David Richardson

Pope of FEMA. Painter, USMC LtCol (Ret.) Author of Texas Flood 4 July 2025 - Out now on Amazon:

[David Richardson @popeofFEMA]

The story was that I could not be reached during the Texas floods. @DPaulCraig at @RCDefense talked to me and to the people running the response. He wrote this: https://t.co/wGuhqvU60Y

[Red Presswire @RedPressWire]

Former FEMA Administrator David Richardson (@popeofFEMA) Releases “Texas Flood”, an Inside Account of Crisis, Bureaucracy and Leadership

https://t.co/8rMUDVjstR

[David Richardson @popeofFEMA]

FEMA flood maps aren’t safety tools; they’re actuarial maps for insurance. Accountability is so diffuse that when lines shift to allow more floodplain building, no one is responsible. NFIP points incentives the wrong way: build, flood, rebuild, repeat. https://t.co/FMtmnBidpU

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🚨 JUST IN: Sec. Marco Rubio announces Americans will be able to apply for passports ENTIRELY ONLINE instead of spending HOURS and frustration doing it in-person

"No printing forms, no drug store hostage photo, no appointment, no line, no middleman...and REAL-TIME STATUS, [tracking] estimated delivery date."

"By the end of 2027, our goal is for most Americans to be able to apply for a passport or passport card on America .gov."

He just PERSONALLY confirmed it: America .gov will let you do the entire process online

This is massively overdue! The page is Super Intelligence-powered. EVERY nation is going to copy it 🇺🇸

[One America News @OANN]

President Trump signs an executive order directing every federal agency to integrate its public services with https://t.co/4SRgVZcc6g as soon as possible.

The new platform is designed to provide Americans with a centralized way to access federal government information and services.

For more updates, watch OAN on OAN Live or click the link in our bio.

[Daily Signal @DailySignal]

The New York Post reported on Sept. 23 that Texas Rangers are investigating whether crimes, including manslaughter, were committed in the deaths at Camp Mystic during the July 2025 floods. Investigators are seeking evidence; no finding of criminal guilt has been made.

Whatever that inquiry concludes, it raises broader questions: Why do we keep building and sleeping on floodplains? And why do federal maps and subsidized insurance continue to make the danger easy to overlook?

https://t.co/aIQ8TkavEV

[David Richardson @popeofFEMA]

My op-ed in The Daily Signal, after the New York Post reported that the Texas Rangers had opened a Camp Mystic inquiry. The question is not only what happened that night. It is why we treat a flood map as a safety line. https://t.co/szCPD1gdtG

[Henry Public Relations @HenryPRUSA]

🎙️Former Acting FEMA Director David Richardson joined @ckchumley on the @WashTimes Bold and Blunt Podcast yesterday.

Full interview: https://t.co/rK36aitNFe

[Gunther Eagleman™ @GuntherEagleman]

CAMP MYSTIC IS NOW UNDER A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION THAT COULD INCLUDE MANSLAUGHTER OR NEGLIGENT HOMICIDE AFTER 27 GIRLS DIED IN THAT 2025 TEXAS FLOOD.

A judge just signed 14 search warrants so the Texas Rangers can pull electronic communications from the camp’s owners. That is not a press release. That is a state treating those deaths like they may have been preventable.

Twenty-seven little girls went to camp and never came home. Parents deserve every message, every warning ignored, and every decision that put those kids in harm’s way. If negligence killed them, charge it. If someone covered tracks, expose it. Texas owes those families the full truth, not another round of empty sympathy.

[ABC News @ABC]

Camp Mystic faces a criminal investigation that could include manslaughter or negligent homicide charges in the deaths of 27 girls amid last year's devastating flooding in Texas, court documents show. https://t.co/4hBtoX4xLM

[John Solomon @jsolomonReports]

Camp Mystic faces criminal probe over lethal 2025 flood deaths https://t.co/MIgUAXbHu6

[CNN @CNN]

Camp Mystic faces a criminal investigation that could include manslaughter or negligent homicide charges in the deaths of 27 girls amid devastating flooding in Texas last year, court documents show. https://t.co/43F1pu5as2

[David Richardson @popeofFEMA]

FEMA is not late because nobody cares. It is late because every fence and driveway becomes a file that can be appealed for years.
I talked through that with @ckchumley on Bold & Blunt — the Texas floods, the $100k memo I overrode, block grants instead of bottom-up counts, and the children at Camp Mystic.https://t.co/2sYJ0QhbZN

[David Richardson @popeofFEMA]

I told @stinchfield1776 what I saw inside @fema.
The National Flood Insurance Program didn’t protect people from floods. It pushed them into floodplains. Once the rest of the country paid the premiums, building in harm’s way became somebody else’s problem. Cheap insurance. Actuarial maps. A $20 billion hole and another taxpayer bailout.
Then I looked at the backlog. About 80,000 open projects. Files that never close. Katrina work still breathing twenty years later. That’s not recovery. That’s a jobs program.
Headquarters had 6,000 people. We needed 2,000. I would have cut the agency in half and kept what the law actually requires.
Call it the deep state if you want. I call it a bureaucracy that survives by never finishing the last disaster.
Americans deserve an agency that shows up fast and leaves — not one that lives on process.

[David Richardson @popeofFEMA]

Texas’s emergency chief didn’t need a think-tank explainer.
I asked Nim Kidd if the state got everything it asked for, on time.
“Damn right we did.”
Andy Rumbach read the book so you wouldn’t have to. He conceded that line, then spent the rest of the piece missing the point.
Answered him here: https://t.co/uH0jlHJX6c

[David Richardson @popeofFEMA]

I sat down with Col. Mike and Dr. Michael Scheuer on The National Security Hour to talk about the work I was hired to do at FEMA and DHS: mission analysis, troop-to-task, and cutting headquarters from about 6,000 to 2,000 against a $30 billion budget. The same logic applied at DHS. The plans were not executed. Then I wrote the book.
Listen: https://t.co/trjeTXUohZ

[David Richardson @popeofFEMA]

My new book, Texas Flood: Power, Money, Politics, History, Bureaucracy and Tragedy, is available on Amazon. In it, I discuss why I was sent to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), how I would have shut down or radically transformed the agency, and how I overrode the Department of Homeland Security to ensure the people of Texas received the assistance they needed during one of six major fatal flash floods in American history.
https://t.co/dmK6gNdW5l

[David Richardson @popeofFEMA]

Luke seems to be the only reporter I've spoken with who was interested in the truth.

[Luke Barr @LukeLBarr]

NEW: Former FEMA Administrator David Richardson told me in an interview he believes that the memo requiring contracts to be personally signed off by former Sec. Kristi Noem was the "beginning of the end" for her. More on his response to TX floods & more: https://t.co/G1kOwUtWMz