Kristi Noem Delayed DHS Response to Texas Floods With Outrageous Rule

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is refusing to take responsibility after a report found that she personally instituted a rule that created obstacles in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s response to the deadly floods in Texas over the July 4 weekend.

Per a Thursday CNN report citing four FEMA officials, Noem recently enacted a requirement that DHS expenditures exceeding $100,000 be signed off by her office. As a result, the agency was unable to deploy proactive Urban Search and Rescue squads near anticipated areas of flooding, as it usually would. While state rescue teams sprang into action, “FEMA officials realized they needed Noem’s approval before sending those additional assets”—and they didn’t receive it until Monday, at which point floodwaters had been raging for over 72 hours.

Texas’s request for aerial imagery to help with search and rescue efforts was also “delayed as it awaited Noem’s approval for the necessary contract,” and, at a FEMA-manned disaster call center, “callers have faced longer wait times as the agency awaited Noem’s approval for a contract to bring in additional support staff.”

It’s a damning report describing a policy one former Customs and Border Protection official called “absolutely nuts,” according to Federal News Network.

Noem dismissed the report out of hand during a Thursday morning appearance on Fox and Friends, even laughing when co-host Griff Jenkins brought it up, before fixating on the outlet that published it rather than the direct line FEMA officials drew between her policy and delays in the disaster response.

“Well there you go. Fake news,” Noem said. “CNN, again, is absolutely trash, what they are doing by saying that. Because our Coast Guard, our Border Patrol, [Border Patrol Tactical Unit] teams were there immediately. Every single thing … they asked for, we were there.”

Noem continued, “The fact that CNN is continuing to be political and push out fake information and false information and lies is not shocking, but it’s a disservice to the country. It’s a real disservice to the country because people start to mistrust anything that comes out, then, over the news.”

U.S. permanent resident and reggaeton artist Leamsy Izquierdo has revealed that conditions in “Alligator Alcartraz,” where he is detained, are as inhumane as advertised.

“There’s no water here for people to bathe. I haven’t showered for four days, there’s no water, no toothpaste, they don’t let you out for even a minute to get some air,” said Izquierdo, whose stage name is Leamsy La Figura, in a phone call later shared online by his partner Katia Hernández. “We are in a cage of metal bars with the lights on 24 hours a day, and the mosquitoes seem like elephants.”

Izquierdo has been detained at Alligator Alcatraz since Friday.

“They give us food only once a day, food that has even been infested with worms. The lights are never turned off, they’re on 24 hours a day,” he continued. “And the mosquitoes seem like elephants.”

Izquierdo is a lawful permanent legal resident of the United States, but was scooped up and deported on extremely short notice after he was arrested on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and simple assault in Miami-Dade County on July 2.

“He never attacked anyone,” Hernández told Telemundo 51. “The police didn’t give him time to explain.”

The Trump administration has been very defensive of conditions in their shining concentration camp on a hill.

“The reporting on the conditions in the facility is completely false,” Stephanie Hartman, director of communications for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said to CBS News. “The facility meets all required standards and is in good working order.”

Izquierdo’s case, much like that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and countless other immigrants, shows just how indiscriminate and extrajudicial Trump’s immigration crackdown is. Ordinary people will continue to suffer while Trump and his inner circle delight in their pumped-up detainment and deportation numbers.

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis revealed that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was confirmed because one senator decided to believe his lies. 

During an exclusive interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper Wednesday, Tillis responded to the claim that Kennedy had gone back on his promises to Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, who serves as the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

“The main reason I supported Kennedy was because Bill Cassidy thought that we should see how it plays out,” Tillis said. 

But Cassidy, who had led the charge on Kennedy’s confirmation, had been duped. 

In February, Cassidy had promised before the Senate that, if confirmed, Kennedy would “maintain the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ recommendations without changes.”

But in early June, Kennedy stripped that committee of all of its members. 

In a post on X Monday, Cassidy explained that “now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion.

Cassidy also claimed that Kennedy had “committed that he would work within current vaccine approval and safety monitoring systems and not establish parallel systems,” and that he would not use his position to “wrongfully sow public fear” about vaccines. 

In May, Kennedy announced that he’d made changes to the CDC’s recommended vaccine schedules without ACIP’s input, upending the decades-old consensus-driven method for making recommendations. Kennedy has also repeatedly sown doubts about vaccines, touting conspiracy theories and possible health risks for the measles vaccine amid a massive measles outbreak.  

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official revealed Wednesday that the agency’s efforts to deport foreign students for their purportedly “radical,” pro-Palestinian beliefs relies on Canary Mission—an anonymously run website that seeks to dox and render unemployable students and academics accused (often falsely) of promoting “hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews.”

During a federal trial in which numerous academic groups are challenging Trump’s ideological deportations, ICE official Peter Hatch, who compiles background reports on agency targets, testified that the Department of Homeland Security’s so-called “Tiger Team,” in early 2025, “rapidly compiled over 100 reports based on a list of 5,000 people identified on the Canary Mission website,” the Knight First Amendment Institute reports.

Though there were other sources, Hatch said “most” of the names he was given to investigate came from Canary Mission, CNN reports.

Canary Mission is notorious for frequently conflating pro-Palestinian advocacy or criticisms of Israel with antisemitism. Take, for instance, the case of Tufts University Ph.D. student Rümeysa Öztürk, who in March 2024 wrote a pro-Palestinian op-ed in the school’s newspaper—which was enough to earn her a listing on the website. Then, this March, she was plucked off the street by masked, plainclothes ICE agents, and the agency baselessly accused her of supporting Hamas.

Öztürk’s case and others led many to suspect that Trump’s ICE was taking deportation orders from Canary Mission. Hatch’s testimony confirms as much, and the administration’s reliance on the blacklist, in its modern-day rehash of the first and second Red Scares, only deepens the impression that it is fundamentally hostile to the freedom of speech.

A provision buried deep within Donald Trump’s behemoth budget bill essentially earmarks funds for Anduril, the defense technology company heavily backed by apocalyptic prophet Peter Thiel.

The Intercept reported Wednesday that a provision allocating some of the $6 billion set aside for border tech stipulates that any border surveillance towers must be “tested and accepted by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to deliver autonomous capabilities.”

CBP confirmed to the Intercept that Anduril’s Sentry Tower line, which use “autonomous” capabilities to scan the horizon for objects of interest, were the only towers that currently fit the bill’s requirements.

This provision is a massive blow to competitors with similar products, such as Israeli company Elbit or General Dynamics. It also undermines exactly the kind of competition that the Trump administration has said it hopes to foster in the search for the best AI technology to power the American machine for deportation and death.

Thiel’s Founders Fund contributed $1 billion to Anduril during its most recent fundraising round. Anduril was founded by Palmer Luckey, former Representative Matt Gaetz’s brother-in-law. In April, Anduril took over Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar contract to develop an augmented reality headset program with the U.S. Army, and partnered with Meta to make a range of products for the military.

Trump’s budget, which was signed into law last week, provided a whopping $165 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, including $46.5 billion for new border wall construction, $3.2 billion for new technology, and $2.7 billion for new border surveillance.