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ICYMI About Texas; Ask Kristi Noem why it took her 3 days to put FEMA in motion [1]
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Date: 2025-07-11
Jo Jo From Jerz posts on Substack as “Are You F’ng Kidding Me?” (She’s also a podcaster.) She has a world class rant about Kristi Noem and Texas flooding.
The River Rose. ICE Barbie Posed
The river didn’t wait. It didn’t care if you were Republican or Democrat, rich or poor. It didn’t check for permits or wait for signatures. It rose—fast, merciless, unrelenting. It tore through homes, swallowed playgrounds, ripped children from bunks at summer camp. At Camp Mystic, 27 campers and counselors—most of them little girls—died. Across Texas, 120 lives were lost. Over 160 more are missing. And every one of them mattered. But when the flood came, help didn’t. Not because FEMA wasn’t ready. They were. Not because Texas didn’t ask. They did. But because Kristi Noem—Donald Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Cruelty—refused to sign the goddamn paperwork.
Read The Whole Thing. What Jo Jo from Jerz has documented about Noem ought to be front page above the fold headlines.
Noem was too busy with Instagram to do her job. Three whole days went by before she got around to signing off on the approvals for action.
The first 72 hours are critical for an emergency response. What was happening during that time? Jo Jo:
Three full days passed before she authorized FEMA to send in Urban Search and Rescue teams. Seventy-two hours. That’s not a delay—it’s a death toll accelerator. During that time, FEMA couldn’t order aerial surveillance. Couldn’t print updated maps. Couldn’t even bring in support staff. FEMA employees were answering hotline calls themselves—because Kristi “Spray Tan Stalin” Noem hadn’t approved the temp contracts.
“Heckuva job Brownie” was merely incompetent; Noem is a monster.
CNN has reported on this, but with all the finger-pointing and scapegoating going on, Noem’s criminal neglect of her job seems to be slipping under the radar. CNN has this response from Homeland Security on why the delays:
“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,” McLaughlin told CNN in a statement. “The old processes are being replaced because they failed Americans in real emergencies for decades.”
In a sane world, Congress would be calling for Noem’s resignation. In Trump World, Noem looks hot and is totally loyal to the President, so that’s all that matters. The Media? Already moving on to the next atrocities.
Paul Krugman asks a question: Should we politicize the Texas flood? Absolutely.
Whenever natural disaster — like the flash flood that just killed large numbers of people, many of them children, in Texas — strikes, we can count on a quick response from officials, both federal and state, who arguably could or should have done something to avert or minimize the disaster. Namely, there will be self-righteous denunciations of anyone trying to assign responsibility: “Now is not the time to politicize this tragedy.” In fact, now is exactly the time to put officials on the spot and ask how much responsibility they bear for the horror. Because the reality of America today is that if we don’t make an issue of how this happened within the next few days, nothing will be learned and nothing will change.
emphasis added
Assuming America ever recovers from MAGA Fascism, we must have a something like a truth and reconciliation commission and the Nuremberg Trials — or this will keep happening.
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[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/7/11/2332935/-ICYMI-About-Texas-Ask-Kristi-Noem-why-it-took-her-3-days-to-put-FEMA-in-motion?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
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