Politico, March 27, 2018: How Trump favored Texas over Puerto Rico
No two hurricanes are alike, and Harvey and Maria were vastly different storms that struck areas with vastly different financial, geographic and political situations. But a comparison of government statistics relating to the two recovery efforts strongly supports the views of disaster-recovery experts that FEMA and the Trump administration exerted a faster, and initially greater, effort in Texas, even though the damage in Puerto Rico exceeded that in Houston.
“There is no doubt that Puerto Rico gets treated differently to a state. And there is no doubt that it has been true for the disaster response as well,” Puerto Rico’s governor, Ricardo Rosselló, said in an interview at the governor’s mansion in Old San Juan. He added, “Our objective is to eradicate this notion of second-class citizenship in the United States, so that whenever a disaster hits — whether it’s Texas, Florida, New York or Puerto Rico — the federal government responds equally in all cases.”
