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mazie hirono
'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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'New Name, Still Cuts Medicaid': GOP Attempts Rebrand of Healthcare-Slashing Budget Bill Amid Dismal Polls
"Hey, so changing what you call this bill actually doesn’t change the harm that’s in it," said one Democratic senator. "Hope this helps!"
Sep 03, 2025
The Republican Party's massive budget law has shown itself to be decidedly unpopular with voters, as polls consistently show Americans opposed to its $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid.
Because of this, reported Punchbowl News' Jake Sherman, US President Donald Trump met with GOP members of Congress on Wednesday morning to discuss how to boost the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act's popularity.
According to Sherman, Trump's message to the GOP is that the bill will become popular if "they completely rebrand it and talk about it differently."
Politico similarly reported that Republicans in Congress have been eager to rebrand the bill after enduring "a spate of angry crowds at... town halls and alarming polling that shows dismal views of the bill's safety-net cuts and deficit impact."
As Common Dreams reported last month, Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-Calif.) faced angry constituents who yelled, "You cut our healthcare!" and called him a liar when he claimed the Medicaid cuts would improve healthcare services. Other Republicans have been confronted with similar outrage at town halls.
Republican pollsters are reportedly recommending that GOP lawmakers tout provisions in the bill such as eliminating taxes on some tips, although worker advocacy organization One Fair Wage has found that this provision won't benefit most tipped workers since two-thirds of them don't earn enough money to file federal income taxes.
In fact, New York Times congressional correspondent Annie Karni noted that Republicans started referring to the package as the "working families tax plan" after getting out of their Tuesday morning meeting.
But critics in the Democratic Party argued that a simple rebrand of the legislation is unlikely to be enough to rescue it in the court of public opinion, with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) emphasizing that the problems with the law stem not from marketing, but from its substance.
"The poorest 25% of workers lose money under this bill while the richest Americans get a $270,000 tax cut," he wrote while sharing a chart of Congressional Budget Office estimates of the impact the law will have on different income groups. "They can rebrand all they want. The facts are the facts. They screwed working people to help their billionaire and corporate donors."
Several other Democratic lawmakers similarly pounced to mock the GOP's attempted rebrand.
Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) sardonically offered advice to her Republican colleagues, writing: "Hey, so changing what you call this bill actually doesn’t change the harm that’s in it. Hope this helps!"
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) suggested a more accurate renaming of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would be the “Tax on Working Families” plan.
"Under the GOP tax law, billionaires got the big tax cuts. In fact, thanks to Republicans, many working families will actually see their taxes go up," said Beyer. "And Trump's tariffs are a huge tax hike on working Americans."
Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Penn.) ridiculed the White House for "desperately" trying to rebrand the package because "working families think the GOP's plan to sacrifice their healthcare and SNAP benefits to give billionaires a tax cut is a bad idea."
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Senate GOP Blocks Effort to Federally Protect IVF Access
"Remember this the next time they claim to care about freedom and family," said one Democratic lawmaker.
Feb 28, 2024
Democratic U.S. lawmakers and reproductive rights defenders on Wednesday blasted congressional Republicans and former U.S. President Donald Trump after a GOP senator blocked a bill to protect access to in vitro fertilization a week after Alabama's right-wing Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children.
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) objected to a request to pass by unanimous consent a bill introduced by Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) to federally protect IVF access, claiming that the bill is "a vast overreach that is full of poison pills that go way too far."
Calling the bill "a vast overreach that is full of poison pills that go way too far," Hyde-Smith claimed it would legalize human cloning, gene-edited "designer babies," and commercial surrogacy, "including for young girls without parental involvement."
Duckworth accused her colleague of misreading the legislation, asserting that "it simply says you have a statutory right should you choose to pursue assisted reproductive technology."
Democratic lawmakers reacted angrily to Hyde-Smith's move—and to Republican attacks on reproductive freedom.
"Once again, Republicans have shown their true colors,"
said Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii). "Republicans are claiming to support IVF while voting down the very bill that would do that. Actions speak louder than words."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)
said on social media: "I wish I could say I'm surprised. Senate Republicans just blocked our attempt to pass Sen. Duckworth's bill to protect nationwide access to IVF. Republicans will stop at nothing to deny women in America their fundamental rights and freedoms."
In the House, Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) lamented Republicans' attack on legislation that would "protect Americans' right to start a family through IVF."
"Remember this the next time they claim to care about freedom and family," Clark added.
Speaking on the Senate floor Wednesday, Duckworth said: "Let's be clear about what led to this moment. The overturning of Roe is what made last week's ruling even possible."
"Donald Trump is the one who bragged about taking down Roe v. Wade," she added. "Donald Trump acts as if that's something to be proud of."
Trump—the 2024 Republican presidential front-runner despite facing 91 federal and state criminal charges—appointed three right-wing anti-abortion justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. All three were part of the 6-3 majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which voided half a century of federal abortion rights.
Following last week's Alabama ruling—which prompted multiple IVF clinics to suspend operations in the state—Trump and other Republicans scrambled to distance themselves from the deeply unpopular decision.
However, Duckworth said Wednesday that "while it may now be convenient" for Trump "to claim that he had nothing to do with what happened in Alabama, we know the truth: IVF is at risk because of him. He is to blame."
"Him and every other GOP official who shamelessly kisses his ring, proving with every word that they they that they care more about protecting his poll numbers than protecting Americans' freedoms," she added.
At the Center for American Progress, senior vice president for inclusive growth Emily Gee said that "Republicans have been on a relentless crusade to strip women of their fundamental freedom to control their own reproductive destinies and medical decisions—seeking to ban abortion, restrict contraception, and limit fertility options for Americans trying to grow their families."
"They have been emboldened and enabled by Donald Trump and his hand-picked U.S. Supreme Court justices, who have misinterpreted the Constitution to rip away Americans' rights and enforce their extreme MAGA ideology on all of us," she continued.
"Senate Republicans' decision to block legislation affirming Americans' ability to obtain IVF treatment is a moral abomination as well as an insult to families devastated by the Alabama Supreme Court's recent ruling," Gee added. "Today, they have made painstakingly clear that there's no limit to their agenda to intrude upon women's most personal decisions. That is an intrusion that Americans will continue to reject."
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