Tag: natural disasters

Shocking Ring Video Shows Helene Victim Being Denied Disaster Aid Over Trump Sign

Doorbell camera footage released over the internet on Tuesday captured an infuriating moment when a liberal North Carolina resident providing donations to hurricane victims reprimanded a family for having the audacity to place a Trump sign in her yard and threatened to withhold future aid.

The Ring doorbell camera shows an elderly woman walking up to the front porch of a home in North Carolina where she was greeted by the homeowner. The End Wokeness account on X, which obtained the footage, drew viewers to negative remarks made by the woman shortly after she delivered a children’s mattress to the resident.

“This is the last of ’em,” the volunteer explains in the video. When the homeowner asks if they’ll be receiving more help, the volunteer replies, “I’m really conflicted — I have a lot more stuff to give, but I am not a fan of Donald Trump, so these signs are a problem for me.” She pointed at a red and blue Trump yard sign before walking off, leaving the resident standing nonplussed at the doorstep.

A timestamp accompanying the video appears to indicate it was recorded on Tuesday, evidencing that relief work is still in progress across parts of the Tar Heel state since being hit by Hurricane Helene in late September. Much of the effort was undertaken by FEMA but spiraled out of control amid speculation that the federal relief agency was withholding aid to Trump supporters, a claim furthered by then-candidate Donald Trump. Mainstream media outlets declared the accusation a “lie” and “baseless,” but shortly after the election the Biden-Harris administration was forced to fire a FEMA worker who admitted to directing her employees to skip over houses that had pro-Trump yard signs.

Other North Carolina survivors have detailed how FEMA hasn’t lived up to President Joe Biden’s promise of a maximum of $750 in relief payments. Other viral videos have shown military choppers causing mayhem over staging grounds where supplies were stored. The Blaze’s Glenn Beck has reported speaking with personnel on the ground who appear more interested in intercepting amateur helicopter pilots conducting rescue missions than rushing to save residents stranded in washed-away mountain towns. The video from Tuesday is another sign that the politicization of Helene has not abated with the election.

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Florida FEMA scandal exposes unaccountable bureaucracy that Trump targets for reform and cuts

An emergency response official’s decision to withhold vital assistance to hurricane victims that showed visible support for Republicans is a scandal that belies a larger issue, namely, an unaccountable federal bureaucracy left to police itself and which President-elect Donald Trump has eyed for reform and cuts.   

The concerns were raised by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer in a hearing on the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to the dual crises of Hurricanes Helene and Milton that struck Florida and the wider Southeast earlier this year. 

“While today’s hearing will focus on FEMA, the issue at hand is part of a larger problem: the urgent need to hold the unelected, unaccountable federal workforce accountable to the American people and to the duly elected President of the United States,” Comer said in his opening statement. 

“The current system does not have strong enough mechanisms to ensure accountability. The disciplinary system is run by and for civil servants to protect civil servants,” he continued.

The hearing followed reports that during the hurricane response in Florida, one FEMA official instructed subordinates to bypass houses that displayed pro-Trump signs in Lake Placid, Florida, while they were canvassing to deliver assistance to the hurricane-stricken community. 

At least 20 houses were reportedly skipped under the guidance, and therefore were not given the opportunity to qualify for FEMA assistance, Just the News reported. 

“I was simply following orders”

The FEMA official responsible, Marn’i Washington was terminated shortly after the public reports emerged of her conduct, but Comer says the accountability came too late, only after the conduct was exposed by reporting from the Daily Wire. For her part, Washington told NewsNation‘s Dan Abrams that “Firstly, I’m being framed,” said Washington. “There’s no violation of the Hatch Act. I was simply following orders.”

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FEMA Employee Fired For Bypassing Homes With Trump Signs Says She Was Following Agency Protocol

An employee who was terminated from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for ordering government workers to bypass homes of Trump supporters said she was simply following standard operating procedure.

On Friday, the Daily Wire reported that FEMA supervisor Marn’i Washington had instructed staff to “avoid homes advertising Trump” while “they canvassed Lake Placid, Florida to identify residents who could qualify for federal aid” after Hurricane Milton tore through the region in early October.

“Government employees told The Daily Wire that at least 20 homes with Trump signs or flags were skipped from the end of October and into November due to the guidance, meaning they were not given the opportunity to qualify for FEMA assistance,” the outlet reported. “Images shared with The Daily Wire show that houses were skipped over by the workers, who wrote in the government system messages such as: ‘Trump sign no entry per leadership.’”

Washington was promptly fired from the agency, and FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell condemned the conduct as “a clear violation of FEMA’s core values & principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation.”

“This was reprehensible,” Criswell said. “This employee has been terminated and we have referred the matter to the Office of Special Counsel.”

Washington, however, who was also terminated from her private sector job at a property management company, said in an interview with the Black Star Network published late Monday night that she was just following FEMA’s standard operating procedure.

“FEMA always preaches avoidance first and then de-escalation,” Washington said. “This is not isolated. This is a colossal event of avoidance, not just in the state of Florida, but you will find avoidance in the Carolinas. Senior leadership will lie to you and tell you that they do not know.”

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FEMA worker Marni Washington breaks silence on not helping Trump-voting hurricane victims

The FEMA boss who was fired after ordering volunteers not to approach homes displaying Trump signs in Florida after Hurricane Milton has insisted her edict ‘was not isolated’ and also happened in North Carolina.  

Speaking out for the first time since she was fired, Marn’i Washington accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency of ‘lying’ about the scandal, and making her the scapegoat of a wider practice. 

Washington was blasted publicly and lost her job after a text chain was leaked that showed her instructing colleagues to ‘avoid’ houses that had Trump signs in their yards. 

Washington told DailyMail.com she is seeking an attorney and is ‘at risk’ as a result of the backlash she’s received. ‘I have information that proves FEMA is lying,’ she said. 

In a podcast appearance last night, she went further – claiming more FEMA employees are guilty of the same bias, but that she is the only one being hung out to dry. 

‘FEMA preaches avoidance first, and then de-escalation. This is not isolated. This is a colossal event of avoidance,’ Washington said in an interview with YouTube podcaster Roland Martin. 

‘Not just in the state of Florida. You will find avoidance in the Carolinas,’ she revealed. 

She says she was directly following FEMA protocol when she issued the controversial directive. 

FEMA has tried to distance itself from Washington after receiving widespread backlash, revealing she lost her job after her superiors learned of the message.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said ‘this is a clear violation of FEMA’s core values and principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation.

‘This employee has been terminated and we have referred the matter to the Office of Special Counsel.’

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FEMA Official Ordered Relief Workers To Skip Houses With Trump Signs

A federal disaster relief official ordered workers to bypass the homes of Donald Trump’s supporters as they surveyed damage caused by Hurricane Milton in Florida, according to internal correspondence obtained by The Daily Wire and confirmed by multiple federal employees. 

A FEMA supervisor told workers in a message to “avoid homes advertising Trump” as they canvassed Lake Placid, Florida to identify residents who could qualify for federal aid, internal messages viewed by The Daily Wire reveal. The supervisor, Marn’i Washington, relayed this message both verbally and in a group chat used by the relief team, multiple government employees told The Daily Wire. 

The government employees told The Daily Wire that at least 20 homes with Trump signs or flags were skipped from the end of October and into November due to the guidance, meaning they were not given the opportunity to qualify for FEMA assistance. Images shared with The Daily Wire show that houses were skipped over by the workers, who wrote in the government system messages such as: “Trump sign no entry per leadership.”

It is unclear whether the same guidance was issued elsewhere in the country. The employees were part of a Department of Homeland Security surge capacity force team, meaning they volunteered from other DHS agencies to help an understaffed FEMA as it dealt with a second major hurricane in a span of just a few weeks.

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Veteran-Led Group Saved Lives in North Carolina amid Slow Federal Hurricane Helene Response

Rolling off of Exit 59 on Interstate 40, one could tell something big was happening at the Harley Davidson dealership in Swannanoa.

About a half dozen helicopters lined up in a grassy field behind the dealership, dust clouds swirling as one prepared for lift off.

Dozens of men in sunglasses, various shades of camouflage, and cargo pants moved about the parking lot with urgency.

Some were loading up ATVs with supplies to deliver to residents stuck in their homes. Some with K-9s were going out to look for the missing. Some had chainsaws to clear downed trees. Some directed air traffic for volunteer pilots airlifting supplies to towns like Chimney Rock that were unreachable by ground.

Some were former special operations veterans, like Aaron Switzer. Some were former firemen like Travis Patton. Some were civilians like Crystal Barker.

A garage that normally hosted live shows was transformed into what looked like a tactical operations center in the middle of a war zone.

Covered in a light-layer of dust, the garage was a beehive of activity, divided up into several sections with a long table at the center of each section.

There was an operations section — where volunteers took in requests for help and directed operations, a logistics section where requests for supplies were coordinated, an intelligence section where volunteers searched online for anyone needing assistance.

There were also local police, National Guard and active duty military personnel embedded at the site, and even a few volunteers from Tesla and SpaceX, working to get solar panels and Starlink satellites out to those in need.

The mission was to save lives and on that Saturday, October 12, the team had a list of over 1,000 names of people missing.

“Roughly 1,270-something people — souls — are still missing,” Switzer said.

The man who started the operation was a former U.S. Army Green Beret Adam Smith, who called on his former military buddies to help.

Smith was in Texas when Hurricane Helene hit western North Carolina — where his three-year-old daughter and her mother lived. After they were cut off from communication, Smith decided to take action and fly in to rescue them rather than wait for a government response.

“It was a selfish desire to save my daughter and her mom,” he told Breitbart News in an interview. “After the storm hit, they were completely cut off, and we had no contact with them for, it was like 40 hours, 42 hours, somewhere in there… . And so this really started with me asking for help so I could get them out.”

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The Panic Over an Imaginary Militia ‘Hunting FEMA’ Did More Damage Than the Actual Threat

It was a bone-chilling report. As North Carolinians reeled from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) suddenly ordered emergency workers “to stand down and evacuate” Rutherford County due to reports of “trucks of armed militias saying they were out hunting FEMA,” The Washington Post reported on October 13, based on an email obtained from the U.S. Forest Service.

The threat turned out to be something less serious. On October 14, the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office announced the arrest of one man, William Jacob Parsons, for making a “comment about possibly harming FEMA employees” while armed with an assault rifle. Law enforcement concluded that “Parsons acted alone and there was no truck loads of militia,” according to a statement quoted in The Washington Post.

Parsons told the BBC that he was not a member of any militia, he had not threatened any federal officials, and he was there to help distribute supplies to hurricane victims.

Every time America suffers a natural disaster, it seems, there’s serious anxiety about social collapse and mass violence. And the media often runs with the most fantastical version, as journalists did with reports of violence at the Superdome refugee center in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

These rumors by themselves can do serious damage. Louisiana National Guard Maj. Ed Bush told Reason in 2005 that “perhaps FEMA would have been quicker in if we hadn’t heard all these urban myths about shootings and rapes and deaths and killing and bodies everywhere.” Last week, relief efforts in Rutherford County and nearby Ashe County were paused due to the alleged militia threat.

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FEMA’s Real Purpose: Suppressing Americans And Preventing Civilian Organization

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was founded on April 1st, 1979 under the Jimmy Carter Administration during the height of a nearly decade long stagflationary crisis and the Iranian oil crisis. Under Executive Order 12127, its stated goal was to centralize all disaster related efforts under a single top-down entity. Specifically, FEMA ended the more localized Civil Defense Agency, which was focused on community based emergency response, and it federalized all disaster coordination under a single top-down system controlled by the Oval Office.

FEMA was eventually placed under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, creating even more centralization. The reason for FEMA according to the government is to aid Americans during and after a national level disaster event; anything from earthquakes to hurricanes to terrorist attacks.

That said, it should also be noted that FEMA was officially created on April Fool’s Day.

The true purpose of FEMA has long been obscured but some disturbing truths have been exposed in the past. The declassification of a program called Rex 84 (tied to Operation Garden Plot) revealed that FEMA was working directly with the Department of Defense on a hypothetical strategy to round up and detain large numbers of civilians considered a “threat to national security.” In other words, FEMA was to act as a tool for helping suppress civil disturbances, it was not necessarily designed to help Americans in times of need.

This was likely always the intent behind the founding of FEMA, but George H.W. Bush and Oliver North are cited as the men that truly militarized FEMA in the early 1980s. The goal to establish a mechanism for controlling domestic political dissent and suspending constitutional freedoms was exposed not long after FEMA’s founding. Oliver North was visibly enraged when the subject was broached in a congressional hearing during the Iran/Contra scandal.

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Rep. Jahana Hayes splurged nearly $13K on oysters, Martha’s Vineyard trips and more as residents grappled with historic flooding

While residents of western Connecticut were cleaning up from deadly floods this past August, Democratic Rep. Jahana Hayes slurped down oysters, pampered herself at a pricey salon and traveled to Martha’s Vineyard and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago — spending nearly $13,000 in the process, Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show.

The three-term incumbent flew to the Windy City just as her home state was hit with a severe storm on Sunday, Aug. 18, which caused more than $206 million in damages to bridges, roads, businesses and homes due to flooding, mudslides and landslides.

More than 100 residents were evacuated, and at least two elderly women died when they were swept away by floodwaters.

Meanwhile, Hayes was living it up nearly 900 miles away, as her campaign forked over $6,384.91 for her to stay at the Sheraton Grand in downtown Chicago, per third quarter FEC filings.

“My heart goes out to all of the people impacted, and I really tried to work with all of the local agencies to make sure that we got the relief that we could,” the congresswoman, 51, said in a video posted to Facebook Aug. 21.

“When I started to get the updates in the news, I tried to schedule a flight to get back to Connecticut, but as you know there were delays, cancellations, and flights had just been booked,” she said. “There was really no way to do it.”

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WaPo’s Favorite Environmental Group Uses ‘Political’ Research To Link Climate Change to Natural Disasters. It’s Also Bankrolled by WaPo Owner Jeff Bezos.

World Weather Attribution was founded in 2014 to produce research linking extreme weather events to climate change. That research is then funneled to mainstream media outlets, giving them what the group calls the “larger global warming context” as they cover natural disasters.

The group found a friend in Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who in 2022 announced a $10 million grant to WWA and two other organizations to “scale effective communication on the links between climate change and extreme weather.” The Bezos Earth Fund said the money would provide the WWA an outlet to “reach the most important audience segments via trusted messengers.”

One such messenger is Bezos’s newspaper, the Washington Post, which has cited WWA research in more than 70 stories over the past three years, a Washington Free Beacon review found. It does so uncritically, publishing the group’s non-peer-reviewed findings to suggest that climate change is to blame for recent natural disasters, including Hurricane Milton. Nonpartisan experts in the field, however, are not so sure of WWA’s methods, portraying the group’s flashy studies as rushed, partisan, and “incomplete.”

Bezos’s funding for the group, paired with the Washington Post‘s favorable coverage of its research, raises questions about the newspaper’s declared independence from its billionaire owner. The Post’s stories citing WWA do not acknowledge that Bezos—who purchased the paper in 2013, one year before the group’s founding—also bankrolls WWA.

“The motivation is entirely political,” Ryan Maue, the former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said of the climate group. “I’m not sure what the scientific community’s opinion on it is, but my guess is that it has gotten along this far because of its political weight and the media attention that it is given, meaning you don’t want to be on the wrong side of this.”

Maue particularly criticized WWA’s methodology, which consists of determining the probability of a recent extreme weather event, comparing it with the probability of a similar event that occurred decades ago, and attributing the difference to climate change. That leads to flashy findings—but not necessarily accurate ones, according to Maue, who argued that the WWA values speed over accuracy and, as such, produces “incomplete” research.

“What they are able to put out is the headline that climate change made Hurricane Helene worse and then count on the scientific illiteracy of the corporate media in order to produce headlines that become, you know, more and more outlandish, making claims that obviously are not supported by the science,” he told the Free Beacon.

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