Well, about the only way you can tell for sure is that with just a minimum of press, the government quickly comes out to announce that there is nothing to see here, please move along. They just seem to be incapable of shutting up when they get caught doing something dubious.
Personally, I can see why FEMA wants to requisition emergency supplies. It’s sort of their job. But why they would want so much and so fast, without any real disaster pending, is that some bureaucrat noticed that the expiration dates of a lot of their emergency supplies had come and gone.
You figure that there was a major resupply right after Katrina in 2005, but that probably happened 7 years ago.
brtrr