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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :(
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.
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.
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
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.
These budget cuts are getting weird.
Yeah, they’re not cutting subsidies to businesses, rolling back tax breaks, or anything that affects the deep pockets. Nope. They’re cutting stuff that helps people at home and abroad. Cut FEMA here, cut foreign aid. Eliminating housing and food help.
I mean, they kind of said they were going to take this tack pretty clearly
Sure. But the people that needed to understand that weren’t listening.
Selectively listening I think
Leopards ate my face is a thing for a reason
This is money that will just stay with the states. For the best for places like California and Washington. For the worst for places like Florida.
Which is to say that this is terrible, but if states aren’t giving money to FEMA, the money will stay there.
florida, louisana, and texas. far and away the largest recipients of fema dollars over the last decade.
https://www.axios.com/2024/10/08/fema-direct-payments-state-recipients
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t FEMA funded out of the Federal budget? Meaning if they cut FEMA, that money will just go elsewhere, not “just stay with the states”.
EDIT added clarification.
Yes, but it’s blue states that contribute the most and red states that take the most. Without the federal government distributing these tax dollars, red states won’t be able to afford disaster recovery.
‘elsewhere’ as in tax breaks for the wealthy and funneled to lord diaper’s designated recipients.
Hmm, I’ll have to look into it. Not sure.
If you plan to drill baby, drill, natural disasters are only going to get worse, so they are mitigating against future emergency budgets they don’t want to pay by scrapping FEMA—leaving them free to destroy the environment and cut taxes with no future blowback, because states’ rights or some shit.
The replacement will have jump shot training sessions with paper towels.
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.
The amount of americans this will kill would demand retaliation if putin had used kinetic warfare instead.
HAHA SUCKS TO BE YOU — any red state that needs FEMA money… Florida, Texas, Louisiana, basically any Gulf of MEXICO state. Eat poop and choke.
So maybe that - and trump can also withhold money from states that don’t kiss his ass. Think of it this way…if people are hit hard by some disaster and the state can only do so much, trump can just say your governor sucks, get rid of him/her and I’ll see that you get money from the fed. Trump puts a favored talibangelical candidate forward, and sees what happens.
He’s already trying this with California, telling them they need to pass restrictive voting laws in exchange for fire aid.
Okay I feel what you’re saying, but also know that not every person in those states is not a trump loving sycophant.
I live in a blue island in Alabama and this is very disheartening news, most of my family and friends are bluer than blue. So I’d appreciate if everyone on the left didn’t look at red states the exact same way people on the right look at red states.
I feel for you, I promise. But you can leave Alabama at any time. If you want to talk about how you can make that happen, I’d love to help you brainstorm.
It’s not actually that easy to move states. It’s expensive and you’re leaving your entire network behind.
I’m aware. But at this point, they aren’t flipping blue. I get that it’s not something people want to think about, but shit is not going to stop hitting the fan for a long while.
I also think the urgency depends on whether or not a person is in a threatened group. Trans people, for example, need to have been packed and ready on Inauguration Day.
Complain about state being red. Tell blue people to leave, making it even redder. profit???
Tell people to stay and suffer??
How long until we start hearing about politicians having legitimate discussions about secession? The whole point of the Union is to help each other out.
California already is having those discussions. They’re collecting required signatures.
That’s just normal CA ballot measure BS. It’s the actual senators and reps that I’m wondering about.
Here in Michigan I am all for it. Fuck these stupid ass southern morons, I don’t want to share anything with them let alone a country. Fuck off and no you can’t have our water, eat shit redneck.
Putin wins
