Loss

Supreme Court hands Trump a rare loss on transgender prison care policy

By John Fritze

The Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump from suspending hormone therapy and other treatments for transgender Americans in federal prisons, a rare win for transgender rights at the conservative high court.

The court handed down a one-sentence order that did not explain the decision.

Since Trump returned to power last year, the Supreme Court has allowed the administration to ban trans people from serving in the military and permitted a policy that requires that the sex designation on US passports align with a traveler’s sex assigned at birth. The court also this year upheld state laws that prohibit transgender athletes playing on girls’ sports teams.

The latest emergency appeal hit on an issue Trump raised during his 2024 campaign with a series of television advertisements that criticized Democratic nominee Kamala Harris for her approach to trans Americans. On his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order barring “any medical procedure, treatment, or drug” for the purpose of “conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”

The Bureau of Prisons later implemented a policy that permits psychotherapy and psychiatry services for inmates with gender dysphoria, but not hormone therapies, surgeries or “social accommodations.” That can include items such as clothing and makeup.

A US district court and a federal appeals court in Washington, DC, blocked the Trump policy from taking effect in the short term. In a brief order last month, the DC Circuit concluded that the administration’s policy was likely arbitrary and capricious because the Bureau of Prisons had not “adequately” considered “its own experience providing gender-affirming care under its prior policy.”

In its emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration argued that it did consider that experience and that the previous treatment and accommodations “raised security and prison-administration concerns that outweighed whatever limited benefits they had.”

Three prisoners who said they had been receiving hormone therapy for years challenged the policy, arguing it was an abrupt change to decades of policy and would end treatment for nearly 1,000 people in custody. The assertion of security concerns within prisons, the American Civil Liberties Union told the Supreme Court, was odd “given that BOP has not pointed to a single security incident relating to its provision of this treatment over the past 30 years.”

Two conservative justices — Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — dissented from Wednesday’s order, but did not say why. The lack of explanation was particularly notable given that the case has been fully briefed and ripe for an order for almost two weeks.

IC 59 and 63

Jinkies, look at all those ghosts! It took 100 hours of observation and a special oxygen filter for today’s image to capture three faint nebulas hidden in the Cassiopeia constellation. IC 59 and IC 63, the original Ghosts of Cassiopeia, haunt the region near multi-star system γ Cassiopeia. Energetic light from γ Cassiopeia causes the hydrogen gas in IC 59 and 63 to glow red. Their dust reflects and scatters some blue-ish white starlight. Newly discovered Objects 1, 2, and 3 appear as blue phantoms, revealing the presence of ionized oxygen. But ionized by what? Like at the bow of a speeding boat, γ Cassiopeia may be piling up material as the system moves through interstellar gas and dust. It follows that Object 3 may be the compressed and heated oxygen of that bow shock. Object 1 could be a planetary nebula if a central white dwarf is identified. The origins of these astronomical apparitions remain a mystery to be solved.

They still do that????

The Depressing Nostalgia of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show

A Fantasy Bra, the Spice Girls, and regressive ideas of sex appeal are helping the brand make an astonishing comeback.

Inae Oh

One of the more striking images from Sunday’s return of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show did not come from the runway. Instead, it arrived as the camera lingered on two members of the audience, Kris Jenner, the reigning reality-show matriarch, and actor Timothée Chalamet. The two were positively beaming, there to support daughter and girlfriend, respectively, Kylie Jenner, who, despite having never appeared in the show, had been chosen to walk the runway wearing the brand’s diamond-encrusted, $50 million Fantasy Bra.

On social media, the backlash was already kicking off. Jenner, to her critics, was not a real model; the Fantasy Bra, clocking in at 4,410 white diamonds and 75.54-carat yellow diamonds, should have been reserved for a credentialed Angel. (The apparent distinction is in the contracts; Angels, unlike mere models like Jenner’s sister, are required to appear in various photo shoots and act as legacy brand ambassadors.) The event also marked the first time the garment was being featured in the runway show since 2018.

From one angle, the comments could seem critical of Victoria’s Secret. Executives, some argued, had misstepped in the selection of Jenner. But in defending the honor of a Fantasy Bra and the prestige that supposedly comes with being picked to model a clear vehicle for profit before a live audience, the brand had clearly notched another victory in its astonishing turnaround following a post-#MeToo movement nosedive, both in stock prices and cultural relevance. Because all the bickering over who gets to wear a bra, even if wrapped in criticism, is to imbue it with value. It’s a comeback that traces the broader, booming return of similar Y2K-era relics, such as the push-up bra and strict, conservative ideas of gender norms.

In fact, Sunday’s runway spectacle, only the third since getting canceled in 2019 over mounting evidence of Les Wexner’s unusually close ties to Jeffrey Epstein, had the eerie effect of deja vu, or as The New York Times’ Vanessa Friedman put it, as if “the past seven years didn’t happen.” Consider the final scenes of the show, which managed to put the time-warp into overdrive, as “Say You’ll Be There,” the 1996 single from the Spice Girls, played while a swarm of models delivered their final air kisses.

Were we back in the nineties? Alas no. Here we were in the regressive mess of 2026: nostalgic takes on sex appeal, women’s bodies as evening entertainment, the empty gospel of female empowerment to smooth things over.

Yet, for all the scantily clad models and overwrought musical performances, my mind kept returning to Kris Jenner and Timothée Chalamet. It was from their vantage point of momager and boyfriend that two essential elements of the Victoria’s Secret’s brand, commerce and the male gaze, seemed to braid perfectly. On a more practical level, their presence also served as a useful reminder that this was indeed taking place in 2026, as in, after a mother’s facelift, a time-bending mechanism in its own right, and after the start of a romance with Chalamet. Sure enough, come Monday morning, Victoria’s Secret’s share price surged once more.

Corruption! Do something about it...

Voters Are Furious About Corruption

Public anger could finally make a difference at the polls.

Russ Choma

As Election Day closes in on us, a lot of fascinating poll results are flying around. But as a longtime political corruption reporter, I’ve found myself particularly intrigued by the numbers showing how Americans feel about the out-of-control graft in Washington, DC. To be brief: Voters are very concerned. And not just a bare majority. Nearly everyone is worried about corruption—roughly 90 percent of respondents in multiple surveys.

Plenty of news has been feeding voter anxieties lately. There’s the hundreds of millions of dollars Donald Trump has apparently earned in crypto deals, including selling a stake of his crypto firm to the national security adviser (and brother to the leader) of the United Arab Emirates. The president has solicited corporate and oligarch money for his pet building projects, and his adult children have mingled their own financial interests with America’s global priorities.

During Trump’s first administration, government ethics experts explained how he was crossing lines no president had ever before crossed. This term, they’ve run out of synonyms for “unprecedented.”

The big question is: Will it actually matter in the voting booth? And, to be brief again: It actually might.

The reason for skepticism is simple. For decades, Americans of all political stripes have complained about “corruption” or the role of money in politics, but it rarely translates to political action. After all, when was the last time you felt like you could really trust politicians or that they weren’t taking campaign cash from the wrong people? In most election years, voters are simply more interested in issues like the economy or foreign wars.

So what might be different this time around? Recent research suggests that concerns over corruption are no longer simply competing for voter attention with bread-and-butter issues. Instead, voters have begun to see corruption as inextricably linked to the the problems they face.

CNN reported this week that in a recent GOP focus group in the Midwest, voters expressed concern over high gas prices—nothing surprising about that. But when asked who they blamed, the voters’ responses were surprising: “corrupt politicians” and “billionaires.” Those responses, in a part of the country Trump won in 2024, apparently alarmed the pollsters.

That focus group isn’t alone in its findings.

Back in May, a Brennan Center poll found 92 percent people, of all political affiliations, believe corruption is a major problem in politics. Those respondents had pretty broad and varying definitions of what “corruption” means. But almost everyone agreed that politicians using their offices for personal gain, or putting the interests of billionaires and big corporations over the interests of voters, qualified. And, just like the participants in the GOP focus group, 79 percent of the Brennan Center respondents felt that corruption was getting in the way of the government’s solving everyday problems.

In September, a Gallup poll found quite similar results—89 percent of respondents thought that corruption was “widespread” in the government. Those figures seem to match a more recent Gallup poll that shows the public’s trust in the government’s ability to handle big problems is at an all-time low.

Piling on, a recent Fox News poll found that 88 percent of Americans are extremely or very concerned about corruption. Notably, that number is higher than the portion of Americans who said they were concerned about inflation or gas prices, healthcare or the war in Iran.

An underlying current in all the polling is that people are worried about corruption across the government, with Congress being held in particularly low regard. And voters don’t seem to be inclined to let Democrats off the hook. Trump has worked tirelessly—and often dishonestly—to link his opponents to corruption, and his efforts have been often been successful. The Brennan Center poll found that most people thought the Supreme Court and the last two presidents were corrupt.

That said, what really stands out is that all of this is unusual—which is potentially a good sign for Democrats. Voters who are mad at the government aren’t likely to favor the incumbents.

Promptly began melting.....

An Artful Move to Call Out Ron DeSantis’ Hostility Toward Climate Action

This statue of the Florida governor was cast in gallium, which melts at 85.6 degrees F.

Oliver Milman

A life-sized statue of Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, was unveiled and promptly began melting in front of an audience in Tallahassee in a symbolic protest at his rejection of action on the climate crisis.

The silvery statue, revealed to an audience of onlookers last week, melted away to show a skull under DeSantis’s face. The structure was cast from solid gallium, a metal that melts at 85.6 F, which is below summertime high temperatures frequently reached in Tallahassee, Florida’s capital.

The environmentalists behind the statue-based protest said it was a fitting monument to DeSantis’s eight years as Florida governor, which comes to an end in January.

The Republican has frequently criticized what he has called a “radical climate agenda,” blocking the ability of Florida municipalities to slash planet-heating pollution, and even signed a bill to erase terms such as “climate change” and “greenhouse gas emissions” from state law.

This law has hindered the ability of state agencies to even mention a climate crisis that poses an outsized threat to Florida. In classrooms, meanwhile, state education regulations are also ensuring the steady elimination of any reference to climate change.

“I am not a global warming person, I don’t want that label on me,” DeSantis, who unsuccessfully ran to become the Republican nominee for president in 2024, said in 2018.

Southern Florida is acutely threatened by sea level rise, while homes and businesses across the entire state have been lashed by powerful hurricanes, worsened by rising global temperatures. The increasing damage wrought by storms supercharged by ocean and atmospheric heat has proved so costly that several major insurers have exited Florida entirely.

The state’s stance towards the climate crisis looks unlikely to change, however. Florida has become a Republican bastion in recent years and Byron Donalds, the GOP candidate, is heavily favored to win the governor’s race in next month’s midterm elections.

Donalds has said he wants to maintain Florida’s environment but has said he doesn’t accept the link between climate change and human actions, despite scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels is causing temperatures to rise.

“The climate crisis is one of the top issues facing our planet today. And yet, some candidates running for office still deny it’s happening, and deny the bold climate action that the people want.” said Candice Fortin, campaign manager at 350Action, the environmental group behind the DeSantis statue, along with advertising agency Uncommon.

The installation, called ‘DENIAL,’ was created by Uncommon, an advertising agency, climate advocacy group 350 Action and M ss ng P eces, a production company.350 Action

“That’s why it’s more important than ever to deny them back at the ballot box,” Fortin added. “If everyone who cares about people and our planet makes their voices heard on election cay, we’ll be too loud to deny.”

DeSantis has defended his position on climate. “We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots,” he said in a post on the X social media platform when making climate a lower state priority in May 2024.

They need loans...

NRSC takes on $20M in loans

The loans come as Republican Senate candidates have struggled to fundraise this cycle — and as the party has boasted about its large cash advantage.

By Jessica Piper and Andrew Howard

Senate Republicans’ campaign arm took out $20 million in loans in September, a significant cash infusion as the party looks to fight an increasingly challenging map ahead of November’s midterm elections.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee incurred a $17 million loan on Sep. 1 and another $3 million on Sep. 22, according to a filing submitted to the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday.

The need for cash comes after months of the NRSC and other GOP groups boasting about their large cash advantage over Democrats, as the party floods the airwaves in an effort to win core battlegrounds in an unfavorable environment.

The organization framed the loan as part of continuing that cash advantage.

“The NRSC has raised record-breaking resources, consistently maintained one of the lowest burn rates across all committees, and furthered the efficacy of every dollar by immediately acting on the fall of unlimited coordinated spending with our candidates,” NRSC communications director Joanna Rodriguez said in a statement. “We’re going to throw everything we can at protecting our Republican Senate Majority, and we’re going to win.”

It’s not unusual for campaign arms to take out loans late in an election cycle. In 2024, the NRSC took out $17 million in loans, and it borrowed $20 million during the 2022 cycle as well, according to FEC reports.

The NRSC has raised $228 million this cycle compared to $188 million for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, but Democratic Senate candidates have far outraised Republican ones.

The NRSC had $28 million in the bank, including the loan, at the end of September after raising $31 million and spending $41 million in the month, although a slight majority of the funds raised — $18 million — came via transfers from the Republican National Committee.

The DSCC, by comparison, ended September with just under $25 million in the bank. It had not taken out any loans this cycle as of that point.

Unlike past cycles, political parties can now more freely pay for advertising in coordination with candidates — and at a much cheaper rate. That will allow the party to stretch the $20 million further than in past election cycles.

In September, the NRSC put just under $34 million into coordinated spending, all of it on advertising, according to the Tuesday FEC filing.

Launches ads

DCCC launches ads against Mike Turner in red Ohio district

The Democratic group is spending in a Dayton-area district that Turner won by 18 points in 2024.

By Riley Rogerson and Meredith Lee Hill

House Democrats’ campaign arm is launching its first ad buy against 12-term GOP Rep. Mike Turner in his western Ohio district as they seek to turn up the pressure on Republicans in once-safe red seats.

The DCCC is dropping separate six-figure buys on two coordinated television ads boosting challenger Kristina Knickerbocker, spokesperson Riya Vashi said — a remarkable investment considering Turner won in 2024 by over 18 percentage points, overperforming President Donald Trump.

Ohio adopted a new redistricted congressional map last year that was expected to favor Republicans. Turner’s 10th District voted for Trump by 6 points in 2024; under the new lines it would have been closer to 8 points.

The first ad airing this week opens with a woman saying, “It’s time we had someone in Congress who actually stands up for us” as Knickerbocker jogs through a neighborhood.

Democrats are eyeing Turner’s Dayton-area seat as a reach opportunity. A new internal DCCC poll of 535 likely general election voters reviewed by POLITICO shows Knickerbocker running 3 percentage points ahead of Turner. Polling from this summer showed Turner leading the race.

Another Democratic group, House Majority PAC, has already poured more than a million dollars into the race against Turner and has reservations planned through Nov. 3. Knickerbocker is not on the DCCC’s “Red to Blue” roster of candidates who get the bulk of its resources.

“Alarm bells should be ringing for Mike Turner,” Vashi said in a statement. “Kristina Knickerbocker has the momentum in this race, and the DCCC will make sure every voter in this district knows exactly how Turner has betrayed them.”

But the NRCC has been spending in the district for several weeks to boost Turner. House Republican campaign operatives are so far dismissing efforts to flip the seat.

NRCC spokesperson Zach Bannon called Turner “a life-long Ohioan who has a record of cutting taxes, lowering costs, and making Ohio streets safer.”

“While Congressman Turner delivers commonsense conservative wins, out of touch Democrat Kristina Knickerbocker supports a radical far-left agenda,” Bannon said. “This November, Ohioans will reject liberal Knickerbocker and send Congressman Mike Turner back to Congress.”

When is he not stupid?

Macron slams ‘stupid’ comments after Trump pins French riots on immigration

The French president rebuked unsubstantiated attempts to link looting and violence to immigration.

By Victor Goury-Laffont

French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday hit out at the “unacceptable and stupid comments from many foreign leaders” in the aftermath of unrest which rocked several French cities over the weekend.

“Some people have claimed that we’ve been overrun by hordes of migrants and Islamists, which is completely false,” Macron told reporters during a trip to Qatar. His comments were a clear swipe at U.S. President Donald Trump, who this week railed that France is “being conquered, looted, and burned to the ground by migrants, jihadists, and Communists.”

While hundreds of thousands of protesters in France demonstrated peacefully over the cost of living and school conditions at the weekend, the mayhem — including public buildings being set on fire, stores being looted and clashes with riot police — sparked widespread condemnation in France and abroad, including in the U.S., where Trump is using the French unrest to rally voters ahead of November’s midterm elections.

There is no evidence tying last weekend’s incidents in France to immigration.

Macron said Trump is “among” a group of political leaders who are campaigning “off of France’s back,” adding, “it’s at times like these that you can tell who loves France and who doesn’t.”

Right-leaning leaders in other European countries like Hungary and Poland also tried to pin the unrest in France on immigration to justify their countries’ hard-line policies on the divisive issue. Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar said on X that the chaos that engulfed several French cities makes it “clear to everyone why Hungary advocates the strictest possible approach to migration.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot responded by offering to “assist the countries concerned in understanding the situation, to prevent them from spreading or relaying false information.”

“Foreign leaders who comment on or exploit recent events in France for electoral purposes or to harm us — without understanding anything about them — should show at least a basic measure of restraint,” he added.

More lies to try to save himself

Trump just made a last-minute gambit to save farm-state Republicans in the midterms

The promise comes two weeks before Election Day — and the payments could still face a fight ahead in Congress.

By Meredith Lee Hill and Grace Yarrow

Republicans locked in tight races this November are desperately hoping the Trump administration’s last-minute gambit to send farmers $8 billion in taxpayer money will work.

President Donald Trump announced the new round of money, aimed at farmers struggling with high diesel prices, during a Monday rally for at-risk GOP Sen. Roger Marshall in Kansas. The move comes as White House officials have scrambled to address anger in farm states from Republicans. Trump’s decisions to import more foreign beef, his tariff regime and high fuel costs amid the Iran war have riled already strained farmers and ranchers — a key GOP voting bloc.

Farmers won’t know how much money to expect for several more weeks. Even then, if approved, they won’t receive the payments until late November or early December at the earliest, according to three people close to the plans, granted anonymity to share details.

With two weeks to go before the election, the new aid may also arrive too late to convince some voters.

But top Republicans are banking on the announcement to stem GOP bleeding in farm states — especially in the Midwest, where Marshall, GOP Senate nominee Ashley Hinson in Iowa and GOP Senate nominee Mike Rogers in Michigan have been struggling in their election campaigns. In some cases, they’ve broken with Trump publicly on high prices and the war.

“This will go a long way to making sure the folks that feed us have it a bit easier when they most need it,” said Rep. Derrick Van Orden, referring to the farmers in his district. The Republican is locked in a highly competitive race in a rural-heavy stretch in Wisconsin’s 3rd District.

However, the internal USDA taxpayer-funded account Trump is tapping for the payments doesn’t actually have enough money in it right now to make the payments, meaning Congress will have to approve the new funds or the administration will have to take it from another program, according to three Trump officials who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Marshall — who’s facing a tougher-than-expected reelection campaign in deep-red territory — and Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) were among the Republicans who helped push for the $8 billion, according to the three Trump officials.

Marshall requested the administration allocate money to assist farmers with spiked fuel costs in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins in September.

“Roger Marshall is the leader who fought for that to happen,” Trump said during the Monday rally.

Spokespeople for Marshall and for Scott did not respond to requests for comment. The White House referred POLITICO to USDA’s announcement on the money.

USDA spokesperson Harry Fones said in a statement that the aid package is Trump’s “latest action to deliver” for farmers and the department is actively reviewing the data to determine payments.

Trump’s decision also comes after administration officials realized the president’s previous step to make off-road dyed diesel more widely available had limited benefits for farm country over other options, according to two of the Trump officials and another administration official involved in the matter. Top agriculture lobbyists further warned the dyed diesel plan could actually backfire on farmers, because they could still be required to pay taxes on the product — just further down the road.

So, Trump officials settled on the $8 billion tranche of direct money for farmers, given that similar kinds of payments to farmers — dating back during the president’s first trade war in 2018 — have quelled enough farmer and rural voter anger to shore up necessary support for Republicans during election season.

Trump officials and Republican operatives in the Midwest are banking on the money shoring up support again this cycle — especially for GOP voters who are angry but also don’t want to vote for Democrats. Trump heads this Thursday to Iowa — where top Republicans have been worried about internal polling that warned several weeks ago they could lose all three Iowa House races, key Senate races and other once-safe red seats across farm states.

“It’s going to help bring farmers’ votes out,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told POLITICO of Trump’s plan on Tuesday.

“This is some way that the federal government can step in to help farmers for problems that they face through no fault of their own,” he said.

Most Hill Republicans weren’t given a heads-up about Trump’s announcement, including appropriators, and many hadn’t received any details from USDA as of Tuesday morning, according to two people familiar with the conversations who were granted anonymity to share private details.

Top agriculture groups have warned they’d need at least $50 billion in direct aid this fall to make farmers whole following the impacts of tariffs, weather-related disasters and other high costs linked to the Iran war’s chokehold on agricultural supplies. Farm-state Republicans are pushing to add at least $12 billion in direct farm aid payments to a separate year-end legislative package.

Monday’s aid rollout followed a number of other funding announcements made in swing rural districts. The White House doled out a first round of $12 billion in bailout funds earlier this year for growers of top agricultural commodities who were hit hard by Trump’s tariff agenda.

Alongside Republican Senate candidate Mike Collins in Georgia, Rollins announced a $3.3 billion loan to build a power plant last week. Rollins rolled out $180 million in funding for seed research alongside vulnerable Iowa Reps. Zach Nunn and Marianette Miller-Meeks earlier this month.

Trump also said he would approve long-derailed permanent year-round sales of ethanol during the Kansas rally — which would be a critical boon for corn growers across the Midwest. But the move has been long-stalled in Congress.

“With Roger Marshall in the Senate, we will make year-round E15 permanent. But if Adam Hamilton is in, I’m not doing it,” Trump said. “That’s a big deal for Kansas, actually.”

Ahhh. That is their only purpose...

FEMA tells states to handle disasters on their own

The Trump administration plans to cut disaster aid in as few as six months and shift responsibility to states, FEMA's administrator said in remarks obtained by POLITICO.

By Thomas Frank

The Trump administration’s disaster chief told state officials Tuesday they must increase their financial reserves and emergency capabilities to handle most disasters on their own, without federal help.

Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Cameron Hamilton gave unprecedented detail at a conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, about the administration’s long-planned shift of disaster responsibilities to states.

“Every state must have the appropriate financial reserves” and other abilities “to ensure that recovery efforts can start immediately and not necessarily be held up simply because of the federal [disaster] declaration process,” Hamilton said, according to a recording of his remarks obtained by POLITICO.

“A future that I hope we would shoot for is one where we wouldn’t require as many disasters because the capability of states is so high and so substantial,” Hamilton added, referring to presidential authorizations of federal disaster aid.

FEMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hamilton’s remarks at the National Emergency Management Association’s annual conference add detail to his Oct. 15 internal memo — reported by POLITICO — which said FEMA will “strengthen state and local capacity.”

The agency will face substantial challenges — both logistically and politically — preparing states to take a lead role in disaster prevention and recovery.

A FEMA report released Friday found that state disaster agencies “are typically understaffed and underfunded” and that many agencies are heavily dependent on federal funding.

“There are many states with [minuscule] emergency management offices and budgets. There are states with slim rainy-day funds and no capacity to make up for a lack of federal disaster recovery funds — without RAISING TAXES!” Eric Holdeman, a longtime emergency management official, wrote on LinkedIn on Monday in response to Hamilton’s memo.

“Reducing the number of federal disaster declarations will be difficult and its implementation will be impossible! All Presidents, not just the one we have today, will ignore such a policy when it becomes politically expedient to do so,” added Holdeman, a former emergency management director in King County, Washington, which includes Seattle.

The Trump administration plans to launch “national mutual aid,” whereby states help each other recover from damaging storms, floods, wildfires and other events, Hamilton told state emergency management leaders.

“You will also see us asking for greater alleviation and waiving of federal environmental and historical preservation requirements — things that add layers of bureaucracy,” Hamilton said, referring to reviews of FEMA-funded rebuilding projects.

POLITICO obtained a recording of the speech from someone at the private conference.

President Donald Trump threatened to abolish FEMA early in his current term and has since called for states to take more financial responsibility.

The administration has not publicly announced any changes and has continued to approve disaster aid for weather-related events.

Hamilton told the conference attendees that changes could begin “in the next six months.”

Hamilton said states that avoid federal aid might begin disaster recovery more quickly. States could start disaster cleanup and repairs “much faster” if they don’t have to submit a detailed aid application to FEMA and await a decision, which can take weeks or months.

“Sometimes what we find is a potential slowing down the [recovery] process to ensure that a declaration comes through,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton said FEMA will focus increasingly on “reducing risk and building capacity across the nation” so that disasters cause less damage and states are better-equipped.

“Federal dollars should be building greater capability, not creating greater dependency,” Hamilton added.