In what should be a surprise to no one, it turns out that FEMA likes Texas way more than Puerto Rico.

Courtesy of Politico:  

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. 

Within six days of Hurricane Harvey, U.S. Northern Command had deployed 73 helicopters over Houston, which are critical for saving victims and delivering emergency supplies. It took at least three weeks after Maria before it had more than 70 helicopters flying above Puerto Rico. 

Nine days after the respective hurricanes, FEMA had approved $141.8 million in individual assistance to Harvey victims, versus just $6.2 million for Maria victims. 

During the first nine days after Harvey, FEMA provided 5.1 million meals, 4.5 million liters of water and over 20,000 tarps to Houston; but in the same period, it delivered just 1.6 million meals, 2.8 million liters of water and roughly 5,000 tarps to Puerto Rico. 

Nine days after Harvey, the federal government had 30,000 personnel in the Houston region, compared with 10,000 at the same point after Maria. 

It took just 10 days for FEMA to approve permanent disaster work for Texas, compared with 43 days for Puerto Rico. 

Seventy-eight days after each hurricane, FEMA had approved 39 percent of federal applications for relief from victims of Harvey, versus 28 percent for Maria. 

Those imbalances track with another one: the attention of President Donald Trump. In public, Trump appeared much more concerned with the victims of Harvey than Maria. He visited Houston twice during the first eight days after the hurricane, but didn’t visit Puerto Rico for 13 days. In the first week after the disasters, Trump sent three times as many tweets about Harvey as Maria — 24 about the plight of Texas and eight about Puerto Rico, including a series of comments about Puerto Rico’s debt level and quality of infrastructure that local officials considered insulting and enraging while lives were still in jeopardy.

Trump also seemed less concerned with the actual delivery of services as he was about public relations, often  pressing FEMA Administrator Brock Long to make more television appearances bragging about the agency's progress.

This desire to flout his ability to respond to disaster was undermined by San Juan's mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz who constantly and publicly called out Trump for his ineffective response and his attempts to change the subject.

In the end Trump's preference for a state that voted overwhelmingly for him in 2016, to a territory that has no electoral votes to offer was impossible to miss:

“On Texas and Florida [during Hurricane Irma], the president was very vocal and engaged in the run-up to the storm. His messaging was frankly pretty good,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, the former top disaster response official at USAID under former President Barack Obama. “If you look at his public messaging on a comparable timeline around Puerto Rico, there’s virtually nothing. ... That sends a signal to the whole federal bureaucracy about how they should prioritize.”

I guess when Trump says "America first" he is really only talking about that part of America which voted for him, kisses his ass, and does not have so many damn brown people in it.