool that NYc has a right-to-shelter law.
                            • 5 months ago
                              • archagon 5 months ago
                                Will DOGE revoke the State Department’s $400 million armored Tesla contract? https://www.npr.org/2025/02/13/g-s1-48571/trump-administrati...

                                If not, then what more is there to say?

                                • lawn 5 months ago
                                  The lack of proof for any of this "waste" is what's truly staggering.

                                  I actually agree that the democrats won't win an election any time soon... But that's because I believe the republicans will do away with free and fair elections.

                                • bbcat 5 months ago
                                  [flagged]
                                  • 5 months ago