Weekend Quotables
“We want to wean off of FEMA." -- Pres. Trump
Kristi Noem on Texas floods: "I think what we've seen here is exactly what President Trump has envisioned for FEMA.” — Local News
Where’s FEMA?
The Trump administration’s 2025 budget slashed FEMA’s funding by $646 million and eliminated over 2,000 staff positions, reducing its workforce by nearly a third. This was done to offset the revenue loss resulting from permanently extending the 2017 tax cuts for high-income earners. As Trump put it, “We want to wean off FEMA.”
Under the Trump administration, the Weather Service, like other federal agencies, has been pushed to reduce its number of employees. By this spring, through layoffs and retirements, the Weather Service had lost nearly 600 people from a workforce that until recently was as large as 4,000.
Programs like Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC)—which funded flood mitigation and disaster preparedness—were terminated entirely, leaving vulnerable regions, such as central Texas, dangerously exposed.
The timing couldn’t be worse. As Kerr County reels from catastrophic flash floods, critics argue that FEMA’s weakened capacity delayed warnings and crippled the response. Locals reported receiving alerts after the Guadalupe River had already surged 26 feet, despite the absence of sirens or river sensors in place. That’s not just a bureaucratic failure—it’s a deadly political one.
And it’s not just FEMA. Cuts to NOAA, which provides critical climate and weather data, have also drawn fire. Trump’s proposed budget would eliminate NOAA’s climate research division entirely, including labs that study hurricanes and severe storms. That means less data, slower forecasts, and higher risk for communities in harm’s way.
The Big, Beautiful, BRICS Summit
The BRICS Summit. Trump doesn’t run it. —Anon
The BRICS group gathered leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, and China in Rio, at its first summit in 2009. The bloc later added South Africa and last year included Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates as full members.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
"In the face of the resurgence of protectionism, it is up to emerging nations to defend the multilateral trade regime and reform the international financial architecture," Lula told a BRICS business forum on Saturday.
BRICS nations now represent over half the world's population and 40% of its economic output, Lula noted. — Reuters
More Weekend Quotables
Border Czar Tom Homan
“We’re going to flood the zone in communities. We’re going to flood the zone at work, at the work site. We’re going to find these people, and (Mamdani) is not going to stop us.” — Fox Business
M.K. Bad metaphor at this time.
Kandiss Taylor, a MAGA congressional candidate from Georgia
“Fake weather. Fake hurricanes. Fake flooding. Fake. Fake. Fake.” — X
Donald Trump
Trump referred to protesters in Los Angeles as “animals” and “a foreign enemy.” He vowed to “liberate Los Angeles” and restore law and order, while leaving open the possibility of invoking the Insurrection Act. — Speech at Fort Bragg
Iranian President Pezeshkian
"We were in the middle of talks with the U.S., and the Americans assured us that Israel would not attack us without their permission. But they suddenly attacked us, and torpedoed our diplomacy." — Times of Israel
“The President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp, and deported. Not because I’ve broken any law, but because I refuse to let him terrorize our city.”
“If you speak up, they will come for you.” — Zohran Mamdani
Brittany Ramos DeBarros, ex–Army officer & organizing director of About Face.
Is it better to resign publicly, or “better to have more people within the military when that moment comes who are willing to stand up and do something and do the right thing? — TNR
