Disasterology: March 2026
Introducing Markwayne Mullin
This newsletter is a compilation of recent disaster ~things~ that I think are cool, important, or otherwise of interest to people who are intrigued with disaster (broadly defined). There’s a little something for everyone!
Hello! Hello!
Me: “Spending time speculating is probably not a great use of our time and energy.”
Also, me: Here’s another newsletter that is primarily speculation.
That’s okay. It’s just us girls here chatting!
Turnover At DHS
So first of all, hell is not hot enough for Kristi Noem. Second, the name “Markwayne” has the exact same energy as Richardson’s Texas Flood costume.
Noem and Lewandowski are out at DHS (ding dong, etc. etc.). I hope the next time I write to you about them it is because they are on trial for human rights abuses (let me dream, please).
As I say every time we lose a character from this clown car, it is good when bad people lose their jobs. The faster we can shuffle through these people, the better. My theory is that high turnover helps protect against more permanent damage. You can’t let them get their footing. Every time someone new comes in and has to get situated, they waste away the days they have in power. The best strategy is to slow them down.
One thing we are going to find out in the coming weeks is how much of the turmoil in FEMA was because of decisions Noem/ Lewandowski were making on their own versus them just implementing the agenda of others within the administration (e.g., Vought, various White House officials, the President). My sense from reporting and talking to folks still at FEMA is that it has been a combination. I can see a future where things start going better at FEMA but I more realistically see a scenario where there is more of the same. I will also, of course, allow for the possibility of it getting worse. I like to only provide helpful analysis around here!
This administration loves to introduce a new character. So, let’s get to know Markwayne Mullin who is currently a Republican Senator from Oklahoma and has been nominated to become the next Secretary of DHS. I am trying to constantly remind myself that the future is not inevitable so maybe the Senate won’t confirm him (!!) but I also do not trust this Senate to do anything rational so he will probably be the next DHS Secretary. He might also be a wildcard himself. Despite him repeatedly saying he is “excited”, he sure did not seem that excited about the nomination. It is very clear that he was not given a heads up before this happened and I do think depending on what he thinks his future in politics is, he may not actually want this job.
Of course what we are interested in is what this means for emergency management. The short version of this was summarized by one FEMA employee who said, “Anyone is better than that dog murderer”. Sure. Here’s the longer version:
Senator Mullins has represented Oklahoma in Congress since 2012. Prior to serving in Washington he was a plumber who participated in a few MMA fights. Notable incidents during his tenure include an ill advised and failed rescue mission to Afghanistan, threatening to physically fight Teamsters union president Sean O’Brien during a Senate hearing, a “joke” about shooting journalists, and others. He also has a questionable financial history with what seem to be violations of the STOCK Act including most recently related to Venezuela and Iran. There’s some reporting that he holds stock in L3Harris which has millions of dollars in contracts with FEMA and other DHS agencies.
As far as I can tell his only disaster experience is that he has been in Congress for over a decade of disasters in Oklahoma. I looked back through his Twitter history and at old news articles and it seems he handled these disasters (a few tornados, most notably the Moore tornado just months after he was first elected, and some other storms) in what I would consider to be a pretty standard way. He shared information about FEMA’s response, visited some of the affected areas, and directed survivors to contact his office if they were having trouble getting assistance from FEMA. All normal things.
The tech bros have broken all the search functions and I am not a hacker so I may have missed something but I did not see conspiracy theories or misinformation about FEMA à la Cameron Hamilton during Helene. When the bar is on the ground it’s easy to jump over it.
Throughout his time in Congress he has served on a few committees that have some kind of emergency management interest. I am grasping at straws here but I went through the hearings he attended to see if there were any insights. He really didn’t say much.
He did what members of Congress often do during emergency management hearings which is bring up very specific issues that someone in their district has brought to their attention. For example, he asked for clarification about how FEMA’s regulations apply to electric co-ops in recovery and rules about bringing in out of state utility workers after a storm. In another hearing he questioned a witness about the costs for small TV stations in implementing IPAWS ($2000, apparently) and implied that the federal government should pay for that cost to avoid an unfunded mandate. He asked another witness about the timeline for expanding the capability of wireless alerts to include audio or visual information.
These all strike me as reasonable questions for a member of congress to ask during a congressional hearing and, frankly, are better questions than some of these other bozos ask at these things.
(He did also get into a verbal spat with Tim Walz in 2013 at a hearing and weirdly ended up questioning Karen Evans one month into her stint as the Assistant Secretary of the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response. Not relevant exchanges for our purposes, just weird to learn current main character’s backstories intersect with each other!)
I did find one quote from the Obama-era about how Congress needs to “rein in a President who has forgotten that the legislative branch makes the laws and that the executive branch enforces them”. I couldn’t agree more! Let’s keep that in our back pocket in case any of these people start caring about being hypocritical.
There wasn’t much in other news coverage. In 2024, Mullin called federal financial assistance “imperative” following a tornado in Oklahoma but then during Helene let out what has turned into a dogwhistle: “It’s not FEMA that’s going to respond, it’s the local people”. He has voted against funding FEMA in the past (though the list of Congresspeople who have done that is quite long) and defended the DOGE firings at HHS.
If the comparison is Noem and Trump calling for FEMA to be eliminated, it seems like we are doing a bit better here but this is not someone who is psyched about federal emergency management.
I also am just not sure that anything he’s said or done in the past related to emergency management matters. That’s because I keep coming back to his reaction to January 6th.
On January 6th he was in the Capitol. There is a now popular photo of him after he helped barricade the door against the rioters. Afterwards, he was adamant that the rioters should be held accountable. But just a few years later, when Trump pardoned rioters, instead of speaking out against the move (or even just keeping his mouth shut), Mullins tried to blame Biden (??) and said “things change”. If he’s not going to stand up for his own safety, I don’t trust him to oversee our safety.
Mullin is yet another violent man with no conviction. He will fit right in.
I do not want anyone to get the idea that I like this guy. He’s violently conservative and does not have any meaningful emergency management experience. He is not qualified to be the de facto leader of FEMA (nor legally qualified) and, for what it is worth, I do not think he is qualified to lead DHS either.
Noem’s departure does not have anything to do with how she was running FEMA. There are some republican members of congress who are mad that FEMA recovery money is being delayed to their states. For example, Senator Thom Tillis from North Carolina accused Noem of violating the post-Katrina law that limits the DHS secretary’s authority in interfering with FEMA’s mission. This aligns with the report from Senators Gary Peters and Andy Kim that highlighted specific instances where the $100,000 sign of rule directly slowed down recovery (and some response) efforts across the country. Just this week we learned that she didn’t renew a critical mapping tool contract needed for search and rescue. Some members of Congress might be mad about this stuff and everyone in emergency management might be mad about it but the White House does not seem to be mad. That seems like a pretty critical piece of this puzzle.
Nonetheless, here are some important questions that we need answers to:
How much attention is FEMA going to get from a new DHS Secretary? Presumably the immigration issues are going to be the primary focus? When we have a big disaster or terrorist attack (given current events this seems increasingly likely), will this focus change?
What is the orientation towards FEMA? Does the new Secretary understand the value of the agency? Or will they also be openly hostile towards it?
How involved will they be with FEMA’s day to day operations (regardless of what the law says)? Will they micromanage in the way that Noem and Lewandowski have done? For example, does the $100,000 rule stand?
If the new Secretary is hands on, what is their vision for FEMA? Does it align with Trump/Noem/Lewandowski? Does it align with Vought? What has become the moderate position in Congress? Something else? And, do they have the authority to decide which of those visions they want to implement or is someone else still going to be calling the shots?
If they are hands off, who fills that gap? Karen Evans? Does she stay? If so, the same vision questions apply.
Relatedly, will a new DHS Secretary encourage the administration to nominate someone to be FEMA Administrator? If so, who will that be?
Does this turnover change the future of the FEMA Review Council Report? Allegedly that’s coming out soon. Will it actually? Which version? Will it be acted on?
How does this affect the partial shutdown? We’re going to need to start freaking out about the Disaster Relief Fund pretty soon.
So, as always, anything could happen.
The End Bits
It’d be cool if you forwarded this newsletter to your friends, post it on social media, or undertake any other form of newsletter sharing you deem appropriate. I’ve heard some of you print out the memes to hang in your emergency management offices! Incredible.
In case you signed up for this newsletter without knowing who I am (a bold choice!), you can listen to this interview with me on Ologies. If you really want to dive in, you can read my book Disasterology: Dispatches From The Frontlines of The Climate Crisis to catch up (here’s a USA Today review). You can order it here and get it as an audiobook here.
Other places to find me: Blog. BlueSky. Instagram. TikTok.
This newsletter can be accessed for free, and I intend to keep it that way because eliminating barriers to disaster knowledge is important. However, there is a “paid subscriber” option for $5 a month, or whatever you’d like to give, if you’re interested in supporting this work.