Trump Backs Kristi Noem’s Disastrous Texas Response for Dumbest Reason

Donald Trump said that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s disastrous response to the deadly flooding in Texas was good, actually, because she had been quick to get in front of a camera.

During an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, Trump defended Noem over reports that FEMA’s response was delayed by a policy she instituted requiring her to personally sign off on all DHS expenditures exceeding $100,000. FEMA officials, who were unaware of the new rule, didn’t receive Noem’s go-ahead until Monday, at which point floodwaters had been raging for more than 72 hours.

“I don’t know anything about it. We were right on time. We were there,” Trump said. “In fact, she was the first one I saw on television. She was there right from the beginning, and she would not have needed anything. She had the right to do it, but she was literally the first person I saw on television.”

“That morning, when we all woke up and saw this tragedy that took place during the evening. And she was right on the ball. She’s done a great job,” Trump added.

In Trump’s world, it only matters how something looks, not how it actually is. And despite Noem’s sweeping powers, her primary job has always been simply to appear on television with that tremendous blowout.

On Sunday, as rescue teams sprung into action and FEMA scrambled to assemble aid, Noem posted on Instagram asking her followers to vote for their favorite portrait of her to be used as her official governor’s portrait. (It’s worth remembering that as governor of South Dakota, Noem was banned from 20 percent of the land by the state’s nine federally recognized Indigenous tribes.)

The next day, Noem finally got around to signing for Texas’s requests for aerial imagery to help with search and rescue efforts. But oh gee, what portrait did she pick?

Governor Greg Abbott is trying to further gerrymander Texas while his state recovers from some of the deadliest flooding in its history.

On Wednesday, Abbott told state lawmakers to begin the redistricting process as he positions Republicans to maintain control of the House in 2026. This directive has come straight from President Trump, who is desperately urging states to find ways to create more Republican seats under the guise that the current maps are “unconstitutional.”

Abbott’s directive has drawn the ire of leaders across the state—as well as nationally.

“While Texans battle tragic and deadly flooding, Governor Abbott and House Republicans are plotting a mid-decade gerrymander,” Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote Wednesday on X. “They should be modernizing emergency response—not rigging maps.”

Democratic state Representative Gina Hinojosa described the move as a “blatant partisan power grab.”

“I’ve been disappointed in this governor before. But I’ve never been so thoroughly disgusted,” Hinojosa said. “The governor is so heartless as to do this right now?”

At least 120 people have been confirmed dead in the flash flooding, and at least 170 are still missing at the time of this writing. And while Republicans across the country chide Democrats, calling their legitimate questions around emergency response an attempt to “politicize” the situation, the governor himself is more concerned with politics as usual.

Joe Rogan, podcaster and prominent supporter of Donald Trump’s presidential bid, is souring on the administration’s immigration agenda.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Rogan, who dined with the president on June 30, “has discussed immigration policy with Trump and pushed him to back off deporting workers who have not committed crimes.”

In a podcast episode that aired three days after their dinner, Rogan expressed a sense of betrayal, saying, “We were told there would be no—well, there’s two things that are insane. One is the targeting of migrant workers. Not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers. Just construction workers showing up in construction sites and raiding them. Gardeners. Like, really?”

Rogan agreed too when his guest, Replit CEO Amjad Masad, denounced Trump’s targeting of pro-Palestinian students.

The podcaster has criticized Trump’s immigration policy since at least March, when he publicly decried the deportation of Andry José Hernández Romero, a Venezuelan makeup artist who sought asylum in the U.S. to avoid persecution for being gay, and whom the Trump administration spuriously accused of being a gang member. Romero was sent to the maximum-security CECOT prison in El Salvador.

“That’s bad for the cause,” Rogan said at the time. “The cause is, ‘Let’s get the gang members out,’ everybody agrees. But let’s not let innocent gay hairdressers get lumped up with the gangs.”

In a June podcast episode, Rogan expressed further frustration with Trump’s targeting of noncriminals, telling his guest that Trump would not have been elected if he’d announced, “We’re gonna go to Home Depot, and we’re going to arrest all the people at Home Depot. We’re going to go to construction sites, and we’re going to just, like, tackle people at construction sites.”

MAGA in recent days has been forced to reckon with the worrisome implications of Trump’s promised mass deportations, which the president touts as a means to root out violent criminals, while undocumented immigrants who haven’t committed crimes have faced the brunt of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s increasingly aggressive operations.

Then there’s the fact that mass deportations would spell disaster for the U.S. economy and food supply—which led Trump to propose a carve-out for undocumented immigrant farmworkers. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, however, promised there’d be “no amnesty,” instead floating the fatuous idea that nonworking Medicaid recipients could replace deported farmworkers.

Many hard-liners want to throw civil liberties, not to mention the economy, to the wind, to allow deportations to proceed full speed ahead. Others, like Rogan, are growing wary.

Senator John Fetterman has once again turned his back on undocumented immigrants with the rubber stamp from Donald Trump.

“ICE performs an important job for our country,” Fetterman wrote on X Thursday. “Any calls to abolish ICE are 💯 inappropriate and outrageous.”

But “Abolish ICE” has long been a slogan used by the exact kind of progressives who first got Fetterman elected to the Senate in 2022. Since then, the so-called Democrat has betrayed his own voter base time and time again by supporting Trump’s efforts to target and deport undocumented immigrants (even though his own wife, Gisele, was undocumented). But now, Fetterman appears to have been emboldened by the president’s support.

On Wednesday, Fetterman defended ICE officers following an allegedly coordinated attack on an ICE facility in Texas.

“Absolutely unacceptable. Terrible. Awful,” Fetterman said. “ICE agents are just doing their job and I fully support that. For me and people in my party, you know, to abolish it or treat them as criminals or anything, that’s inappropriate and outrageous. ICE performs an important, an important job for our nation.”

During a meeting at the White House with African leaders Wednesday, Trump openly agreed with the Democrat. “The new John Fetterman is exactly what you said—he’s right, he’s right,” Trump said. “And we have to protect our police officers, and we will, and we have been.”

Fetterman told the Daily Mail the following day that the president’s comments “made [his] parents proud.”

“They’re big Fox News viewers,” Fetterman continued. “My whole family is Republican.”

A few hours later, he posted on X reiterating his statement and condemning calls to abolish ICE.

But not everyone was feeling pride. Annie Wu Henry, who ran the Fetterman campaign’s social media, responded to Fetterman’s latest post on X by sharing a campaign video where the Democrat took the opposite view when discussing his own family.

“Ya know, I was asked, ‘Your wife’s family broke the law, what do you think of that?’ And I said, ‘Well I’m so grateful that they did because if they didn’t have the courage to take that step I wouldn’t have the three beautiful children that I have today,’” Fetterman said in the voiceover.

Texas State Senator Angela Paxton has filed for divorce from her husband, Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who has long faced accusations of infidelity and corruption. Senator Paxton blamed the split squarely on her husband’s cheating, while the attorney general blamed the split on “the pressures of countless political attacks.”

“Today, after 38 years of marriage, I filed for divorce on biblical grounds. I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation. But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage,” Senator Paxton wrote on X. “I move forward with complete confidence that God is always working everything together for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose.”

Those “recent discoveries” were the adultery that the senator accused her husband of in her divorce petition. The petition also noted the two had stopped living together in June 2024.

The attorney general made it seem like it was the stress of political office rather than his sleeping with other people that caused Senator Paxton to file for divorce.

“After facing the pressures of countless political attacks and public scrutiny, Angela and I have decided to start a new chapter in our lives,” he wrote on X. “I could not be any more proud or grateful for the incredible family that God has blessed us with, and I remain committed to supporting our amazing children and grandchildren. I ask for your prayers and privacy at this time.”

This is extremely avoidant language from the attorney general, who just two years ago was impeached by the Texas state Assembly for allegedly securing a job for the woman he was having an affair with. He was eventually acquitted. Attorney General Paxton is currently campaigning for the Senate himself against John Cornyn.