Key FEMA leader endorsed fringe conspiracy theories, claims to have been ‘teleported’

By any fair measure, the Federal Emergency Management Agency had a difficult 2025. Part of the problems stemmed from outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s misguided agenda and imposed inefficiencies, coupled with Donald Trump’s stated determination to destroy the agency altogether for reasons he has struggled to explain.

To fully appreciate the scope of FEMA’s troubles, however, it’s useful to focus on the agency’s personnel problems.

FEMA, for example, had five different administrators over 11 months. The head of FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue branch resigned in frustration last summer. The head of the agency’s disaster command center, who coordinated response to earthquakes, floods and other disasters, resigned around the same time.

When a group of FEMA officials warned Congress that the Trump administration had gutted the nation’s ability to handle extreme weather disasters, many of them were forced from their jobs.

But stepping back, serious concerns remain, not just about who’s left at FEMA, but also about some of the people the Republican administration has brought into FEMA. CNN reported late last week on Gregg Phillips, who is three months into his tenure leading FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery. Phillips is a far-right activist with a background in spreading baseless conspiracy theories, using violent rhetoric about his political opponents — and, in some instances, talking up teleportation. From the report:

As millions of Americans braced for a series of brutal storms this winter, the senior official in charge of the federal government’s disaster response had been on the job only a few weeks — and had previously claimed on podcasts that he once teleported to a Waffle House. […]

Phillips on multiple podcasts made bizarre claims to have been involuntarily teleported, including once to a Georgia Waffle House 50 miles away.

“Teleporting is no fun,” Phillips said on one podcast last year. “It was real.”

To be sure, Phillips’ background as an enthusiastic election denier, which played a key role in the discredited “2000 Mules” project, should itself be seen as disqualifying. But the whole teleportation thing takes concerns about his qualifications that much more obvious.

What’s more, this guy was not rewarded for his political loyalties with some obscure position deep within the federal bureaucracy. On the contrary, CNN’s report noted despite his weird beliefs, Phillips is currently in one of “the most consequential” positions at FEMA, leading an office that makes decisions involving “search-and-rescue operations, emergency aid, infrastructure restoration and ultimately distributing billions of dollars in disaster assistance.”

All things considered, it remains an open question whether FEMA can survive the president’s second term.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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