Trump’s FEMA Is an Unnatural Disaster

Source: The New Republic · Bias: Left

Summary

FEMA is not all right. As the United States faces another summer of extreme weather exacerbated by climate change, the Federal Emergency Management Agency—which coordinates federal disaster response, relief, and preparedness—continues to shuffle through leadership a roster of mostly unqualified Trump loyalists.This week, Donald Trump nominated Cameron Hamilton to lead the agency, which has not had a Senate-confirmed administrator since January 2025. If Hamilton’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he was fired a year ago as the senior official performing the duties of administrator of FEMA for saying—shocker!—that the agency should continue to exist. He was replaced by David Richardson, perhaps best remembered for yelling at staff soon after beginning the job and then taking several days to show up to the scene of flash floods in Central Texas that killed more than 130 people last July. Richardson, who happens to be a novelist, resigned after just six months on the job and was replaced by the former government I.T. official Karen Evans, chosen by erstwhile Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem. Known internally as “The Terminator,” Evans reportedly acted as a “final gatekeeper” for FEMA funding, according to CNN, in charge of axing grants, contracts, and staff. She’ll now serve as the director of DHS’s waste, fraud, and abuse task force. Her replacement is Bob Fenton Jr., who first joined the agency in 1996 and has led FEMA’s Region 9 office since 2015.If the White House gets its way, Fenton, a FEMA official with roughly 30 years of experience at the agency, will be replaced by a former NAVY Seal who lost a congressional primary. Meanwhile, FEMA’s associate administrator of the Office of Response and Recovery has made headlines in recent months for claiming to have teleported to a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia. CNN reported earlier this year that Gregg Phillips had repeated teleportation claims on multiple right-wing podcasts, and touted a string of far-right conspiracy theories: that Biden’s DHS conspired to assassinate Donald Trump, that Biden was elected as a result of widespread voter fraud, and that a “Chinese army” would invade the United States. The news outlet NOTUS reported last week that one of FEMA’s most experienced executives—Deputy Associate Administrator Keith Turi—will depart at the start of the Atlantic hurricane season, on June 1.At lower levels, FEMA remains dangerously understaffed. Sabotaging Our Safety, or SOS—a group of emergency management experts and former FEMA leaders—gave the agency an “F” on preparedness in a recent report. Three out of four top leadership positions remain vacant, the group notes. The regions covering Texas and Louisiana have neither a regional administrator nor a deputy. As a result of firings at the start of the Trump administration, FEMA has its lowest-recorded levels of available field staff. “Leadership positions sit vacant. A tenth of the core disaster response workforce has been eliminated,” SOS writes. “No multi-year strategic plan exists. Training exercises that have taken place every year for half a decade have simply not happened.” These issues came to a head last July. Despite the agency’s claims that, during deadly flooding in Texas Hill Country, a “majority” of calls to the toll-free FEMA Helpline were answered, the Government Accountability Office found that 58 percent of those calls in fact weren’t answered.The timing of FEMA’s spoliation is less than ideal. Below-average snowfall followed by early, above-average temperatures are predicted to elevate wildfire risk across the Western U.S.; dry conditions in the Southeast—now in the midst of a historic drought—threaten additional dangers there too. Two large wildfires in Georgia have already destroyed 120 homes and scorched 50,000 acres. Smaller fires in Florida have burned up 120,000 acres. As The New York Times notes, timber plantations in the region’s “wood basket” are less likely to initiate prescribed burns that can mitigate wildfire risk by burning through brush that can act as kindling. Hurricanes can also knock down trees, allowing fires to spread more rapidly. It isn’t only rising temperatures that will rattle the country this summer. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center now predicts a 61 percent chance of an El Niño, a natural weather pattern involving warming Pacific Ocean waters. Scientists with World Weather Attribution predict that human-induced climate change will have more of an impact on this year’s extreme weather than what may well be the strongest El Niño ever.There have been talks of reforming FEMA to prepare for the future for years, but the reforms the White House is looking to bring about may have the opposite effect. The Trump-appointed FEMA Review Council last week issued a long-overdue final report that has been plagued by accusations of meddling by former DHS head Kristi Noem.

Related Coverage

Daily Analysis

Read the full Parallax Pulse for May 15, 2026 — an AI-powered analysis of how Left and Right media covered the biggest stories this day.

More Headlines From May 15, 2026

arallaxNews.io
Trump’s FEMA Is an Unnatural Disaster
The New Republic

Trump’s FEMA Is an Unnatural Disaster

Left

FEMA is not all right. As the United States faces another summer of extreme weather exacerbated by climate change, the Federal Emergency Management Agency—which coordinates federal disaster response, relief, and preparedness—continues to shuffle through leadership a roster of mostly unqualified Trump loyalists.This week, Donald Trump nominated Cameron Hamilton to lead the agency, which has not had a Senate-confirmed administrator since January 2025. If Hamilton’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he was fired a year ago as the senior official performing the duties of administrator of FEMA for saying—shocker!—that the agency should continue to exist. He was replaced by David Richardson, perhaps best remembered for yelling at staff soon after beginning the job and then taking several days to show up to the scene of flash floods in Central Texas that killed more than 130 people last July. Richardson, who happens to be a novelist, resigned after just six months on the job and was replaced by the former government I.T. official Karen Evans, chosen by erstwhile Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem. Known internally as “The Terminator,” Evans reportedly acted as a “final gatekeeper” for FEMA funding, according to CNN, in charge of axing grants, contracts, and staff. She’ll now serve as the director of DHS’s waste, fraud, and abuse task force. Her replacement is Bob Fenton Jr., who first joined the agency in 1996 and has led FEMA’s Region 9 office since 2015.If the White House gets its way, Fenton, a FEMA official with roughly 30 years of experience at the agency, will be replaced by a former NAVY Seal who lost a congressional primary. Meanwhile, FEMA’s associate administrator of the Office of Response and Recovery has made headlines in recent months for claiming to have teleported to a Waffle House in Rome, Georgia. CNN reported earlier this year that Gregg Phillips had repeated teleportation claims on multiple right-wing podcasts, and touted a string of far-right conspiracy theories: that Biden’s DHS conspired to assassinate Donald Trump, that Biden was elected as a result of widespread voter fraud, and that a “Chinese army” would invade the United States. The news outlet NOTUS reported last week that one of FEMA’s most experienced executives—Deputy Associate Administrator Keith Turi—will depart at the start of the Atlantic hurricane season, on June 1.At lower levels, FEMA remains dangerously understaffed. Sabotaging Our Safety, or SOS—a group of emergency management experts and former FEMA leaders—gave the agency an “F” on preparedness in a recent report. Three out of four top leadership positions remain vacant, the group notes. The regions covering Texas and Louisiana have neither a regional administrator nor a deputy. As a result of firings at the start of the Trump administration, FEMA has its lowest-recorded levels of available field staff. “Leadership positions sit vacant. A tenth of the core disaster response workforce has been eliminated,” SOS writes. “No multi-year strategic plan exists. Training exercises that have taken place every year for half a decade have simply not happened.” These issues came to a head last July. Despite the agency’s claims that, during deadly flooding in Texas Hill Country, a “majority” of calls to the toll-free FEMA Helpline were answered, the Government Accountability Office found that 58 percent of those calls in fact weren’t answered.The timing of FEMA’s spoliation is less than ideal. Below-average snowfall followed by early, above-average temperatures are predicted to elevate wildfire risk across the Western U.S.; dry conditions in the Southeast—now in the midst of a historic drought—threaten additional dangers there too. Two large wildfires in Georgia have already destroyed 120 homes and scorched 50,000 acres. Smaller fires in Florida have burned up 120,000 acres. As The New York Times notes, timber plantations in the region’s “wood basket” are less likely to initiate prescribed burns that can mitigate wildfire risk by burning through brush that can act as kindling. Hurricanes can also knock down trees, allowing fires to spread more rapidly. It isn’t only rising temperatures that will rattle the country this summer. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center now predicts a 61 percent chance of an El Niño, a natural weather pattern involving warming Pacific Ocean waters. Scientists with World Weather Attribution predict that human-induced climate change will have more of an impact on this year’s extreme weather than what may well be the strongest El Niño ever.There have been talks of reforming FEMA to prepare for the future for years, but the reforms the White House is looking to bring about may have the opposite effect. The Trump-appointed FEMA Review Council last week issued a long-overdue final report that has been plagued by accusations of meddling by former DHS head Kristi Noem.

Read Full Story at Source
Trump’s FEMA Is an Unnatural Disaster | Compare Perspectives | ParallaxNews.io