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FEMA’s Woke Disaster: $2 Billion Fraud, Reverse Discrimination, and Retaliation Buried for Six Years

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3 months ago

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(U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Greydon Furstenau)

For six years, FEMA has quietly buried one of the worst scandals in federal disaster response—a toxic mix of reverse discrimination, fraud, and whistleblower retaliation tied to the Hurricane Maria recovery in Puerto Rico. I led the contractor team that uncovered it firsthand.

In 2018, I deployed as the technical lead of a Lean Six Sigma team made up of straight, older, white veterans and executives.

Our mission was to bring order, transparency, and efficiency to a FEMA operation crippled by dysfunction. What we found was not just inefficiency—it was corruption: theft, favoritism, and rot embedded deep in FEMA’s culture.

We documented widespread violations of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Anti-Deficiency Act.

FEMA leadership stole contractor-developed intellectual property and inflated performance metrics in a $1.5 billion scheme to mislead Congress.

Unqualified personnel were promoted—not for merit, but for checking the right identity boxes. This was not mismanagement. It was deliberate.

FEMA’s culture was dominated by DEI politics—identity trumped merit, and promotions were rigged. One insider told us: “Straight white men are at the bottom here.” That was not just talk. It was policy.

At the heart of it was a tight-knit special interest group dubbed internally by FEMA insiders the “LGBTQ Mafia.”

They wielded outsized influence, shielded by management and FEMA’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and FOIA offices, which buried complaints and blocked accountability.

A two-story Pride flag was unfurled in the FEMA Joint Recovery Office—while requests by Alcoholics Anonymous members and religious employees to form special interest groups were denied.

We were pressured by prime contractor ATCS Plc to hire an LGBTQ consultant—regardless of qualifications—just to appease FEMA’s internal clique.

Our team became a target. We faced reverse discrimination and internal sabotage—both overt and subtle—because of who we were and what we exposed.

FEMA’s insiders resented our demographic and refusal to play along. The moment we began challenging the status quo, the knives came out.

FEMA’s misuse of DEI did not just hurt outsiders. It failed the very communities it claimed to help. FEMA’s 80% local hire mandate filled recovery roles with unqualified workers, most with no emergency management experience.

The result? Incompetence, chaos, and a recovery effort that fell years behind schedule, leaving communities in limbo.

When we blew the whistle, FEMA immediately retaliated—terminating our contract, erasing over $100 million in potential efficiency gains, and killing a game-changing Digital Site Inspection Tool.

It could have saved 500,000 man-hours, slashed aid delivery time by 90%, and scaled to future disasters.

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) eventually substantiated our retaliation complaint—a rare outcome.

Yet it ignored nearly $2 billion in documented waste, fraud, and abuse we also uncovered.

Worse, DHS’s Office of General Counsel, FEMA’s Contracting Office, and the DHS Whistleblower Protection Unit shielded bad actors.

ATCS Plc and FEMA employees who stole IP, falsified records, and targeted whistleblowers continue to be protected—not punished.

To date, we have filed seven lawsuits—three naming FEMA directly. I have briefed over 50 members of Congress and discussed the malfeasance with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Still, FEMA’s culture of retaliation and obstruction remains intact. The FOIA office withheld records from whistleblowers and Congress. The EEO office buried complaints.

FEMA knows what happened—discrimination, retaliation, and IP theft—but did nothing. Unfortunately, FEMA’s lawyers continue to hide behind procedural games, dodging the facts while quibbling over technicalities.

One FEMA attorney, after receiving multiple extensions from us, denied my team a routine filing extension out of spite—for other articles I wrote.

What FEMA did was not just unethical, it was catastrophic for Puerto Rico and for taxpayers. Maria was FEMA’s second-largest disaster, and our team had more insight than anyone on the island. We were positioned to fix it. Instead, we were eliminated for telling the truth.

This is not just a FEMA problem. It is a warning. Across government, DEI is being weaponized, whistleblowers are silenced, and unqualified ideologues are being installed in positions of power. At FEMA, where lives are on the line, the cost is not just dollars, it is disaster.

In quality management, the Japanese use a phrase—walking the Gemba—to describe going to the actual place where work is done, seeing problems firsthand, and fixing them at the root.

At FEMA, no one walks the Gemba. They hide defects. They punish those who speak up. They protect the rot. It reminds me of another Japanese saying: “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.”

FEMA is not broken from lack of tools—it is broken by culture: fraud hidden, failure tolerated, integrity punished. It cannot be reformed from within.

The agency will continue to waste billions, fail in its mission, and destroy the lives of those who try to fix it.

Trump needs to consider devolving disaster recovery to the states and dismantling FEMA entirely. FEMA has become the middleman in a bad drug deal: bloated, corrupt, and obstructive.

Eliminating it would not create chaos—it would eliminate the bureaucracy and inefficiency that have plagued disaster response for decades.

Using block grants and putting recovery in the hands of states would allow them to tailor solutions to their specific needs at far lower cost, with far greater incentive to get it right.

Barry Angeline: retired corporate executive with over 30 years’ experience in process improvement at organizations like GE, Sun Microsystems, Time Warner,  the USMC, and US army. Holds multiple awards for quality management, several patents and has publications in performance management. He holds a BS and MS degrees in chemical engineering from Case Western Reserve University and was awarded an MBA with Distinction from the Manchester Business School in the UK. Technical leader for the FEMA Lean Six Sigma deployment in Puerto Rico.

Dan McCabe (USA Ret.):  awarded two Bronze Star Medals. Army armor officer and two-tour veteran of OIF-1. After retirement, worked with US and Iraqi flag officers and US Department of State in transferring US security training operations over from Army to State, and then to the Iraqi government. He holds a BS in history from Oregon State University and an MS is Strategic Studies from the US Army War College. Senior consultant for the FEMA Lean Six Sigma deployment in Puerto Rico.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Gateway Pundit.

The post FEMA’s Woke Disaster: $2 Billion Fraud, Reverse Discrimination, and Retaliation Buried for Six Years appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Politics

Former AOC Campaign Organizer Arrested Over Terror Threats Against Jewish High School

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21 hours ago

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August 10, 2025

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Photo: Ståle Grut NRKbeta

A former campaign organizer for Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been charged over alleged terror threats she made against a Jewish high school.

Iman Abdul, who previously worked as a youth organizer for AOC, was arrested on Friday for allegedly urging her 25,000 social media followers to “attack” the Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences in Manhattan Beach.

“If anyone needs a public school in NYC to attack for whatever reason … Lexus driving Israhell (sic) loving Zionisits (sic) all attend here,” she wrote in a social media post, which has since been deleted.

“They’ve all gone on ‘Birthright,’” she added added, referencing a program that provides free 10-day trips to Israel for young Jews.

The post in question showed the location of the school on Google Maps so that her followers could locate it.

According to The New York Post, officers from the New York Police Department (NYPD) took Abdul into custody at her Brooklyn residence on Friday.

She was later charged with making her making terror threats, aggravated harassment, threatening mass harm, and endangering the welfare of children

In the summer of 2018, she was involved in the Democratic primary campaigns of progressive figures Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and state Senator Julia Salazar, even serving as a paid canvasser for Salazar.

Abdul’s post was first flagged by the online campaign group StopAntisemitsm, who said she should be “prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

She later messaged the group directly, where she denied having made physical threats of violence.

“I never called for an attack on the school in the sense of mass organization or not even individual people attacking individuals, that’s literally stupid,” she wrote.

“I called for an attack on the school, the Zionist institution funded by our public dollars … we have every right to verbally attack the school.”

She has since deleted all her social media accounts and is expected in court at a later date.

The post Former AOC Campaign Organizer Arrested Over Terror Threats Against Jewish High School appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Jimmy Kimmel Blames ‘Repulsive’ Liberal Activists For Trump’s Return to Power (VIDEO)

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21 hours ago

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August 10, 2025

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Late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel has blamed “repulsive” liberal activists for enabling President Donald Trump’s return to power.

During an appearance on the Sarah Silverman Podcast on Thursday, Kimmel said without a shred of irony that “loud voices” had scared people away from the Democratic Party.

“I’s not the party. It’s not the majority,” Kimmel insisted. “ It’s the loud voices that scare people from saying what they believe and make you think twice about a joke or whatever.”

“You know, a lot of their points are valid, but a lot of them are also just repulsive, in that they repel people,” he continued.

“They go like, ‘Oh, you’re no fun. I don’t want to be around you.’ And I think that if you had to boil it down to one thing, that’s kind of what it is.”

It is not the first time that Kimmel, who is himself a committed left-wing activist, has accused humorless liberals of costing the Democrats the 2024 election.

“I think a lot of the outrage is completely manufactured, and it’s like, a lot of these people who are angry aren’t really angry,” Kimmel said back in April.

”I think these liberals who’ve done such a good job of viciously attacking comedians are a big part of the reason why Trump is the president right now.”

So Close, Yet So Far: Jimmy Kimmel Actually Nails 1 Reason Trump’s Winning

Following Trump’s victory last November, Kimmel choked up on air as he moaned about the “hard-working immigrants” who might be deported under the administration.

Last month, Kimmel had a social media meltdown after his fellow late-night comedian Stephen Colbert was canned by CBS.

“Love you, Stephen. Fuck you and all your Sheldons CBS,” he wrote at the time.

President Trump, meanwhile, warned that Kimmel may well be next on the chopping block.

“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” Trump wrote after hearing the news of Colbert’s firing. “His talent was even less than his ratings.”

“I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert!” he continued.

The post Jimmy Kimmel Blames ‘Repulsive’ Liberal Activists For Trump’s Return to Power (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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National Security Advisers From Europe and Ukraine Hold Meeting Today in England, Hosted by UK Foreign Secretary Lammy and US Vice President Vance

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21 hours ago

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August 10, 2025

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UK’s Lammy and US Vice-President Vance will host the European and Ukrainian ‘allies’ for a meeting today.

As we have reported previously, Vice President JD Vance’s holiday in the UK is actually filled with relevant work pushing President Donald J. Trump’s foreign policy.

Today, a meeting of National Security Advisers from the US, UK, as well as European ‘allies’ and Ukrainians, is being held, hosted by Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Vance.

The meeting is taking place at Chevening, Secretary Lammy’s ‘official country residence’ in Kent where Vance is staying during his days in the UK.

Daily Mail reported:

“The aim of the meeting is to bring together advisors from the US, Europe and Ukraine – it is understood to have been requested by the US.

A Downing Street spokesperson said that Keir Starmer and Volodymyr Zelensky agreed the meeting would be a ‘vital forum to discuss progress towards securing a just and lasting peace’.

‘Both leaders welcomed President Trump’s desire to bring this barbaric war to an end and agreed that we must keep up the pressure on Putin to end his illegal war,’ the spokesperson added.”

This meeting follows the news that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a peace summit in Alaska on August 15.

“’The highly anticipated meeting between myself, as President of the United States of America, and President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, will take place next Friday, August 15, 2025, in the Great State of Alaska,’ Trump wrote. ‘Further details to follow. Thank you for your attention to this matter!’”

This stay by Vance highlights that Foreign Secretary Lammy has somehow managed to become closer to the Trump administration, having previously called the president a ‘Neo-Nazi sympathizing sociopath’.

Read more:

VP Vance Warns UK Foreign Secretary Lammy: Do NOT Go Down ‘Very Dark Path’ of Censorship

The post National Security Advisers From Europe and Ukraine Hold Meeting Today in England, Hosted by UK Foreign Secretary Lammy and US Vice President Vance appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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