Trump: ‘I hope they now go and take a look at the oranges, the oranges of the investigation,’ IT’S HAPPENING: “Some of those tasks will be kind of orange-like tasks,- David Richardson head of FEMA who didn’t know there’s a hurricane season

 “Several top FEMA officials have departed the agency in recent weeks, as Richardson has brought on staff from the Department of Homeland Security, according to personnel announcement emails sent to agency employees. Those DHS officials, many of whom don’t have emergency-management experience, have been largely in charge of crafting the agency’s new approach, according to people familiar with the matter. 

During a May meeting, Richardson said the agency needs to break its goals into various tasks, which he explained using fruit metaphors.

“Some of those tasks will be kind of orange-like tasks,” he said, according to a video recording of the meeting viewed by the Journal. “And by orange, I mean the fruit orange, but they might be tangerines, they might be blood oranges, it might just be a little bit grapefruity, all those will go in one bin.”

MORE AT:

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

FEMA Scraps New Hurricane Plan and Reverts to Last Year’s

Agency’s leader suggested he recently learned there was an annual hurricane season

By Scott Patterson and Tarini Parti

Updated June 2, 2025, 6:23 pm EDT

“President Trump and top White House officials have accused FEMA of failing to adequately respond to disasters. They argue states could do a better job of administering disaster relief money. The president said at a fundraiser last year that he believed he believed the private sector could rebuild more cheaply after hurricanes.”

We already tried private sector rebuilding after a hurricane: 

 

“On both the federal and local levels, inadequate contract oversight and lack of cost controls provided opportunities for private contractors to siphon public resources and exploit government agencies to further their profiteering interests and accumulation agendas.”

 

Disaster, Inc.: Privatization and Post-Katrina Rebuilding in New Orleans

“This paper examines the problems and limitations of the privatization of federal and local disaster recovery policies and services following the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The paper discusses the significance of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 in accelerating efforts to devolve and privatize emergency management functions; the reorganization of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as a service purchaser and arranger; and the efforts by the New Orleans city government to contract out disaster recovery activities to private firms. I situate and explain these three developments in the context of recent trends toward the neoliberalization of state activities, including the privatization and devolution of policy implementation to private firms and non-governmental organizations. On both the federal and local levels, inadequate contract oversight and lack of cost controls provided opportunities for private contractors to siphon public resources and exploit government agencies to further their profiteering interests and accumulation agendas. This article demonstrates how the privatization of emergency management services and policy constitutes a new regulatory project in which the state's role has shifted away from providing aid to disaster victims and toward the management and coordination of services delivered by private contractors.”