Is FEMA Getting Its Very Own RFK Jr.?

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For Gregg Phillips, Monday marked his first day as the new head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Office of Response and Recovery. For the agency, it marked the beginning of a new era: one in which a genuine conspiracy theorist holds its second-most-powerful position.

Phillips, to be clear, is no mere hobbyist when it comes to dangerous conspiracy theories. He was a major figure behind the organization True the Vote, one of the most influential sources of election-fraud misinformation during the efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Phillips and True the Vote claimed to have evidence of millions of fraudulent votes, as well as of Chinese efforts to steal the election. There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, of course, but Phillips was reckless in his campaign, in terms of both his methods and his friends. According to the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America, Phillips developed numerous ties to the QAnon world as he sought allies in his efforts.

On Truth Social, he repeatedly shared posts from accounts with Q-related logos or names and screen grabs from Q drops, the messages left behind by the purported “Q” figure. He also posted directly to praise known QAnon influencers as friends and clever investigators. He appeared as a guest on several QAnon podcasts and even participated in QAnon’s “Flannel Fridays,” a symbol of solidarity with the movement. He made at least a dozen appearances on the Matrixxx Grooove Show, a livestream hosted by two QAnon supporters. He and the founder of True the Vote put on an event in Arizona that courted QAnon influencers, allowing over a dozen such influencers to network in person. He praised them all as patriots ready to expose the ways in which the “enemy” had stolen millions of votes from Donald Trump. Phillips, in other words, peddles in MAGA fantasies.

This appointment would have been a worrying one for any governmental department—the position, which oversee’s the agency’s largest division, does not require congressional approval—but it’s especially concerning when paired with FEMA. That’s because FEMA, more than just about any other agency, is a central entity in some of the oldest right-wing conspiracy theories about ambitiously menacing government schemes, which include everything from secret prison camps to human-caused hurricanes.

Beyond being ridiculous, experts say, having a conspiracy theorist leading the core work of a conspiracy theory–targeted entity could be dangerous. There are real reasons to worry that a person dismissive of mainstream expertise could derail the work of nonpartisan bureaucrats trying to protect the public. He could sideline technical experts, delay action during time-sensitive emergencies, and undermine important communication from the agency. And he could find innovative new ways to disrupt the agency’s work.

We have seen this play out already, in other personnel decisions from the Trump administration. Kash Patel runs the FBI, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. oversees the Health and Human Services Department. Both were chosen because they were convinced that evil had taken root in their respective agencies. During this second Trump administration, Kennedy’s pursuit of his convictions has been catastrophic: The administration has already rolled back vaccine mandates and helped cause deadly epidemics. Patel has inflicted less direct harm on the public, but he purged the bureau’s ranks and replaced them with loyalists, seriously compromising the trustworthiness of federal law enforcement.

So the question is what a similarly minded person could do in a place of such power in the country’s disaster-response agency. This will depend in part on what the administration decides to do with FEMA, as it is considering a major reorganization. But if FEMA remains the nation’s primary emergency-response infrastructure, and if it remains the central source of intel and coordination as climate change exacerbates extreme weather events, the presence of a conspiracy theorist in its top ranks could do very real harm. If a crusader with a paranoid mindset manages to remake FEMA’s disaster recovery into an arena for his grievances, it will mark the end of one of the most urgently nonpartisan roles of the federal government, a historic place of bipartisan agreement on the need to help suffering Americans, no matter who they are.

It makes some intuitive sense that FEMA would attract conspiracy theories, given that it’s the entity that’s most activated in times of crisis and confusion.

Ever since the 1980s and ’90s, people have theorized that FEMA was building secret prison camps to hold U.S. citizens upon the imposition of martial law; that it was planning to create major natural disasters in order to sow chaos nationwide and seize power; that it was setting up a surveillance state by inserting chips or other devices at agency “processing centers”; that it was testing out mind-control technologies or other sinister efforts when running emergency-alert-system tests; or that it would, in some other way, act as the supervillainy arm of whatever dark forces run the government or are plotting to take it over.

But these particular conspiracy theories, long fodder for the paranoid Alex Jones types, have moved toward the mainstream in recent years. They were boosted by QAnon during the general growth of American paranoia during the pandemic. Social media created incentives for content creators to spout engagement-baiting nonsense. And A.I. has obliterated our ability, as a general public, to distinguish reality from computer-generated fiction. As a result, the fires, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other disasters that are becoming more frequent and more severe have reliably been followed by a flood of theories of FEMA’s malfeasance. Sometimes the old theories are regurgitated, with grainy videos of purported FEMA prison camps; other times, new pieces of information become the kernels at the core of new panicked rumors.

This is obviously not ideal. If people don’t trust the agency, they may not seek out its aid. They may heed warnings related to certain hazards in their environment. They may not listen when they are told to evacuate. In some cases, they may become desperate and turn to violence: One armed man was arrested last year for threatening agency employees in North Carolina, having been convinced by social media misinformation that FEMA was withholding supplies from storm victims.

“When you have this anti-science sentiment, which is intertwined with conspiracy theories, it worsens disaster outcomes across the board,” said Njoki Mwarumba, a professor of emergency management at Empire State University.

Having an anti-science figure in charge of disaster response will almost certainly make this situation worse, experts say. But this is not because Phillips will necessarily spread such conspiracy theories himself: Although it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Phillips would do so, there’s no evidence he believes in FEMA conspiracy theories. He has in the past expressed his opposition to FEMA’s existence, arguing that disaster response should instead be handled by local and state governments, but nothing has surfaced indicating he believes that the agency is pursuing a new world order. And because FEMA theories are so out there, they are presumably impossible to maintain once you’re inside the institution. A plot to take over the federal government or depopulate the country with a supervirus should be easy to sniff out from the top.

Instead, Phillips’ danger is in eroding public trust in the agency, leaving more room for conspiracy theories to flourish. Phillips has no experience in federal emergency management. He has also been accused of ethical misconduct multiple times in his professional career, including in his handling of government contracts in Mississippi and Texas; his financial management of True the Vote’s funds; and fundraising for a mobile hospital in Ukraine that never materialized. And given his pattern of acting purely on partisan motivation, it seems very possible that he will run his office on political priorities rather than data-driven analysis. That could mean that his version of FEMA’s response and recovery efforts will be inherently less trustworthy.

Putting a skeptic in charge of the agency, in other words, will make it less effective—and therefore legitimately more worthy of skepticism.

“When you can’t rely on the government or don’t trust the government, it further fuels conspiracy theories,” said Alice Marwick, the director of research at the nonprofit Data & Society. “It’s this horrible ouroboros.”

It’s reasonable to wonder if there’s a silver lining here. If a QAnon guy is tasked with overseeing a QAnon-suspected agency, wouldn’t that be reassuring to his fellow truthers?

This was a question that came up when Patel was placed in charge of the FBI. It seemed reasonable to assume that once Patel realized that there was no cabal running the bureau, he would be able to calm everyone down.

That’s not what happened.

Instead, Patel, bumping up against the reality of bureaucracy, was forced into some awkward contortions, trying to convince people he was doing their work by firing Trump critics inside the agency, but ultimately unable to make good on any promises to dig up proof of treachery within the agency or release the promised Epstein files. Instead of deflating the conspiracy theories, this caused people to turn on Patel.

This reality is the same with the FEMA theories, Marwick said. “Where conspiracies don’t match the daily reality, you can have an immediate breakdown,” she said. “Conspiracy theorists will never be satisfied until someone shows them it’s controlled by the illuminati or a cabal or the Freemasons. So there’s no satisfactory resolution to this situation.”

And once the leader is unable to expose the corruption and reform the agency in the way the theorists want, that failure further proves the deep corruption of the system, she said. It reinforces public cynicism more than anything else.

Having an extremely partisan person in the position might instead encourage conspiracy theories from residents of blue states. Already, the Trump administration has weaponized grant funding for its own means. It is threatening to withhold Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits from Democratic-led states over their refusal to share recipients’ immigration status. It slashed $8 billion in funding for green projects in Democratic states. And a judge blocked the administration’s effort to reallocate $233 million in FEMA disaster-relief funds away from a dozen blue states without explanation. The states accused the administration of targeting them for not backing Trump in the election.

And if draft proposals for “Fema 2.0” are any indication, the administration hopes to shift some of its funding toward block grants, in which pots of money are distributed by some to-be-determined metrics to individual states. Under that scenario, says Jeffrey Pellegrino, a professor of emergency management and homeland security at the University of Akron, the size of those pots could certainly be politically driven. That would inherently give blue-state residents reason to raise questions.

It’s unlikely these residents would jump from being suspicious of Trump’s FEMA to believing that the agency is about to round them all up in prison camps, turning into some kind of liberal version of Alex Jones. But this kind of politicization does shorten the distance between reality and conspiracy theory. It’s something we’ve never seen before, Pellegrino says. FEMA has historically fluctuated in efficacy depending on the president’s own sense of its urgency, he says, but it has never been all that tainted by partisan politics—as past administrators have always believed that natural disasters are not a partisan issue.

“But that seems to have gone by the wayside with the current administration,” he said.

Phillips will likely not be the RFK Jr. of FEMA. The far-out FEMA conspiracy theories, unlike “Vaccines Cause Autism,” are not particularly actionable. You can ban vaccines, but you cannot halt the building of prison camps that don’t actually exist or dismantle fictional offices that run mind-control programs. Nor will he be its Kash Patel, as he won’t be able to find as many exciting ways to weaponize the agency or root out politically charged projects; disaster management is simply more bureaucratic and less controversial.

The most important questions about FEMA currently concern its scope and, frankly, its survival while under assault from the administration. But having a committed conspiracy theorist in one of the most important positions in an organization long plagued by conspiracy-theory accusations only proves how little the administration cares about public trust. As climate change continues to make natural disasters worse, as the administration refuses to grapple with the dangers of A.I., and as severe cuts to nonpartisan agencies debilitate their relief and prevention work, conspiracy theories about FEMA will continue to proliferate. Disasters are frightening and destabilizing. They’re the kinds of events that naturally breed misinformation and confusion. In that scenario, you need an agency led by people who respond to crises with reason and levelheadedness in order to mitigate conspiratorial thinking. A responsible administrator might be counted on to stem that paranoia, to—at a critical moment—pull people back from their worst impulses. But Phillips has spent years preying on those impulses, and there’s little reason to hope he’ll stop now.

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