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'America Deserves Better': Top Trump FEMA Official Continues to Claim He's Being Teleported By God
"With over 340 million people in this country, you’d think we could find people grounded in reality to run our government programs," said Sen. Mazie Hirono.
Apr 01, 2026
The man appointed by President Donald Trump to lead America's disaster recovery will not stop talking about teleportation. It's leading many people to question whether he's fit for the job.
Even before this past week, many concerns had already been raised about Gregg Phillips, who Trump tapped as associate administrator for the Office of Response and Recovery at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in December.
Phillips had no formal experience in disaster management prior to being given a senior role overseeing billions of dollars to help victims of floods, hurricanes, and wildfires.
But he did have qualifications that are evidently more important to the second Trump administration: a long history of echoing the president's baseless claims about election fraud, including that millions of noncitizens illegally voted in 2016 and that an elaborate operation involving ballot stuffing “mules” helped former President Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020.
Because Phillips was a presidential appointee, Congress was not given the opportunity to scrutinize these statements or others he's made, including his description of himself as a "very vocal opponent of FEMA," the very agency he was chosen to help lead. Nor did it have the opportunity to examine accusations that he directed millions in government contracts to his own personal businesses and associates while working in the Texas and Mississippi governments.
But months into his tenure, Phillips is finally getting some attention for comments he made on multiple podcasts, in which he claimed to have been involuntarily "teleported," including to a Waffle House in Georgia.
Phillips discussed the supernatural experience in a January 2025 episode of the podcast Onward, hosted by fellow election conspiracy theorist Catherine Engelbrecht. CNN first reported on the conversation earlier this month:
"I was with my boys one time and I was telling them I was gonna go to Waffle House and get Waffle House. And I ended up at a Waffle House—this was in Georgia—and I end up at a Waffle House like 50 miles away from where I was,” Phillips said...
"And they said, ‘Where are you?’ and I said, ‘A Waffle House.’ And, 'A Waffle House where?’ And I said, ‘Waffle House in Rome, Georgia.’ And they said, ‘That’s not possible, you just left here a moment ago.’ But it was possible. It was real.”
“Teleporting is no fun,” Phillips added. “It’s no fun because you don’t really know what you’re doing. You don’t really understand it, it’s scary, but yet um—but so real. And you know it’s happening but you can’t do anything about it, and so you just go, you just go with the ride. And wow, what, just an incredible adventure it all was.”
Phillips said this was not the only time he'd been teleported. In another case, he described his car being “lifted up” and dropped in a ditch outside a church in Albany, Georgia.
CNN reported on other controversial and violent statements made by Phillips as well, including one on the same podcast in which he said he'd like to "punch [Biden] in the mouth" and that he "deserves to die." In a 2024 Truth Social post, Phillips also urged listeners to learn how to shoot firearms and warned them that migrants were "coming here to kill you."
But it's his tales of teleportation that have drawn the greatest ridicule. And Phillips has only continued to double down, according to a report out Wednesday from CNN's KFile.
“Haters gonna hate,” Phillips wrote on Truth Social in a post that now appears to be deleted.
"I know what I’ve experienced, I know Who I serve," he continued, in a reply to one of his detractors on the right-wing social media site owned by Trump.
To another, he said: “I have no regrets for my words nor my faith in my Savior, Jesus Christ. The Bible has many examples of the power of God."
Given the enormity of FEMA's responsibility, especially with the climate crisis increasing the number of billion-dollar disasters in the US in recent years, Phillips' tenuous grasp on the fabric of reality has led some to worry that the agency is in suboptimal hands.
“With over 340 million people in this country, you’d think we could find people grounded in reality to run our government programs," said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii). ”And yet, here’s another powerful official who exists on lies and conspiracy theories. America deserves better.“
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The FEMA Workers Fired on New Year’s Eve Won’t Be There for the Next Hurricane
You can’t save lives and rebuild communities while gutting FEMA’s workforce and keeping the agency under incompetent and overtly political control.
Jan 10, 2026
While Americans were preparing to ring in the new year, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Federal Emergency Management Agency Chief Karen Evans were firing dozens of disaster response workers. The employees who lost their jobs on New Year’s Eve weren’t bureaucrats shuffling papers in Washington—they were members of FEMA’s Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery teams who deploy when hurricanes flatten communities, when floods trap families in their homes, and when wildfires consume entire towns.
This wasn’t a budget decision. This was sabotage.
I spent years at FEMA and working disaster response, and I know what it takes to save lives when disaster strikes. You need trained personnel who can mobilize immediately; who know how to coordinate search and rescue operations; who understand the complex logistics of getting food, water, and shelter to people who’ve lost everything. You can’t save lives and rebuild communities while gutting FEMA’s workforce and keeping the agency under incompetent and overtly political control. These New Year’s Eve firings guarantee that when the next disaster hits, Americans may very well pay the price with their lives.
The timing tells you everything about this administration’s priorities. FEMA’s workforce has already been traumatized by DOGE, endured a revolving door of unqualified political leadership, witnessed retaliation against staffers who speak out, and heard President Donald Trump himself threaten to destroy the agency. Most recently, senior FEMA leaders were tasked with an agency-wide “workforce capacity planning exercise,” with the stated goal of cutting 50% of FEMA’s workforce (a target the administration claims was included in error). Now they’re watching their colleagues get fired on a holiday while the nation faces a looming crisis.
Every day that FEMA remains under Noem’s control, every firing of trained disaster workers, every delayed disaster declaration brings us closer to a preventable catastrophe.
Nearly 200 FEMA employees warned that this combination of political obstruction and resource depletion risks another Katrina-level catastrophe. They’re not exaggerating. I fear that we’re on a course to painfully relearn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina. Those who watched that disaster unravel in real time remember that it was a bad time for emergency management. FEMA was underfunded, it wasn’t a respected agency, and we saw the result: a bungled response to a major disaster that failed Americans when they needed help most. And now, we’re watching it happen again, in real time, and this time the warnings are coming from inside the agency itself.
The pattern under Noem’s leadership at DHS has been consistent: political interference that kills. When catastrophic flooding struck Texas, her bureaucratic approval requirements delayed Urban Search and Rescue deployment for more than 72 hours while Americans feared for their lives. Disaster declarations are being weaponized along partisan lines, with Democratic states denied relief at alarming rates while Republican states receive swift approvals, turning emergency management into political retaliation.
The administration’s contempt for professional emergency management extends beyond Noem’s obstruction. Trump appointed Gregg Phillips—a conspiracy theorist and election denier with zero emergency management experience—to lead FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, one of the agency’s most critical offices. Karen Evans, whose reputation for eliminating programs and slashing staff preceded her appointment as FEMA chief, is now overseeing the systematic dismantling of disaster response capabilities. A leaked report exposed plans to gut FEMA and slash the workforce in half. When the White House faced criticism, they didn’t abandon the plan. They just canceled the public meeting and stopped talking about it.
FEMA’s placement under DHS has enabled Noem to impose political interference and red tape that directly endangers American lives. Last month, Sabotaging Our Safety sent a letter to the FEMA Review Council with a straightforward solution: Make FEMA an independent, cabinet-level agency. Give the FEMA administrator a direct seat at the table with the president so the agency can respond to disasters without political obstruction from DHS leadership. This isn’t a radical proposal. It’s the only way to ensure that when Americans need help, they get it based on need rather than which party controls their state government.
This administration’s actions will cost lives. Every day that FEMA remains under Noem’s control, every firing of trained disaster workers, every delayed disaster declaration brings us closer to a preventable catastrophe. Our leadership must decide whether protecting FEMA’s capacity to respond to disasters matters more than political expediency. The agency that stands between American communities and disaster is being dismantled piece by piece, and we’re running out of time to stop it.
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'New Year's Eve Massacre': Trump Administration Makes Deep Cuts at FEMA as Climate Crisis Accelerates
A former FEMA official said that the agency "can't do disaster response and recovery without" the employees being terminated by the Trump administration.
Jan 02, 2026
The Trump administration this week made abrupt cuts to the top federal disaster response agency, even as US communities face increased threats from natural disasters caused by the global climate crisis.
Independent journalist Marisa Kabas reported on Wednesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) "has begun issuing termination notices" to staff at the agency's Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery (CORE) that are effective as of January 2.
A FEMA staffer who spoke with Kabas described the terminations as "The New Year's Eve Massacre," and explained that "the driving force behind all CORE employees is supporting and enacting the mission of preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters."
A Thursday report from CNN added some additional details to Kabas' reporting, including that the decision to issue the layoffs was made by Acting Administrator Karen Evans, who was appointed to the role after former Acting Administrator David Richardson resigned in November.
One former FEMA official bluntly told CNN that the agency "can't do disaster response and recovery without CORE employees" that are being laid off by the administration.
The former FEMA official added that regional agency offices throughout the US "are almost entirely CORE staff, so the first FEMA people who are usually onsite won’t be there," which will mean that "states are on their own" when it comes to disaster response.
CNN also reported that there is anxiety among remaining FEMA staffers that these cuts could just be the start "of a larger effort" by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem "to shrink FEMA, potentially axing thousands of workers in the coming months who deploy during hurricanes, wildfires and other national emergencies."
President Donald Trump has been targeting FEMA for potential termination for nearly a year now, and he said shortly after being inaugurated last January that a goal in his second term would be "fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA," while emphasizing that individual states should bear the cost of responding to natural disasters.
“I think, frankly, FEMA’s not good,” the president said. “I think when you have a problem like this, I think you want to go, and whether it’s a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time calling FEMA.”
The Trump administration's deep cuts to FEMA come as the intensity of natural disasters is only projected to increase thanks to climate change.
According to a report published on Tuesday by the Yale School of the Environment, 2025 was the second hottest on record and was only surpassed by the previous year.
"The last three years have been, by a wide margin, the hottest ever recorded," stressed the report. "Each of the last three years has measured more than 1.5°C warmer than preindustrial times, putting the world at least temporarily in breach of an international goal to limit warming below that level."
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