FEMA facing disbanding?

FEMA facing disbanding?
By Terry A. Hurlbut
Yesterday President Donald J. Trump dropped another thunderclap. As he’d promised, he visited Asheville, North Carolina, and toured the surrounding Disaster Area. Incredibly, that area still has not recovered from the ravages of Hurricane Helene. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been in charge, and has made the most pathetic showing in its history. Now President Trump proposes to disband FEMA. He has proposed a new model of disaster relief: let the affected States take charge. Sober examination of the agency’s history shows that it has no one to blame but itself.
The immediate provocation: FEMA blew the gaffe after Hurricanes Helene and Milton
Trump visited Western North Carolina yesterday morning, landing in Asheville. Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit posted this review of his visit, and his remarks at a press conference:
I’ll also be signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA.
And:
Frankly, FEMA is not good. I think when you have a problem like this, you want to go. Whether it’s a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time calling FEMA. And then FEMA gets here, and they don’t know the area—they’ve never been to the area—and they want to give you rules that you’ve never heard about. They want to bring people that aren’t as good as the people you already have. And FEMA has turned out to be a disaster.
Nor did he mean to imply that North Carolina and Florida were the only States where FEMA has not helped:
You could go back a long way; you could go back to Louisiana. You could go back to some of the things that took place in Texas. It turns out to be the state that ends up doing the work. It just complicates it. I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away, and we pay directly. We pay a percentage to the state, but the state should fix it.
The Tennessean (Nashville) covered that press conference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3gCzoWfJHM
At that press conference Trump offered high praise for mostly private organizations who extended aid, including Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse. He also pointed out that having the States take care of emergencies, is in keeping with the federal system. That system, as he also pointed out, has lasted for nearly 250 years. (July 4, 2026, will be the 250th anniversary of the independence of America from Britain.)
Trump also let several western North Carolina residents tell their often heart-rending stories.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQA3NafmUmk
After listening to the stories, Trump said this:
We want to bring [the aid] locally so that a state takes care of its problem, and then they can bring it down to a local level… But you had a number of people that did a great job. You have groups that did a great job and organizations. The one that didn’t do a good job was the government. They did a bad job.
In many ways, they did no job. They weren’t even available… The answer is, we go local. I think it’ll work much better. FEMA is a very expensive organization that really doesn’t work out very well. It hasn’t. This is not the only example. If it was up to me right now, it would end right now, and I’d just let the state take care of the problem. I mean, you can always have problems. If it’s Florida, it’s a hurricane—let Florida take care of it. They don’t need FEMA to come in.
He promised “rapid reconstruction” in the Disaster Area, to address problems that have lingered since Hurricane Helene tore things up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8Xj0uV5V6E
A sorry history
Those who have forgotten what federalism is all about, expect FEMA to take the lead in any emergency. At least, the Natural Resources Defense Council, reporting on FEMA in August of 2024, took that tone. They lamented that FEMA has operated on an Immediate Needs Funding basis for two straight years.
NRDC blamed Congress for failing to appropriate sufficient funds. But they did not mention that FEMA has spent more than $640 million settling illegal migrants in this country. They also, according to RealClearInvestigations, are sitting on billions of dollars designated for prior disasters – but never spent. So their laments about running out of money ring hollow.
Indeed, the federal government was not the first to respond to Hurricane Helene. The Trump campaign was. Trump himself was on the scene, actually delivering relief supplies at campaign expense. President Biden and Vice-President Harris pretended to be coordinating relief efforts. But photographic and other evidence plainly showed that they were not.
FEMA offered a munificent $750 per person for “Serious Needs Assistance.” The obvious problem, of course, is that no one had anywhere to spend that money. Worse, the agency could ask for it back after a victim got an insurance settlement. (The agency spokespeople said they wouldn’t.)
Interference with others offering help
Local residents reported that they got what help they had, not from the government, but from the Red Cross, Samaritan’s Purse, local churches, volunteer fire departments, veterans’ groups like the American Legion, the “Cajun Navy,” owners of horses and mules, and private pilots. FEMA, they said, were trying to be the only heroes – and interfering with others.
Elon Musk donated several Starlink terminals to the Disaster Area to keep communications going – or restart them. Several of his men reported interference from the FAA – until Musk attracted the attention of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. As soon as those two men started communicating, that problem went away.
The outrage in North Carolina helped Trump carry the State, even as the Democrats retained the governorship and lieutenant governorship. But after the election, came the report that FEMA, as a matter of policy, avoided people flying Trump signs. Several workers, inadvertently or perhaps deliberately, provided corroborating evidence – by logging their bypassing of Trump homes. Some of this bypassing happened in Florida – and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) opened his own investigation. Ultimately FEMA fired a regional supervisor, who then “ratted out” her higher-ups, saying this happens all the time. As to North Carolina, James Varney put some of the blame on Gov. Roy Cooper, who did not seek reelection. But Varney mainly blamed FEMA, for a delayed, “halting,” and incompetent response.
FEMA overly bureaucratized – or worse
Jeremy Portnoy of OpenTheBooks portrayed FEMA as an overly bureaucratized waster of money. In a “Waste of the Day” article, he cited FEMA’s refusal to pay $200 for a broken window. Instead they put the homeowner and her family up in a hotel for a month. Cost: $12,000, or 60 times as much as the window repair would have cost.
On January 13, Portnoy cited FEMA as an example of agencies signing no-bid contracts. The agency signed four such contracts after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The contractors gouged the agency to the tune of $3 billion.
Rumors have dogged FEMA’s steps for decades. Many firmly believe the agency has set up camps in several abandoned or simply oversized Army and Air Force posts. Those camps, some say, sit idle, waiting to receive hapless victims of some natural – or man-made – disaster. People will check in – and never check out.
Facts about the agency are not much less horrible. At best it is a bureaucratized, inefficient, and inept agency. People expect it to take the lead in a situation where State governors should deploy their own first responders. As President Trump now notes, the States do that anyway, if they have smart leadership.
And at worst, the agency withholds aid out of political spite. One wouldn’t expect that, because such a policy creates lasting enmity. But the evidence that FEMA did just that, is too great to ignore.
Looking ahead
So President Trump would be doing exactly the right thing by dismantling FEMA and instead offering grants to disaster-stricken States. He should do that even if ineptitude and corruption were the only problems the agency had. But he ought to investigate all abandoned or sprawling military posts, to see whether those rumored camps exist. This will require more than a simple dismantling. It will require a detailed, forensic-level audit of the agency’s physical and other assets.
And that would be in keeping with another action the President took two days ago. He declassified all government records concerning the lives and deaths of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy Sr., and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Those records aren’t available yet (and Dr. King’s family has asked to see his records first). But already the Technocrats are howling with outrage. What are they hiding? And have some of the same people, having influence over FEMA, actually built detention or even extermination camps, as those who advise self-reliance in all things have long suspected?
Whether they have or they haven’t, FEMA hasn’t done anyone, except for some greedy government contractors, any favors. It’s high time – and past time – that this agency went the way off the Johnson-era Office of Economic Opportunity. And that should be only the beginning.
Link to:
The article:
https://cnav.news/2025/01/25/news/fema-facing-disbanding/

Jim Hoft article:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/01/president-trump-sign-executive-order-overhaul-eliminate-corrupt/

Videos from The Tennessean:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3gCzoWfJHM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQA3NafmUmk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8Xj0uV5V6E

CNAV morgue on FEMA:
https://cnav.news/2024/10/07/accountability/executive/fema-sitting-billions-unused-disaster-funds/
https://cnav.news/2024/10/01/accountability/executive/leadership-contrast-disaster-wake/
https://cnav.news/2024/10/04/accountability/executive/helene-hurricane-election-interference/
https://cnav.news/2024/10/07/accountability/executive/fema-gets-worse-reviews/
https://cnav.news/2024/10/08/accountability/executive/disaster-relief-compounding/
https://cnav.news/2024/11/06/accountability/executive/hurricane-helene-aftermath-prove-distance-nc/
https://cnav.news/2024/11/12/accountability/executive/fema-aid-withholding-policy/
https://cnav.news/2024/11/14/accountability/executive/helene-hurricane-snafu-carolinas/
https://cnav.news/2025/01/13/accountability/executive/no-bid-contracts-jeopardize-taxpayer-funds/

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https://x.com/DecTruth

Declarations of Truth Locals Community:
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