Did President Trump redirect $2 billion meant for welfare programs for undocumented immigrants to the residents of North Carolina during the first week of his second term in 2025? No, that's not true: This claim is from a self-described satirical source. The Facebook page where the claim appeared included a bio that read, in part, "Nothing on this page is real." Lead Stories did not find evidence of this rumor in official government sources, including those published by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the White House.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook published on January 21, 2025, that read:
FEMA has been directed back to North Carolina with $2 billion in emergency funds:
'We transferred it from the programs that fund welfare for illegals. They won't be needing it.'
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Jan 27 15:25:25 2025 UTC)
The post did not provide evidence to support the assertion that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) redirected $2 billion in emergency funds to North Carolina, nor did it provide an attribution for the included quote.
The account that published the post on Facebook is "America - Love It Or Leave It," which is self-described as posting content that isn't true. The intro on the account page reads:
A subsidiary of the America's Last Line of Defense network of trollery and propaganda for cash. Nothing on this page is real.
Evidence of that intro is below (highlighting by Lead Stories):
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Jan 27 21:03:56 2025 UTC)
The claim was also posted on another Facebook account, "America's Last Line Of Defense." The "America's Last Line Of Defense" account has the same Facebook "intro" and dunning-kruger-times.com link as the "America - Love It Or Leave It" account. Evidence of this is below. Highlighting done by Lead Stories:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Jan 27 21:10:42 2025 UTC)
There was a link on the Facebook page that led to dunning-kruger-times.com. We found no article or additional information on this claim on dunning-kruger-times.com to support the supposed $2 billion funding move. More information on America's Last Line of Defense and dunning-kruger-times are further down in this article.
A search through Google News, an online news archive, did not yield any evidence that would support this claim (archived here). When we searched keywords and part of the claim's quote in the search engine, we found fact-checking websites and reputable news sources debunking the claim.
Lead Stories also checked FEMA's press releases from January 21- 27, 2025, when this article was written. We found no evidence that FEMA announced moving $2 billion in emergency funds from "illegals" to the residents of North Carolina. Evidence of this search is shown below:
(Source: Fema.gov screenshot taken on Mon Jan 27 15:30:46 2025 UTC)
We have contacted FEMA's media relations team and will update this article with a relevant response.
Lead Stories also checked the News section of the official White House website for any evidence corroborating this claim. We did not find any, as shown in the screenshot below:
(Source: Google screenshot taken on Mon Jan 27 19:08:04 2025 UTC)
We've contacted Trump's press secretary and will update this article when a relevant response is received.
ALLOD & The Dunning-Kruger Times
The Dunning-Kruger Times is part of the ALLOD network of satire websites run by self-professed liberal troll Christopher Blair, who lives in Maine. Along with a loose confederation of friends and allies, Blair runs several websites and Facebook pages with visible satire disclaimers.
Sites in the network have an "About" page that reads, in part:
About Satire
Before you complain and decide satire is synonymous with "comedy":
sat·ire ˈsaˌtī(ə)r noun: The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined. Any similarities between this site's pure fantasy and actual people, places, and events are purely coincidental and all images should be considered altered and satirical. See above if you're still having an issue with that satire thing.
Articles from Blair's sites frequently get copied by "real" fake news sites that omit the satire disclaimer and other indications showing that the stories are fake.
The Dunning-Kruger Times website also contains an "About Us" (archived here) page that has the following disclaimer:
About Us
Dunning-Kruger-Times.com is a subsidiary of the 'America's Last Line of Defense' network of parody, satire, and tomfoolery, or as Snopes called it before they lost their war on satire: Junk News
At the time this was written, Snopes, Reuters, and PolitiFact had reviewed the same claim.
Read more
Other Lead Stories fact checks concerning immigration claims to the United States can be found here.
More Lead Stories fact checks surrounding FEMA are here.
