SEPTEMBER 2025 – The Federal Emergency Management Agency isn’t known nowadays for its responsiveness – except, it turns out, if you have a political donor make a call for you. That’s the takeaway from a ProPublica piece last week by three reporters – Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski – who document convincingly that high-level Trump officials like Kristi Noem have taken access-selling to an entirely new level.
This is the kind of story that should have been picked up by now by the likes of The Big Three (WSJ,NYT,WaPo) but those newsrooms are more cautious than ever to avoid this administration’s crosshairs.
This is the second Rosebud win for ProPublica reporters in the last month.
https://www.propublica.org/article/kristi-noem-fema-florida-naples-sinan-gursoy