WHEN HUBRIS TURNS FATAL

David Richardson, Kristi Noem, and the Human Cost of Disaster Arrogance

“Don’t get in my way,” said David Richardson, the acting head of FEMA, in his first address to the agency. He was clear: anyone within the organization who tried to slow him down — anyone who might have expertise, caution, or a memory of how to properly run disaster relief — he’d “run right over you.” That was not metaphor. That was policy.

And when the floods came to Texas — when water rose and homes collapsed and people called in desperation — that was exactly what happened. They didn’t run to the disaster. They ran over the people who might have stopped them from screwing it up.

For three days, FEMA was paralyzed. Thousands of emergency calls went unanswered. Entire towns waited for federal rescue teams that never came — because their contracts were tangled in bureaucratic tripwires of Richardson’s boss, Kristi Noem, who insisted on personally signing off on any expenditure over $100,000. FEMA needed contracts renewed? Rescue teams dispatched? Call centers staffed? Too bad. Wait for the Queen of Homeland Security to sign her name in the ink of indifference.

They called it a "review process" but in practice it was a dam built of red tape. Water roared over Texas, and FEMA stood still — because Noem was holding a pen.

And where was Richardson? Not on the phones, not on TV, not commanding a coherent response. No — when he finally surfaced in Texas more than a week later, it was with a wide-brimmed boater hat, an unbuttoned polka-dot shirt, and the posture of a man who’d mistaken a mass casualty event for a lifestyle photoshoot. This is the man who told his agency he doesn’t stop for yield signs. In Texas, it turns out, he doesn’t stop for corpses either.

That’s what hubris looks like. A man with no disaster management experience, swaggering around the ruins in tight jeans, more concerned with his optics than the optics of rescue helicopters in the sky. A woman in Homeland Security, treating every life-saving contract as if she were vetting an invitation to Mar-a-Lago. And a president — Donald Trump — who’s made it known that FEMA’s existence is optional in his America. These are not accidents. This is strategy.

When Richardson promised to “achieve the president’s intent,” he meant it. The president’s intent is to dismantle the federal response to disaster, privatize resilience, and let the states fend for themselves. And if that costs lives? That’s just the price of obedience. The price of not getting in the way.

The rivers in Texas carried away homes, cars, lives — and with it, the last illusions that FEMA under Trump is still FEMA. It’s a shadow agency, led by a man with combat medals and no moral compass, answering to a secretary with a signature worth more than a thousand lives, in service to a president who thinks flooding is just a blue-state problem until it hits his golf course.

When hubris turns fatal, this is the body count. And all they’ve got to offer is a smirk, a hat, and a rehearsed indifference.

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