Some of the Trump Administration’s most fun wins so far, wins that exposed infuriating conduct on the part of leftist jurisdictions, came back in February of this year, when President Trump was able to get a few things done he had obviously long been hungering to do. Amongst those things was one particularly fun win in that it was a clawback of funds from woke New York City: FEMA reclaimed $80 million the city had been using to pay for illegal immigrant housing.

As background, one issue that rose to the fore during the Biden Administration was that, even in very high cost of living cities like New York City, municipal and state governments were paying, sometimes with federal funds, to house migrants and illegal immigrants in hotels. That housing came at great cost to local and federal taxpayers, but no cost to the illegal aliens.

Predictably, the news caused a panicked freakout in New York City. There, City Comptroller Brad Lander, freaked out in a public statement explaining that FEMA had unexpectedly seized back, without letting the city know, one $59 million grant and another $21.5 million federal funds award, both of which the city was using for migrant housing.

Releasing an angry, February 12 statement on the matter, Lander said, “This morning, my financial team shockingly uncovered that President Trump and his crony Elon Musk illegally executed a revocation of $80 million in congressionally-appropriated FEMA funding from New York City’s bank accounts late yesterday afternoon.”

Continuing, he hinted at what the funds had been used for, noting that “shelter and services” had been impacted by FEMA taking taxpayer dollars back from Gotham. He said, “This is money that the federal government previously disbursed for shelter and services and is now missing.”

Adding to that, Lander ridiculously referred to FEMA taking federal money back from a city that had been using it to house illegal aliens as “highway robbery” and “a betrayal,” saying, “This highway robbery of our funds directly out of our bank account is a betrayal of everyone who calls New York City home.”

Then, hinting at legal action that ended up coming later in the month, toward the end of February, Lander snapped that the city would fight back against FEMA’s decision. He said, “New York City cannot take this lying down. I call on the Mayor to immediately pursue legal action to ensure the tens of millions of dollars stolen by Trump and DOGE are rightfully returned.”