Cuts have consequences, illustrated. As seen on TV ??
— John Morales (@johnmoralestv.bsky.social) June 2, 2025 at 8:45 PM
Exclusive: Staff of FEMA were left baffled after the head of the US disaster agency said during a briefing that he had not been aware the country has a hurricane season, according to four sources familiar with the situation reut.rs/3HAP8qI
— Reuters (@reuters.com) June 2, 2025 at 5:06 PM
In case you missed Cole’s post, the head of FEM says not knowing about the hurricane season was a joke, probably…
… The remark was made during a briefing by David Richardson, who has led FEMA since early May. It was not clear to staff whether he meant it literally, as a joke, or in some other context…
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA’s parent agency, said the comment was a joke and that FEMA is prepared for hurricane season.
The spokesperson said under Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Richardson “FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens.”…
Richardson said during the briefing that there would be no changes to the agency’s disaster response plans despite having told staff to expect a new plan in May, the sources told Reuters.
Richardson’s comments come amid widespread concern that the departures of a raft of top FEMA officials, staff cuts and reductions in hurricane preparations will leave the agency ill-prepared for a storm season forecast to be above normal…
Trump has said FEMA should be shrunk or even eliminated, arguing states can take on many of its functions, as part of a wider downsizing of the federal government. About 2,000 full-time FEMA staff, one-third of its total, have been terminated or voluntarily left the agency since the start of the Trump administration in January.
Despite Noem’s prior comments that she plans to eliminate FEMA, in May she approved Richardson’s request to retain more than 2,600 short-term disaster response and recovery employees whose terms were set to expire this year, one of the sources said, confirming an earlier report by NBC News.
Those short-term staff make up the highest proportion of FEMA employees, about 40%, and are a pillar of the agency’s on-the-ground response efforts.
FEMA recently sharply reduced hurricane training and workshops for state and local emergency managers due to travel and speaking restrictions imposed on staff, according to prior Reuters reporting.
Hurricane season is here. But with FEMA and NOAA in turmoil, experts fear the real disaster could be in the response.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) June 1, 2025 at 2:45 PM
… “My nightmare is a major catastrophic storm hitting an area that is reeling from the impact of all of this nonsense from the Trump administration and people will die. And that could happen in Florida, that could happen in Texas, that could happen in South Carolina,” said Susan Cutter, the director of the Hazards and Vulnerability Research Institute at the University of South Carolina.
Representatives of both NOAA and FEMA say the agencies are prepared.
About 2,000 full-time staff have left FEMA since Trump took office in January, a loss of roughly one-third of the agency’s full-time workforce, amid Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) mandated cuts. Scholars who study emergency management are concerned by both the reduction in capacity and the “brain drain” of experienced staff.
“There’s really been a brain drain within FEMA in addition to the loss of overall employees,” said Samantha Montano, who teaches emergency management at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. She noted that many who left were in critical management positions.
The agency is run by an acting chief, David Richardson, a former Marine Corps officer who served overseas and worked as the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for countering weapons of mass destruction. He does not appear to have any experience in managing disasters. Emergency management requires knowing where to get things, who to call, how things work and how to get it done quickly — which comes from experience and establishing relationships with state officials, Montano and Cutter said.
What’s happening reminds former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Craig Fugate of 2005, the year Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana and exposed inexperienced and poorly prepared governments at all levels, especially the then-FEMA chief who came from a horse-rearing association. Fugate said he’s especially worried about top experienced disaster people leaving FEMA…
FEMA has also cut disaster resilience programs. Making areas more survivable saves up to $13 for every dollar spent, said Lori Peek, director of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado…
Ready or not, the 2025 hurricane season starts today.
— Eric Holthaus (@ericholthaus.com) June 1, 2025 at 6:13 AM
===
Jay
FAFO
Baud
Hurricane season begins earlier every year, it seems.
cain
A lot of people are going to die. If it isn’t directly from the hurricane but our piece of shit healthcare.
I hope these communities will empower themselves to help but they are on their own and they’ll need state money.
You’d think that we will pay less fed tax if we are going to get a downgrade so we can raise state taxes to cover?
cain
@Baud:
Just like Christmas.
Strange, we don’t seem to be politicizing Hurrican season – happy hurricaning!
Baud
@cain:
That’s a risk they’re willing to take.
Jay
@Baud:
Gee, I wonder why hurricane season starts earlier each year, and last longer, like wildfire seasons.
If only there was a scientific explanation for it?
cain
@Baud: You get what you voted for!
Baud
@cain:
Some innocent people won’t.
Spanky
@Jay: It’s woke.
Also too, I’m betting Hurricane Karen is going to be this year’s big disaster.
Jay
@Spanky:
Is she going to demand to talk to the Manager?
Elizabelle
@Spanky: LOL. My bet is on Nestor. And maybe we will have to use a whole ‘nother set of names, too.
But. Big problem is we have already been sunk by Hurricane Donald and Hurricane Elon. Fuck them, very much. (Unpleasantly, mind you.)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Jay:
Or God’s will, opinions vary. /s
Baud
I’m not going to stress. We’re going to have to go through four of hurricane seasons before there a possibility of improving things.
prostratedragon
Wow. Except for “Imelda” and, I think, “Olga,” that list of names reads like friends and family.
Trollhattan
Those ’25 names sound all too woke to me. Trump will rename Chantal Cathy with his Sharpie.
And Marge has a little detail she’d like to share about Trump’s budget.
Now tell us something we didn’t already know, Marge.
It would seem the lunatics are pivoting to Elmo and away from Donny. The heck?
bbleh
Exhibit #25480 in the catalog of Trump Does Not Care About His Voters.
Not that they’ll ever believe it, of course. They’ll blame any failure on DEI, or Illegal Immigrants, or perhaps Joe Biden, as they are told to do by Fox et al.
Hell, I feel sorry for the people in western NC, who still haven’t recovered from last year, and who rejected FEMA help while it was available right there. But “you can lead a horse to water …”
JoyceH
Something I first noticed during Katrina. Might have originated then, but that’s when I noticed it. Whenever a Republican administration completely botches something, the conservative pundits start saying well, that’s something the federal government shouldn’t even be doing. I’ve seen it several times since. Can’t help but think that if the response to Katrina had been a masterpiece of efficiency and caring, FEMA would be the flagship of the executive branch. Disasters R Us! We came, we saw, we kicked Katrina’s ass! Oooo-rah!
Craig
That quote about shifting from a bloated DC centric org to a lean, deployable one reminds me a bit too much about that idiot Rumsfeld. That went so well of course.
prostratedragon
Maybe some Florida voters will pay attention to John Morales, who put the matter very plainly.
Eyeroller
@Baud: I assume that’s (sort of) a joke? Meterological summer is June-July-August and the seasons start at the beginning of months, not at solstices and equinoxes. Hurricane season starts at the beginning of summer and ends at the end of fall (November 30) What may be changing is when the tropical storms actually start forming and how strong they are. Most storms form mid-August to mid-October, but that could change.
The 2005 season (the year of Katrina) had 27 named storms so ran out of the alphabetical names and had to use six Greek letters (and one found in data later was unnamed) — the naming scheme omits five letters.
cmorenc
It’s difficult to tell whether the FEMA cuts are motivated more:
– from need to make make room for the Trump Admin’s tax cut priorities;
– from Heritage Society ideological goal of radical downsizing of federal government
– or from nihilistic pleasure in smashing and vandalizing stuff.
It’s obviously all of the above are influences, but which one is the big-liest motive. You could also throw in: since the most damaging US wildfires have more often so far been in blue states like California, to punish blue states. But OTOH it’s red states that are more often at risk from hurricanes or tornadoes. So the combination of the first three motivations is the more likely explanation.
prostratedragon
@Craig: I doubt very much that’s an accurate description of the FEMA that was. They lie.
Jackie
@Trollhattan: Just a few days ago, Mike Flood (R-NE) admitted during a town hall that he wasn’t aware the bill contained a provision stripping federal courts of the power to punish Trump administration officials for defying judicial orders.
I guess republicans vote, and THEN read…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@bbleh: They will say the Democrats used HAARP to create the hurricanes.
Matt McIrvin
@JoyceH: They’ve been making the argument forever that you should vote for them because they suck. They suck, they’re the government, government sucks, they’re the anti-government party, so you should vote for them because they suck.
Eyeroller
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Florida and Louisiana have passed laws banning “chemtrails,” then say to sane people who ask that what they really mean is they are banning weather modification such as cloud seeding (and maybe HAARP). It’s stupefying.
Jay
@Eyeroller:
It really isn’t,
The majority of ‘Mercans are functionally illiterate.
The majority of ‘Mercans score on the IQ scale, as “need to be reminded to breathe”.
A crack house nation, that unfortunately, Canada lives above.
Eyeroller
@cmorenc: I think it’s mostly that the Heritage Foundation and the super-wealthy have a common belief that there is no collective, there is “no such thing as society” as Ms. Thatcher put it, so the government should not be spending money on anything that helps ordinary people. The government should spend only on defense and a few other very limited underakings, and we plebes should fend for ourselves in all other areas. They also want very low tax rates on the wealthy, and of course they will not be expected to serve in this military they want to protect their interests. Russia is their model.
Matt McIrvin
@Eyeroller: the “motte and bailey argument”: you have an argument with a crazy and a (marginally) defensible version, and you retreat to the defensible one when pressed.
Heidi Mom
On the topic of government malfeasance, I see that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the renaming of the U.S.N.S. Harvey Milk. In Pride Month.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
Yeah, getting rid of FEMA and letting states do it instead is typical Donny Two-Dolls genius right there. Why be efficient? We know there’ll be disasters every year in this country, but we don’t know where. So now, we can have 50 FEMAs, all staffed right up, and paid for by state taxes, ready to go, and 35 or 40 of them won’t need to do much of anything each year, but their citizens will have to pay for them all anyway, because you never know. That’s brilliant.
bbleh
@Matt McIrvin: as though they had authority over either. I’m not even sure I’d call it an argument; it’s just a dumb-show for the idiots
Next they’ll outlaw measles, and say “problem solved, no need for vaccines!” Saves taxpayer money too!
Jay
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
There won’t be 51 State FEMA’s. there will be 14.
Old School
Ahhhh – so when things go wrong, it’ll be Biden’s fault!
Kelly
After Oregon’s 2020 Labor Day fires FEMA paid for a lot of cleanup and repair here in this very red area of rural Oregon. Statewide around a million acres burned. Several thousand homes burned. Hundreds of miles of roads and utility lines needed repair and hazard mitigation.
Are the local MAGA thankful the country pulled together to help us out of the disaster?
Nope.
They have convinced themselves they did it themselves. Country folk are strong and resourceful not like those commies in Portland. FEMA worked through local and county governments and MAGA resolutely will not acknowledge the Feds made all that work happen.
Jay
@Old School:
Which President Joe Biden?
The senile one who can’t walk?
The clone one?
The robot one?
Or Schrodinger’s Biden?
Eyeroller
@Jay: I don’t really want to defend American education but this isn’t true. “Functionally illiterale” means ‘Level 1″ reading level, which corresponds to about 21% of the population. This includes people who don’t speak English, because the data are about English literacy. About 54% read at or below 6th grade level (that includes that 21%) That is not really quite as bad as it sounds because we have a rather stricter standard for literacy than many other countries. The US is actually pretty average for OECD countries. It’s the fairly large and unevenly distributed 21% that is a lot of the problem. Also there are some genuine concerns with younger generations. But a lot of this panic about American reading levels is just alarmist
Edited: belief in conspiracy theories has very little to do with intelligence (that is well studied). It’s emotional, and poor metacognition. Lots of very intelligent people are MAGA and/or believe insane conspiracy theories. I know a few.
JGreen
@cain: Well, we’ve all got to die sometime, right? That’s the official GOP position, isn’t it. Heard one of them say so just the other day.
Elizabelle
Ironic, but Trump Musk DOGE Vought may prove the value of good government by exposing Americans to its absence.
Let us not forget. We have international media. Those not hopelessly stupid can compare and contrast with what they see is going on abroad. (Isn’t that thought be a factor in why the Berlin Wall came down when it did? It was unsustainable.)
Jay
@Eyeroller:
LMAO.
86% of Canadians, (even immigrants) read at a Grade 12 level or higher.
Our “average” IQ score is 142, vs. the US’s 94.
No you don’t score “tougher” than other Nations, most of your High School Graduate’s would never get into a Canadian University, or even a Trade School, and it’s not because of the metric system, (what, you don’t understand 10?).
The US has been failing, for a long time, and now the chickens have come home to roost.
Good luck.
cmorenc
@Heidi Mom:
People who are as virulently homophobic and transphobic as Hegseth is and as determined to do uber-manly cosplay often harbor deep fears and insecurity about their own sexuality. The coping mechanism to deal with those private fears often exacerbates any general personality tendencies toward being an asshole, because they use their asshole behavior as a coping mechanism to try to continually disprove their fears about their sexual identity.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
He sounds just the sort of yahoo who would nuke a hurricane, just so he could tell Percert Hoover that they tried it.
Eyeroller
@Jay: I don’t know where you get those numbers but there is no human population anywhere on Earth with an average IQ of 142. Unless you cheat. The tests are normalized to an average of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. So now I think you’re just pulliing numbers out of your ass.
Baud
@Eyeroller:
It’s my fault for screwing up the average.
Jay
@Eyeroller:
So explain to me again, the Farmers, the Factory workers and the Masters of the Universe, oh and Wall Street, how tariffs (FFS For Fucks Sake), work.
We know, most of you don’t and still don’t.
Eyeroller
@Jay: OK so now we are talking about motivated reasoning. Scott Bessent knows and is pretending he doesn’t. Wall Stree knows–why do you think they came up with TACO? Their mistake was assuming that Trump didn’t really mean it and would chicken out when faced with consequences.
The farmers never thought about it. Most are high-school graduates if that. It is true that we do a poor job of teaching economics to high-schoolers. And their preferred media were telling them that their God-Emperor said the other countries would pay so again, motivated reasoning.
Scout211
Jay
@Eyeroller:
LMAO
They went through the exact same shit, last Dolt45 Admin and had to get bailed out.
So ‘Mercan farmers , MOU’s, Wall Street all have dementia or Alzheimer’s?
Glory b
@Heidi Mom: Yes. As I said in the previous thread, a Defense Department spokesperson said the timing is absolutely deliberate.
Eyeroller
@Scout211: I’m not sure whether that’s statistically significant but even if it is, a lot of the difference likely has to do with how we treat poor children, especially (of course) minorities. Poor nutrition, poor healthcare, and unstable home environments with little to no intellectual enrichment in the very early years are known to reduce IQ.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@cmorenc: Kegsbreath has no fear of having his manly heterosexuality tested. With the possible exceptions of Richard Grenell and Charles Moran, there’s nobody on this side who would want him.
As for disappearing Harvey Milk (and likely Dorrie Miller when that ship comes to somebody’s attention), I’m guessing “milk” is his code word for today’s spirit of choice.
Betty
Just here to say that hurricane season starts on June 1st every year and ends on November 30th. It is intended to be all inclusive no matter when hurricanes actually occur.
Scout211
@Eyeroller: Sorry, I deleted my comment because I couldn’t tell if the data was from a valid source. There are many sites that list countries’ average IQ score but I’m not sure if they are valid sources or even AI. Most list Canada around 101 and the US around 99. But your points are valid.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Eyeroller:
Which is exactly how Reichwingnuts like Those Other People, which in turn is why they steadfastly refuse to deal with those conditions and instead prate on about family values and fiscal responsibility and so on.
Gloria DryGarden
Just listened to heather cox Richardson do her talk to answer questions, she is so calm and sane. And she’s starting to keep it brief. I think today it was only 20 minutes. It helped me w knowing what to do, and how to frame some of what’s going on, fema and noaa, and the other stuff.
recommended.
I found her talk on Facebook, where I have a safe, curated bubble. I suspect she’s also on YouTube, blue sky, I’m sure you’ll find her.
Eyeroller
@Scout211: I found one that had a map of the world, and the 104 was for China, not Canada. Canada was still ahead of us by about 2 points so I guess Jay wins :-)
What was really striking was the divide between the North and South (with China straddling the two). A stark indicator of the consequences of poverty and lower development. I would like to see the correlation with average income, but it wasn’t available at that chart. China would probably again be an outlier there.
https://www.datapandas.org/ranking/average-iq-by-country
I do not take this to be definitive but there’s a good chance it’s reasonably accurate.
lowtechcyclist
@Jay:
IOW, nearly half your population has genius-level intelligence, or close to it. No wonder Canada is the scientific powerhouse of the world – y’all have more geniuses than countries with 10x your pop!
ETA: Seriously, didn’t anything in your mind say “wait a second, how can that be? Isn’t this more than just a bit too good to be true?” when you saw that 142 number?
This is exactly what happens with a lot of our MAGAts. They hear something that shouldn’t make sense, but it reinforces their prejudices, so they believe it. Please learn something from this.
Jay
@lowtechcyclist:
We also have more 2’nd Degrees and Masters than anybody else.
Beating even Europe.
Salty Sam
I experienced this during Trump 1, in 2017, result of Hurricane Harvey. I understand that dealing with emergency services will always be hectic and haphazard- even so, the intake and application process for emergency relief after Harvey was a complete shit-show.
This was only seven months into his first administration, but it was obvious that resources had already been directed to other areas (ICE was a big recipient even back then). I cannot imagine how bad it will be when (not if) a major disaster strikes now.
Jay
@lowtechcyclist:
Spent 10 years working in “Merica” in tech, 3 weeks a month, bailing out a Corporate Sub. 10 years because “nobody want’s to work”*. Got offered the job full time, at major $,$$$,$$$.
Passed.
The level of stupid was just too much.
*The job title, and the Corp, was enough to bump people up, big time. Little known fact is that raises come faster when you switch companies, than internally.
The 2nd last person, we “hired” to fill my role, (which was not my role, I was just parachuted in to fix stuff, I still had a full time job in Vancouver), was at Harley Davidson, in the same role. 3 weeks later. She is now their Global Ops MGR. Good for her.
Bill Arnold
LOL, you scanned the names too!
Dexter has potential as well.
Passepartout
@Jay: Canada: 102 USA: 99.7
Miss Bianca
@Jay: More and more I am regretting that I never tried to emigrate to Canada when I was younger and it would have been even a remote possibility.