June 1st marks the start of America’s hurricane season. Last year, the mid-Atlantic and Southeast were heavily battered by catastrophic floods from multiple hurricanes and hurricane remnants. There are North Carolina communities still trying to recover. Incidentally, North Carolina residents voted for Donald Trump. Southern states are most likely to be affected by hurricanes, and they ALL voted for Trump (except for Virginia, but we have a MAGA loser as governor). Well, good news: Southerners are going to get exactly what they voted for this hurricane season. Donald Trump’s FEMA director David Richardson doesn’t even know/believe that the United States has a “hurricane season.” Hurricane season is fake news in MAGAland.
Staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency were left baffled on Monday after the head of the U.S. disaster agency said he had not been aware the country has a hurricane season, according to four sources familiar with the situation.
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.
The U.S. hurricane season officially began on Sunday and lasts through November. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast last week that this year’s season is expected to bring as many as 10 hurricanes.
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.
“A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA’s parent agency, said the comment was a joke.” The FEMA Director thought it would be a funny joke to say “do hurricanes even happen in the US?” The more telling comment is from Noem though – what she’s clearly saying is that no state, especially not the states who voted for Trump, should expect any kind of federal assistance when a hurricane destroys their community. The states are on their own.
Trump’s new appointee for Director of FEMA David Richardson reportedly told staff he had no idea that hurricane seasons existed, leaving people baffled and confused. pic.twitter.com/Y7fJxaLgMR
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) June 2, 2025
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
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- US National Security Secretary Kristi Noem takes part in 1st edition of Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Congress and Exhibition Center in Jasionka, south-eastern Poland, 27 May 2025. CPAC is an annual conference attended by conservative politicians and activists from around the world since the 1970s.,Image: 1003874028, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: POLAND OUT, Model Release: no, Credit line: Darek Delmanowicz/PAP/Avalon
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- Kristi Noem, Governor of South Dakota appears before a House Committee on Natural Resources hearing on H.R. 3397, to require the Director of the Bureau of Land Management to withdraw a rule of the Bureau of Land Management relating to conservation and landscape health, in the Longworth House Office Building. Featuring: Kristi Noem Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 15 Jun 2023 Credit: Rod Lamkey/CNP/startraksphoto.com
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- Kristi Noem, Governor of South Dakota appears before a House Committee on Natural Resources hearing on H.R. 3397, to require the Director of the Bureau of Land Management to withdraw a rule of the Bureau of Land Management relating to conservation and landscape health, in the Longworth House Office Building. Featuring: Kristi Noem Where: Washington, District of Columbia, United States When: 15 Jun 2023 Credit: Rod Lamkey/CNP/startraksphoto.com
He looks like a minor villain from Robocop sequel. I know many Southern states voted for Trump. I wish them luck this hurricane season. I will never not be convinced that a huge section of the white South is still enraged they lost the Civil War.
Considering who were dealing with in the Whitehouse…a bunch of ignorant cretins…NONE of this surprises me🤬
“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.”
What that government-speak translates to is no Federal funding for FEMA, States are going to be left on their own to fund their own disaster relief.
Sometimes you get what you voted for.
And most states are prohibited by state constitutions from engaging in deficit spending so there are no funds available or obtainable for this shifting of responsibility from FEMA to the states in the middle of a budget year.
Yes, as many southerners will be happy to tell you, the Civil War should actually be called The War of Northern Aggression.
I lived in Georgia for six years. I remember visiting the campus of UGA for the first time & seeing one of those historical signs about the university, how it was the longest-operating university in the state only closing for x amount of time during the ‘War of Northern Aggression’. I had never heard that term before! And there it was, on the campus of an institution of ‘higher’ education!
As they say, this is not a presidential cabinet. It’s a junk drawer.
🤭
He looks like he’s never not said the n-word with a hard R.
I do not wish them luck. I wish them what they deserve, which is to find out what they voted for.
That’s…not nice. I am a blue dot in a blue city in a blood red state. I voted for happiness and freedom and respect and a prosperous future for EVERYONE. I did not, have never and will never vote for the sinister circus peanut.
Then again, I WOULD like to find out what I voted for. I want that more than anything in this world.
I live in coastal NC (definitely not a Trump voter, am in fact leaving this state forever in just a few weeks). It’s going to be really bad – not only is the FEMA assistance going to be lacking but local Republican governments have been approving development unchecked and there are very few natural flood barriers and grasses left. Already in the last year we had a storm (not even a developed tropical storm) drop 18 inches of rain and flood our entire town. We are not in a flood plain either.
I’m on the coast in Florida, and we’re saying, “We need to get out of here and go north to North Carolina.” lol.
I grew up in Wisconsin where everything was south, now I’m trapped in the panhandle where they only things south are Miami and Disney World. I hate it here. So much.
Fort Myers resident here. I am 68, a Florida native and will be moving to NM this winter. I have experienced far too many hurricanes, and just last year a tornado went thru my street, so I am moving. Of course Ian totally sent my car and condo the wrecking ball. But it is just not FEMA who will leave us in hell, but the last 25 years of a Republican lead legislature and repub governors who have handed everything over to greedy insurance companies and permits to construction companies to build on land that was known to be in areas that were doomed to destruction by flooding and major storms. Just follow the money.
I worked in the Everglades for four months back in 2020–in the summer! 🥵 My first four weeks we had four hurricanes come through our Parks (Everglades, Dry Tortugas, Biscayne, Big Cypress), each hurricane closing these two parks this time, these two another. It was scary! And we didn’t even have the hurricane shutters on yet! That came a month or so later. We were still working on repairs from Irma. Good luck y’all, you’re going to need it. I’m out here in Hawaii now, also a hurricane state albeit a blue one, feeling no safer as we have a president that doesn’t think we’re even part of the US.
Even Europeans know it. We also know that d.t. values uneducated people.
You’d think he would have done something different with his hair. He looks like he hasn’t been to his barber lately.
That greasy looking curl of hair on the back of his head looks awful. And lots of people dye their hair but he was way overdue and the weird colored hairline (I’m guessing powder) is bad.
And this is his official portrait?
This person’s appearance,
is, as it happens, the least of this country’s problems.
And yet, he really does have a failed villain air about him.
Of course we have far worse problems but sometimes I have to ponder the absurdity of these people.
Like the X ads promoting Trump T shirts by using the phrase “ Take our Country Bach.” Are they classical music fans or are they just illiterate?
Stupid people are running our country. Seriously. The only qualification Trump cares about is if they are ‘loyal’. And do whatever he wants, no matter how stupid or mean.
Grossly incompetent and lazy. This administration talked a big game about changing things. Either it was too much work, they are too stupid, or they lost all of their actual scientists (all of the above?), but looks like they have to rely on plans created by the (gasp!) Biden administration. Except for actually helping people – they are not going to do that.
Oh, it’s going to get worse. They want to change the entire federal hiring process to include, instead of a skills & experience questionnaire, a four-question essay in which you pretty much have to praise Dear Leader–questions like, which of trump’s EOs resonates with you & etc. They’re also limiting CVs to two pages (mine is currently up to 12). Merit system, my *ss. This is next-level authoritarianism.
I’m in Asheville, NC (heavily blue city btw) and we aren’t even close to recovered from Helene. Whole communities were completely washed away. It will take years.
I also live in Asheville and the destruction is so widespread and already underfunded. People are bigly fucked this summer and fall. It didn’t have to be this way…
Beff- I was in 2 studios in the RAD. One gone completely, one rebuilt. I have friends who watched neighbors swept away in the floods. People do not understand the lasting trauma. Hope you are beginning to see light again. If you are ever in the RAD, I’m at Trackside studios on Depot.
I am so sorry for all of you!
This is just another in a long list of unqualified sycophants in this administration. I am from NC and unfortunately the area hit the hardest by this storm was Asheville, which is a large blue island in a sea of mountain red. It’s easy to paint states with a bold brush but North Carolina has huge pockets of blue in the metropolitan areas, however if you drive 20 minutes “out of town” it’s deep red again. Regardless of who the storm victims voted for, we all deserve better than the cast of clowns who are in charge today, it’s disgusting.
I have a friend in NC who organized fiercely for Kamala Harris. She also recently helped to flip her red district blue. There are so many people doing great work down there.
NC is a purple state I have a lot of hope for.
I think Asheville being hit so hard by Helene might have affected the outcome in North Carolina. Asheville is such a reliable Dem area.
See my comment above. I’m in Asheville and the funding has completely dried up and many communities here are still struggling. I am fine most days and crying even typing now.
Helene hit during the height of the campaign last year. It was quickly followed by another hurricane. Remember Trump and his campaign going around telling everyone that the Biden-Harris administration wasn’t doing anything and there was no federal response at all? That was a lie, of course, and even Republican governors refuted it, but these ignoramuses will believe anything Trump says. Even with both Biden and Harris on the ground in storm ravaged states, people were sure they had been abandoned. Well, now they really have been abandoned. And states that have been hit by tornadoes this spring, Trump states like Mississippi and Arkansas, have also found themselves on their own. Next time they have a chance to vote, I predict they will march to the polls and faithfully vote Republican just like they have always done since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. You can’t fix stupid (or racism apparently).
Sadly more people should have taken trumps threats seriously before they elected a racist wrecking ball. I don’t think anyone is safe in this country anymore.. from food to weather all safety measures are being eliminated. I had to ask about third party testing on milk for my grandchild because the fda no longer tests milk from what I’ve been reading.
They’re no longer testing for anything so we won’t even know when the next pandemic hits. Measles and AIDs are back and cancer research is done. They really are trying to kill us all.
Not that long ago, I might have dismissed “they’re trying to kill us” as hyperbole. Not anymore. Yesterday I read the most disturbing piece in the New Yorker about Curtis Yarvin, one of the monsters behind the scenes in this horrific era. He truly believes a genocide is needed to rid everyone he and the tech bros see as inferior. I was left kinda reeling anew that we have given this crazy minority the reins to this country.
Yarvin sounds much worse than anything Aldous Huxley or George Orwell ever imagined. That New Yorker piece was the scariest thing I’ve ever read.
Not all of us, just the poor.
RFK wants everyone to drink raw milk. He is a walking plague.
Even the parasite in his head didn’t survive contact with his sick brain. That says a lot about rfk.
“empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens.” UGH!
I work in government (thankfully not in the US), so I know a bit about government speak. As soon as an agency is ’empowering’ other part of government to do something, it basically means they’re washing their hands of the responsibility and it’s on someone else now. In this instance, it sounds like it’s on the individual states to provide relief.
Regarding my original comment..please understand I wasn’t painting all southerners/people who live in the South as racist Trump maniacs. I know there are huge blue sections. I spent half of my life in South Carolina and New Orleans. I miss it very much. But y’all know damn well that there are pockets of the Old White South alive and well. Just like up here in PA. I hope to God no one suffers anywhere but…these storms are coming. And Trump voters are going to wonder where their special treatment is.
A hard hard man.. pairs perfect with Barbie doll Noem and Levitt and Taco Don
Despite the ‘give it back to the states’ rhetoric, FEMA apparently has had to greatly reduce the training and workshopping it did with states in order to ensure that states could play their part. So much for that approach. This dreadful administration is basically cutting back or abolishing anything that makes life safer or more satisfying or happier for the average citizen. Just appalling. A deranged wannabe messiah surrounded by sycophantic incompetents.