As a severe winter storm approaches, the Trump administration has bigger concerns on its plate: not getting trolled on the internet. And, we almost forgot to mention, memes.
On Thursday, Homeland Security officials instructed disaster response staff at the Federal Emergency Management Agency to avoid using the word “ice” in public messaging about the impending storm for an incredible reason, CNN reports: because of all the outrage surrounding the other ICE, the US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
The urgent concern, according to two sources familiar with the directive, is that it could not only cause confusion, but heaps of online mockery.
“If FEMA says, ‘Keep off the roads if you see ice,’ it would be easy for the public to meme it,” one of the sources told CNN.
Ice posing a threat to the safety of American citizens? Gallows humor on the topic certainly does spring to mind — the controversial agency shot and killed another protestor today.
The unorthodox guidance, according to CNN‘s sourcing, was delivered “informally” by officials from the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both FEMA and ICE, and comes as the latter agency faces ever intensifying public backlash against its brutal — and deadly — crackdown in Minnesota. Meanwhile, FEMA, which Trump has openly mused about dismantling entirely, has been targeted with cuts and layoffs and reportedly plans to eliminate half its workforce, although it has paused those layoffs because of the storm, per another CNN scoop.
According to the latest reporting, the sources claim the officials said to avoid phrasing like “watch out for ice,” arguing that the memes those could spawn would take away from the serious nature of the warnings. Instead, the officials suggested using terms like “freezing rain,” very possibly eliciting groans from meteorologists the world over.
One of the sources called the directive a “dangerous precedent to set.”
“If we can’t use clear language to help prepare Americans,” the source told CNN, “then people may be left vulnerable and could suffer.”
Twenty-two states have issued states of emergency in anticipation of the storm that, stretching over 2,000 miles from Texas to New England, may affect over half the population of the entire country. In some regions, temperatures could plunge to such extremes lows that trees could start exploding.
One of the biggest threats the storm will pose, despite FEMA’s instructions to avoid mentioning it, is ice — the frozen water, not the immigration agency, which imperils roadways and weighs down trees, raising the risk of them toppling onto power lines.
If the directive to FEMA to censor ice because of ICE sounds too stupid to be true, then maybe it is, if you’re inclined to believe a very hostile sounding FEMA spokesperson.
“‘Reporting’ like this reads like a desperate ploy for clickbait rather than real journalism that actually gives Americans disaster preparedness information that could save lives,” the spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. “FEMA will use correct and accurate descriptors of weather conditions to communicate clearly to the American people.”
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The post Trump Admin Warns FEMA Not to Talk About “Ice” in Winter Storm Because They’re Scared People Will Use the Clips to Make Fun of ICE appeared first on Futurism.
