MAGA Senator Blows Up Kristi Noem’s Claims on Delaying Disaster Aid

One MAGA lawmaker has had enough of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s “stonewalling” requests for funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Speaking with CNN’s Ted Barrett Tuesday, Republican Senator Ted Budd slammed Noem for slowing the disbursement of FEMA funding to North Carolina residents still suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

Congress had appropriated an estimated $5.95 billion to North Carolina for Helene recovery in December 2024, through the American Relief Act of 2025.

“But now here we are, nine months later, we still haven’t seen the reimbursements,” Budd said. As of June, his state was still waiting on $4.2 billion, according to a report from the governor’s office.

Budd specifically pointed to a policy Noem instituted that required her to personally sign off on all DHS expenditures exceeding $100,000. “I know that in each county, every item almost is over $100,000,” Budd explained. “That’s every single thing that runs through a rather significant agency.”

Last week, local officials in western North Carolina also sounded the alarm on the funding “bottleneck” Noem had created.

Noem has been widely criticised for the pitifully delayed response to the deadly flooding in Texas earlier this summer, when her policy slowed the deployment of Urban Search and Rescue Squads and left emergency call centers empty. Noem dismissed the reporting as “fake news,” even as her disastrous disaster management led the head of FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue Branch to resign.

Budd said he intended to play ball. “We’ve let leadership know we’re going to place holds on all DHS nominees until we get an appropriate dialog and response on the outstanding invoices that have not been paid to western North Carolina from FEMA,” Budd said.

“Choke-holding this thing or stonewalling states that are hurt by hurricanes is not the way to get rid of waste fraud and abuse,” he said.

When asked whether he’d reached out to Noem to change her policy, Budd said he’d had “some difficulty” getting ahold of her. “And I can tell you that every other Cabinet secretary has been wonderful to work with and very easy to work with, and I look forward to that from Secretary Noem,” he said.

Budd’s threat may have already gotten the ball rolling.

Noem announced Tuesday that the Department of Homeland Security would disburse more than $12 million to support North Carolina’s recovery, as part of the $322 million promised by the Trump administration. In a statement, DHS lauded Budd and RNC Chairman Michael Whatley for “delivering swift, decisive action to restore our communities.”

In a post on X, Budd said he was “grateful” to President Donald Trump for “weighing in to fast-track” the funds. “I look forward to hearing from @Sec_Noem on how we can work together to ensure WNC projects quickly receive promised federal funds,” he wrote.

Now it’s a matter of whether state agencies actually see the funds allocated by DHS—or not. And it seems that North Carolina is still a long way from the billions it was promised.

One of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims has tied a sordid detail from his 50th birthday book to a memory from her real-life trauma.

Speaking with CNN Tuesday, Epstein survivor Jess Michaels connected a drawing in the notorious book to a joke Epstein made when she was being “trained” by the pedophilic sex trafficker.

“In 1991, there was something that he did when I was there initially training me to do massage, as he had trained a very dear friend who trusted him, spoke highly of him and directed me to him,” Michaels said, identifying herself as one of Epstein’s earliest known survivors.

“And during that time where he was training me and we were talking about massage, at one point, it devolves into sexual jokes, and one of the jokes started with that in other countries, you know, it can be a little different,” Michaels continued. “You don’t just have one masseuse, you have three. You have one at your head, one at your feet, and one in the middle. Hahaha.”

The drawing from Epstein’s birthday book makes a similar reference, depicting Epstein grooming young girls and then, later, receiving massages from them on his shoulders, feet, and—as Michaels put it—“in the middle.”

The image was one of thousands of Epstein-related files released by the House Oversight Committee last week.

“And when I saw that picture, and like I said, I haven’t had many triggers happen,” Michaels explained. “I’ve worked so hard on my own healing and taking responsibility for that. All that put me right back there to what happened next. But I think there’s something really important about it. And you started saying that joke he told in 1991 shows a pattern of behavior, that’s clearly depicted in that cartoon.”

Epstein’s birthday book was compiled by his longtime girlfriend and sex-trafficking associate Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003—long before he was charged or arrested for crimes related to his vast pedophile network. The creator of the drawing is not currently known, though the same cannot be said for the other participants in Epstein’s bicentennial gift.

Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard University professor emeritus who defended Epstein during his first criminal trial, was included in the project, as was billionaire Leslie Wexner, the former CEO of Victoria’s Secret and co-founder of Bath & Body Works. The Wall Street Journal first reported in July that Donald Trump had also penned and signed a letter to the glitterati socialite, referring to Epstein as a “pal” with “wonderful secrets,” inside a crude drawing of a woman’s torso. Trump has vehemently denied that he participated in the birthday gift—but the newly revealed letter appears to indicate otherwise.

Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte is becoming an increasingly significant character in the MAGA-verse, and it’s pissing everyone off.

Politico has reported that GOPers on Capitol Hill are privately fuming that Pulte has punched so far above his weight. The Trump official has managed to achieve inner-circle status as FHFA director, which is usually a more background role.

That contempt only grew stronger after Pulte’s dust-up with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent at a MAGA influencer’s upscale birthday dinner in Washington, D.C., in which the secretary told Pulte he would punch him in his “fucking face” for apparently criticizing him to Trump behind his back. It seems safe to say that many GOP members take after Bessent, and find Pulte irritating at best. 

“I think he’s a nut,” one House Republican told Politico, referring to Pulte.

“The guy’s just a little too big for his britches,” said a second Republican of Pulte. “I’ve got great respect for Bessent for taking him on.”

“I would have done the same,” a third Republican told Politico.

A Republican on the  House Financial Services Committee, which oversees Pulte at the FHFA, also thinks that he is moving too quickly on privatizing mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying that Pulte was “not where the committee is.” 

The fact that Bessent told Pulte he wanted to beat the shit out of him, and party members are on record essentially saying they would have done the same thing, speaks to just how disliked Pulte is. There’s one major exception: President Trump. The president’s affinity for Pulte seems to stem from the FHFA director’s aggressively pro-MAGA social media activity. He is perhaps best known on X, where he tweets something every day to his three million followers.

We’ll see if this internal strife has any real impact on Pulte’s growing influence, as he has been the driving force behind recent mortgage fraud attacks on Senator Adam Schiff, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and most recently Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Cook has denied the allegations and remains at her post. 

The National Guard produced an internal analysis of public opinion on President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of Washington, D.C.—and, spoiler alert, it’s pretty damning.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that an internal “media roll up” analyzing public opinion in social media posts hadn’t produced favorable results for Trump’s decision to deploy more than 2,300 troops in Washington to help with his so-called “public safety emergency.”

The assessment, produced last Friday, found that a vast majority of social posts disapproved of the National Guard’s mission in the nation’s capital. Fifty-three percent of social media posts about the military mission were negative, 45 percent were neutral, and only 2 percent were positive, according to the assessment.

A summary of the assessment said that the most popular videos showed D.C. residents responding to troops with “alarm and indignation.”

“One segment features a local [resident] describing the Guard’s presence as leveraging fear, not security—highlighting widespread discomfort with what many perceive as a show of force,” the summary said.

In addition to residents’ responses, the assessment found that individuals who self-identified as veterans and active duty troops viewed the National Guard’s domestic deployment “with shame and alarm.”

A National Guard official acknowledged that the assessment was legitimate, and claimed it had been accidentally sent to the Post.

The assessment also included highlights such as “mentions of Fatigue, confusion, and demoralization—‘just gardening,’ unclear mission, wedge between citizens and the military.” Some National Guard troops have been roped into helping with Trump’s expensive beautification efforts across the small part of the city that he sees on a daily basis. Servicemembers have been spotted around the National Mall picking up trash and laying out fresh mulch.

In evaluating public sentiment about the legal battle spurred by Trump’s actions, the National Guard found that there was “debate about the legality of the mission, whether it’s needed and if it has been successful,” and criticism of its being “federal overreach and politically motivated.”

That poor sentiment is only likely to fester, as the deployment of National Guard troops has officially been extended to December. Maybe they can help hang Christmas lights?

The Trump administration’s blatant disregard for human life has put Republicans in a tough position.

The U.S. military’s decision last week to kill 11 people aboard a small Venezuelan boat that American officials alleged contained drug shipments has sparked fights within the conservative party. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, for one, said earlier this week he felt compelled to address the attack, particularly after Vice President JD Vance praised the unconstitutional killings.

Paul doubled down Tuesday. In an interview with Fox News, he was forced to explain why killing people without evidence, warrants, or oversight would seed “chaos” as a federal policy, particularly as dozens of boats off of U.S. coasts are stopped, boarded, and searched everyday.

“The reason we board them before we blow the crap out of them is some of them don’t have drugs,” Paul said.

“Think about it this way. This is how people don’t quite get this. Let’s say there’s a house in your neighborhood and they’re all selling fentanyl, and thousands of people are dying, and you’re just so mad,” he continued. “Do you go over there and just kill them or burn them? No, you go to a judge and you get a warrant and you do that. We have an interdiction program.

“We’re talking people speeding along off of Miami. Are we going to just simply blow them up? No, we’re not. I mean, if we were, that would be extraordinary. That would be extraordinary to blow up ships,” Paul said.

In an X post on Saturday, Vance wrote that “killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military.” In a follow-up post, the vice president suggested that the action had protected U.S. citizens from the “scum of the earth.”

When a political commentator noted that killing citizens of another country without due process is a war crime, Vance simply retorted, “I don’t give a shit what you call it.”

President Donald Trump finally decided to step out in Washington, D.C., to prove how safe the city was and was immediately called “the Hitler of our time” to his face. 

On Tuesday night, Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President JD Vance, and other Cabinet members pulled up to Joe’s Seafood, an upscale surf and turf restaurant about a block from the White House.  

The motley crew was both booed and cheered lightly as they entered the restaurant. 

“I wouldn’t have done this three months ago, four months ago, I certainly wouldn’t have done it a year ago,” the president told reporters outside the restaurant. “This was one of the most unsafe cities in the country. Now it’s as safe as there is in the country.”  

Once they got inside, they were met by a group of activists from women’s antiwar group CODEPINK.

In the video, the activists can be heard chanting “Free D.C., Free Palestine, Trump is the Hitler of our time,” while Trump and his Cabinet stand across the room, trying to ignore them. Then Trump comes to the table and stands directly in front of them, smiles wryly and tilts his head, then waves his index finger in their direction as if to say, “Get ’em outta here.” 

 “What do you want your legacy to be?” one woman asked Trump. 

Security began to attempt to herd the women out. They continued to yell directly in the faces of Trump, Rubio, and Hegseth. “All right, time to go!’ security told CODEPINK.

“He is terrorizing communities in D.C., he is terrorizing Gaza, and communities all over the world. To Puerto Rico, to the Philippines!” they said. CODEPINK later put out a press release taking responsibility for the action.  

“Two years into genocide, Gaza is under evacuation orders, Puerto Rico and Venezuela are in the crosshairs, and the Pentagon proudly calls itself the Department of War. Trump looked us in the eyes, and we made sure he would never dine in peace while communities are under siege,” an organizer wrote. 

Trump has been making ridiculous statements for weeks about how everyone in the city was just too afraid of crime to dine out at night before his federal takeover. Now, as he shows how safe it all is by driving barely a block away from the White House, community members have made their dissatisfaction known. 

And regardless of what he says, most D.C. residents report that they don’t feel safer seeing guys in military gear with machine guns on the Metro. 

As for Gaza—Trump has doubled down on U.S. fealty to the Israeli war machine as famine tears through the region. Just yesterday, Israel bombed a neighborhood in Doha, Qatar, in an attempt to kill Hamas leaders, a shocking move of aggression against another close U.S. ally in the Middle East. 

All of that came to a head last night before dinner. But it didn’t seem to disrupt his Cabinet’s appetites much. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who was also in attendance, said the food at Joe’s was “phenomenal.”

The House Oversight Committee’s Monday release of Donald Trump’s disturbing 2003 birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein has sent GOP lawmakers reeling.

Some have unquestioningly swallowed the White House’s dubious denials of its authenticity. Some even suggest it was somehow planted by the Biden administration.

Republican Representative Eric Burlison of Missouri, for his part, expressed his interest in examining the signature on the letter. But when faced with a hard copy, he refused to look.

In a Monday interview aired Tuesday evening on CNN’s Laura Coates Live, reporter Manu Raju asked if he had seen the letter.

“I have not,” Burlison replied. “But I would love to see it, like, matched with his handwriting. It just is really, really, um, wild.” (Despite the Trump administration’s claims, the signature on the 2003 letter is a perfect match for contemporaneous examples of his handwriting.)

As the representative answered, CNN reporter Manu Raju produced a printed copy. “Here’s the letter.”

Looking down, Burlison said, “Yeah, I don’t, I don’t really—I don’t want to see that,” chuckling.

The Missouri representative’s ignorance-is-bliss reaction recalls that of Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who, when asked about the letter and whether he wants “to learn more about Trump’s relationship and friendship with Epstein,” answered, “No. I want to have [FBI] Director [Kash] Patel in next week, where we’ll ask him about all kinds of things.… I haven’t seen it. Don’t buy it.”

Missouri Republican state Representative Tony Harbison rebuked his party on the state House floor for choosing to submit to President Trump’s gerrymandering demands rather than address the actual problems of their constituents.

“The needs are heavy, the list is long. Our plate is full of things that we need to be doing for the people of this state, and this ain’t one of ’em,’” Harbison said on Monday. “I thank you for your time, Mr. Speaker.”

The room immediately erupted with applause.

Even still, the House on Tuesday voted to pass the redistricting effort after Republican Governor Mike Kelhoe called the legislature back at the behest of Trump. The gerrymandered congressional map will now head to the Senate, where Republicans also hold the majority.

The House proposal would split the Democrat-held 5th congressional district into three districts, giving Republicans a 7-to-1 advantage heading into the 2026 midterms.

State Democrats have condemned the move.

“The Missouri GOP is aiding and abetting the systematic destruction of our democracy by an authoritarian regime led by a geriatric conman who knows the only way he can win is to cheat,” House Minority Leader Ashley Aune told The Missouri Independent. Democrats and Missouri NAACP have also argued that it’s unconstitutional to draw congressional maps before the completion of the next census.

Harbison wasn’t the only Republican against the gerrymandering decision, either. Several Republicans came out against it, including Speaker Jon Patterson.

“Unfortunately, it’s not ethics.… It’s not morality. It’s definitely not liberty. It’s just political power,” said Republican Bryant Wolfin. “There’s certainly nothing conservative about ignoring the moral implications of our actions.… Morality is not defined by what is legal. Morality is not defined by what you can get away with.”

The Republican-led state Senate is eager to get it over with and get good news back to Trump in D.C.

“The map and the initiative petition reform measures will strike a huge blow to progressives and their efforts to turn Missouri into California,” Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin wrote Saturday on Facebook. “We are not California. We are not progressives.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt unleashed an angry, nonsensical tirade Tuesday claiming that she’d never said the Jeffrey Epstein files were a “hoax.” 

Actually, she’d said it less than 24 hours before.

On Monday, Leavitt published a statement claiming that Trump had not drawn the crude picture on the birthday note to Epstein, or signed it, writing, “This is FAKE NEWS to perpetuate the Democrat Epstein Hoax!” 

But speaking to reporters at a White House press briefing the next day, Leavitt fumed when asked to explain her claims undermining the Epstein documents. 

“You said the Epstein documents are a hoax the Democrats are perpetrating against the president,” reporter Maggie Haberman of The New York Times asked. “You said he didn’t sign that check, that he didn’t sign the birthday card that he allegedly signed. So, what is the theory, since these documents came from the Epstein estate? Who is, I guess in your view, faking these documents?” 

“I did not say the documents are a hoax,” Leavitt snapped. “I said the entire narrative surrounding Jeffrey Epstein right now that is absorbing many of the liberal cable channels on television is a hoax, that is being perpetuated by opportunistic Democrats—” she ranted.  

“What exactly is the hoax?” Haberman pressed. “I’m just trying to understand what’s fake. What’s fake is not the documents?”

“The hoax is the Democrats pretending to care about victims of crime, when they do not care about victims of crime,” Leavitt explained. “When they have done nothing to solve crimes, when they have done nothing to lock up child pedophiles and child rapists across the country, and when they are now using victims as political props, to again, try and smear the president of the United States—” she went on, lost in the spiral of her own semantic spin.

It seems that by contrast, Trump is not even pretending to care about the victims of crime. Last week, the president described calls to release the documents from survivors of Epstein’s abuse as a “Democrat hoax that never ends.” 

Spin aside, Leavitt seems to know that there is nothing fake about the government’s documents on Epstein—but that conviction doesn’t extend to the ones that might incriminate her boss. 

As the White House flailingly denies the authenticity of Donald Trump’s lewd 2003 birthday note to his then-friend Jeffrey Epstein, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is, apparently, just creating evidence out of whole cloth.

Since the letter was released Monday—as a result of the House Oversight Committee subpoenaing Epstein’s estate—Leavitt and other Trump spokespeople have sought to deny its veracity by arguing that the signature at its close doesn’t match Trump’s current handwriting.

In reality, examples abound of nearly identical signatures by Trump from around the time of the letter’s writing.

Nonetheless, Leavitt dug in her heels at a Tuesday press conference, where she even claimed to have brought receipts: “I have already seen many forensic analysts of signatures coming out. I believe it was The Daily Signal that published a piece with three separate signature analysts who said that this absolutely was not the president’s authentic signature,” the press secretary said.

No such Daily Signal story exists, as Matthew Gertz of Media Matters observed on X. Instead, Leavitt was likely thinking of an article by another conservative website, The Daily Wire. But even that story was a far cry from her description.

The Daily Wire, for instance, did not cite “three separate signature analysts,” It cited three “AI research systems”—which did not remark, at all, on Trump’s signature, but rather compared the diction in the 2003 letter to Trump’s other publicly available writings. The AI models apparently cast doubt on the note’s authenticity, finding it inconsistent with the president’s speech habits (namely, too “sophisticated” for Trump).

And the AI models’ conclusions are quite dubious. For example, although the AI systems flagged that the 2003 letter employs third-person narration, words like “enigma,” and a theatrical opening line (“There must be more to life than having everything”), these by no means prove Trump was not the author.

In July, when The Wall Street Journal first reported on the existence of the letter, Judd Legum of Popular Information showed that each of these elements of the letter are plausible Trumpisms. This is not to mention that The Daily Wire overlooks the fact that one’s verbiage varies depending on context.

The Daily Wire story, in other words, is quite thin gruel—failing in its desperate mission to prove the letter was faked (and certainly not proving that Trump’s signature was forged). It’s no wonder Leavitt had to invent an imaginary article instead.