The latest installment of “willful incompetence kills” comes out of Texas, where catastrophic flooding on July 4th left entire communities decimated and at least 129 people dead. As of this writing and according to reports, more than 170 are still missing.
As Gabe Cohen and Michael Williams report for CNN, Kristi Noem-instituted “cost controls” actually made FEMA less agile when inevitable disasters like Texas floods require quick action.
As monstrous floodwaters surged across central Texas late last week, officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency leapt into action, preparing to deploy critical search and rescue teams and life-saving resources, like they have in countless past disasters. But almost instantly, FEMA ran into bureaucratic obstacles, four officials inside the agency told CNN. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem—whose department oversees FEMA—recently enacted a sweeping rule aimed at cutting spending: Every contract and grant over $100,000 now requires her personal sign-off before any funds can be released.
Gabe Cohen and Michael Williams for CNN
Requiring Noem’s personal sign-off, according to multiple reports, caused at least a 72-hour delay in getting first responders to the scene as well as rescue assets mobilized.
Multiple FEMA officials told CNN that they were taken aback by the agency’s relatively limited response in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. The tragedy in Texas has made one thing clear: The buck now stops with Noem. Her office has delegated little authority to acting FEMA Administrator David Richardson, who, as of Wednesday morning, has yet to visit Texas since the flooding began, multiple FEMA officials told CNN.
In fact, acting-FEMA head Richardson was a no-show in Texas for a full week, according to The Independent, before being seen today “surveying the flood’s impact” by helicopter.
And as Marisa Kabas reports for The Handbasket, since his appointment by Trump, Richardson has taken a noticeably disinterested approach to his role—and was “unaware” United States had a defined hurricane season.
Even after the devastation, catastrophic damage and the agency’s documented failure to respond, Noem is still repeating the administration’s line that FEMA should be abolished. “We, as a federal government, don’t manage these disasters. The state does,” she claimed, according to CNN. “We come in and support them, and that’s exactly what we did in this situation.”
In May, Trump’s FEMA denied North Carolina Governor Josh Stein’s request to extend financial relief for Hurricane Helene.
AUTHOR FOOTNOTE
Many Earth 1 residents often lampoon right wingers’ “thoughts and prayers” after a disaster or mass-shooting, self included, noting that “prayer isn’t policy.” But their ethereal “thoughts and prayers” reveal something more sinister about their “agenda,” which is that MAGA Republicans don’t believe government or policies are the solution. Like, ever. And that is the car crash we’re watching in real time here.
Donald Trump and Kristi Noem and everyone else are congratulating each other on how great a job they did, and are doing, when they failed in every verifiable way possible. Even Texas Governor Abbott weighed in with some fascist fluffing of his own, falsely claiming through a spokesman, “Trump, Noem and FEMA have been exceptional partners throughout the flood response.”
No, they haven’t babe. Not in any way is that even remotely true.
Project 2025 called for this exact “strategy” (reducing FEMA’s role in disaster response) to be implemented, which likely explains why they’re all acting like they “nailed it” in public statements: their handlers demanded diminishing of FEMA.
In other words, when a left-is-right, up-is-down, incompetence-is-manly authoritarian mafia controls federal-disaster response (fully enabled by Right Wing Entertainment, like Murdoch’s Fox so-called News) you can bet the narrative they create for themselves will have absolutely no resemblance to what actually happened.
Facts-on-the-ground, including traumatized families, be damned.
SOURCES
- CNN
- Axios
- The Independent
- Marisa Kabas, The Handbasket
- Ali Velshi for MSNBC
