Tom Fahy, Erik Hooks, Tim Quinn and Stacey Young Transcript — Oct. 8, 2025

Kevin Johnson/NPF (00:00):

When there is a breakdown in federal government operations, the first to feel it are often communities far beyond Washington. Consider a couple of things and these are just pulled from just recent clips. Bloomberg reported at least a third of senior career leaders have left the Justice Department since the start of Trump’s second term, taking with them centuries of combined experience in civil rights, immigration, the environment, and national security, all such important parts of what makes the Justice Department the department in the middle of a hurricane season. The post reports that the National Weather Service is at a breaking point while FEMA’s fate is still uncertain the larger DHS. Meanwhile, it has largely transformed into the Department of Deportation. Again, we’re fortunate to have four people with us who are intimately familiar with the implications of these dramatic changes. Stacey Young is founder of Justice Connection, which works to protect former DOJ officials targeted by the administration.

(01:18):

She’s a former senior DOJ attorney having served in the Civil and Civil Rights Division under five presidential administrations. Is that right? Yes. Okay. Erik Hooks served as Deputy Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Administration between 2021 and 2025. He’s at the end here. Tom Fahy represents the National Weather Service Employees Organization as legislative director before Congress and the administration part of that job is or not part, a large part of that job is that he represents the interests of meteorologists, hydrologists, physical science scientists and technical specialists that belong to the Independent Federal Employees Union. Founded in 1976, and as you probably know, there is a hurricane flurry off of the coast. Tim Quinn, the Customs and Former Customs and Border Protections chief liaison to state and local public safety agencies left his post earlier this year when the administration banned engagement with law enforcement groups, including the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, women in federal law enforcement, national Latino Peace Officers Association and other advocacy groups all are here to talk a little bit about the state of play as they see it from their vantage points, what these changes could mean to the local communities which you serve, whether they be dramatic reductions in force or the loss of centuries of expertise.

(03:13):

All of that comes crashing onto the shores of your local communities. So please welcome our panel and I’ll start with Stacy first, and if each could take maybe four or five minutes and then we will open it up to questions from the group.

Stacey Young/Justice Connection (03:38):

This is working I think. Hi everyone. So I left DOJ four days into the administration because after the election I realized that DOJ employees were going to be targeted. I imagined more than employees at any other agency because there’s only one agency that has investigated and prosecuted the president, and it seemed obvious based on everything he said, that he was going to seek retaliation once he assumed office. And indeed, that is what we’ve seen. What we’ve seen has been at DOJ truly catastrophic. We have seen a purge of approximately 5,300 employees. That’s our count, and that includes prosecutors and immigration judges and civil rights lawyers, counterintelligence analysts, people who do work that really affects every aspect of American’s lives. I think that DOJ has done DO J’s history really makes it stand out as I think the premier law enforcement institution in the world. But one of the things it didn’t really ever do particularly well is explained to the American public what it does.

(05:03):

People don’t really know what the department does. They don’t know the many ways in which it keeps our country safe and it keeps our nation secure and it keeps our environments clean and it keeps us prosperous. It helps beat monopolies. It is the principle institution that enforces civil rights. It’s an instrumental part of our immigration system. It keeps guns off the streets. I mean, DOJ does kind of everything when it comes to law enforcement and defending the law. And it has been just decimated prosecutors there, or being told almost on a daily basis that they have to bring cases against this administration’s enemies regardless of whether the evidence is there to convict. We’ve seen dozens of immigration judges fired at a time when this administration has prioritized immigration enforcement. We are seeing FBI agents pulled off their counter-terrorism and counterintelligence work to do ICE’s jobs.

(06:13):

Their 75% of the lawyers in the Civil Rights division have been ousted. That means that our country’s civil rights laws are not really being enforced right now, and that is shattering. And we’ve already begun to see the effects of this. And as time goes on, we’re going to see more and more effects and more and more employees are going to be fired or pushed out in other ways. Our enemies in other countries are paying attention to what’s happening. They know that they are unforced errors in terms of creating vulnerabilities and they’re taking note of that. And I think what my organization is trying to do is raise awareness about what’s going on. Let the public know more clearly about what DOJ does and the consequences of an administration decimating it and weaponizing it for its own advantage.

Tom Fahy/National Weather Service Employees Organization (07:18):

Hi everybody. How’s everyone going? I don’t know where to start. I really don’t know where to start because so much has happened in the first couple of months of this year. We have seen the president and his colleagues take apart the National Weather Service and Noah, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. We have multiple divisions. They’re trying to do a, like what’s happening at the Department of Justice. Imagine everybody has a phone right now. You look up a weather app, all of the weather apps, all of your data that’s on there comes from the National Weather Service and it’s employees. They work every day. They pull all this data together from observation and it’s staggering to think that this country, for example, we have invested billions and billions and billions of dollars to create these technologies to provide and make Americans safer. And these guys come in and they say, oh yeah, we’re going to sell the whole thing off.

(08:30):

There’s an RFI on the street right now, sector satellite company. For somebody to take over the entire infrastructure of the weather service satellite infrastructure gone just go away completely. It’s amazing. And this is what we’re dealing with. That’s the casualty on the technology side, but the casualty is also on the human side. On the human side. Now we have thousands of employees gone, just a few hundred at the Weather Service, but across the entire agency, thousands. And it’s unconscionable and I just don’t know how to even address it Recently as part of another example of destroying and dismantling the human infrastructure at NOAA in the National Weather Service, the staff at the White House did a misinterpretation on a 1978 law that said, if you have an agency that is participating and works as primary focus in National security matters, that agency doesn’t have to have unions or collective bargaining agreements.

(09:46):

So the president said, oh, all these agencies, including the National Weather Service, you guys all have a national security focus. Thus, no more unions in any of these federal agencies gone just like a blink. They’re all gone. Now, there’s multiple lawsuits that are challenging this in court and lawsuits take time, judges for example. But it’s the egregiousness of the craziness of the lawyers at the Trump administration. For example, in one of our lawsuits that we’re doing, we filed the motions and the Trump administration lawyers came out and said, we’d like you. They petitioned the court to say, we don’t want that judge to hear this case. They wanted us to. They wanted the court to reassign the judge. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up. You can’t. And it’s crazy. So I look forward to the conversation with you all and there we go.

Tim Quinn/Formerly U.S. Customs and Border Protection (11:03):

Good afternoon. Just in terms of a little bit of framing as to what my office did at Customs and Border Protection, when you have a question as media, you’re calling the Office of Public Affairs at a government agency. When a mayor or a governor or a city council person or a tribal leader or an academic institution or state and local law enforcement have a question for CBP, they would come to my office. One of the things that I was not expecting, I was expecting many things with the start of the new administration. One of the things I wasn’t expecting is that we were going to turn off our engagement with certain national law enforcement organizations that we have partnered with for years and partnered with during the first Trump administration. And Kevin mentioned who some of those groups are at the beginning. In my mind, that is extremely shortsighted, probably is the best way to put it.

(12:11):

We would go to those gatherings where law enforcement professionals were meeting and we didn’t necessarily care why they were getting together. We had critical law enforcement and security information to share with them. And that’s why we were at those conferences. There are a couple of things that Kevin asked us to focus on. The things that maybe you should focus on. I want to make note of a few of those. Number one is that the administration has gotten rid of a lot of the oversight apparatus of DHS, the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the ombudsman for those who are in detention. Those are critical avenues of investigation and oversight of the law enforcement agencies within DHS. Without that oversight. And we’ve seen throughout the government what has been done to the inspectors general, without that oversight, there are great opportunities for things to be occurring that shouldn’t be without anybody bringing them to light.

(13:22):

The other thing I would mention, and Kevin mentioned that now that it seems everyone within federal law enforcement is focused on immigration enforcement and deportation, that’s going to have real ramifications for your communities. If lefts, FBI agents, DEA agents A TF agents, instead of working on the major serious crimes that occur around the country are now focused on immigration, that’s going to have an impact on your communities. And we’re going to be feeling that impact as time goes on. And as more agents are diverted to immigration work, which I think the latest statistics are, 60 to 70% of the people being deported have no criminal record.

Erik Hooks/Formerly FEMA (14:09):

Thank you. Are you able to hear me? Okay? Alright. Again, I’m Erik Hooks. I’m proud to be with you. Kevin, thank you for pulling this training together. And I also want to start by thanking you all. I have never fully understood to the degree that I do now, the great appreciation for the press and for journalism, you are commonly referred to in some corridors as the fourth estate that oversight to power. And so I want to be encouraging to you as you continue to grow in your careers and you continue to hone your skills because it’s vitally important because what we have seen is really, as my colleague has mentioned, a deterioration of oversight in the executive branch by the tearing down of those structures that provide oversight, we have probably all witnessed the pushback or the contempt for the oversight that Congress has constitutionally over the executive branch as well.

(15:16):

And those are some important foundational things that I think should be kept in mind. I’m not here to bash one administration or the other, neither are my colleagues, but there are some real implications for all of the things that we have seen, all the things that we have experienced as well. And so with fema, again, about a third of the workforce of the career workforce has departed FEMA in the last nine months. Now, every administration has changes and directives, but when you come into the executive branch and you have espoused things that were clearly not true, and then you have set about a mission of tearing down an agency, it is very, very difficult for those career professionals who are fully committed. And in fema, they all take an oath. They take an oath to the constitution. I took an oath, my first oath when I started in public safety and law enforcement back in 1989, I still hold that dear.

(16:19):

I took another oath when I became the deputy administrator of fema. I hold that dear. And that was to uphold the constitution, protecting and defend the Constitution and fulfill the mission of fema, of providing and protecting communities all across this nation. What we have seen in the last nine months, and it’s no secret to you, is a slowness to respond. And when you don’t have a forward leaning posture when a hurricane or any other catastrophe is knocking on your door that costs lives. Now fema, you don’t see a herd of FEMA people out here in uniforms in communities. But when you do see the deployment of assets out there, be it military assets and commodities going in communities, and the coordination that you see from the VOAD communities responding to those folks are FEMA trained, they’re FEMA sponsored, that money has gone into those, the urban search and rescue teams that you see coming from around the country because no state has enough resources in a catastrophic event to carry out all of these search and rescue operations that they have.

(17:47):

Those fire departments, they are funded through fema. FEMA coordinates the training, coordinates the deployment with NEMA to ensure that they are there to meet the need. So having that forward leaning posture saves lives. One of the other areas that we have seen is in the preparedness space, there’s been a lot of talk about, well, we want to move the preparedness down to the states and reduce the complexity of FEMA. And FEMA has been a very complex and onerous agency for some people to navigate because of the varying laws and perspectives on the law since the passage of the Robert Stafford Act, which FEMA operates on. But when you promise communities that they would have more control and that you would send the funding downstream, but yet your actions show that you have withheld preparedness funds from states so that they can adequately prepare for this new vision that you have laid upon emergency management and the responsibilities back to state and local governments.

(19:01):

It can ring hollow and it’s created a lot of uncertainty and a lot of distrust in communities because unfortunately, a lot of state and local communities are majority funded by federal grant funds. Now, I do believe that there is room and that state legislatures, legislatures should be taken to task about adequately funding their emergency management system as a larger part of public safety. I recall that during my tenure in North Carolina, I used to serve as the Secretary of Public Safety. So I was the coordinating official for the state of North Carolina during the first Trump administration. I served under Governor Cooper at that time. But when I took office and I’d come up in that same law enforcement community, state law enforcement, I recognized in this new role in 2017 that my commander of the Highway patrol had appropriated funds.

(20:04):

The lead of my National guard had appropriated funds and all of my state law enforcement and corrections personnel, they were funded by general appropriations, but I had a great emergency experience emergency management team, but they were almost wholly funded by federal grant funds. And so that conversation is worth having. And if you want to make that change, that change cannot be made so abruptly that you cut off federal funding. And so you have reduced capacity at the federal level and you have cut off funding at the state level with the expectation that there is an improvement in preparedness response and recovery also in the reimbursement of funds. FEMA has a major role in reimbursing state and local governments for costs. I think I’m alright. We just learned recently that FEMA has, and I say FEMA and this is a point of correction that I have to make for myself, is that the hardworking people at FEMA are not making this choice to withhold funds.

(21:13):

But the administration has made a choice to withhold 11 billion in COVID reimbursements for things that have already been spent by hospitals and states around this country to deal with the COVID epidemic to save lives and have now withheld that money. There are funds that are supposed to go downstream right now but is being withheld because now the administration is demanding that each state certify its population count and also certify that that population count does not include what they deem as illegal immigrants in that population count. We all know that the population count is dependent upon the Census Act. That is a data point that the federal government uses. And so now you have placed a burden upon the state to carry out a task that they’re not equipped to carry. And so I look forward to your questions and thank you for being here.

Kevin Johnson/NPF (22:16):

I just have one. And all of you have collectively have described a extraordinary vulnerability across the government’s ability to respond to even the basics from the Justice Department, basic security, public safety, whether for climate, catastrophes and epidemics. We had this discussion, a few of us had this discussion earlier. How long would it take to restore what’s been lost so far to make your institutions whole and just quickly go down the line and if you can even come up with a number.

Stacey Young/Justice Connection (23:10):

So the question is how many years will it take to restore what’s been destroyed?

Kevin Johnson/NPF (23:14):

Yeah. If there was an attempt at restoring the institutions that have been affected here, how long would that take? Or could it,

Stacey Young/Justice Connection (23:26):

I don’t even think I would want to hazard a guess. I mean, I’ll just say it’s going to take so much longer to rebuild these institutions, then it has to tear them down. I don’t know that I’d want to say permanence. I think just about anything can be rebuilt, but it could take decades.

(23:53):

And one issue that’s going to be long lasting is the fact that the federal government has always been a very attractive place to work for people because they’re able to serve the public. And many people feel that calling. And one of the benefits for not getting paid as much as you probably would in the private sector, the salaries are on average, I think like two thirds what they would be in for comparable jobs in the private sector. One of the benefits has always been job security. Civil service protection laws have existed since the late 19th century. And the reason they exist is because our country for a long time has valued expertise in the federal government and they want that expertise to develop and they want people to be there for decades and in many cases their entire career. So they can become experts in their fields and do for the government what they could be doing for more money. In the private sector, the civil service laws are still on the books, but they’re clearly not being adhered to. And I think a lot of people are really going to second guess in the future if we get out of the quagmire we’re in, people are really going to have had hesitations about looking to the federal government as a viable career option because they’re not going to want to be purged after any given administration. And that’s something, I don’t know how we recover from that.

Kevin Johnson/NPF (25:29):

I have thoughts on that.

Tom Fahy/National Weather Service Employees Organization (25:33):

Well, at the National Weather Service Employees organization, the Trump administration has said that our union is dissolved. We no longer have collective bargaining rights as of August of this year, and legal lawsuits are underway, and we’re hopeful that that can be overturned in the courts. The question is, will the administration adhere to what the court says? That’s the $64,000 question. And to Stacey’s point about rebuilding what we’ve lost, it could take decades because of the appropriations process. Imagine just for a moment, the way your Congress works. You’ve cut all these programs and somebody decides, okay, well, we don’t need all these programs. And then a new administration comes in after 2028 say and says, oh, well, we’d like to restore this, this, and this.

(26:40):

The appropriators don’t have a habit of passing multi-billion dollar programs for different agencies, and this will be a staggering amount of money. It’s like, well, how is this going to be paid for? Well, they took the money out last time. And again, Congress doesn’t work like that. It’ll take longer. It’ll take very long. So we are at a point in our history where these things that have been perpetrated on the American people are unprecedented and just we’re all in a place where we’re trying to do coping mechanisms, trying to find out how do we go forward.

Tim Quinn/Formerly U.S. Customs and Border Protection (27:27):

Yeah. Just really quickly, I think to echo Stacy’s comment about who’s looking to go into federal service right now, I mean, we’re day six of us shut. Shutdowns unfortunately are nothing new. Federal employees have borne the burden of a lot lately. And so in addition to the brain drain that we’re losing from federal agencies, it doesn’t seem as though folks are going to be lining up for federal service for the reasons that I mentioned, but also just in terms of the way that we talk about federal employees in this country, who are some of the most dedicated people you’ll ever meet, but we talk about them in a way that is incredibly dismissive and disrespectful. I agree. I think it’s going to be hard to get people to sign up for this work.

Erik Hooks/Formerly FEMA (28:26):

I’ll just echo what my colleagues have already said. I do believe that it would take many, many years, but that also has a real life consequence to there. Those things that I described when I first started talking, when you tear down those structures, when you tear down that intentional focus on public safety that hits communities at their heart, what you end up doing is you lose lives. And so whereas we certainly lament the loss of trust in the federal government, we lament the loss of valuable workers who bring so much to the fight to save and sustain lives in all of our organizations. The impact on communities are devastating and generational. You’re not going to get back any of those little girls that were lost. You’re not going to get back people that do not survive or develop such a distrust that they don’t come out of the shadows to get the assistance that they need and already deserve under federal law.

Kevin Johnson/NPF (29:33):

Okay, I think we’re ready. Let’s start here.

Sapna Bansil | The Baltimore Banner (29:46):

Hi, I am Sapna Bansil from the Baltimore Banner. And in our newsroom, we’ve been spending a lot of time this year obviously covering federal workers just because of our state’s proximity to the federal government. I think it’s one in 10 workers in Maryland worked for the federal government. And I’m curious, especially for you, Stacy, to just maybe if you have some feedback for us as journalists on what you’ve seen in terms of how the media has been covering federal workers and what we could be doing differently and what stories haven’t been told about the experience of federal workers who have left or been fired that you would like to see out there more.

Stacey Young/Justice Connection (30:37):

Yeah, thanks for that question. I’d like to see, and I know there aren’t many large national news outlets represented here, but I would like to see the national news outlets have more beat reporters dedicated to the federal workforce. I think there was talk of that at some of the papers and other news outlets, but I haven’t really seen it materialize very much. So I’d love to see the federal workforce as more of a beat you see at more publications. And I think it would make sense at a Baltimore paper where as you said, it’s very close to DC and I think many federal workers live in Baltimore, much more than most American cities.

(31:28):

There have been some really, we at Justice Connection are a group of alumni who are supporting Justice department, justice Department employees. But when we talk about the Justice Department publicly and press is a huge part of our organization. We generally talk about how the destruction of DOJ affects Americans writ large, but we do also talk about how it affects employees. And I think that’s a really important story because the federal workforce is the largest employer in the country. It has or had 2.3 million workers. The civil side, I’m not including military. That’s a significant portion of the American workforce. And I think there have been some really poignant stories told about what beds are really going through, but I don’t think there’ve been enough. And feds are everywhere. They’re easy to find, especially feds who have left. And there are a lot of feds in the federal government who will speak off the record.

(32:38):

I think these stories are labor stories. They’re American stories, and I think more of them need to be told. And there are no limits to the amount of heartbreaking experiences people have really gone through. I mean, in addition to people just losing their jobs and their expectations to serve their country for the rest of their lives, finding a job in this climate is extremely challenging. The job market is flooded, and you have so many people oftentimes from the same office looking for the same kind of job because they all share the same expertise and there just aren’t enough jobs to go around. And that’s a huge story that should be told. And just I think the story about how Americans public service, I think used to be just universally appreciated and people used to think public servants and this whole narrative about the deep state and federal employee laziness and inefficiencies, it’s all bullshit. I think that needs to be called out more. I think journalists are the ones who should be doing that because the federal employees who are still there can’t do it themselves, and we can’t rely on people who have been purged. It’s not fair. I mean, I think journalists should be looking more for these stories to try to expose just the perniciousness of the efforts to kind of castigate federal employees and make federal government seem like it does nothing for the American people.

Whitney McKnight | The Edge (34:20):

Hi, my name is Whitney McKnight. My paper is The Edge because I’m reporting from the edge of Appalachia in Kentucky. So I cover the Western edge of Eastern Kentucky, but a lot of my readers come from Eastern Kentucky, which is important in the context of FEMA and weather because it floods continually. So I’m just curious, Mr. Fahe and Mr. Hooks, how do I report what you’re saying? How do I distill this from my readers? In Kentucky, I’m particularly distressed to learn that billions in advanced weather technology is just basically being stolen from the American people and sold off for parts, which is truly, I think that’s really what’s happening here is we’re just being sold off for parts. And I don’t know where we end up, but we’re certainly not going to be great. But I’m worried, and I want to tell this story to my local readers in Kentucky. I don’t know where to start though, but I think the two of you together can maybe put me in the right direction.

Erik Hooks/Formerly FEMA (35:30):

I’ll jump in to start with, I visited Kentucky in 2022 after they had been hit with some devastating storms. And so I saw the devastation that is there, and I know what Governor Beshear and your state emergency management has been through. One of the things that I would encourage you to do is to see if you can get to the heart of some stories with your local and state emergency management with the backdrop of the knowledge that what you’ve already seen from the federal government and the reduction of the technology in the government’s hand to help predict storms that are on the horizon. And that my colleague has expressed in my expression that the current federal government and the executive branch has taken a posture where they’re not leaning forward, that they are not going to give speed to need and how that impacts them. So I think that there are plenty of stories because of federal government action that impacts directly with your state emergency management. And your governor’s office would have a great handle on that too as well. And then translate that into how does it impact real people, whether or not there’s enough data as of yet to draw a comparison between the storms that hit late 2021, early 2022. And now, I don’t know off the top of my head, but that to me seems like a good area of inquiry from my perspective.

Tom Fahy/National Weather Service Employees Organization (37:20):

Are you from Jackson? I’m from Madison. Okay. You’re a champion as Hal Rogers, Congressman Hal Rogers. And he’s champion? Well, actually he is because for weather research and technology and for expanding the National Weather Service, Congressman Hal Rogers is a real champion. He and Congressman Tom Cole from Norman, Oklahoma recently a few weeks back, committed what I will call a profiling courage. They divide the President of the United States, and the President said, I don’t want these things funded. And they went out and funded all the weather laboratories across the country, all of the advanced research technology facilities where weather applications are taking place, employees that were supposed to be laid off. They said, no, these places will not be laid off. That’s a real profile and courage. And Hal Rogers and Tom Cole, the authors of that legislation as part of the appropriation for the CJS package and the House representatives, the selling off of assets of what the Trump White House is currently trying to do in terms of weather technology that has to be approved, they can’t just do that carte blanche.

(38:45):

They can’t say, oh yeah, we got this great idea. And what they’re banking on is their allies in Congress to say, okay, no oversight. You know, best, Mr. President, you go right ahead and do that. Well, there are members on both sides of the aisle who will be opposing those motions to sell off all of our technology and all of our national assets. So there’s lots of fights yet to come. And like I said, it’s a very difficult time. But again, at the heart of this though, where I’m coming from is I’m representing the union, the employees, the people down in Jackson who work at the Weather Forecast Office in eastern Kentucky, they’ve been muzzled. They’re not allowed to talk to you. They’re not allowed to talk to the press. They’ve been told, anybody talks to the press, you’re fired. And those people at EPA and other agencies that have talked to the press, they were fired. And also because of the recent spate of tornadoes you had down in London and Somerset County, he is actually from Somerset. He was born there. He took it very personal. And when the Secretary of Commerce was testifying before his committee and gave wholly inadequate answers that you could see that the congressman was quite upset that he didn’t get the respect and the intelligent answers that he felt that he deserved.

Sarah Michels | Carolina Public Press (40:16):

Let’s go to Sarah. Hi, I’m Sarah Michels. I work for Carolina Public Press in North Carolina. Thank you all for being here. I have a question for Mr. Cooks. We just passed the anniversary of Tropical Storm Helene in North Carolina, 60 billion in estimated damage. And so far the federal government has promised about 9% of that, and with that compares to 40 to 50% for an average storm. And even of that 9% very, very little has actually reached the people that it should in Western North Carolina to this point. How much of that do you think is due to this third of loss in employees at FEMA and how much is due to other issues? And if you could speak to what those are.

Erik Hooks/Formerly FEMA (40:58):

Sure. From the information that I have, that is primarily due to the administration’s posture for administering those funds. I don’t believe that it’s wholly related to the loss of personnel at fema. But on top of what we’ve already discussed about the loss of personnel, they have put mechanisms in place that have dramatically slowed the funding coming to the states and localities for disaster relief. The secretary’s mandate that everything over a hundred thousand dollars must land on her desk for signature before going out the door. Greatly impacts that as well. The Secretary of Homeland Security for which our colleagues here we both worked under the previous administration, has vast responsibilities, 22 or some odd agencies underneath there. But for the secretary to have to spend time to come back for approvals in the a hundred thousand dollars increments or above for anything is a task that would naturally slow things down even if they had the best intentions.

(42:15):

But you couple that with the idea that even before it reaches her, that those requests for reimbursements have to go through fema. They have to be analyzed, they have to be verified. They always have, they have to be checked for fraud, for those public assistance funds to go out the door, but now to now have to go over to the Department of Homeland Security for another run through and check and with the political pressures of, Hey, we don’t want to give so much federal funds. And then after that, before even landing with the secretary, I understand that there has been some reporting that there is still, you may not hear as much about Doge publicly as he did when Mr. Musk was there, but then there’s a Doge type review before going to the secretary. All of those new structures slow things down, and you’re absolutely right after a year to see that only eight or 9% has gone to not just because it’s my home state and state where I live and where I love, but to go to any jurisdiction has been devastated and lives have been ruined, maybe generationally is extremely, extremely troublesome as well.

(43:34):

And one of the things that really struck me was some of the current release of funding from, for disaster relief for Western North Carolina was accompanied by press releases from DHS that has such vitriol about one, how quickly they are administering these funds when that does not add up to the percentages you gave versus any previous administration. And so there are some things that, and I know it’s tough and I’m not really for the back and forth. He’s lying, she’s lying, all of these kind of things as well. But the truth matters. And the truth is that if any department is saying that they are expediently providing assistance to local communities, but your local communities know that that is not happening, that deserves reporting. It also deserves reporting about who on your congressional delegation is standing up to that and trying to fight for those funds that have been legally appropriated by Congress have been approved by the structures that have historically been in place, that have been vetted for fraud, waste, and abuse to be delivered to those communities that deserve it.

Hannah Pinski | Louisville Courier Journal (44:57):

Hi, I’m Hannah. I’m also based in Kentucky. I’m based in Louisville though, and I also have a question about fema. Given the fact that Kentucky had more major disasters this year, particularly, there was really bad flooding during the legislative session. And the whole question was how is the state legislature, how much are the funding are they going to set aside for these floods? And what ended up happening is technically they didn’t. They moved money around. There was no new funding for these floods and recoveries. So given the uncertainty of FEMA and moving forward into budget cycle next year, what do state legislatures have to consider with emergency disaster funding and any other type of policy given FEMA’s uncertainty moving forward? And especially since a lot of these communities are still recovering and not even close to?

Erik Hooks/Formerly FEMA (45:50):

Sure. I think your legislature needs to look at that disaster relief as a broad scope of public safety. And just as they have shown commitments around the country and legislatures to fund public safety initiative, their state law enforcement money going to their local law enforcement, they really have to look at their disaster relief. Now, some states have a fairly robust disaster relief fund. Some states do not. I don’t remember off the top of my head where Kentucky stands, but some of those, if I were giving advice, which I’m not right now, to a legislative body, I would say you have to prepare for the future with the idea that the federal money is either delayed or not coming. One of the issues that they may have to think through programs or assisting localities like Louisville or even smaller localities that may have a cashflow problem. So maybe they don’t have to fully expend the funds, but if the funds are coming slowly from the feds, they’re a mechanism in law, or can they create a mechanism to help cash flow into those communities until these slower federal resources reach them?

Amir Khafagy | Documented (47:07):

Hi, how are you? Thanks for being here today. My name is Amir Khafagy. I’m a reporter from New York. I guess my question would be, I know right now everyone’s terrified of losing their jobs, right? The people that still have jobs, I know there’s this fear of speaking to people and letting reporters know what’s going on, but as reporters, I feel we are only as good as our sources. We’re only as good as the information we’re getting. So how would we as reporters build those relationships with people still in the inside who would want to talk about what’s going on? And I think we can all agree that this is an authoritarian attack on democratic institutions. So how could we build those relationships with public servants that are continuing to work in these agencies and that we can build these relationships to do the reporting that needs to be done?

Tim Quinn/Formerly U.S. Customs and Border Protection (48:09):

Well, I’ll start. It’s a challenge, to be honest with you. I’ve worked 27 years in the federal government and did not talk to a reporter unless it was a part of my job with prepared talking points that had been cleared. So I don’t know whether I’m the best person to answer this question, but so it is challenging. I think you have people, as everybody has mentioned, who are afraid of losing their job. I think probably the best way may be to talk to people like us who have been there recently and may know folks who are still there, who may be willing to talk with all the appropriate backgrounds so that they’re not named sources.

Stacey Young/Justice Connection (49:06):

I mean, that’s absolutely right. If federal employees are told, do not talk to the press. I mean, oftentimes feds get requests from journalists to talk about their work, and usually they’re expected to go to their public affairs offices. And it’s hard. And if you email them directly, it’s not always difficult to figure out what federal employee’s email addresses are. I mean, the construction at different agencies is usually easy to figure that out, the email construction. But our organization is here not only to support employees, but to get information out of the department because it is too dangerous for employees to do it themselves. So federal employees will, DOJ employees will come to us with information, and they come to us because they trust us and they don’t have experience talking to journalists, and they don’t know how to do it. And they don’t know the difference between on the record or on background or on the record.

(50:09):

And it’s a really intimidating thing, especially in today’s climate where just about anything can get you fired, especially talking to the press. So at DOJ, a lot of employees are coming to us and we’re communicating with journalists ourselves, and we have a press director who’s here, and he really oversees this effort. And so if journalists come to us, we will try to find people in the component there looking to talk to people in and get information to them that way. And also because we’re an alumni network and we have thousands of members in our alumni network at this point, people who are recently there or people who are just extremely familiar with their former offices or people who are still there are talking to reporters as well. So I think going to organizations that work directly with agencies like ours or going to recent employees is a good way to get the information you’re looking for. But I recognize the challenge and we recognize the challenge, and that’s why this is one of the functions we serve. And we’re not all that loud about it.

Julietta Bisharyan | Modesto Bee (51:26):

Hi, I’m Julietta. I’m with the Modesto Bee in California. I have a question for Mr. Quinn. I have been reporting on our local sheriff offices task forces with federal agencies like HSI. These agreements allow our sheriff’s office to share resources and databases and even the office space with these HSI agents. And I know this year a lot of federal agencies, including HSI have been directed to prioritize immigration enforcement. So my question is, should local law enforcement agencies that have these relationships with federal agencies be concerned or reconsider these agreements because of immigration enforcement?

Tim Quinn/Formerly U.S. Customs and Border Protection (52:18):

Yeah, I think what you’re going to see is I think every local law enforcement agency is going to have to make a decision of what it’s going to do, because there are a few different ways that the administration is coming at local law enforcement. One is on the dollars side in terms of where grant dollars, whether they come from DOJ, whether they come from DHS to the extent that grant dollars are being provided. There is certainly going to be an inducement through grant dollars to have local law enforcement engage in immigration and enforcement. I think on the other side, whether it’s a local sheriff or a local police chief, the community is going to have a voice there in terms of what they want their local law enforcement officials to be doing. As it relates to immigration, there’s a huge increase in the number of agencies that have signed up for 2 87 G, and there are different models of 2 87 G, which is basically the mechanism by which local law enforcement agencies can assist ICE with their immigration enforcement duties.

(53:39):

But I think it’s really going to come down to what those local law enforcement agencies are hearing from their community about what it is they want their police chief to do. What do they want their elected sheriff to do as it relates to immigration enforcement? And I think our law enforcement leaders across the country, those who are going to say, Nope, I am not the immigration police and I want to maintain trust with my community. Both those who are here documented and those who are undocumented, I think they are going to face a significant storm from the administration.

Kevin Johnson/NPF (54:21):

Again, we’re leaving a number of hands in the air and we can’t get to everybody because this session just flew by, but I’ll hope that you’ll be able to reach out. Stacy mentioned her press person is here, Peter Carr, who’s in the back of the room. Peter probably knows more about justice than just about anybody in town. He’s been there a long, long time, and a wonderful person to get to know. So I would encourage, I don’t mean to throw the wave of folks on you, Peter, but you’d be a great resource for them. And I can’t thank the panel enough for sharing the information that you did today, and I know you’ll be getting follow-up calls and texts and emails as well. But thank you so much and please join me in thanking all of them.