Upheaval at the nation’s top disaster agency is raising anxiety among state and local emergency managers — and leaving major questions about the whereabouts of billions of federal dollars it pays out to them.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency still has not opened applications for an enormous suite of grants, including ones that many states rely on to pay for basic emergency management operations. Some states pass on much of that money to their most rural, low-income counties to ensure they have an emergency manager on the payroll.

FEMA has blown through the mid-May statutory deadline to start the grants’ application process, according to the National Emergency Management Association, with no word about why or what that might indicate. The delay appears to have little precedent.

“There’s no transparency on why it’s not happening,” said Michael A. Coen Jr., who served as FEMA’s chief of staff under former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

FEMA’s system of grants is complex and multifaceted and helps communities prepare for and respond to everything from terrorist attacks to natural disasters.

In April, the agency abruptly rescinded a different grant program that county and local governments were expecting to help them reduce natural hazard risks moving forward. The clawback of money included hundreds of millions already pledged. FEMA also quietly withdrew a notice for states to apply for $600 million in flood mitigation grants.

On top of that, on June 11, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem began requiring that she review all FEMA grants above $100,000. That could slow its vast multibillion grants apparatus to a crawl, current and former FEMA employees said.

FEMA did not answer ProPublica’s questions about the missed application deadline or the impact of funding cuts and delays, instead responding with a statement from DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin that Noem is focused on bringing accountability to FEMA’s spending by “rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and working to ensure only grants that really help Americans in time of need are approved.”

The memo announcing the change arrived the day after President Donald Trump said he wants to begin dismantling FEMA at the close of hurricane season this fall.

All of this has left states — some of which rely on the federal government for the vast majority of their emergency management funding — in a difficult position. While Trump has sharply criticized FEMA’s performance delivering aid after disasters strike, he has said almost nothing about the future of its grant programs.

“It’s a huge concern,” said Lynn Budd, president of the National Emergency Management Association and director of the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security, which houses emergency management. The state agency gets more than 90% of its operating budget from federal funds, especially FEMA grants. “The uncertainty makes it very difficult,” she said.

In North Carolina, a state hit hard by a recent natural disaster, federal grants make up 82% of its emergency management agency’s budget. North Carolina Emergency Management leaders are pressing state lawmakers to provide it with “funding that will sustain the agency and its core functions” and cut its reliance on federal grant funding, an agency spokesperson said.

A forced weaning off of federal dollars could have an outsize impact in North Carolina and the other states that pass on much of their FEMA grants to county and local agencies. Many rural counties have modest tax bases and are already stretched thin.

In May, ProPublica published a story detailing the horrors of Hurricane Helene’s impact on one of those counties, Yancey. Home to 19,000 people, it suffered the largest per capita loss of life and damage to property in the storm. Jeff Howell, its emergency manager, was operating with only a part-time employee and said that for years he had been asking the county commission for more help. It wasn’t until after the storm that county commissioners agreed with the need.

“They realized how big a job it is,” said Howell, who has since retired.

But even large metropolitan counties rely on the grants. The hold upin opening the grant applications concerns Robert Wike Graham, deputy director of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Emergency Management, which serves an area of 1.2 million people and is home to a nuclear power plant. The training and preparation FEMA grants help the agency pay for are critical to keeping the community safe in the face of a nuclear catastrophe.

Yet Graham said he has resorted to scouring social media posts and news reports for bits of clues about the grants — and the future of FEMA itself.

“We’re all having to be like, hey, what have you heard? What do you know? What’s going on? Nobody knows,” Graham said.

Trump is on his second acting FEMA administrator in five months, and the director who coordinates national disaster response turned in his resignation letter June 11. More than a dozen senior leaders, including the agency’s chief counsel, have left or been fired, along with an unknown mass of its full-time workers.

“Every emergency manager I know is screaming, ‘You’re screwing the system up.’ We’ve all been calling for reform,” Graham said. “But it’s too much, too fast.

Vulnerable to Political Shifts

Shortly after President Jimmy Carter created FEMA in 1979 to centralize federal disaster management, the agency began to dole out grants to help communities grappling with large-scale destruction. Over the years, its grants ballooned, especially after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when huge new programs helped states harden security against this alarming new threat.

Today, FEMA operates roughly a dozen preparedness grant programs. Among other things, the money serves as a financial carrot to ensure that even spending-averse and tax-strapped states and counties employ emergency managers who help communities prepare for and respond to terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

Former FEMA leaders said states have been largely content to sit back and let the feds pay up. As a result, they said, the grants have created a system of dependence that leaves emergency managers vulnerable to ever-shifting national priorities and, at the moment, a president set on dismantling the agency.

Across the country, the percentage of state emergency management agencies’ budgets paid by federal funding ranges from zero to 99.4%, a 2024 National Emergency Management Association report says. A spokesperson declined to provide a state-by-state breakdown, so ProPublica canvassed a few.

Wyoming tops 90%. Texas’ agency gets about three-quarters of its operational budget from federal funding. Virginia gets roughly 70%. South Carolina comes in around 61% federal funding for day-to-day operations.

Most state emergency managers agree that their states need to depend less on the federal government for their funding, “but there’s got to be some glide path or timeline where we can all work toward the goal,” Budd said.

Some states would need upwards of a decade to prepare for such a seismic shift, especially those like Wyoming that budget every other year, she added. Its Legislature is in the middle of budget negotiations for fiscal year 2027-28.

If emergency managers instead are scrambling, “the effects that we’re going to see down the line is a lack of preparedness, a lack of coordination, training and partnerships being built,” Budd said. “We’re not going to be able to respond as well.”

A key reason states have become so dependent on FEMA grants despite the risk of national political upheaval is that state legislatures and local elected leaders haven’t always prioritized paying for emergency management themselves despite its critical role. With FEMA’s grants, they haven’t had to.

W. Craig Fugate has seen reluctance to wean off FEMA grants from all levels of government. He served as FEMA administrator under Obama and, before that, as head of Florida’s emergency management division under then-Govs. Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist.

“My experience tells me locals will not step up unless they are dealing with a catastrophe,” Fugate said.

Because most of the preparedness grants require no match from state or local governments, he said, it strips away any motivation for them to do so — especially with other pressing needs vying for those dollars.

“The real question is how much of this is actually critical and should be the responsibility of local governments to fund?” Fugate said. “Neither local governments nor states have been very forward in funding beyond the minimums to match federal dollars.”

Small-Town North Carolina

After Hurricane Helene, North Carolina’s Emergency Management agency commissioned a report that pointedly criticized the state’s “over-reliance on federal grants to fund basic operations.” Only about 16.5% of the state agency’s budget comes from state appropriations.

The report noted that this reliance had led to an inadequate investment by the state in its emergency management staffing and infrastructure. A staff shortage at the agency “severely compromised the state’s response to Hurricane Helene.” Among other things, a lack of staff hampered the State Emergency Response Team’s ability to maintain a 24-hour operation that was supposed to support local and county officials who were overwhelmed by the massive storm.

North Carolina state Rep. Mark Pless, the Republican co-chair of the House Emergency Management and Disaster Recovery Committee, said the state’s conservative spending and $3.6 billion in reserves have “afforded us the ability to fund ourselves for preparedness” if FEMA suddenly yanks its grants.

But Democratic Rep. Robert Reives, the House minority leader, worried that any financial flexibility would dry up if planned and potential tax cuts in the years ahead create a budget shortfall, as some have predicted.

In mostly rural Washington County, along North Carolina’s hurricane-prone coast, Lance Swindell is a one-man emergency management office. His county, home to 11,000 people, lacks a big tax base.

Like other emergency managers across the state, Swindell said he supports cutting FEMA red tape and waste, but “grant funding is a major funding source just to keep the lights on.”

One of the grants in the FEMA program that blew past its deadline for opening applications pays half of his salary. That grant can fund core local operations such as staffing, training and equipment. It is critical to local emergency management offices: Almost 82% of counties across the country report tapping into it.

Cuts to this particular grant under the Biden administration already reduced what North Carolina gets — and therefore what gets passed down the governmental food chain to people like Swindell. North Carolina was allocated $8.5 million in fiscal year 2024, down from $10.6 million two years earlier.

Looking ahead, Swindell is still waiting for the applications to open while wondering if FEMA will more drastically slash the grants — and, if so, whether his county could find the money to continue paying his full-time salary.

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Kléya Rice says her phone rings every other day from unknown numbers. She answers in a panic, unsure if it’s Rony Dieujuste — her partner and the father of her two children — calling from an undisclosed detention center with only minutes to talk.

The usual recording that reveals a caller’s location hasn’t played on any recent calls, she said. Over the past month, Rice has become Dieujuste’s sole advocate. He’s a Haitian immigrant now facing deportation, along with his parents — though, unlike their son, they aren’t in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. The uncertainty has added more pressure as Rice works to keep their family together.

Rice spends most of her days caring for their two young children: a 10-month-old son and a 23-month-old daughter. As a registered nurse in Palm Beach County, Florida, she’s overwhelmed trying to juggle her career, motherhood, and Dieujuste’s absence. The babies are Dieujuste’s third and fourth children born in the United States. His oldest, a 9-year-old daughter, was born in Haiti. His second child is from a previous marriage to an American citizen.

During an interview, their oldest child calls for her daddy. 

“Da da, da da,” the little girl repeated. Her voice rose as Rice recalled a previous call with Dieujuste since she last heard from him on May 30, bringing tears to her eyes.

“It’s hard to navigate all of this,” said Rice, 41. By “this,” she meant the immigration system that detained Dieujuste, after he was pulled over by police while on his way home from a family member’s graduation party on May 30 in Palm Beach County on suspicion of driving under the influence. Since then, neither Rice nor his family has seen him.

There are over 500,000 Haitian immigrants under Temporary Protective Status lost in the immigration court system, said Guerline M. Jozef, founder and executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, on a monthly call hosted by Black Lives Matter Grassroots on June 12. Haitians with TPS status have until Aug. 3 to reregister, according to ICE officials.  

“These are people who are here legally, with legal status,” and yet, they’re still being detained, Jozef said.

Dieujuste was arrested by ICE on May 30 for allegedly violating the terms of his admission to the U.S. as a “nonimmigrant” and will remain in its custody pending completion of immigration proceedings, a spokesperson confirmed to Capital B in an email on June 23. 

For generations, people from the Caribbean have migrated to the United States — some directly from their home islands, others through countries like Canada or the United Kingdom. Today, under President Donald Trump’s deportation policies, families like Dieujuste’s are living in fear, often unaware of the whereabouts of their detained or deported loved ones. 

“I didn’t know this would be part of my story,” Rice said. 

It’s not just Haitian-born immigrants from West Indian islands living in the United States who are under threat of deportation. In May, a judge decided that Marlon Parris, a U.S. green card holder from Trinidad and Tobago since 1997 and an Army veteran, can be deported, KJZZ, a local public radio station, reported. Parris spent five years in prison for a nonviolent drug offense and was released in 2016, but that has triggered his deportation proceedings. 

Capital B reached out via email to ICE and confirmed Dieujuste is in their custody in California. Capital B has reached out via email to the Executive Office of Immigration Review for his next court appearance, which is open to the public. Both agencies informed Capital B that without having Dieujuste’s “alien registration number,” which isn’t given out to the public, his case information is not available. 

“He has been having nose bleeds for days”

“A lot is happening. Families are being separated,” Jozef said with a warning. “This is a real issue we are facing. This is not about immigration. Because at the same time, they [the federal government] are welcoming people from South Africa, who happen to look like them with blue eyes and blonde hair. That is the reality.”

From a detention center in Miami, Dieujuste told Rice he had been shackled alongside other non-English-speaking, nonwhite men and flown on a Southwest Airlines flight to what he believed was another detention facility in Fort Worth, Texas, on June 8. 

Rice has tried to track Dieujuste’s movements using ICE’s detainee locator system. The phone calls come in at random hours, and information is limited. Keeping up has been overwhelming. She didn’t think to take screenshots, but her photographic memory helps her recall some of the legal language she’s now learning.

Rice said Dieujuste’s immigration attorney has attempted to schedule in-person or video visits, only to find that by the time a meeting is confirmed, he’s already been transferred to another facility. 

The ICE custody transportation industry is run by “a handful of large conglomerates notorious for varied types of abuses across the world,” according to Bianca Tylek, author of The Prison Industry: How It Works and Who Profits. Some of those abuses came to light in a 2017 class action lawsuit filed on behalf of 92 Somali deportees, who were held on a plane for nearly 24 hours handcuffed, denied restroom access, and assaulted.

“Paid per person per mile, correctional and immigration detention transportation corporations guard their bottom lines by overcrowding vans, taking extended routes, avoiding stops, and ignoring the needs of their shackled passengers,” wrote Tylek, founder of the advocacy group Worth Rises, a nonprofit that opposes mass incarceration and the exploitation of incarcerated people. “With few government protections or legal remedies available to those harmed, these corporations create some of the most inhumane conditions for incarcerated and detained people.” 

Rice wouldn’t find out where Dieujuste was for hours, Rice said, wiping away tears during a Zoom interview with Capital B on June 12. She spent hours refreshing the locator site. Rice couldn’t hold back her tears when she talked about the poor quality of food like stale bread he said he has been served and her concerns about the air quality. 

“He has been having nose bleeds for days and he hasn’t seen a doctor,” Rice said as she used a Kleenex tissue to pick up her glasses and catch her tears. “They’re all wearing masks. Other Spanish-speaking men told Rony their noses have been bleeding for weeks.”

Nosebleeds has been a known complaint from detainees in ICE custody. There are a handful of organizations that are focusing on Black immigrants, and “the Haitian Bridge Alliance is at the forefront,” Josef said. 

“It has been devastating watching my little sister go through this,” Shani Simpson, 43, told Capital B on the same Zoom call with Rice. She told Capital B it has been “frightening” and “heartbreaking” to watch Rice — and other friends and families in the Caribbean diaspora, who took pride in obtaining U.S. citizenship — try their “very best to understand what’s going on through a very complicated and intricate immigration process.”

“He is breaking”

Dieujuste, 36, left Haiti in September 2018 in search of a better life for himself and his then infant daughter. After settling in Florida with another woman, not Rice, they fell in love, married and had his second child, Rice told Capital B. 

Dieujuste, a skilled contractor and master electrician, once built hotels along the coast in Haiti. In Florida, he worked as a handyman at a country club in Boca Raton. 

His marriage quickly fell apart, however. During the divorce, his then-wife accused him of immigration fraud, which triggered a review of his permanent residency status by immigration authorities.

“He kept that from me,” Rice, who is of Jamaican descent, said. 

After a cousin’s graduation party on May 30, Dieujuste got behind the wheel and was pulled over in Lake Worth.

Not fully understanding the officer’s questions — English isn’t his first language — Dieujuste admitted to drinking and was arrested. Bail was set at $1,000, but Rice noticed online that he’d been placed on a 48-hour hold. She Googled the term and panicked. He wasn’t allowed to post bail to go home, pending ICE investigating his status. 

“They tried to pressure him to sign papers to give up his rights. He said they’re still trying to get him to sign the paperwork,” Rice said through tears, grateful he refused and asked for his attorney.

As of their June 14 call, Dieujuste was at Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico, California, which is owned and operated by Management & Training Corp., a private company, according to online records.

It’s unclear when Dieujuste’s next court appearance will be. If a judge grants him bond while he awaits deportation proceedings, Rice says she’s been told to expect amounts “upwards of $30,000 or more. They’ve been setting bonds extremely high — for people with no criminal record.”

“The private prison model does not differ much from the corrections system to the immigration detention system. Business is still driven by more bodies, longer stays, and low costs,” Tylek wrote in her book, released by the New Press in April 2025. “Private immigration detention centers suffer from many of the same problems as private prisons and jails, but the people held in them have even fewer rights and thus, at times, can suffer even more abuse.”

The facility Dieujuste is currently in has been known for their food services needing improvement, according to an August 2022 inspection report from the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. 

“I told him to remain strong,” she said, adding, “But he is breaking. I can hear it in his voice and feel it in his spirit.”

They were reaching out via Facebook: The woman from middle school selling nutrition shakes, the woman from high school selling jewelry, the one from summer camp selling purses, the one I had met at a baby shower selling skin care. These business ventures, they said, would let them work from home around their commitments as mothers and, they claimed, make so much money they would soon be able to “retire their husbands.”

The final sales pitch was always the same: This could be available to me, too, if only I signed up through them to do the same. 

In other words, they were all multi-level marketing (MLM) ventures. And these women who defined a huge part of my online experience were why I wanted to read “Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America.” 

In the book, Bridget Read, a features writer at New York Magazine, tells the story of how this phenomenon has been intimately intertwined with the history of America itself over the past 80 years. I rushed to read it, looking for answers on just why MLMs had become so pervasive and adept at selling women the idea that they could both be the ultimate girl boss and the consummate homemaker — an idea that I had felt as an undercurrent in my reporting on last year’s election. 

I knew I wasn’t alone in seeing these connections. In her book, Read goes so far as to describe Project 2025 as sounding “like multilevel marketing.”

I spoke with Read about the connection between the core ideology of MLM and contemporary politics. 

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. 

Jennifer Gerson: Your book really digs into the history of how MLM and American politics are closely intertwined. Now we are six months into the second Trump administration — what kind of postscript would you want to add today based on what we have seen so far?

Bridget Read: The robber baron class is back, but they’ve successfully rebranded that concentration of power as freedom: that the profits that they are able to make with as little oversight as possible will somehow trickle down to the rest of us to make us freer to take care of ourselves, our families, to make our own decisions. And it just couldn’t be further from the truth. 

But they now have that buy-in from so many Americans, which we saw when [President Donald] Trump was reelected. In a multi-level marketing company, all of the people being exploited by it somehow think that they are going to have the ability to equally exploit people below them. It’s a chain of people who are underlings, but who participate because of the promise that they will be able to lord over their own pyramid under them. 

In the book, you talk about how Trump, from birth, was just completely steeped in the language and culture of MLMs. Now that he’s back in office, how do you see this iterating?

Trump really embodies the MLM problem, which is that of a business that doesn’t run in the way that it says it does. It dangles opportunity in front of people and tells participants that they will make an income, make a living, change their circumstances through a method that doesn’t actually work. It dangles this ladder and then pulls it up at the same time. 

Donald Trump has been doing that since day one. He’s been telling people that he’s a rich and wealthy guy — and if you want to be like me, here’s the way to do it.  I think Trump is the ultimate MLM president.

You write about the way that this MLM ideology came to the fore for Trump during COVID and the way that the pandemic pushed many people further into this mindset. How did you see that continue to evolve during this past election cycle and how people thought about politics and identity?

MLM since the beginning has been a pitch that tries to trick people into thinking that you are becoming a business owner. People are drawn into MLM because of this idea that they will leave the worker class behind eventually, whether they work retail or a 9 to 5, and that they can leave that slog and actually become a member of the ownership class and transform their class status.

MLM has also always drawn on the tradition of positive thinking, eschewing expertise, eschewing intellectualism and science, in trying to push people into the idea that they are somehow not only joining this business opportunity, but are health mavericks or science mavericks or self-care mavericks. 

The pandemic causing this economic disruption really just fed so many more people into that kind of thinking. It felt good to protect themselves by saying, “I know more than the scientists. I know more than [former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infection Disease Anthony] Fauci. I am a part of this maverick group of people and they are going to save me.” 

How do you think women specifically received this message during this election cycle? What parallels did you see between the Trump campaign and the MAGA movement in general and the foundation of MLMs and who it targets and how?

I think we saw that very directly in the election with Trump’s appeal through Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to MAHA [Make America Healthy Again supporters], who are predominantly women who, for very good reason probably, feel skeptical of institutions that are supposed to take care of them. 

So many MLM women I have encountered have had health problems and they weren’t able to get adequate health care. So instead of taking that energy and thinking, “How can we restructure these systems for all of our benefit?” MLM and the forces around Trump this round really focused all that DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] energy of tearing it all down. 

I think that’s why you have a huge amount of voters who turned out to say, “Let me not vaccinate my kids.” “Let me not pasteurize my milk.” “I don’t want to send my kids to public school — give me money to send my kid to religious school or homeschool them.” 

These are the methods of privatizing everything. And I think women in particular were served this idea that it was going to enable them to create this utopian, Ballerina Farm-esque life for themselves.

I asked you when we started talking about what postscript to the book you wish you could write today, knowing what the outcome of the 2024 election would be. But now I want to end with asking if you were able to keep reporting for the book today given this current political landscape, where would you be looking?

I think crypto has a huge, huge overlap with MLM. I think that crypto has simply inherited MLM’s Ponzi scheme structure and obviously, there’s a huge amount of political influence there. 

I mean look at Trump’s [crypto] coin itself — do we need any more evidence? The very idea that we’re supposed to buy into this coin and it’s going to grow in value merely by other people buying the coin? Like, hello: Paging the literal definition of a pyramid scheme. 

MINNEAPOLIS – Former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman will lie in state in the Minnesota Capitol rotunda on Friday while the man charged with killing her and her husband, and wounding a state senator and his wife, is due in court.

Hortman, a Democrat, will be the first woman and one of fewer than 20 Minnesotans accorded the honor. She will lie in state with her husband, Mark, and their golden retriever, Gilbert. Her husband was also killed in the June 14 attack, and Gilbert was seriously wounded and had to be euthanized.

The public can pay their respects from noon to 5 p.m. Friday. House TV will livestream the viewing. A private funeral is set for 10:30 a.m. Saturday. The service will be livestreamed on the Department of Public Safety’s YouTube channel.

The criminal case proceeds

The man accused of killing the Hortmans and wounding another Democratic lawmaker and his wife is due in court at 11 a.m. Friday to face charges for what the chief federal prosecutor for Minnesota has called “a political assassination.” Vance Boelter, 57, of Green Isle, surrendered near his home the night of June 15 after what authorities have called the largest search in Minnesota history.

The hearing, before Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko, is expected to address whether Boelter should remain in custody without bail and affirm that there is probable cause to proceed. He is not expected to enter a plea. Prosecutors need to secure a grand jury indictment before he’s arraigned later, which is when a plea is normally entered.

According to the federal complaint, police video shows Boelter outside the Hortmans’ home and captures the sound of gunfire. And it says security video shows Boelter approaching the front doors of two other lawmakers’ homes dressed as a police officer.

His lawyers have declined to comment on the charges, which could carry the federal death penalty. The acting U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Joseph Thompson, said last week that no decision has been made. Minnesota abolished its death penalty in 1911. The Death Penalty Information Center says a federal death penalty case hasn’t been prosecuted in Minnesota in the modern era, as best as it can tell.

Boelter also faces separate murder and attempted murder charges in state court that could carry life without parole, assuming that county prosecutors get their own indictment for first-degree murder. But federal authorities intend to use their power to try Boelter first.

Other victims and alleged targets

Authorities say Boelter shot and wounded Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman, and his wife, Yvette, at their home in Champlin before shooting and killing the Hortmans in their home in the northern Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park, a few miles away.

Federal prosecutors allege Boelter also stopped at the homes of two other Democratic lawmakers. Prosecutors also say he listed dozens of other Democrats as potential targets, including officials in other states. Friends described Boelter as an evangelical Christian with politically conservative views. But prosecutors have declined so far to speculate on a motive.

Boelter’s wife speaks out

Boelter’s wife, Jenny, issued a statement through her own lawyers Thursday saying she and her children are “absolutely shocked, heartbroken and completely blindsided,” and expressing sympathy for the Hortman and Hoffman families. She is not in custody and has not been charged.

“This violence does not align at all with our beliefs as a family,” her statement said. “It is a betrayal of everything we hold true as tenets of our Christian faith. We are appalled and horrified by what occurred and our hearts are incredibly heavy for the victims of this unfathomable tragedy.”

An FBI agent’s affidavit described the Boelters as “preppers,” people who prepare for major or catastrophic incidents. Investigators seized 48 guns from his home, according to search warrant documents.

While the FBI agent’s affidavit said law enforcement stopped Boelter’s wife as she traveled with her four children north of the Twin Cities in Onamia on the day of the shootings, she said in her statement that she was not pulled over. She said that after she got a call from authorities, she immediately drove to meet them at a nearby gas station and has fully cooperated with investigators.

“We thank law enforcement for apprehending Vance and protecting others from further harm,” she said.

The White House communications office released an eye roll–inducing supercut video Thursday about Trump’s trip to the NATO summit, declaring “Daddy’s Home,” using Usher’s song “Hey Daddy (Daddy’s Home).”

The video referred to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s cringeworthy comment during a press conference Wednesday about Trump’s surprise military strike in Iran.

“They’ve had it, they’ve had a big fight like two kids in a schoolyard,” Trump said of Israel and Iran, revealing just how elementary his understanding of the conflict actually was. “You know they fight like hell, you can’t stop ’em. Let ’em fight for about two to three minutes. Then it’s easy to stop ’em.”

“Daddy has to sometimes use strong language,” Rutte joked. It seems that “Daddy” liked his new nickname. Now he’s even selling ugly orange T-shirts that say it, complete with his glowering mug shot.

When asked about Rutte’s comment and whether Trump viewed his NATO allies as his children, Trump seemed to love the idea. “He likes me, I think he likes me. If he doesn’t, I’ll come back and I’ll hit him hard, OK?” Trump told reporters during a press conference Wednesday. “He did it very affectionately. ‘Daddy, you’re my daddy!’”

Of course, Trump’s not the only one with a daddy kink: MAGA has been quick to embrace the new nickname, as well. Fox News anchor Jesse Watters gushed about his newfound father figure, applauding Trump for not abandoning NATO.

“The media said Daddy was gonna leave the family, but look at him front and center in the family photo,” Watters said of a photograph of Trump posing with leaders at the summit.

The MAGA mouthpiece joined in on the administration’s complaining about a leaked Pentagon report that had undermined Trump’s claims about the strikes in Iran being successful. “If you stab Daddy in the back, you’re getting more than a spanking,” Watters said. “The punishment for treason: the death penalty.”