If you teleport to start a race war and the Waffle House is closed? That's really bad

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“Teleporting is no fun.” — Gregg Phillips, FEMA Associate Administrator of the Office of Response and Recovery

Hill Heat will investigate this claim, but first, here are some D.C. cherry blossoms:

In 2004, Florida Emergency Management Administrator Craig Fugate noted that the true indicator of the severity of a climate disaster in the southeastern United States was the condition of the reliably 24-7 Waffle House regional chain:

Fugate, an emergency administrator since 1987, later served as the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for both terms of Barack Obama’s presidency, overseeing the reorganization of the post-Katrina FEMA to establish the Office of Response and Recovery in 2009, and managing the federal response to climate disasters such as Superstorm Sandy, Hurricane Matthew, and the 2016 Louisiana floods.

It’s now 2026, and our spring is hitting the fracked gas, with scorching heat baking the west, melting all the snow, and towering fossil-fueled floods scouring everywhere from Hawaii to Washington state. Deadly floods have hit Colombia and Malawi while Brazil sizzles. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency is on life support.

As Trump turns everything to fossil farce, his regime has been seeking to eliminate FEMA while installing cartoonish characters to run the critical agency. One year in, we’re on our fourth acting administrator.²  

And the official in charge of FEMA’s disaster response since December is the aforementioned teleporter Gregg Phillips, whose claim to fame before Trump installed him at FEMA was being a Trumpist election-denier conspiracy theorist who was stupid and violent even by the standards of Trumpist election-denier conspiracy theorists.

Andrew Kaczynski unearthed a January 2025 podcast in which Phillips described his violent hatred of President Joe Biden and his claimed teleportation to a Waffle House in a manner that seems more than a bit like a blackout episode:

Phillips also reported “teleporting” into a ditch while he was driving.

More importantly, Phillips is a foaming racist and bigot, who has tried to spark a race war against immigrants for years.

To conclude, Phillips is wrong that teleporting is no fun. Teleporting is a lot of fun! 

Being Gregg Phillips is no fun.

Phillips will testify before the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday morning.

Speaking of foaming bigots in charge of FEMA, former MMA fighter Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) is about to be confirmed by the Senate to be the next Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, after a bit of kayfabe with Homeland Security chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) at his confirmation hearing last week. Hoo boy: “Paul airs beef with Mullin!” “Paul eviscerates Markwayne!” “Mullin hearing went off the rails!”

It sure seemed like Mullin was on the ropes! But then at the committee vote two days later, Mullin was able to tap back in with a vote from John Fetterman (D-Pa.). What a surprise victory for Markwayne!

Really, it wasn’t.

If Paul sincerely opposed Mullin, he had all the power as committee chair to slow-walk the nomination. Instead, he put Mullin on the fast track to confirmation.

In more Senate kayfabe, the inevitable conclusion of the DHS “shutdown” farce is near. After Democrats struck the deal to cleave DHS funding from the guns-and-butter minibus in January, the incentive for the Trump regime and its Congressional lackeys to rein in ICE disappeared. There will be more feints and political stunts, but unless Trump’s goon squad guns down more Americans in broad daylight (always possible), there will be a bipartisan deal to fund the non-ICE/CBP elements of DHS and a GOP-only extension of the One Big Brutal Bill tab for the ICE gang.

Thanks for subscribing and spreading the word. If you’ve got job listings, event listings, or other hot news, I want to hear it. Connect with me—@[email protected], @climatebrad on Threads, and @climatebrad.hillheat.com on BlueSky.

1  The fine Waffle House Tracker maintains a real-time indicator of Waffle House status.

2  Technically, the last three have been the “Senior Official Performing the Duties of Administrator” since they haven’t had the qualifications to serve as administrator.