Trump wants to rob disaster relief to pay for border wall, terrorizing people of color

While Donald Trump is playing president in Texas, demonstrating his commitment to supporting Gulf Coast residents flooded out of their lives, here's a quick reminder of his real priorities. That reminder is his budget request for 2018 for the Department of Homeland Security, the department that houses the Federal Emergency Management Agency. For Trump's purposes, it more importantly oversees immigration and border control.

Here's some highlights from that budget request:

• Funds hiring of 500 new Border Patrol Agents and 1,000 new ICE law enforcement personnel, plus associated support staff.
• Provides a further investment of $2.6 billion for high priority tactical infrastructure and border security technology, including funding to continue planning, designing, and constructing a border wall. […]
• Restructures user fees for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) to ensure that the cost of government services is not subsidized by taxpayers who do not directly benefit from those programs.
• Reduces Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) administered grants, saving $667 million; additionally the budget proposes establishing a 25% non-federal cost match for FEMA preparedness grants that do not currently require a non-federal match.

Yeah, you're reading that right. It cuts flood insurance and FEMA in order to build the fucking border wall and hire agents to kick more brown people out of the country. Because this is Trump. Because the foundation of the Trump presidency is racism and bigotry and terrorization of people of color.