Why Kristi Noem hates FEMA

[marmar]

Why Kristi Noem hates FEMA
No, Trump has not given up on the conspiracist mania to kill the popular agency

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published July 14, 2025 6:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) First things first: Mainstream media reports that Donald Trump has “backed away” or “scrapped” plans to destroy the Federal Emergency Management Agency are greatly exaggerated. Trump is just doing what he always does when faced with intense public scrutiny of his unpopular positions: Lying. As usual, he will go right back to doing the bad thing as soon as the news cycle moves on to something else. Right now, the aftermath of the tragic floods in Texas is dominating the news, so Trump will pretend he has no desire to end the federal agency doing the heroic work of helping people in the state recover and regroup.

The misleading Washington Post headline from Friday, which claimed Trump “moves away” from abolishing FEMA was immediately undercut by the actual reporting, which revealed the White House is using weasel words like “rebranding” and “reorganizing” to conceal that the goal of destroying the agency has not changed. Observing that Trump “has dialed up and down his aversion to the agency, depending on the occasion,” the reporters noted that White House spokespeople continued to insist that the agency is part of “a bloated bureaucracy” and talked about how it’s the job of states to deal with natural disasters, not the federal government. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of homeland security, admitted out loud to the Post that, under Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, “FEMA, as it is today, will no longer exist.”

Noem isn’t giving up the dream of ending the federal agency. Sending innocent people to wither away in foreign gulags has been Noem’s top priority at DHS, but she’s seems to be nearly as excited about cutting off aid to Americans who are suffering from natural disasters. In February, she declared her intent to “get rid of FEMA the way it exists today.” In March, Politico reported that Noem plans to subject FEMA to the “chopping block.” Those plans haven’t changed. This week, she reiterated that FEMA “fundamentally needs to go away as it exists” and called for it to be “eliminated as it exists today.” The “as it exists today” caveat is put there to give Noem and Trump wiggle room, but make no mistake: Their goal is to destroy the system of disaster relief that Americans depend on, especially as climate change worsens.

....(snip)....

At the center of the conspiracy theory is this concept of “FEMA camps.” The claim is that FEMA will pretend to be setting up emergency relief stations, but really, they’re laying groundwork for prison camps for white Christians. To bolster this assertion, hoaxsters will use images of barbed wire around military prisons or tents set up for military training events, falsely labeling the installations “FEMA.” The racist subtext is never hard to spot. Militia groups that promote “FEMA camps” conspiracies will often spin yarns about how “urban gangs” will be recruited to round up “patriots” — their code word for white conservative Christians — into camps. .................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/07/14/why-kristi-noem-hates-fema/

[sakabatou]

1. Always remember that this administration is all about cruelty

[underpants]

2. So this goes back to Pres. Carter and super fueled by Jade Helm 15 9 years ago?

The history of conspiracy theories about FEMA goes back to the agency’s founding under President Jimmy Carter in 1979. Far-right groups immediately started circulating rumors that FEMA’s disaster relief mission was a cover story for the true goal: Rounding up white Christians into concentration camps, so the “globalists” (read: Jews, people of color, feminists, queer people) could impose the “New World Order.” As usual with racist conspiracists, the psychological motivation is a combination of sublimated shame and defensiveness, manifesting in a victim complex. In the imagination of right-wingers, the “real” victims are white Christians, and it’s the people who were once subjected to slavery, concentration camps and genocide who are the oppressors.

But really, it was the election of President Barack Obama in 2008 that put the FEMA conspiracy theories into overdrive. Fears that a Black president would round up white people into camps spread rapidly, often aided by opportunistic Republican politicians. The Oath Keepers were one of the militias that formed after Obama’s election, based around a vow that they would not enforce imaginary efforts by the president to round up “patriots” into concentration camps. In 2015, the conspiracy theory grew even more pronounced, when fear about the “Jade Helm 15” Army training exercise tore through social media. Photos of soldiers undertaking standard training procedures in Texas were circulated as “proof” that the FEMA round-ups were about to begin. Shelters built to protect people from tornadoes were brandished as “proof” that the prison camps were coming.

[travelingthrulife]

4. They never let a conspiracy theory die, even from old age.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. FEMA concentration camps were always a fantasy. ICE concentration camps are a reality.

When they've deported all who they can, then who will they fill up the empty internment camps with?

[applegrove]

5. She said to a female reporter at a sit down interview

that no employee lost their job answering phone. How about the contractors? They were talking about the calls to FEMA that were missed after the first day of the Texas flash flood disaster.

https://www.dailykos.com/story/2025/7/14/2333343/-Kristi-Noem-is-getting-roasted-for-FEMA-flop-after-Texas-floods?pm_campaign=blog&pm_medium=rss&pm_source=