- cross-posted to:
- politics
- cross-posted to:
- politics
ASHEVILLE, North Carolina, Jan 24 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said he would sign an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally overhauling or eliminating the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “FEMA has turned out to be a disaster … I think we recommend that FEMA go away,” he said during a tour of North Carolina to see damage done by Hurricane Helene last year.
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Goodbye New Orleans, Miami, Jacksonville, Virginia Beach, all those Florida cities that are underwater from hurricane surge every year now, etc
Asheville North Carolina received 63 million in FEMA aid just a few months ago to help recover from hurricane season. He lied trying to say they didn’t have the money and now he’s making that the case.
This is gonna go over well next time there’s half an inch of snow in Texas and the entire power grid goes down. 😂
Oh no it’ll be fun.
He’ll get rid of FEMA, and just throw money at the states he likes. Of course the real trick is, his buddies in the States he likes will just pocket the money.
Nobody gets helped, horrible press all over the place. Lots of disenfranchised red voters.
Won’t turn them blue, But they might be less likely to vote.
Fun fact, it just snowed in Houston. Surprisingly went okay. Not to defend the Texas power grid. I still had random power outages all year. But it did survive some snow. So that was nice.
They’ll just pull themselves up by their… wait
“But my egg prices” - morons about to have a very bad 2025 Atlantic hurricane season.
We all warned you this would happen. This move was plainly outlined in Project 2025. Nobody tricked you, you’re just fucking morons.
B b but Trump claimed he never heard of project 2025. He wouldn’t just lie to the American people right?
Accusing gentle Mr. Trump of a misdeed?
I’m sorry but it’s either just Trump or Mrs. Trump now. Respect the law.
Mrs. Trump
At least now we know who’s the bottom.
Absolutely not, I love Trump mister TSS officer
I think if he denies a state assistance because they won’t play his games, other countries step in and send all the assistance that state could want. Imagine if China just threw billions of dollars at LA without conditions to make a point. I don’t expect Xi to be that smart, but it would be funny as hell watching Trump scramble.
I remember a story about a remote town that needed a bridge replaced. And the federal government was dragging their feet about it until the town wrote to the Soviet Union about helping them build the bridge.
Xi and Trump seem to coordinate pretty closely. If Trump weakened US cohesiveness and Xi stepped in, Trump would thank him and kiss his ass.
This is a decades long goal of Republicans. This is what I grew up with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEMA_camps_conspiracy_theory
More recently https://www.fema.gov/node/rumor-fema-operations-threats
Yay
This 1million%
Also grew up being promised that any day now, 1) Bill Clinton will take all the guns, and 2) We’ll go to FEMA camps to get gassed. It was all part of the UN Agenda 21 thing that George HW Bush/Clintons/Soros/CNN/Bill Gates and the New World Order One-World-Government are bringing.
Except none of that ever happened. Hm…were those guests on Art Bell in 1998 possibly…wrong?
And yet, 30 years later, here we are.
The south hurt itself in its confusion.
I think you misunderstand his goal here. This won’t stop him from giving aid to the people/states who help him. This will only stop FEMA helping everyone unconditionally. He isn’t trying to stop aid. He’s trying to stop aid without strings attached. This is a power play.
Plus read about how he specifically didn’t want emergency response people ready to jump in and help, just money. Money to be allocated on personal choice, not need, to the governor. Money for the governor to allocate by personal choice, not need, to communities and companies. This is about buying favors all the way down.
States would need to create an emergency bureaucracy redundant to each other state. California or Texas could do it but good luck South Dakota.
…again
I’m willing to bet that the “problem” with FEMA is that, due to its vital role in dealing with emergencies, it has particularly stringent safeguards in place to prevent it becoming a partisan tool. And since Trump’s stated goal is to turn the entirety of the federal government into a partisan tool, it has to go.
Maybe there are some buddies of the trump crime family that would be happy to privatize aid to disaster victims for a nice fee, and trump would like to withhold or bestow aid on States and individual officials that kiss his ass. So you bet the Left Coast won’t be getting any, but Mar a Lago will get a new roof every year.
Nah, it’s just really hard to steal from it without people noticing.
How hard can it be? They have to buy supplies and resources somewhere. And in an emergency no one is looking where you get stuff, from who, or how much. I’m surprised it isn’t ripe for abuse…
Used to be that easy. Then Bush 2 and his fleet of RVs happened.
Ironically, the Republicans installed a lot of oversight against single source contracting. You can do it but it’s very obvious. So privatizing the entire thing makes it easier to grift.
I would bet it was as stupid as someone (or even naturally by group via social media) inventing a narrative during the Biden administration because everything he does is evil. Then the destruction of the agency being the natural conclusion of said narrative. It wins points for Trump since people living in that reality see this as a win over evil.
Then later, when it all blows up, likely during the next hurricane, they can just figure someone else to blame. Everything is probably purely off the cuff.
It’s what con men do. Just roll with everything and keep it up for as long as they can. It’s worked for Trump his entire life.
Fuck it. Bye Texas. Bye Florida. You will not be missed.
Yeah that’s not how this plays out. This will only affect states that he wants it to to affect, and when.
Yeah… probably :(
I’ll miss me, but also not really. I’ve already accepted that I’m probably gonna die before Trump is out of office—I don’t know if it’s better to go out in a concentration camp or some unmanaged aftermath of a natural disaster.
Take some fascists with you.
You could move up north if you have the funds
They live in Texas, they likely don’t have the funds.
Written by someone that lives in texas.
They say they have a plan to give money directly to the states instead. So far nobody has seen or heard this plan.
Even if such a plan exists, that still sounds like they’re taking a stockpile of vehicles and personnel and getting rid of it all only to be unprepared for all future disasters.
The plan is to give money to states that kiss trump’s ass, and none for the blue states or cities that don’t.
Just like the covid crisis (it’s a hoax) where he said it would ‘disappear’, President Felon & his cult will leave us all to die without any help or caring from our government, that we fund !
Funds for me, not for thee.
It’s kind of funny when you put it that way because the FEMA claims and reimbursement process is so convoluted and labor intensive that those funds often only go to the wealthy.
FEMA funds are often only for [the wealthy] and not for [the poor]. FEMA absolutely needs an overhaul, but probably not the one Trump has in mind.
Many of us have direct experience getting FEMA relief and cash. We disagree with your claim.
Here is some research on the inequitable distribution of Stafford Act disbursements. They go to wealthy and white neighborhoods that have the resources to navigate the barriers to receiving funding. People in these neighborhoods have an easier time passing through the federal government’s fraud detection barriers, and are more likely to receive support from their (better-funded) local governments in filing for and receiving federal aid. FEMA payouts and insurance payouts are often intertwined, and this leads to further red tape, delays, and denials.
That said, I’ll admit that I may be biased because my mental model on the topic almost entirely comes from a former boss who relied on talking up these inequities to secure investment funding for a tool we claimed we wanted to design (in our public messaging) to help people navigate these barriers, organize their claims paperwork, and receive funding.
I would agree with the assessment that there can be a lack of fraud investigation, or even simply the inability to determine what areas need help vs. not, so they blanket approve some places. Whether or not that approval is driven by demographics I can’t say, only that in-laws who did not get much damage from one of the past storms had complete opportunity to claim some money for “whatever damage there was”, and didn’t because…that’s the wrong thing to do morally. How many people would do that, probably not 100%. But I don’t blame FEMA in concept, only in its funding and organization, and not being manned well enough to do its job well.
Looks like Trump fixed that problem by just removing it altogether. Free market disaster response will be a fascinating thing to document. Not to live through.
Fully agree.
+1. i got money from fema in 2017 and all i had to do was sign a webform saying i was impacted by the hurricane that just hit
wtf, I got fema cash once. No paperwork. No convoluted process. I’m certainly not wealthy although I was surprised to qualify. Just money directly to fund repairs
Every accusation is a project. They will turn FEMA into what they’ve been accusing FEMA of.
Now we know where they’ll put those accused of illegal immigration.
https://www.axios.com/2024/10/08/fema-direct-payments-state-recipients
Where FEMA’s direct relief money is going
Florida, Louisiana and Texas residents have received the lion’s share of FEMA direct assistance since 2015, per newly gathered data.
Texas and Louisiana have been Republican-favoring states for some time.
https://www.270towin.com/states/Louisiana
https://www.270towin.com/states/Texas
Florida is more swing, though has been trending Republican:
https://www.270towin.com/states/Florida
I’d guess – not familiar with the politics – that maybe there’s irritation with FEMA’s speed of processing hurricane aid in those states, and that’s what’s driving Trump’s statements. However, if FEMA simply disappeared tomorrow, along with the aid it provided, it’d probably be generally-disadvantageous to Republican-favoring states.
Nah, “get rid of FEMA” has been a thing for a long while, since before 2000. The issue is FEMA looks like a giant black box that does nothing but suck money when they aren’t being actively used, at least to the layperson, and when they ARE engaged with a disaster, people don’t get that it’s almost always local aid networks and such that actually handle distributing things because they know their town and the people who need help better than FEMA does, so they still look like all they’re doing is dumping truckloads of supplies off in the middle of the area. They also buy scary things like body bags (because natural disasters tend to wind up with a lot of dead bodies), making dumb people think they have some ulterior, sinister motives (see X-Files).
The layperson doesn’t think about FEMA at all unless there’s been a recent disaster. Regular people aren’t making lists of government organizations and cataloging their budgets. If an org hasn’t literally just been in the news, they forget it exists.
Oh, I do remember the FEMA conspiracy stuff from back when, believe that that was from the right.
kagis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEMA_camps_conspiracy_theory
The FEMA camps conspiracy theory is a belief, particularly within the American Patriot movement,[1] that the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is planning to imprison US citizens in concentration camps, following the imposition of martial law in the United States after a major disaster or crisis.[1][2][3][4] In some versions of the theory, only suspected dissidents will be imprisoned. In more extreme versions, large numbers of US citizens will be imprisoned for the purposes of extermination as a New World Order is established. The theory has existed since the late 1970s, but its circulation has increased with the advent of the internet and social media platforms.[2]
Meanwhile voting for fascists who will actually and openly put people they don’t favor in camps. JFC
Probably priorities. Probably the exact opposite of what they claim.
Don’t forget the part where Trump said he didn’t see the point in having federal emergency response people ready to rush in and help. People who would evaluate need and get help where it’s most important …. Instead of what Trump co siders mpst important.
I call uno reverse on these claims that fema only helps the wealthy rather than those who need it most. That is what is not happening, yet. That is what will be happening
All those hurricane victims that complained about “illegals” getting some FEMA (but it wasn’t FEMA money, not that they cared) money got their wish. They won’t get any more FEMA money. Maybe nobody else will, either.
Florida’s about to be unaffordable for millions of Americans. FEMA’s NFIP program had been disproportionately keeping cost of flood insurance low for millions of people in hurricane/flood regions along the Gulf coast, but now the market alone will dictate rates if FEMA is taken out of the picture.
now the market alone will dictate rates if FEMA is taken out of the picture
Nah, Florida will just pass a law making it illegal for insurers to leave the state. Surely that will work!
They’d save more effort by making it illegal for hurricanes to hit Florida. Borrow Trump’s marker and make them hit Alabama instead.
Didn’t they actually pass something near to that already?
Don’t worry. They’ll make sure handouts to red states won’t stop. It’s only blue states that’ll get fucked.
The replacement will have jump shot training sessions with paper towels.
I know this is stretching it, but given how stupid of a timeline we’re in, I have to allow for the possibility that FEMA is being disbanded because CA Gov. Newsom is taller than Trump.
