FEMA Is Broke
Peter St. Onge /
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge.
It’s America last as the nation’s disaster relief agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, reports it is broke because it wasted billions on illegals, Ukraine, and other foreign aid instead of, say, the American people.
So says the Department of Homeland Security, with Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas confessing, “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.”
Note this is after Dems strong-armed $12 billion last year by holding it hostage to Ukraine aid, then House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Ky., poured in another $20 billion just weeks ago.
FEMA’s foreigner-depleted cupboards could be part of why the White House dragged its feet declaring Title 10—which sends military resources into disaster zones to help rescue operations.
That largely left rescue to private volunteers—truck drivers, helicopter pilots, and people who have boats, dubbed the Cajun Navy. Some of whom, incidentally, have been threatened with arrest.
Of course, even if you don’t arrest them, there’s only so many private volunteers with helicopters, and they don’t have billions of dollars hijacked from taxpayers then given away to import new voters or pay military contractors.
For example, considering the 82nd Airborne is literally based in North Carolina and in hours deploys halfway around the world, it might be nice to get some help.
Ironically enough, just last week, President Joe Biden announced another $2.4 billion to Ukraine, aid that has historically included generators and transformers bought by USAID that are now desperately needed in North Carolina.
Of course, it wasn’t just Ukraine; everybody from Taiwan to Djibouti apparently has been feasting while our own people go without.
That apparently includes the millions of illegal aliens who showed up uninvited.
Thanks to X, we have the receipts for program after program shipping out FEMA money for illegals a hundred million at a time. The New York Post tallies these for a total of at least $1.4 billion in disaster relief repurposed to bribe sanctuary cities to import replacement voters—especially in swing states.
As America First Legal put it: “Over the last 4 years the Biden-Harris admin has steadily transformed FEMA into an illegal alien resettlement agency.”
So, it’s red carpets for illegals, $200 billion for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and boiling swamp water for North Carolina.
So, what’s next?
For literally millennia, disaster relief has been the touchstone of a functioning government. In China, for example, a poor response to a natural disaster was taken as a revocation of the “Mandate of Heaven”—a sovereign’s right to rule.
This is part of the reason that, even today, countries like Japan, where I am now, take natural disasters very seriously. Because the people are watching. And remembering.
In America, our federal government has long since lost that mandate.
FEMA was a disaster in Hurricane Katrina. In COVID-19. In East Palestine, Ohio. And now in North Carolina.
How did it get this bad? Easy: Because the bureaucracy took over, replacing the people via something called the Pendleton Act, which I’ll cover in an upcoming video.
This means the government’s goal is not serving the people but feathering its own nest—expanding its power and rewarding the donors and lobbyists who pay the politicians to expand that power.
One video out of North Carolina captures the shift perfectly: A police officer threatens to arrest a local couple trying to salvage their flooded store before looters get to it.
There was a time when that officer would have rolled up his sleeves and pitched in. Because his job was to protect and serve. But those days are gone: Protect and serve is now neglect and harass.
At least if you’re American.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.