Silicon Valley investors had an inside look into how Kamala Harris intended to implement a Chinese-style authoritarian government in America. pic.twitter.com/iwrVKvvG4Q
Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management
Agency, accompanies President Joe Biden on an Oct. 13 tour of damage
caused by Hurricane Milton in St. Pete Beach, Florida. (Joe Raedle/Getty
Images)
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is under fire after a
supervisor directed staff to avoid helping Florida residents with signs
supporting Donald Trump, but that incident illustrates a larger culture
of woke priorities undermining FEMA’s central mission, according to one current employee and one former employee who spoke with The Daily Signal on condition of anonymity.
The FEMA veterans said that, under the Biden-Harris administration, the agency prioritizes racial minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals,
and climate initiatives, undermining its mission of helping Americans
face disasters and leading Americans to distrust the federal government.
FEMA pushes diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, at the risk of
saving fewer lives, they said.
“FEMA’s rotten to a core,” said an employee who worked there for
about five years and left earlier this year. “It’s overstaffed, it’s
bureaucratic, [and] they don’t really help anybody.”
“FEMA needs to help people. It doesn’t help people right now,” he
said. “It’s so biased and racist [against those perceived as white].”
(Note: This article refers to both the former staffer and the current
staffer using male pronouns, but this editorial decision should not be
taken as revealing the sex of either person.)
The current FEMA employee, who has over a decade of service in
federal agencies, said the woke bias undermines FEMA’s disaster response
goals.
“I think such an approach more broadly undermines trust in government,” the employee told The Daily Signal.
“While FEMA aims to help people through noble missions, such emphasis
on DEI compartmentalizes people, further dividing the country and sowing
distrust.”
“The current FEMA administrator made a conscious decision to
sacrifice a ready and prepared nation for a divisive DEI agenda and
unserious climate goals,” the staffer added, referring to Deanne
Criswell, who was appointed by President Joe Biden.
FEMA did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time.
The Trump Signs Scandal
A FEMA supervisor, Marn’i Washington, 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 after Hurricane
Milton, The Daily Wire’s
Leif Le Mahieu reported last week. Employees of FEMA told The Daily
Wire that Washington relayed this message both verbally and via a group
chat.
Her directive reportedly prevented FEMA from offering post-hurricane
aid to at least 20 homes displaying Trump signs or flags between late
October and November.
Criswell confirmed the story and announced on X that Washington had been fired.
“More than 22,000 FEMA employees every day adhere to FEMA’s core
values and are dedicated to helping people before, during and after
disasters, often sacrificing time with their own families to help
disaster survivors,” Criswell wrote. “Recently, a FEMA employee departed
from these values to advise her survivor assistance team to not go to
homes with yard signs supporting President-elect Trump. This is a clear
violation of FEMA’s core values & principles to help people
regardless of their political affiliation.”
The FEMA administrator called the actions “reprehensible” and pledged
to “continue to do everything I can to make sure this never happens
again.”
Recently, a FEMA employee departed from these values to advise her survivor assistance team to not go to homes with yard signs supporting President-elect Trump. This is a clear violation of FEMA’s core values & principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation.
Yet after her firing, Washington told journalist Roland Martin that FEMA’s avoidance of Trump supporters is a “colossal event” that also occurred in North Carolina and South Carolina after both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.
“They all alleged that these actions were made on my own
recognizance, and from my own political advances,” Washington said.
“However, if you look at the record, there is what we call a community
trend and unfortunately, it just so happened that the political
hostility that was encountered by my team—and I was on two different
teams during my own deployment—they just so happened to have the Trump
campaign signage. FEMA always preaches avoidance first and then
de-escalation, 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.”
Washington also claimed that her FEMA team witnessed hostility and
“verbal abuse” from residents who had Trump signs on their property,
leading to the instruction to avoid Trump supporters. She said her staff
did not canvass at homes with Trump signs to avoid facing the alleged
“verbal abuse” and “hostile encounters” at the behest of Chad Hershey, a
FEMA supervisor above Washington who allegedly instructed them to avoid
homes they felt were unsafe.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is under fire after a
supervisor directed staff to avoid helping Florida residents with signs
supporting Donald Trump, but that incident illustrates a larger culture
of woke priorities undermining FEMA’s central mission, according to one current employee and one former employee who spoke with The Daily Signal on condition of anonymity.
The FEMA veterans said that, under the Biden-Harris administration, the agency prioritizes racial minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals,
and climate initiatives, undermining its mission of helping Americans
face disasters and leading Americans to distrust the federal government.
FEMA pushes diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, at the risk of
saving fewer lives, they said.
“FEMA’s rotten to a core,” said an employee who worked there for
about five years and left earlier this year. “It’s overstaffed, it’s
bureaucratic, [and] they don’t really help anybody.”
“FEMA needs to help people. It doesn’t help people right now,” he
said. “It’s so biased and racist [against those perceived as white].”
(Note: This article refers to both the former staffer and the current
staffer using male pronouns, but this editorial decision should not be
taken as revealing the sex of either person.)
The current FEMA employee, who has over a decade of service in
federal agencies, said the woke bias undermines FEMA’s disaster response
goals.
“I think such an approach more broadly undermines trust in government,” the employee told The Daily Signal.
“While FEMA aims to help people through noble missions, such emphasis
on DEI compartmentalizes people, further dividing the country and sowing
distrust.”
“The current FEMA administrator made a conscious decision to
sacrifice a ready and prepared nation for a divisive DEI agenda and
unserious climate goals,” the staffer added, referring to Deanne
Criswell, who was appointed by President Joe Biden.
FEMA did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time.
The Trump Signs Scandal
A FEMA supervisor, Marn’i Washington, 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 after Hurricane
Milton, The Daily Wire’s
Leif Le Mahieu reported last week. Employees of FEMA told The Daily
Wire that Washington relayed this message both verbally and via a group
chat.
Her directive reportedly prevented FEMA from offering post-hurricane
aid to at least 20 homes displaying Trump signs or flags between late
October and November.
Criswell confirmed the story and announced on X that Washington had been fired.
“More than 22,000 FEMA employees every day adhere to FEMA’s core
values and are dedicated to helping people before, during and after
disasters, often sacrificing time with their own families to help
disaster survivors,” Criswell wrote. “Recently, a FEMA employee departed
from these values to advise her survivor assistance team to not go to
homes with yard signs supporting President-elect Trump. This is a clear
violation of FEMA’s core values & principles to help people
regardless of their political affiliation.”
The FEMA administrator called the actions “reprehensible” and pledged
to “continue to do everything I can to make sure this never happens
again.”
Yet after her firing, Washington told journalist Roland Martin that FEMA’s avoidance of Trump supporters is a “colossal event” that also occurred in North Carolina and South Carolina after both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.
“They all alleged that these actions were made on my own
recognizance, and from my own political advances,” Washington said.
“However, if you look at the record, there is what we call a community
trend and unfortunately, it just so happened that the political
hostility that was encountered by my team—and I was on two different
teams during my own deployment—they just so happened to have the Trump
campaign signage. FEMA always preaches avoidance first and then
de-escalation, 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.”
Washington also claimed that her FEMA team witnessed hostility and
“verbal abuse” from residents who had Trump signs on their property,
leading to the instruction to avoid Trump supporters. She said her staff
did not canvass at homes with Trump signs to avoid facing the alleged
“verbal abuse” and “hostile encounters” at the behest of Chad Hershey, a
FEMA supervisor above Washington who allegedly instructed them to avoid
homes they felt were unsafe.
Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, a Republican, filed a lawsuit Wednesday alleging that FEMA engaged in discrimination against Floridians. Gov. Ron DeSantis, also a Republican, supported the lawsuit.
“It’s unacceptable for the federal government to discriminate against
Floridians who voted for Trump, and especially egregious in the
aftermath of a hurricane,” DeSantis said Thursday. “I’m supportive of
this legal action by the Attorney General’s Office, and I have
instructed state agencies to likewise take any action necessary to
investigate and ensure those who engaged in this behavior are held
accountable.”
‘I’ve Seen That’
The former FEMA employee
told The Daily Signal that he also witnessed FEMA leaders encouraging
staff to avoid whites and conservatives on the supposition that they
would be hostile.
“They were told to avoid Trump, avoid any house that has a Trump sign, in a verbal meeting,” he said. “I’ve seen that happen.”
“We were told, ‘Don’t go into any house that looks suspicious,’” the
former employee recalled. “They would use words like, ‘hick,’ ‘cowboys,’
‘rednecks.’ You can change that over to ‘Trump supporters,’ ‘MAGA.’”
Referring to Washington, the fired supervisor, the former employee
said: “She’s saying, ‘I didn’t make this up on my own.’ I believe her
because I’ve totally seen it.”
“I believe she did exactly what she was told to do,” he said. “I read Deanne’s statement—it’s a lie, it’s a complete lie.”
The current employee agreed regarding Criswell, FEMA’s administrator.
“The good people at FEMA deserve stronger leadership,” he said. “I
believe the FEMA administrator to be premature, shortsighted, and
misleading in her assessment of this incident.”
“While public responder safety is a paramount objective, responders
are given the necessary latitude to determine whether unsafe conditions
exist,” the FEMA employee added. “The extreme liberal ideology behind
DEI that this Biden-Harris administration
has prioritized, with support from the mainstream media and their
sympathetic sycophants, convinced humanitarian responders that Trump
signs imply a risk to their personal safety.”
“I do not believe Ms. Washington is alone and I believe we will hear
more instances of how DEI has improperly influenced the delivery of
lifesaving aid to Americans in need,” the staffer said.
The former FEMA employee said the agency’s leftist bias had been visible since at least Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Trump’s first year as president.
He also pointed to a July 21, 2022, email FEMA sent
to staff with the subject line, “How LGBTQ+ Survivors get left out of
Disaster Planning.” The email invited staff to a meeting of a resource
group for LGBTQ+ employees focused on prioritizing such individuals
after disasters.
FEMA’s Strategic Plan
In 2020, FEMA launched a new DEI plan, the former employee recalled.
“That’s when everything went crazy,” he said. “All our goals were
basically no longer about helping or anything like that. They were about
DEI—it was all about equity and helping the
disadvantaged/disenfranchised.”
“It had nothing to do with the actual mission of the agency,” he added.
The former employee pointed to the 2022-2026 FEMA Strategic Plan, which prioritizes “equity” and “climate resilience.”
“We must instill equity as a foundation of emergency management,”
Criswell, FEMA’s administrator, wrote in the plan’s opening letter.
The plan cites a June 25, 2021, executive order from Biden
prioritizing “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in the
federal workforce.”
Biden’s order defines equity as “the consistent and systematic fair,
just, and impartial treatment of all individuals, including individuals
who belong to underserved communities that have been denied such
treatment, such as Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American
persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of
color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons; persons with disabilities;
persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely
affected by persistent poverty or inequality.”
Critics say this emphasis on “equity” traces back to critical race theory,
the idea that American society is inherently racist and discriminatory
against racial minorities, LGBTQ+ individuals, women, and others, and
needs to be fundamentally restructured to achieve justice.
The FEMA document states that “intentionally directing resources to
communities most in need” in order to “counteract systemic disaster
inequities” will not entail “that resources will be directed away from
others in need of assistance.” Critics, however, say that DEI and
climate priorities undermine the agency’s ability to provide disaster
relief.
The current employee explained how the emphasis on diversity affects FEMA’s operations.
“FEMA has prioritized DEI initiatives that play on three distinct
levels: workforce management; disaster program and policy design; and
disaster response,” the agency employee told The Daily Signal. “The
latter two are largely guided using an ‘equity lens’ purpose-built for
FEMA using the Racial Equity Tool developed by Government Alliance on
Race and Equity (GARE). FEMA employees consider this purpose-built
‘equity lens’ when starting or developing new policy or reviewing
existing policy. These policies span grant programs, disaster aid
programs, technical assistance, grant funding, training, and community
outreach.”
“FEMA implements these designs during disasters using Equity Advisors
and task forces, which are carved out from the already limited disaster
workforce,” he added. “These advisors and [task forces] use FEMA’s
equity guidance to direct aid to specific groups matching categories of
demographics.”
The Government Alliance on Race and Equity, a project of the
left-leaning nonprofit Race Forward, advises local, regional, and state
governments on implementing “racial equity.”
Race Forward has received over $1 million in grants from the George Soros-founded Foundation to Promote Open Society since 2021. GARE did not respond to a request for comment about the Racial Equity Tool and the “equity lens.”
The current FEMA employee said the equity and climate goals undercut the agency’s effectiveness.
“It’s the opportunity cost of running government programs,” he said.
“Limited staff and resources will inevitably hit diminishing returns if
their mission suite is diluted with poorly considered directives.”
“We can certainly walk while chewing gum, but having to
simultaneously sip the climate Kool-Aid runs the risk of choking,” the
employee quipped. “And choking organizationally during a disaster
response is simply un-American.”[SOURCE]
Ukrainian soldiers attend training at a polygon in Ukraine on November 19, 2024 (AP)
By
Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
22 Nov 2024 22:0
Piotr Kulpa, an outspoken admirer of US
President-elect Donald Trump, believes Ukrainian authorities
misappropriated up to half of the financial aid given to Kiev.
According to a former Polish deputy
minister, Ukraine did not get as much foreign aid as the Biden
administration reported, and what it did receive was substantially
embezzled. Piotr Kulpa claims Ukrainian authorities misappropriated up
to half of the financial aid given to Kiev.
The political pundit formerly held many
positions in the Polish government, including deputy labor minister in
the mid-2000s, and is now a regular contributor to Ukrainian web shows.
Kulpa, an outspoken admirer of US President-elect Donald Trump, told
Ukrainian journalist Lana Shevchuk on Thursday that “Everyone
understands that war-related corruption is linked not only with Ukraine
but also the supplier nation."
“Who would ever believe that the US burned through $2 trillion in Afghanistan? It’s delusional!" Kulpa added.
According to Kulpa, the future Trump administration
might analyze government finances and discover that "Ukraine got very
little" in comparison to publicly declared amounts and that a large
chunk of the funds was "stolen...from 30% to 50%, regardless of the
nature of the aid," he divulged.
Criticizing the massive salaries and
bonuses Ukrainian officials pocket, Kulpa further expressed that if the
country could retrieve all the stolen money, it would have sufficient
funds for a year.
Related News
Kulpa called the system "criminal from start to finish," adding it was a "spit in the face of every Ukrainian."
His comments come as the White House prepares to unveil a support package for Ukraine worth up to $275 million.
Pentagon issues warning to Ukraine about corruption
"Judges, politicians, and officials have
been charged with corruption, and the Ministry of Defense has been a
key player in many corruption scandals," the report noted, citing data
from the US State Department and media sources.
Ukraine's Security Service (SBU)
reported uncovering a corruption network inside the defense ministry
early this year when five individuals attempted to steal 1.5 billion
hryvnia (about $39.6 million) in state cash earmarked for mortar shell
purchases.
Aleksey Reznikov, the Defense Minister,
was fired some months ago due to graft charges. His replacement, Rustem
Umerov, stated in January that an audit found $262 million in
theft-related charges in weapons purchases. A US intelligence officer
informed writer Seymour Hersh last year that Umerov is "even more
corrupt" than his predecessor.
In May, Ukrainian media revealed a
scheme in which officials in Kharkov diverted millions of euros to fake
businesses for non-existent building materials, leaving the area
undefended when Russian forces arrived.
The report echoes the claims of aUkrainian general who last month warnedthat
the Ukrainian armed forces are unable to respond quickly to changing
battlefield conditions due to bureaucracy and corruption in their
logistics.
General Dmitry Marchenko revealed in an interview that adaptability is a crucial prerequisite for amodern military, and Kiev's force lacks it-
but not because of the troops. "Unfortunately, our bureaucracy, our
corruption, do not allow us to adapt and quickly produce what we need,"
he remarked, referring to Ukraine's military sector.[SOURCE]
Just your average Zen Baptist, admitting upfront to being a (mostly) reconstructed hillbilly.
If you can't understand the attitude or perspective I come from, it's safe to say that we're from different realities.
If you can't start off the conversation with a respectful question about how/why I came to the particular perspective I did, and then find some way that you can relate to it, then I don't have any time to entertain your issues.
Give respect, get respect.
Hear Together: Roanoke Outside Foundation
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Roanoke Outside is a nonprofit working to protect outdoor experiences and
build a stronger outdoor community. One of the biggest ways they do that is
thr...
Joe Shields - Brooklyn Bridge
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Joe Shields - Brooklyn Bridge
Website - http://twoshacks.com.
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