from Hacker News

FEMA May Be Eliminated

by magic_smoke_ee on 1/24/25, 9:44 PM with 45 comments

• by taylodl on 1/24/25, 9:59 PM

  Awesome! If California residents weren't paying for all the hurricanes in the deep red South and tornadoes in the deep red plains states, then they'd have plenty of money to take care of themselves.

  Does this guy ever think through anything before opening his mouth? Is he even capable of thinking?

• by Terr_ on 1/24/25, 10:06 PM

  > Florida, Louisiana and Texas residents have received the lion's share of FEMA direct assistance since 2015, per newly gathered data.

  https://www.axios.com/2024/10/08/fema-direct-payments-state-...

• by jschveibinz on 1/24/25, 10:48 PM

  I'm not taking a political stance here, because that's not the purpose of this forum. But from an efficiency perspective, I believe the question is whether a federal "agency" (and its associated bureaucracy) is necessary to deal with local emergencies, not whether federal "financial aid" may be necessary to help support state and local governments. Most if not all states have their own emergency management programs.

• by legitster on 1/24/25, 10:22 PM

  From the article, it doesn't sound like FEMA will be eliminated, just incredibly politicized. So... yay?

  > Trump has criticized former President Joe Biden for his administration’s response to Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. As he left the White House on Friday morning, he told reporters that “it’s been a horrible thing the way that’s been allowed to fester” since the storm hit in September, and “we’re going to get it fixed up.”

  > “I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems,” he told Hannity, adding that “FEMA is getting in the way of everything.”

  So to be clear, when it happened during the previous administration, it was the administration's fault. When it's his administration, it is the agency's fault and also not his responsibility. And it sounds like the president changes his tune based on whether the disaster was in a red state or a blue state.

  Everything that has been said so far is so in conflict with itself so it's hard to guess what a policy change would even be. So my guess would be nothing happens and we don't hear about it anymore as soon as wildfires are out of the news cycle.

• by jaybrendansmith on 1/24/25, 11:43 PM

  Developers: America has been taken over by a bad, pointy haired boss. Suggestions on how to deal with him? Tell him what he wants to hear and continue doing what's needed? Ignore his insane announcements, just come in for work as usual and do the necessary things? Hope that he is ousted or removed somehow? Indeed.

• by xnx on 1/24/25, 10:27 PM

  I'm not a fan of the "chaos agent" style of politics, but sometimes it does bring up topics that would be taboo to talk about otherwise.

• by swatcoder on 1/24/25, 11:00 PM

  This seems a relevant time to remember that 90's-era conspiracy mythology saw FEMA as the big boogeyman agency whose emergency powers were essential to an authoritarian seizure of the nation.

  Along with the ATF and IRS (for other reasons), its looming and certain villiany rallied sovereign citizen and militia types to organize and arm themselves.

  Assuming some of those people now have more political influence than they have had in the past, it seems like the legacy of that mythos could be part of what's at play here.