Kirsti Noem told FEMA agents they weren’t allowed to say “ice” during last month’s winter storm, as she sought distance from her disastrous immigration crackdown in Minnesota.
Noem demanded FEMA deliver a robust response to the freezing conditions that blanketed much of the country in January, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. She allegedly hoped it would generate some favorable press for her, despite having been an outspoken advocate for drastically downsizing the agency until then.
“If FEMA says, ‘Keep off the roads if you see ice,’ it would be easy for the public to meme it,” a source told CNN, which first reported the guidance. “I think it’s a dangerous precedent to set. If we can’t use clear language to help prepare Americans, then people may be left vulnerable and could suffer.”
The network reported, via sources, that FEMA staff, who are overseen by DHS, were told to use phrases like “freezing rain” instead.
Noem was looking for ways to showcase her leadership beyond immigration enforcement, sources told the Journal in a far-reaching expose on the department.
The Minnesota crackdown had become increasingly unpopular, raised fears over due process and malpractice, and led to the deaths of U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37.
The scandal in the north became a flashpoint in President Donald Trump’s broader deportation push, leading to the firing of Noem’s “commander at large,” Gregory Bovino, and mounting scrutiny of her job.
FEMA employees were shocked when Noem arrived at their headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 23, sources told the Journal and CNN, for her first in-person briefing with the agency since taking office more than a year earlier. The outlet reports, citing sources, that she had previously taken a hands-off approach to all storms.
“I was shocked she showed up after all the s--t we’ve been put through and what she’s said,” a FEMA official told CNN at the time.
ICE Barbie, so called by the Daily Beast for her penchant for cosplaying as a member of whatever agency she is visiting, had also spent much of the previous 12 months trying to make states pick up the slack for disaster response, the Journal reports.
Her scheme sought to shrink FEMA and shift responsibility to more local governments, but when the storm approached, agents were allegedly suddenly told to assist states and ask them what they needed.
The ploy had previously involved withholding disaster funds from the needy, but in January, $2.2 billion was swiftly released to support the storm response nationwide.
Following the shooting of Pretti at the hands of ICE agents, Noem tried to keep her press briefing on-message: the storm.
She carried out the briefing from FEMA’s headquarters, surrounded by carefully arranged emergency response equipment, from where she labelled the slain ICU nurse a “domestic terrorist.”
“Violence against a government because of ideological reasons and for reasons to resist and to perpetuate violence. That is the definition of domestic terrorism,” she said.
In a reused statement to the Daily Beast, a FEMA spokesperson said: “‘Reporting’ like this reads like a desperate ploy for clickbait rather than real journalism that actually gives Americans disaster preparedness information that could save lives. FEMA will use correct and accurate descriptors of weather conditions to communicate clearly to the American people.”
