What I Think About What Other People Say (WITAWOPS)

In both 1812 and in 2026, Venezuela was rocked by devastating earthquakes and the US responded. Both times, without USAID because it did not exist. I've traced what happens whenever the United States decides whether, and how, to spend the taxpayer's money on people who aren't citizens or permanent residents. Madison and Haitian refugees in 1794. Polk and the Irish famine in 1847. FEMA, DHS, and non-citizen migrants in Washington State this year.  But our bizarre response to the 2026 disaster warrants a deeper dive. It echoed research I had conducted a decade ago for an unpublished manuscript when I ran across a bill that historians affectionately call America's First Foreign Aid Act. That was Congress’s response to the 1812 earthquake. Image by Magnific 1812: Madison flip-flops  Caracas was hit by an earthquake in March 1812 during Venezuela's fight for independence from Spain. The US Congress debated relief in April, focusing primarily on whether the aid would actu...

Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta and the Duwamish tribal may have had different conquerors, in different centuries, and on different continents, but did they have one thing in common? Did they sell out their neighboring tribes?  "The Great Chief above who made the country made it for all." — attributed to Chief Seattle (Si'ahl), Point Elliott Treaty negotiations, January 1855 “Mau Mau was a disease which had been eradicated, and must never be remembered again.” — Jomo Kenyatta, 1962 Made by ChatGPT, July 2026 What do I think Every colonized people needs a Kenyatta or a Si'ahl … or Mandela, Gandhi, and Jinnah. These revered leaders bravely step forward, distancing themselves from the freedom fighters to put their marks on the paper the colonialist hands them. In doing so, each buys his own people a seat at a power table. History rewards him with a country or city named after him. But history is less kind to the neighbors he signed away in the process. Is this pro...

Quick quiz for my fellow Eastsiders: what do you call the flat, slow-moving waterway between Lake Sammamish and Lake Washington that you bike, run, or kayak along every summer? If you said "river," you're only sort of right. If you said "slough," you're also only sort of right. The U.S. Geological Service (USGS) calls it the Sammamish River. The river supplies 27% of Lake Washington’s water. Longtime locals still call it the Sammamish Slough. Old maps call it the Squak Slough. Nobody, apparently, felt like settling this before naming an annual hydroplane race after it. Image by Galeeb Kachra So which is it? Technically, a slough is a slow, marshy, meandering channel — which is exactly what this waterway was for most of its existence. It wound through a wide, swampy valley for 30 miles. What you see today, a tidy, 10-to-14-mile, laser-straight ditch with a bike trail on top, is a river only in the sense that a canal is a river. Both run where engineers told t...

I'd love to help, but where in the Constitution does it say Congress can spend the people's money on charity? The Senate majority leader has done it. Probably more explicitly than I had expected in feeding the President’s agenda. On the topic of supporting non-resident immigrants, he stated that he "could not undertake to lay his finger on that article in the Federal constitution, which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." He warned that if Congress "once broke the line laid down before them... it was impossible to say, to what lengths they might go." But in May 2026, the Court rebuked the Executive (FEMA/DHS) for pedaling back across the line! What's going on? Designed by Graphiqastock / Freepik http://www.freepik.com FEMA Loses Again On May 26, 2026, Judge Barbara Rothstein handed Washington State a victory against FEMA and DHS for the Shelter and Services Program (SSP). Congress had fun...

This week marked the tenth anniversary of this conclusion made by the U.S. government against the government’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).  Let me say this again:  one branch of the federal government found, a decade ago, that another branch of the federal government was jeopardizing 16 species of endangered or threatened salmon in Oregon and the orcas. Image by freepix.com This is not an environmental group or group of activists accusing FEMA. The determination was made in April 2016 by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NMFS is charged (by Congress) with recovering marine-related endangered species under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA). The US Fish and Wildlife Service manages terrestrial, freshwater, and avian endangered species. What does jeopardizing mean? Jeopardizing does not mean that the NFIP (an insurance program) is actively wiping out the species. Rather, it means that the program in ...

I spent four years inside FEMA reviewing the environmental compliance of hazard mitigation infrastructure projects. I’ve seen hundreds of applications for great ideas on paper, such as roads elevated above floodplains, ports wired with backup power, levees, libraries retrofitted for earthquakes, and even entire villages relocating away from flood prone areas. I posit that many states consciously or subconsciously view FEMA’s mitigation programs as a very flexible infrastructure funding stream. A kind of ATM for local infrastructure, one that dispenses billions of dollars each year. Generated by ChatGPT, March 2026 This is how I personally understood the intensity of the current litigation conflict between states and the federal government over FEMA’s mitigation programs. But it also highlights something that nagged at me for four years. Who, exactly, evaluates the efficacy and efficiency of these projects? How do we know whether these billions of dollars actually work? Disclaimer: the ...

The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) is, I believe, off-track. We are subsidizing (socialism) flood risk using a mid-20th century insurance framework (ancient) against 21st century climate change (reality), local politics (not national), and changing hydrology. FEMA is not actively constricting or guiding development away from high risk areas, despite this being an objective of the law. The NFIP is deeply in debt. Flood water does not care about your mortgage, zip code, income, skin color, generation, or party registration. It only cares about gravity, volume, and contours. Image generated by ChatGPT, March 2026 The NFIP is next in my series of things that surprised me about FEMA. FEMA is the Federal Emergency Management Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). I quit FEMA in March and wrapped up 20 years working for the executive branch of the government. See why in my  earlier post .  Flooding Every year, we experience flooding. It’s a global problem...

I have watched the entire drama unfold over the past fourteen months. My conclusion: I think FEMA is the Titanic . The Administration steered her into an iceberg on purpose and she has begun to sink. I don’t know how long she will stay afloat, but as I described in my earlier post , I abandoned the ship this month and am now rowing away in a lifeboat. I mage generated by ChatGPT, March 2026 The Analogy On January 20, 2025, the new administration launched a defined and voter-backed mandate: shrink government, cut duplication, balance the budget, and return authority to the states. These theoretically echoed the Republican Party's historic core principles.  Like many of those who gathered to watch the launch of the RMS Titanic in 1911, I was optimistic. I believe the federal government should not spend more than it generates. Why must individuals and states have balanced budgets but not the federal government? Yes, federal spending has ballooned, due to structural redundancy, bureauc...

Update : March 25, 2025: I was wrong, at least partially. Today, FEMA surprised me by publishing a Notice of Funding Opportunity (call for proposals) on grants.gov for the BRIC program. It's for $1 billion covering Fiscal Years 2024 and 2025. The project cap is now $20m. Proposals are due July 23, 2026. Let's see if I was wrong on all my predictions.  Published March 10, 2025: This is my first opinion post on things I learned while at FEMA. Apologies to the States and Cities in advance. I do not believe that the mitigation grant program, the way you expect it, will be re-instated.  Despite the lawsuits, court decisions, supposed wins, and Congressional interest on the topic of FEMA’s mitigation grants, I think it’s over. Image by Freepix What Others Say For a backgrounder on this contentious topic, see this  article . Here are some of the recent headlines, all titled against FEMA. In one sentence, FEMA cut off funding. Multiple states sued FEMA in July 2025, “won” in Dece...