Acting FEMA Administrator David Richardson resigns: Sources
David Richardson, acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), during a House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (Photographer: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Acting FEMA Administrator David Richardson resigned on Monday, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.
Richardson, who was temporarily installed in May after former Acting Administrator Cam Hamilton was essentially fired by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
Richardson was also in charge of the department’s countering Weapons of Mass Destruction office. It is unclear if he will still stay on in that role.
It is unclear who will lead the disaster management agency.
Richardson told staff in an all-hands meeting in June that he was unaware hurricane season had started, according to sources familiar with the meeting.
It was unclear if Richardson was joking, but a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson argued he was.
When asked by reporters during a White House press briefing whether President Donald Trump was “still comfortable” with Richardson after his remarks, press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed concerns and said FEMA is taking hurricane season “seriously, contrary to some of the reporting we have seen based on jokes that were made and leaks from meetings.”
Richardson’s comments followed an internal review indicating FEMA was “not ready” for the 2025 hurricane season in mid-May.
The DHS spokesperson denied FEMA is unprepared, saying “Despite meanspirited attempts to falsely frame a joke as policy, there is no uncertainty about what FEMA will be doing this Hurricane Season.”
“FEMA is laser-focused on disaster response and protecting the American people,” the spokesperson added.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., slammed Richardson, posting on X that he is “unaware of why he hasn’t been fired yet.”
“Trump’s FEMA chief is incompetent,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., added. “People will die.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Charlie Kirk poses at The Cambridge Union on May 19, 2025 in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. (Photo by Nordin Catic/Getty Images for The Cambridge Union)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump announced conservative activist Charlie Kirk died on Wednesday after being shot at a campus university event in Utah.
“The Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk, is dead. No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika, and family. Charlie, we love you!” Trump wrote on his social media platform.
Before the announcement, Trump told ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl, “It’s horrific. It’s one of the most horrible things I’ve ever seen.”
“He was a good man. He was an incredible guy. Nobody like him,” Trump told Karl.
Kirk, the founder of the conservative youth activist organization Turning Point USA, was a close ally to Trump and many members of his administration. Several top officials issued messages of support for Kirk and his family as news of the shooting first spread.
Vice President JD Vance shared Trump’s announcement of Kirk’s death and wrote on X, “Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was “heartbroken” by Kirk’s killing.
“He was an incredible husband and father and a great American. May he rest in eternal peace with our Lord,” Rubio posted on X.
The House of Representatives held a moment of silence for Kirk on Wednesday afternoon.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers condemned the shooting.
“This is detestable,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said. “Political violence has become all too common in American society, and this is not who they are.”
Johnson added, “We need every political figure, we need everyone who has a platform, to say this loudly and clearly, we can settle disagreements and disputes in a civil manner, and political violence must be pulled out, and it has to stop.”
“There is no place in our country for political violence. Period, full stop,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune wrote on X.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham called it a “sick and despicable attack.”
Former President Joe Biden said “there is no place in our country for this kind of violence.”
“It must end now. Jill and I are praying for Charlie Kirk’s family and loved ones,” Biden said in a post on X.
“I am deeply disturbed by the shooting in Utah,” former Vice President Kamala Harris wrote on X. “Doug and I send our prayers to Charlie Kirk and his family. Let me be clear: Political violence has no place in America. I condemn this act, and we all must work together to ensure this does not lead to more violence.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who earlier this year hosted Kirk for the first episode of his new podcast, called the attack “disgusting, vile, and reprehensible. “
“In the United States of America, we must reject political violence in EVERY form,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on X.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote on X: “Political violence is NEVER acceptable. My thoughts and prayers are with Charlie Kirk and his family.”
Gabrielle Giffords, a former Democratic congresswoman who was shot in the head during a public event in 2011, also shared a message condemning acts of political violence. Giffords later founded a national gun violence prevention group.
“I’m horrified to hear that Charlie Kirk was shot at an event in Utah. Democratic societies will always have political disagreements, but we must never allow America to become a country that confronts those disagreements with violence. Mark and I are praying for Charlie’s recovery,” Giffords wrote.
Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi, whose husband was violently assaulted in their California home by an invader looking for Pelosi, called the shooting “horrific” and “reprehensible.”
“Political violence has absolutely no place in our nation,” Pelosi wrote on X. “All Americans should pray for Charlie Kirk’s recovery and hold the entire UVU community in our hearts as they endure the trauma of this gun violence.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Justice Clarence Thomas said the Supreme Court should take a more critical approach to settled precedent, saying decided cases are not “the gospel” and suggesting some may have been based on “something somebody dreamt up and others went along with.”
Thomas made the comments during a rare public appearance Thursday evening at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C., just over a week before the high court starts a new term that includes challenges to several major, longstanding decisions.
The Court is poised to revisit Humphrey’s Executor v U.S. — a 90-year precedent that limits a president’s ability to remove members of some independent federal agencies without cause. The justices will also consider whether to overturn Thornburg v Gingles, a landmark 1986 decision governing the use of race in redistricting under the Voting Rights Act.
For the first time, the Court is also considering a petition for writ of certiorari asking them to explicitly revisit and overturn the 2015 decision in Obergefell v Hodges, which extended marriage rights to same-sex couples.
“At some point we need to think about what we’re doing with stare decisis,” Thomas said Thursday, referring to the legal principle of abiding by previous decisions. “And it’s not some sort of talismanic deal where you can just say ‘stare decisis’ and not think, turn off the brain, right?”
The Court’s senior conservative suggested that some members of the Court over the years have blindly followed prior judgments, comparing them to passengers on a train.
“We never go to the front see who’s driving the train, where is it going. And you could go up there in the engine room, find it’s an orangutan driving the train, but you want to follow that just because it’s a train,” Thomas said.
“I don’t think that I have the gospel,” he said, “that any of these cases that have been decided are the gospel, and I do give perspective to the precedent. But it should — the precedent should be respectful of our legal tradition, and our country, and our laws, and be based on something, not just something somebody dreamt up and others went along with.”
Thomas has long been an outspoken advocate for revisiting some of the Court’s significant landmark opinions. In a 2022 concurring opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health — which overturned Roe v Wade — Thomas urged his colleagues to “reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell” — cases involving rights to contraception, same-sex intimacy, and marriage.
