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

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4 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

President Trump Taps Dr. Ben Carson for New Role — A HUGE Win for America First Agenda

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8 hours ago

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September 25, 2025

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Dr. Ben Carson is the newest member of the Trump administration.

On Wednesday, former Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, was sworn in as the national adviser for nutrition, health, and housing at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins shared that Carson’s role will be to oversee Trump’s new Big Beautiful Bill law, which aims to ensure Americans’ quality of life, from nutrition to stable housing.

After being sworn in, Carson shared, “Today, too many Americans are suffering from the effects of poor nutrition. Through common-sense policymaking, we have an opportunity to give our most vulnerable families the tools they need to flourish.”

Table of Contents

WATCH:

Per USDA:

Today, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins announced that Dr. Benjamin S. Carson, Sr., M.D., was sworn in as the National Advisor for Nutrition, Health, and Housing at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

“There is no one more qualified than Dr. Carson to advise on policies that improve Americans’ everyday quality of life, from nutrition to healthcare quality to ensuring families have access to safe and stable housing,” said Secretary Rollins.

“With six in ten Americans living with at least one chronic disease, and rural communities facing unique challenges with respect to adequate housing, Dr. Carson’s insight and experience is critical. Dr. Carson will be crucial to implementing the rural health investment provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill and advise on America First polices related to nutrition, health, and housing.

“As the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the first Trump Administration, Dr. Carson worked to expand opportunity and strengthen communities, and we are honored to welcome him to the second Trump Administration to help lead our efforts here at USDA to Make America Healthy Again and ensure rural America continues to prosper.”

“Today, too many Americans are suffering from the effects of poor nutrition. Through common-sense policymaking, we have an opportunity to give our most vulnerable families the tools they need to flourish,” said Dr. Ben Carson. “I am honored to work with Secretary Rollins on these important initiatives to help fulfill President Trump’s vision for a healthier, stronger America.”

On Sunday, Dr. Carson was one of the many speakers at the memorial service of the late TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk.

During the memorial service, Carson highlighted that Kirk was shot at 12:24 p.m. and then continued to share the Bible verse John 12:24, which reads, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

WATCH:

The post President Trump Taps Dr. Ben Carson for New Role — A HUGE Win for America First Agenda appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Politics

LEAKED MEMO: Deep State Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia Claim There Isn’t Enough Evidence to Convict Comey Amid Reports of Imminent Indictment

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8 hours ago

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September 25, 2025

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On Wednesday evening, disgruntled officials in the Eastern District of Virginia leaked contents of a memo explaining why charges should not be brought against James Comey.

As reported earlier, former FBI Director James Comey is expected to be indicted in the Eastern District of Virginia in the next few days.

Comey will reportedly be charged for lying to Congress in a 2020 testimony about whether he authorized leaks to the media.

Officials in the Eastern District of Virginia are still fighting to stop Comey from being charged after Trump fired US Attorney Erik Siebert.

President Trump last week fired Erik Siebert as the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia because he refused to bring charges against Letitia James, Comey, Schiff and others.

On Saturday evening, President Trump announced that he had appointed Lindsey Halligan – his personal attorney who defended him against the Mar-a-Lago raid – as US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Now, with just days to go before the statute of limitations runs out to charge Comey for lying during a September 30, 2020 testimony, Lindsey Halligan is reportedly gearing up to indict Comey.

Prosecutors reportedly gave newly sworn-in Halligan a memo defending James Comey and explaining why charges should not brought against the fired FBI Director.

Per MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian:

Two sources familiar with the matter tell me prosecutors in the EDVA US attorney‘s office presented newly sworn US attorney Lindsey Halligan with a memo explaining why charges should not be brought against James Comey, because there isn’t enough evidence to establish probable cause a crime was committed, let alone enough to convince a jury to convict him.

Justice Department guidelines say a case should not be brought unless prosecutors believe it’s more likely than not that they can win a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.

The post LEAKED MEMO: Deep State Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia Claim There Isn’t Enough Evidence to Convict Comey Amid Reports of Imminent Indictment appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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Nearly 8 in 10 Voters Say the United States is in Political Crisis After the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

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9 hours ago

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September 25, 2025

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Nearly eight in ten voters believe that the United States is in a political crisis in the wake of the assassination of conservative icon Charlie Kirk.

According to a Quinnipiac University national poll of registered voters released on Wednesday, a massive 93 percent of Democrats, 84 percent of independents, and 60 percent of Republicans said the nation is in a political crisis.

“The Kirk assassination lays bare raw, bipartisan concerns about where the country is headed,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy said of the poll results.

Quinnipiac reports:

Seventy-one percent of voters think politically motivated violence in the United States today is a very serious problem, 22 percent think it is a somewhat serious problem, 3 percent think it is a not so serious problem, and 1 percent think it is not a problem at all.

This is a jump from Quinnipiac University’s June 26 poll when 54 percent thought politically motivated violence in the United States today was a very serious problem, 37 percent thought it was a somewhat serious problem, 6 percent thought it was a not so serious problem, and 2 percent thought it was not a problem at all.

Nearly 6 in 10 voters (58 percent) think it will not be possible to lower the temperature on political rhetoric and speech in the United States, while 34 percent think it will be possible.

Over half, 54 percent, of voters believe the US will see increased political violence over the next few years. Another 27 percent said they think it will stay “about the same,” while just 14 percent believe it will ease.

A 53 percent majority also said they are “pessimistic about freedom of speech being protected in the United States.”

Surprisingly, a 53 percent majority also believes the current system of democracy is not working.

“From a perceived assault on freedom of speech to the fragility of the democracy, a shudder of concern and pessimism rattles a broad swath of the electorate. Nearly 80 percent of registered voters feel they are witnessing a political crisis, seven in ten say political violence is a very serious problem, and a majority say this discord won’t go away anytime soon,” Malloy added.

The vast majority, 82 percent, said the way that people discuss politics is contributing to the violence.

“When asked if political discourse is contributing to violence, a rare meeting of the minds…Republicans, Democrats, and independents in equal numbers say yes, it is,” Malloy said.

The survey was conducted from September 18 to 21 among 1,276 registered voters with a margin of error of +/- 3.3 percentage points.

The post Nearly 8 in 10 Voters Say the United States is in Political Crisis After the Assassination of Charlie Kirk appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

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