first place. kaitlan collins at the white house. thanks. democratic senator jeff merkley of oregon claiming the trump administration is diverting hurricane are. money from fema to fund i.c.e. just as hurricane season is getting underway. merkley released a homeland security document on tuesday showing a transfer of $9.8 million. the document says the money is coming from the agency s travel, training, public engagement, and i.t. budgets, not disaster relief. senator merkley insists the white house is diverting money from response and recovery budgets to fund additional immigrant detention camps. he says any shift in funding will make it even more challenging for fema to respond to natural disasters. let s bring in politics digital director zach wolf live in washington. tremendous to have you on the show today. the statement about hurricane maria, almost one year after it hit puerto rico, unsung success. some say that s reminiscent of george w. bush saying this fema
infrastructure that was allowed to decay. that s the first time that fema has ever had to do that in history as i m aware so we take that forward. now fema is one of the largest employers in puerto rico. we ve hired over 1,800 puerto ricans to become part of that emergency management arm to make sure that we build a strong backbone for the commonwealth and emergency management and at the local level. so we ve got there s a lot of work that needed to do to put that whole community response into place and that s what we re concentrated on. i understand. i mean, i just think that for the 2,975 families they don t make that distinction between whether someone was killed by wind or whether a week later they died because they couldn t get their medicine, to them a death is a death. fair enough. brock long, we wish you the best today, we will be watching. thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule to update us. thank you. coming up in our next hour we will get a
forwa forward recovery teams. we re pushing forces to implement national flood insurance program. we re setting up and gearing up for the next couple years. now fema and the department of homeland security will have a briefing updating what s happening there. 6: 6:15 texas time. 7:15 eastern. rosa flores joins us live from the flood zone in houston. is the rain still has it stopped? does it remain quiet there? awfully dark where you are in houston. reporter: we re still getting rain this morning. that s really bad news for the entire houston metro area. as you look around me, we are inundated with water. this is downtown houston. it s the historic district. i m not sure if you re able to see because it s dark, but the intersection that s behind me, commerce and travis streets. for people familiar, this is where spaghetti warehouse is.
for some time. while there are some political appointees always in positions like fema, there is a staff that is well-rehearsed in this and well studied in this. that s one. reasons, for instance, they knew to start pre positioning supplies. fema used to wait until after the fact and see what we can do. now fema has an operation that pre-positions supplies. they work with large companies like walmart, like budweiser to get cans. that normally would have beer in them with water. rush into communities, pre-position. when it s finally over, people can see that, okay, there are supplies in place. i would anticipate unrelated to the politics of this, that fema should be able to do it job because it is no longer the fema it once was. we ll hold you to it. kerry sanders in victoria, texas where they re going to get all of the storm they can handle. generous he will on ray was on
houston play i don t recall candidate chris bell thanks for being with me. you ve been in the middle of this destruction. tell me what it s been like from your perspective. well, it s been much more personal than it has ever been before, jose. you know as a former member of congress we talk about flooding and drainage projects and finding dollars for those projects and what have you. you don t expect to be victimized by flooding so i was right here. we live right in the worst hit area in the city and we took in about three feet during the storm. that was good news. i just heard on the weather cast, there is a light rain here but it s nothing like what we saw the other night. i was there in houston yesterday and streets that normally have drainage systems on the sides were just flooded and as you say two to three feet of water. now fema warned texans to