Good Luck Everybody

I won't say everything they are doing was clearly promised in the campaign - and you can certainly forgive people for not knowing even those things because our glorious newspapers were busy running interference for most of it - but "destroy FEMA" was a common theme.

Now a month later, while not a hurricane, the first big natural disaster since Noem tightened her grip has struck–and it shows.

“We would have hundreds of people on scene in FEMA jackets registering people for assistance, regional coordination center fully activated, national at least partly activated,” a current FEMA employee whose identity is being protected for fear of reprisal told The Handbasket. “Setting up disaster recovery centers with federal partners, we’d have our search and rescue there already. We would have mission assigned other agencies like USACE (US Army Corp of Engineers) to clear debris and establish power.”

I'm not sure what precise combination of ideology and incompetence this is, but you don't have to choose one over the other!

I never quite figured out why they hate FEMA so much - seems like the smarter play from some grifters would be to see it as an extraordinary grift opportunity with a small side in handling aid - but I'm sure there are some nonsensical reasons.