Although it has been more than a year since Hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico, in parts of the U.S. territory, “it’s like the hurricane hit yesterday”—yet President Donald Trump wants to cut off recovery money, according to Axios, “because he claims, without evidence, that the island’s government is using federal disaster relief money to pay off debt.”

“We remind the Pres the ‘help’ you say will not come is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. You are violating our human right by denying us what we need.”
—San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz

The unfounded claims about federal funds being misappropriated come from Trump’s misreading of an October Wall Street Journal article, multiple unnamed sources told Axios‘ Jonathan Swan.

A day after the Journal report was published, Trump falsely alleged on Twitter that the island’s “inept politicians are trying to use the massive and ridiculously high amounts of hurricane/disaster funding” to pay off Puerto Rico’s substantial debt.

While “Puerto Rico is expecting billions in disaster recovery aid to help rebuild from last year’s Hurricane Maria,” as Bloomberg pointed out after the president’s tweet, “neither the island’s leaders—nor the board installed by the U.S. to oversee its budget—are proposing using disaster recovery aid to directly pay off bondholders or other lenders, who have been squaring off in federal court and stand to recover a portion of their investments once the government emerges from bankruptcy.”