Whether you get your forecast from an app on your phone, a website or a meteorologist on TV, most of the underlying information comes from the federal government.
By @rhersher.bsky.social— NPR (@npr.org) May 19, 2025 at 2:27 PM
As hurricane season looms, the effects of DOGE cuts on the U.S. alert system are a new menace, writes @juliettekayyem.bsky.social. “A nation best prepares for a crisis not by ignoring it and hoping it never happens, but by anticipating it and planning for it.”
— The Atlantic (@theatlantic.com) May 19, 2025 at 5:39 PM
Juliet Kayyem, for the Atlantic — “This Tornado Mayhem Is a Warning”:
The tornadoes that swept through Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia resulted in a horrifying total of 42 deaths this weekend. Unlike hurricanes, which form steadily and are relatively easy to track, tornadoes are generally hard to predict. Because they appear very quickly, giving populations and emergency services little time to prepare, tornadoes can be particularly deadly.
This is why the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service (NWS) are so crucial for the nation’s emergency-response system. These agencies’ scientists gather and interpret meteorological data, identifying the patterns that should trigger a warning about a dangerous weather event. If we didn’t have that capacity, then we wouldn’t get the warning, and we wouldn’t have time to prepare.
Providing tornado notifications is one of these agencies’ most important tasks. The hierarchy of these alerts—watch, warning, emergency—is not an advisory about a tornado’s intensity but one about its likelihood and imminence. It’s all about time: A tornado watch means, in effect, that you may want to start to get ready if something bad happens; a warning means prepare for imminent danger because tornadoes have been identified in your area; the emergency declaration, though rare, means that you have no more time, and should take cover immediately.
Preparing for emergencies is always difficult; extreme climate events can overwhelm even the best-laid plans. But this challenge has been exacerbated by major staffing cuts imposed by Elon Musk’s and President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. Today, about 40 percent of the 122 local forecasting offices of the NWS have significant staffing gaps. More than 10 percent of its 4,800 employees have left in recent months—either dismissed, retired, or bought out. Some of the usual predictive measures, such as the deployment of weather balloons and Doppler radar, many of whose experts and technicians have been fired or laid off, are now not available…
Problems of staffing, capacity, and cuts demand more study as we enter another season of extreme weather. But what we already know is this: When we face the risk of a mass-casualty disaster, time is our most precious commodity. In this age, unfortunately, we can expect mayhem from all sorts of sources: cyberattacks, terrorism, active shooters, weather events, overburdened aviation systems, deadly viruses. A nation best prepares for a crisis not by ignoring it and hoping it never happens, but by anticipating it and planning for it. The success of such preparation is measured by the ability to provide more time, because more time means that those affected will have better options…
Some of the most consequential recent changes to emergency management have been in this crucial capacity to buy more time. New technology, including user-friendly apps that people can download to their phone, provides the public with better situational awareness. During the Los Angeles fires earlier this year, a nonprofit named Watch Duty, whose employees include dispatchers, volunteers tracking radio reports, and both active and retired firefighters, distributed real-time information about where fires were raging so that citizens would know how much time they had before they were in immediate danger. Earthquakes were once viewed as leaving populations wholly vulnerable, but new early-warning systems can get data from ground-monitoring devices and provide a loud alert before the seismic activity intensifies. For people who live in high-risk geological zones, a few extra seconds could save lives. The MyShake app, an initiative from UC Berkeley, aggregates this seismic information and crowdsourced data with an individual user’s phone location to target precise alerts…
These tech innovations and the NOAA project point to an essential fact: The private sector always has a part to play, but it cannot pick up the slack created by DOGE’s indiscriminate cuts, because these new developments still depend on data from government climate, seismic, and atmospheric programs. The dismantling of our nation’s early-alert and notification system is a dangerous gamble that is already affecting America’s citizens. Ultimately, this loss of capacity deprives us of vital time to seek safety from a catastrophic weather event that may be only seconds away.
jonas
Weatherforcasting is just woke because it leads to awareness of climate change. And probably drag queen storytime and other atrocities. Who knows?
Lord Fartdaddy (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I’m really not liking all this Greatness™. I wish we could go back to not being Great Again™.
Steve LaBonne
Conservatives think we should be paying AccuWeather for this, and are too ignorant to know where they get their data.
Steve LaBonne
@Lord Fartdaddy (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I sure as hell am tired of winning.
waspuppet
Abusers I have known, and who have been president in my lifetime, do not think this way. If you can’t tell them the exact location and date of a hurricane or a tornado, well, hell—you can’t be sure there will be any at all! Maybe this stockpile of money is going to waste!
The concept of “I don’t know when or where a bad thing is going to happen but I know it will someday” is beyond them. And they run the country.
Old School
How much institutions are going to need to be rebuilt is maddening.
Scout211
Both the NWS offices in Sacramento and Hanford California announced that they can no longer operate 24/7.
But that’s fine because weather is a 9 to 5, 5 days a week thing, right?
Steve LaBonne
@waspuppet: Hur dur stupid libs, we got a tornado warning but we didn’t get hit by a tornado! (Never mind about the next town over.) Also it’s chilly today, so much for your global warming hoax.
Elizabelle
Tornado Alley and Florida voted for this. In an era of severe climate change disruption. I pity those now in harm’s way who voted against this ridiculousness.
Steve LaBonne
@Old School: There is already quite a bit that will never be rebuilt to what it was, and it hurts my head to think even briefly about how much more destruction there will be in the next 3 1/2 years.
Raven
@Elizabelle: fuck em
Raven
You seen one Redwood you’ve seen em all.
Melancholy Jaques
Apparently, knowing shit is a waste.
Steve LaBonne
@Melancholy Jaques: Knowing shit is thought crime.
scav
@Steve LaBonne: Only if you attempt to support your knowing based on anything but the goateed baby jebubs vibes.
Ohio Mom
I’m getting flashbacks to the time Ohio Dad’s libertarian friend from high school kept insisting we don’t need the government to pay for forecasting weather, there are all the private companies that do that.
Knowing the limits of your knowledge base is an underrated skill.
sab
We had a very disruptive flood in our little valley last summer. No warning whatever, and cars were washed away and basements flooded.
I don’t blame NWS. We just had gobs more rain for a lot longer than expected. Spouse and I were driving up out of the valley and commented that we had never seen water pouring down the street like that. Later we learned our daughter got trapped in it and spent the night with her daughter in a parking lot with water lapping at her SUV.
My point is that with climate change these surprise events will be more common. No fault with the NWS, but they need more input not less. So we definitely are going in the exact wrong direction.
Trollhattan
Reposting this from yesterday, as it’s on topic.
Horrifying for a lot of reasons but suffice to say from a health and safety standpoint it’s on par with depopulating air control towers.
TONYG
It is the same shit. Ignorant dumb-asses in tornado country VOTED FOR THIS SHIT, whether or not they were too dumb to realize it. By all means, help these stupid people. But I have zero respect for these assholes.
Elizabelle
@Raven: Yes indeed. FAFO.
Jackie
The other side of the coin… AFTER disaster strikes, there’s no FEMA.
I know these states voted for FFOTUS, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t expect this… It’s kind of like a Mother Nature’s version of Covid.
Matt McIrvin
The next step is “Sure, you can get your tornado alerts back. All you have to do is cooperate with me on mass deportation, ban trans people, stop complaining about my free 747, etc.”
Sasha
Ironically, the kind of problem that kept the US from properly Trump-proofing itself in 2016 and 2024.
geg6
@Elizabelle:
This. No sympathy from me. We get some bad weather and tornado warnings, but not like tornado alley. Once again, it’s FAFO for these idiots. My heart goes out to the innocents, but fuck the voters who chose this.
West of the Rockies
Republican policy diminishing Republican voters. And all involved are totally OK with it because Dear Leader wanted it that way.
Belafon
@Sasha: A third of the country, half the voters, thought the crisis was DEI, trans, and taxes on the rich.
Steve LaBonne
@Belafon: Majority of wypipo.
suzanne
We got a phone call from my MIL last night. She was in her closet (in a very red state), sheltering. She voted the right way. Tornadoes don’t care.
UGHHHHH I HATE REPUBLICANS.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@jonas: more living people who might vote against insane GOP notions like defunding cancer cure research?
rikyrah
They have already killed 28 people.
We are about to ENTER HURRICANE SEASON BLIND!!
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Steve LaBonne: true conservatives know it is time to return to cave dwelling technology
Belafon
@Steve LaBonne: Yep.
West of the Rockies
There is a free app called Watch Duty that tracks fires. I find it to be extremely useful (living in northern California).
HopefullyNotcassandra
@TONYG: maybe they were never told
remember we have real news deserts in this country where next to no internet arrives unless one can afford to build their own tower
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Jackie: this president did not run on destroying FEMA.
sab
@HopefullyNotcassandra: And the locals vote for this.
Belafon
@rikyrah: We’ll end up relying on European models for that. Bur hurricanes happen slow. Tornado development doesn’t.
Scout211
@West of the Rockies: Yes! That app exploded in popularity and use during the Los Angeles fires. Mine has already sent me notifications this season for fires in the counties I have chosen for alerts.
It covers most of the western states and in California it includes the Alert California cameras and red flag fire watches and warnings.
Watch Duty
Matt McIrvin
@HopefullyNotcassandra: In fact, a bogus claim that Joe Biden abandoned North Carolina after the floods was one of the things that boosted Trump late in the campaign.
Though there were also conspiracy theories that the government was going to somehow steal the land from affected people, and some may have thought FEMA would do it.
Trollhattan
@geg6:
Living in the nation’s 2nd most flood-prone city I don’t want to be lumped with Trump’s hillbilly voters.
Baud
Weather isn’t real.
BellaPea
I would just like to say that Elon Musk and this DOGE horse-shit is one of the worst fake and phony ops ever pulled in this country. All of it was clearly illegal and did nothing to save money and they fired a bunch of government employees who were just doing their job. Bastards, all of them, Elon and the young punks who helped to pull this stupid shit off.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Ohio Mom:
“Libertarian from high school friend”.
And glibertarians wonder where the stereotype comes from.
Libertarianism is a simply a series of poses, an ethic of mooching off the commonwealth while simultaneously deploring it. It is fairly defined as “Free me from the shackles of that which I find bothersome.”
The late, great Doghouse Riley had this to say about glibertarians 15 years ago:
Phylllis
@Jackie: I was at a meeting last Friday about our state’s federal education funding. I told the folks at my table they better be prepared for mid-year budget cuts when Hurricane season + no reliable assistance from FEMA blows a hole in the state’s budget.
lou
Gah. The fact that NPR had to even REPORT this story because so many idiots believe they can just “find the weather on an app.” I mean, that’s literally what some of the commenters on NPR’s Facebook page are saying. Sometimes I think we as a country and a species don’t deserve to live.
cain
@Jackie: America being great means that you help yourself cuz America doesn’t need any govt help. They can cope!
Just like how it was in the 50s
Elizabelle
@BellaPea: I hope Karma pulverizes Musk and DOGE.
cain
@lou:
Nothing like having it all taken away to understand how their society runs.
NaijaGal
Off topic: there was a BJ post some days ago about a woman being kept alive without consulting her family because she was 8 weeks pregnant at the time that she was declared “brain dead” and Georgia’s abortion laws prohibit abortions after 6 weeks. The woman’s mother had mentioned that the family has had to foot the associated medical bills (she’s now 22 weeks along and the baby is likely to be born with disabilities because he has fluid in his brain). I found a GoFundMe for the family and wanted to share it because their bills are likely going to be astronomical.
TONYG
@HopefullyNotcassandra: Yes, that’s true. Local newspapers have largely become extinct (including in my state, New Jersey). Most broadcast and cable news is garbage (notably, but not only, Fox and NewsMax). When I was in the outskirts of the “city” (a bunch of strip malls) of Knoxville, Tennessee four months ago it was disheartening to see how much of the region had zero cell service (and therefore zero internet access). The people in that area are being deliberately kept ignorant by their masters. It’s very depressing. (What was noteworthy to me was that I was there because a relative chose to move there. Good luck to her.)
Miss Bianca
@NaijaGal: I hope they sue the ever-loving shit out of the state of GA. And that some crackerjack lawyer takes the case.
Jackie
@HopefullyNotcassandra:
It’s in Project 2025. So I disagree.
Trollhattan
@lou:
Have already seen “N/A” populating current conditions in my area forecast web page.
Hard not to be paranoid when they’re certainly after you.
Duke of Clay
@Scout211: The Jackson, KY NWS office which covers southeastern KY was closed the other night when tornadoes ravished Laurel County after midnight leaving 20+ dead. I haven’t seen an analysis of how this may have impacted the response, but one can‘t help but wonder.
Trollhattan
@Elizabelle: Karma is lazy AF.
brendancalling
I am so rooting for Houston to be leveled without warning, then Trump refusing to send FEMA like he did to Arkansas (which had no warning, IIRC).
Yes it’s mean. No, I don’t care.
brendancalling
@Jackie: maybe they didn’t, but I’m done caring about them. They want people like me to be dead, so when it happens to them instead it’s hard (impossible, in my case) to feel anything but schadenfreude.
cope
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I miss old Doghouse.
mrmoshpotato
@Elizabelle:
Don’t worry. Trump trash knows their orange dog will scare away hurricanes and tornados by calling them fake storms.
Same. My sympathy to them.
Elizabelle
@Trollhattan: So far. Maybe she is just warming up.
I want to see Murdoch, Musk, Thiel, and Zuck come to a bad end on their corporate jets. Because of weather or overstretched air traffic control, or even substandard aircraft parts and service. Stuff they count on but — surprise!
Throw the Mercers in there too.
Redshift
@HopefullyNotcassandra:
And news deserts correlate with Trump support. We have well-deserved criticism for mainstream media coverage, but the fact is people whose primary news source is NPR, network news, and newspapers are the most likely to vote Democratic.
Baud
@Redshift:
People more likely to vote Democratic consume mainstream media more than right leaning voters.
ETA: Do we actually think the media being fairer to Democrats would make people less likely to vote blue?
Marc
@West of the Rockies ,@Scout211:
A good time to mention that the Watch Duty app makes use of open data from various federally funded sources. It will only be useful if those data sources continue to be available.
Belafon
@brendancalling: Houston, which constantly votes for Democrats? Houston, which Republicans in the state keep trying to take over? Houston, which was denied FEMA benefits by Trump last time after being hit by a hurricane? Houston, where, if it were wiped out, most of the state would cheer because it would mean fewer Democrats? You should probably learn more about my state before you make that statement.
Belafon
Houston is also one of the most diverse cities in the entire country.
Elizabelle
@Jackie:
Mother Nature’s version of Covid. That is so perfect.
cckids
@Baud:
No, weather is real, climate is fake.
in MAGA world, anyway.
Redshift
@Steve LaBonne:
The CEO of AccuWeather thinks they should privatize it and turn it over to him, so other sources can still get the data if they pay him. Because free market worshipers believe it’s wrong for the government to provide something when someone else could be making a buck off of it.
Elizabelle
@Belafon: Very true.
Houston is also famous for no building codes, or not as many as other big cities. Cannot imagine that situation has improved much, because TexA$$.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Here we go with the “let the red states burn” shit again…
Fuck all the way off with that crap. It’s borderline Nazi shit, IMFHO.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Belafon:
https://www.understandinghouston.org/topic/community-context/population-and-diversity/#population
That looks at the 3-country metro area and sure, it’s diverse.
But the City demographic stats are roughly the same.
Elizabelle
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: You have a point.
Baud brought up empathy in a morning thread, and I do think that is one of our strengths, but you do not see it on display when we are discussing being savaged again by the delusional and low information voting patterns of — sadly — red states.
Trump and the actual oligarchs are bigly uprooting all the good that government can do, when it is geared to providing security and services to the average person.
They want to hoover it all up.
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah:
Remember when they wanted to lock Hillary up over some emails and a server? This, OTOH, is serious shit, and the people responsible need to pay.
After due process, of course.
Marc
That’s just differing priorities between DOGE and the next tier down of corporate rent seekers. AccuWeather wants the feds to continue collecting the data, but only make it available to those who can pay, like themselves. DOGE says they now own the data feeds and will fire most of the employees as they are no longer needed. AccuWeather can simply pay GrokAiWeather for the forecasts as soon as they become available next year (Note: not a binding offer of service).
mapaghimagsik
„Not in Anger, but in Sadness….“
Baud
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
We shouldn’t “let” the red states burned.
But the red states have removed our power over the situation. So what the red states have to decide now is whether they’re going to let the Republican Party burn them.
Chief Oshkosh
@rikyrah:
I believe the butcher’s list now includes 42 dead.
WTFGhost
To touch on an earlier thread, there’s a bit of smug “well, what did you morons think was going to happen, when the Trump admin decided to crap all over the government?” going through my mind, but a full awareness that this isn’t like a sibling who did something stupid and got spanked for it, and after the crying stops, it’s hilariously funny to everyone else. This is staring at devastation that simply didn’t need to happen, all because the entire Republican Party decided they preferred evil, and power, to doing what’s right.
@Matt McIrvin: Oh, hell no. That was waste, fraud, and abuse, and absolutely not a mistake – he never makes a mistake, at least, according to the voices he invents in his head. You just have to stop complaining, or he’ll retaliate.
@geg6: Go up to those voters, ask them if they thought Trump would leave them helpless to tornados. They really didn’t vote for this – they voted based upon an egregious set of lies told by the Republican Party. Alas, to reference another response, we didn’t trump proof ourselves in 2020, and we should have.
@HopefullyNotcassandra: I believe he did talk about destroying FEMA pre-election. It’s not surprising if he did – he was slagging FEMA left and right, so why wouldn’t he decide it’s a terrible agency? He’s not bright enough to keep track of his created-hates.
Chief Oshkosh
@Matt McIrvin: Those CTs were just crazy, and the followers nearly violent in the vehemence that IT IS ALL FER REALZ, even after several of their cohort packed into remote areas that were wiped out and found…drumroll, please…FEMA already on-site helping people and NOT NOT NOT taking their lands.
People are stupid. Both parties recognize this. One party takes advantage of the stupidity, the other party tries to help stupid people at least not die horrifically and in debt.
So far, the swindling grifters are winning.
Elizabelle
@mapaghimagsik: Had to look that up.
Possibly yet another gift from Shakespeare. From dictionary.com:
BlueGuitarist
Any Pittsburgh/Allegheny County juicers have a sense of turnout in the local elections today or an opinion re the I Voted N’AT! sticker?
https://bsky.app/profile/omnibarn.bsky.social/post/3lpmvxia7rc2n
Old School
Elizabelle
@Chief Oshkosh: We did get some reporting on that. A county sheriff (elected Republican) took on a lying conspiracy-monger at a government hearing. All the lying was making it too hard for emergency responders and relief workers. Sheriff called out that man right to his face.
But we do not see enough public pushback like that. Sadly.
Of course, at the moment our finest media stars are pleasuring themselves with Biden health conspiracy theory spouting. Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them.
lowtechcyclist
@HopefullyNotcassandra:
That would be fine. I’d be willing to set aside some serious caving country for them – maybe the central Kentucky karst region, or the string of counties either side of the VA-WV border that are chock full of caves, a number of which I’ve been inside of. If they’ll go back to the cave dwelling tech level and thereby GTFO of the way of the rest of us, I’d be good with that.
Booger
@Old School: Good to hear he Wendt peacefully.
catclub
@Trollhattan:
New Orleans should be number 1. Based on the past two years – Montpelier VT is next.
Miami Beach?
HopefullyNotcassandra
@lowtechcyclist: nah. It will not be that simple.
They want all of us to go back to cave dwelling tech.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@sab: how do you vote for what you do not know you do not have?
catclub
The sharpie squad is on it.
Trollhattan
@Old School:
Norm!
What do you say to a beer, mister Peterson?
Hellooo, sailor.
How’s your day been, mister Peterson?
It’s a dog eat dog world, and I’m wearing Milkbone shorts.
One of the all-time great comedic roles, done perfectly.
Trollhattan
@catclub: Sacramento, CA. Our flood and inundation maps are a thing to…behold? Stare at with crossed fingers.
catclub
@Trollhattan:
I realized Houston is also in the running.
Elizabelle
Thinking more about empathy.
But what do you do when you are in a boat with people who are shooting out its bottom, because you cannot tell them what to do? So there!
Also, we may never hear that people regret their lack of foresight, or their votes, but many of them do and will. They may discuss it privately in their own social circles.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Matt McIrvin: True. There were also conspiracy theories about FEMA creating concentration camps.
Looking at the House’s bill to screw the U.S., our children and our children’s children, it appears those camps will be run by ICE.
This all happened for certain. Nonetheless, unless I missed the moment, this president never told Floridians, or anybody else, he planned to let the states face major weather disasters by their lonesome.
I doubt, right now, there are many folks who know this president has already screwed Arkansas following severe tornados, or that he plans on screwing everybody else in the same way, too.
This is just one of the myriad ways our DC Capitol press is failing the U.S. miserably.
lowtechcyclist
@NaijaGal:
Strictly from a legal standpoint, I don’t understand why the family’s on the hook for anything. If you die with debts greater than the value of your assets, the creditors can take every penny from your estate, but that’s as far as it goes: they can’t come after your family for the rest of it. The rest of your debts die with you.
So that should be what happens when they finally let this woman’s body die: all that medical care would presumably get charged to her estate. They’ll get her house, her car, and her bank accounts, but if they spend $30M on her medical care, and everything she owned is only worth $50K, the hospital and the doctors and all them can either try to get the remaining $29,950,000 out of the government of the state of Georgia, or they can go pound sand. There shouldn’t be any legal way they can hold her family responsible for a nickel of it.
ETA: And the guardian ad litem that the court will appoint for that poor orphaned infant can declare bankruptcy on his/her behalf.
Dangerman
@Trollhattan: Someplace on Youtube is the greeting every time Norm walked into the bar.
Cheers, George.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Phylllis: how many people at your table were shocked, incredulous or otherwise utterly uninformed?
HopefullyNotcassandra
@NaijaGal: absolutely insane.
The state is forcing this woman to be an Axotl tank. The state of Georgia should foot the medical bill.
Dangerman
@Trollhattan: Not sure how to do this on phone.
Norm!
ETA: Cheers ran for so long I’m kinda surprised this video is less than 20 minutes.
Baud
The whole leopards meme is based on the idea that Republican voters voted to hurt other people but hurt themselves as well.
Whether or not they voted to hurt themselves isn’t much of a defense.
As always, if they want to change their worldview and join with us in fighting against Republicans, no one is going to stop them.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@TONYG: There was a pot of Federal money to try and fix this in the Inflation Reduction Act. Of course, this president illegally impounded that pot and now wants Congress to agree that rural America needs no dang internet connection, unless wealthy enough to install their own tower.
NaijaGal
@lowtechcyclist: I hope someone who understands this is advising the family because it sounds like the hospital is asking them to pay for 14 weeks and counting of round-the-clock ICU care.
Care for their grandchild will likely fall on the family – it’s bittersweet but you can tell they are hoping he’s okay, given the circumstances, and as a way to remember and honor her daughter, I’m sure the grandmother plans to raise her grandchild, if he makes it.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Jackie: Yes. Nonetheless, this president did not campaign on letting states blow away without help.
This president claimed he knew nothing about project 2025. Most of the press treated those pushing project 2025 as silly chicken littles. The information was out there for people with internet access or more than basic cable.
Is that enough to blame the ignorant for this mess? I don’t think so.
Dangerman
@Trollhattan: Thus begat the Shasta dam.
They have a nice museum there.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Baud: In the main, you are right, of course.
Nevertheless, there are human-beings who voted for this mess simply because they wanted cheaper eggs, too.
NaijaGal
@HopefullyNotcassandra: I couldn’t find the right article (found another one from PBS that includes an ethicist who thinks Emory made the wrong call by insisting that the GA law says the woman has to be kept on life support) but apparently, the Georgia attorney general says the law doesn’t call for anyone to be forced to give birth if they are on life support. So, the State of Georgia will claim the hospital read the law and its implications wrong and the hospital’s lawyers will disagree. In the middle of all that is a grieving family put in a horrendous situation, just trying to make it through.
Other MJS
Kristi Noem fails her citizenship test.
mrmoshpotato
@Other MJS: That was probably deliberate. The dog-and-goat-murderer wants Dump to be able to deport whomever his fat, orange, fascist ass wants.
Jackie
@HopefullyNotcassandra:
FFOTUS made Huckabee-Sanders beg for federal assistance before he finally granted aid:
As far as I’m aware, he hasn’t given disaster relief to any other states who’ve requested it.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@NaijaGal: just tragic all around.
The vagueness of these laws making women vessels without rights is part of the point, too.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Jackie: I had not realized this president flip flopped on this, which proves the obvious. I, too, can be ignorant.
WTFGhost
@NaijaGal: What needs to be remembered, is, a prosecutor *could* prosecute, with one set of facts. While that is true, the hospital lawyers will always say “no” even though the AG says “the law says it’s okay!”
It’s like killing someone with a knife in self-defense. People believe you shot someone in self-defense, but a knife fight makes the cops and prosecutors think something else entirely. Technically, the law is on your side; pragmatically, they might not even offer an Alford plea (where you acknowledge they’ll convict you, but don’t admit guilt), much less take your claim of self-defense seriously.
Well – for the hospitals, the AG saying one thing, and the hospital lawyers saying another, it’s a difference of opinion between two lawyers, one of whom is protecting your interests (hospital lawyers) and one who isn’t. Who would you trust? Obviously: the lawyer that has your interest at heart, and is forbidden to tell egregious lies to you. (An AG can tell egregious lies if he wants to.) The hospital will always lean on the opinion of their lawyers, Republicans will always pretend that it’s the hospital’s fault, so they don’t get blamed.
Gvg
@Matt McIrvin: Or: give us our forecasting back or we will impeach and remove you from office, then Vance can have a chance to give us what we need.
At some point Congress will discover it does have power, the point when the voters make them, the point when their families die, or maybe when some actual congresspeople die and their appointed and elected replacements tip the voting enough.
Lyrebird
@NaijaGal: Thanks for posting the link.
I hope the family has both excellent lawyers AND true friends – I mean the coordination and financial pressure alone would be incredibly difficult without also losing their wonderful young daughter.
Eternal shame on the ghouls that put them in this position.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Calfire is the state, so The Donald can fuck himself with a rake.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@HopefullyNotcassandra:
I’m really upset that we never got the FEMA reeducation camps for conservative white Christians that Obama promised us.
As I understood them to be, such FEMA camps would be where every man is force gay-married to a convicted felon, every woman is given a choice of miscegenation or lesbianism, all full white babies are aborted and camp staffers say “Happy Holidays” on a daily basis as they create effigies of gay Robert E Lee and hand out Confederate flag toilet paper printed on bible pages.
If we’d only done that, we most likely would have never endured one Trump presidency much less two.
Thanks Obama!
/s
lou
@NaijaGal:
And how disgusting is that they haven’t made much headway in their fundraising compared to, let’s say, that racist woman who assaulted a 5-year-old autistic (and black) child?
Steve LaBonne
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: My daughter’s best friend in high school (they’re still close) has crazy wingnut parents who back in the day were definitely convinced that Obama would put them in those camps. Not surprisingly the friend had mental health issues that improved after she left for college and never went back.
like a metaphor
@brendancalling: Houston voted for Kamala. I know, because I live here. If Houston does get leveled, it will skew Texas even more Republican. But have a nice day anyway
Ohio Mom
@NaijaGal: There is an older brother (IIRC, he’s nine) that the grandparents (or other family members) will be raising as well.
It will be a heavy lift, raising a traumatized orphan, and a baby who will (by all accounts) be very disabled.
like a metaphor
thank you, neighbor!
evodevo
@HopefullyNotcassandra: well, he kept denying project 2025, but it clearly states its goal of downgrading FEMA and other disaster relief agencies, so…they were warned…
HopefullyNotcassandra
@brendancalling: Please do not say that. Please do not think that. Millions of people live, work and love in the Houston metro area, which is one of the most diverse on Earth.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: you made me guffaw.
Are the effigies of Robert E. Lee, treacherous traitor, made of toilet paper?
TONYG
@evodevo: Yes. Although, in fairness, the corporate media (deliberately) did a horrible job of reporting on the contents of Project 2025. Clearly those media corporations wanted Donald Trump to be elected. At the time (during the summer and autumn of 2024) I tried to read all of the Project 2025 document, but the sheer length of the thing (almost a thousand pages) plus the dry bureaucratic language meant that I never finished reading it before Election Day. The media could have helped to inform the public by reporting on the most frightening excerpts of the document, but they clearly had no desire to do so. Instead there was a lot of reporting about Biden being old and Harris having a weird laugh.
WTFGhost
Random thought: at Trump Supporters rallies, play loud, loud, audio of him bellowing “THEY’RE EATING THE DOGS!” over, and over, and over again.
Or any other word salad that becomes embarrassing after a few seconds.
You could make that your social media response to Trump praise, too. “Sure, he’s a genius, who’s only going after the bad immigrants.” THEY’RE EATING THE DOGS! meme.
“Yes, his tariff negotiations will undoubtedly be stellar” (word salad meme)
Matt McIrvin
@WTFGhost: That’s not embarrassing. Those people all believe that they really were eating the dogs.
TONYG
@TONYG: I’m old enough to remember when several major media outlets did a pretty good job of reporting on major excerpts of a lengthy and complicated document — the Pentagon Papers in 1971. The New York Times famously published the entire document, but the Times (and several other publications) also published useful summaries, understanding that most people did not have the time and energy to read the whole thing. It can be done. But the corporate media failed to do that in the summer and autumn of 2024, and I remain convinced that they WANTED Trump to win.
TONYG
@WTFGhost: Trump supporters would not be embarrassed by that. In addition to being selfish, cruel assholes, Trump supporters are deeply stupid people who are not capable of telling the difference between an intelligent statement and gibberish. I’m pretty sure that Trump could just make random noises for an hour at one of his rallies, and his cult would think that it was brilliant.
BellaPea
@Elizabelle: You and me both, sister. I think Musk is already feeling some pain–he is absolutely hated and his short-lived foray into right-wing politics is looking like an utter disaster for him and for Tesla.
RileysEnabler
@brendancalling: We are a Dem city doing our best to stave off the Repubs. We are trying very hard to turn the red tide down here. I don’t know you. I don’t wish you ill. Why the hell would you wish me to drown in the next hurricane?
NaijaGal
@lou: OMG, I hadn’t even thought of that. So infuriating!
@Ohio Mom: I can’t even imagine the pain and confusion that little boy is going through.
Tasha
Seems like 20 or so years ago Rick Frothy Mix was on a kick to privatize (of course) the national weather service.
prostratedragon
This weeks Frontline, “Hurricane Helene’s Deadly Warning”