(The Center Square) – Federal employees tasked with responding to natural disasters and providing assistance to Americans in dire straits haven’t all been using government resources as intended. As part of an investigation, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) staff have been found to be using government resources to engage in sexually explicit behavior.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security investigators identified employees working at a FEMA command center who they say were sending sexually explicit images via text, or sexting, to foreign nationals and uploading the images using government devices.

Agents working in DHS’ Insider Threat Operations Center (ITOC) identified two FEMA employees who allegedly “used their official government equipment to send graphic messages, access adult websites, and in one case, upload an image of male genitalia to an online sex platform,” DHS said.

“This behavior and misuse of government resources is absolutely disgusting,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said. Instead of working on behalf of the American people in taxpayer funded jobs with access to highly sensitive systems, the employees “spent their duty hours sexting strangers, including foreign nationals, on encrypted government devices. Such conduct is unacceptable, and these employees have been terminated,” Noem said.

On August 27, DHS ITOC agents discovered that one FEMA employee had accessed Facebook Messenger through the FEMA network to allegedly “engage in multiple sexually explicit conversations with an individual believed to reside in the Philippines.” ITOC agents reviewed messages including graphic sexual content, references to a Filipino dating group, and statements about the FEMA employee’s plan to visit the individual overseas, DHS said.

Between Aug. 30-31, another FEMA employee used his official government workstation to access an adult website to engage in multiple graphic conversations and upload an image of male genitalia to the platform, investigators said. The activity was observed to have occurred during work hours using a FEMA-assigned device connected to an unclassified FEMA network.

The offenses occurred at FEMA’s Mount Weather Emergency Operations Center/High Point Special Facility located near Frogtown, Virginia, DHS said. The facility is used as a relocation site for senior civilian and military officials, houses FEMA’s National Emergency Coordinating Center, and provides communications to the White House Situation Room.

“The revolting actions of these employees, now the second group to be caught at FEMA engaged in such acts, represents a clear national security risk,” Noem said.

She’s referring to two other FEMA employees who worked at the operations center who were also fired. On July 12, ITOC agents identified a FEMA employee who “typed explicit and sexually charged phrases into a chatbot website” using government devices to have “comments read back to him in an accent,” DHS said.

On Aug. 1, ITOC agents identified a government-contracted employee “accessing Reddit.com 578 times over a 30-day period. It was revealed that he was engaged in extensive interactions with individuals online, viewing explicit sexual content while on his work devices.” He used his government computer several times to chat online with Reddit members presenting explicit content and accessed graphic photographs and videos, DHS said.

“These individuals had access to critical information and intelligence and were entrusted to safeguard Americans from emergencies – and instead they were consuming pornography. In at least one case the pornography consumed was racially charged and involved bestiality,” Noem said.

DHS says it is actively investigating alleged misuse of devices agency-wide to ensure employees aren’t abusing or misusing federal devices or sharing classified or sensitive information. This includes DHS prioritizing investigations into FEMA’s network activity and employee conduct, including actively reviewing internal policies, network monitoring protocols, and security clearances, it says.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are cleaning house at FEMA to make this dysfunctional agency work for the American people the way that it was intended,” Noem said. “For decades some of these bureaucrats engaged in every act imaginable instead of safeguarding the American people from natural disasters. That ends now.”

Voters in South Carolina have expressed concern about conflicts of interest in letting lawyers pick the state’s judges. The response by lawmakers was to add more lawyers.

The slightly changed system will be tested in the coming months as three candidates challenging Supreme Court Justice John Few for his seat try to woo legislators, many of whom are lawyers who could possibly have cases before that court in the future. The state is one of only two that has a committee screen judicial applicants before putting those deemed worthy to a vote in the legislature.

That committee has three members of the House of Representatives who must judge their ex-leader, former speaker Jay Lucas. It also features a Columbia lawyer with a controversial cause in the state’s asbestos court whose authority to act as the head of companies that died decades ago will likely ultimately be decided by the state Supreme Court. And there are personal injury lawyers, like Sen. Luke Rankin, whose lawsuits have been heard in the appellate courts.

“You have built-in conflicts of interest that at times become actual conflicts of interest,” said longtime South Carolina journalist Rick Brundrett, editor of The Nerve – a product of the South Carolina Policy Council.

“This type of race is not going to improve the public’s trust in the judiciary at all. Until there are more serious reforms than what we got… nothing’s going to change.”

The Policy Council would prefer a system in which the governor makes appointments, but those picks must be confirmed by the legislature – the same way the federal government operates. Open elections are susceptible to out-of-state spending, as two recent supreme court elections in Wisconsin showed. That court has a 4-3 liberal majority and plenty of bad blood among the justices.

What South Carolina has only occurs there and in Virginia. And putting the power to pick judges in lawmakers’ hands means South Carolina’s legal community can select its favorites – there are more than 40 lawyers in the 170-member legislature, with many of them working at firms that do personal-injury cases.

Their influence was shown earlier this year when the business community tried to pass a reform measure to help restaurants that were made to pay so much in DUI cases that some insurers either stopped issuing policies or raised premiums for coverage so high that restaurants couldn’t afford them.

Sen. Shane Massey’s bill tripped repeatedly over amendments, to the point where he asked for a vote on them and declared he might not vote for the final version of his own legislation. Ultimately, it passed, with a carveout protecting asbestos lawyers.

Three lawyers in the House and three from the Senate make up half of the Judicial Merit Selection Commission. They’re joined by two members of the public, both lawyers, and four more citizens appointed by Gov. Henry McMaster – three are lawyers and one is a retired judge.

The old system was a 10-person committee with no input from the governor. In the Republican primary in 2024, voters (who could have been from any party, the state has open primaries), were asked if the state should adopt reforms to improve transparency and reduce conflicts of interest in how judges are picked.

More than 91% said yes. Months later, small changes were made: The governor can pick one-third of the JMSC and it can approve up to six candidates for a spot on the bench, up from three.

Further measures have been proposed but not adopted. One idea that has floated around is eliminating lawyer-legislators from the JMSC. Brundrett also said JMSC members should not be allowed to use it as a stepping stone to seek a judgeship in the future.

Lucas was a judge 30 years ago before his election to the House of Representatives, where he served for 24 years. From 2014-22, he was House speaker – one of the most powerful posts in the state – and he worked with all three current JMSC members from the House: Leon Stavrinakis, Micah Caskey and Jay Jordan.

Lucas could only serve three years until the mandatory retirement age if lawmakers pick him. JMSC members can recuse themselves from a vote on a candidate, but a message to the commission’s attorney asking whether anyone ever has was not returned.

Brundrett worries that nothing stops JMSC members from recusing themselves but still discussing the candidate’s qualifications with others in closed-door meetings.

“This is the incestuous nature of the screening and selection process,” he said. “Should the former House speaker get a seat on the Supreme Court and upend a guy that’s already been there? Is that really smart, to just do a favor and keep a buddy on their court for three years?

“Is that in the best interest of the public? Obviously, no.”

One of Gov. McMaster’s appointees to the JMSC this year was Peter Protopapas, a lawyer selected by former chief justice Jean Toal, now head of the state’s asbestos docket, to act as a “receiver” for companies that no longer exist but are sued in asbestos lawsuits.

Using that authority, he sues the defunct companies’ former insurers over old policies, obtains multimillion-dollar settlements, takes some of the money for his contingency fee and places the rest in Delaware funds whose books are not available to the public.

Earlier this year, Justice Few was among a unanimous majority that pushed back at the arrangement. A May ruling affirmed Protopapas’ receivership over one company but said “it is an extraordinary remedy reserved for the most extraordinary cases. It is not to be used in the typical default case.”

Companies fighting Protopapas are taking this to mean he should not be allowed to take control of dead companies, especially when there has been no judgment against them. This and other issues in the asbestos court often kick up to the state’s appellate courts.

One lawyer Protopapas uses in his court fights is G. Murrell Smith, Lucas’ successor as House speaker. Few could face long odds in gaining their favor when pitted against Lucas and Court of Appeals judge Blake Hewitt, a former plaintiff lawyer with asbestos experience who clerked for Judge Toal. Administrative law judge Ralph Anderson III is the fourth candidate.

“Right now in South Carolina, the power to elect the higher-level judges in this state lies in the Legislature,” Brundrett said. “Despite the so-called ‘reform’ of last year, that power is still there.”

(The Center Square) – Hope remains 125 years after the Great Storm of 1900 decimated Galveston Island.

On Sept. 8, 1900, a massive hurricane tore through Galveston, creating an estimated $30 million worth of damages at the time.

The last wind speed measured 100 miles an hour before instruments were blown away. The tide reached roughly 16 feet above sea level; the barometric pressure at 7:30 PM “was the lowest ever recorded in the United States to that day,” according to accounts in a Rosenberg Library exhibit in Galveston.

An estimated more than 8,000 people were killed in Galveston and north on the mainland, although total deaths are unknown and believed to be much higher. At least 8,000 were left homeless; nearly all buildings and churches were destroyed. Bridges, train tracks, utilities and telegraph lines were wiped out. Ocean steamers were stranded; boats were destroyed. No fresh water and a limited food supply created a desperate situation for survivors.

Corpses were strewn on land and floating in the Gulf. Dead animals, rotting vegetation and fragments of houses were piled stories deep, stretching across the east end of the island.

“There is hardly a family on the island whose household has not lost a member or more, and in some instances entire families have been washed away or killed. Hundreds who escaped from the waves did so only to become the victims of a worse death, being crushed by falling buildings,” one account describes in “Galveston in Nineteen Hundred,” published in 1900 and edited by Clarence Ousley of the Galveston Tribune.

After extensive looting and price gouging ensued among the living, the mayor declared martial law, enforced by the military and local police. All able-bodied men were required to collect the corpses to bury. The volume was so great there wasn’t enough land, men, horses and carts to bury them. Attempts to bury corpses at sea resulted in them washing back ashore. The only solution left was to burn bodies, which lasted for months. Identification of the dead was impossible, according to multiple accounts.

“Bonfires are burning all over the city. They are the funeral of a thousand festering corpses cast back upon the shore at high tide,” another account from Galveston in Nineteen Hundred reads. “Cremation has become a necessity to prevent an epidemic. The townspeople are paralyzed with fright and suffering, or are making preparations to leave the doomed island.”

After appeals were made by the governor and Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross, relief money, supplies, volunteers and messages of hope poured in from across the country.

“In the wake of the disaster of 1900, the determined majority of the survivors stayed on Galveston Island and turned their eyes to the future,” the library states. They were led by a group of businessmen resolved to rebuild. Among them was W. L. Moody, Sr., who said, “Galveston will be rebuilt stronger and better than ever before.”

Within a few years, part of the east end of the island was raised and a seawall was built. The island survived a massive hurricane in 1915 and every subsequent hurricane. In 125 years, the island’s population increased roughly 35%; more than 8 million visit a year.

Among the many commemorative events on Sept. 8, was the unveiling of the Bryan Museum’s first grand scale outdoor painting, “The Emotional Trinity: Hope, Fear and Awe,” painted by Vickie McMillan-Hayes. It’s available to view for free.

“In the world’s great tragedies that of Galveston stands remarkable. In no other case in history has a disaster met with such courage and fortitude; in no other case in history were the people of the whole world so responsive to the call for help for the helpless,” the museum states.

Its founder, J.P. Bryan, another instrumental leader in Texas and descendent of Stephen F. Austin’s sister, encouraged the public at the unveiling, “in all things great or small, never give in. … Hope abides abundantly regardless of the tragedy and the magnitude of it that you might face like we faced here in Galveston. God’s amazing grace is available for all of us who seek it, and it abides abundantly in our lives.”

The painting depicts a woman holding her baby, with her son clinging to her legs, looking at sunlight with the ruins of Galveston below. The baby represents awe; the boy, fear and comfort. The mother “isn’t looking down at destruction but is gazing at hope,” Hayes said. “She has fixed her eyes upon something beautiful. She is looking to the future, renewal, rebirth. She had a choice to look down at the devastation and distraction or to lift her gaze up … in hope.

“This is a question we can all ask ourselves when faced with difficult circumstances, what are my eyes fixed on? Does it lead me on a path of peace and hope for myself? It is the Lord Jesus Christ who gives me great hope,” she said. “It is fixing my eyes on him and him alone.”

The painting was collaborative, with members of the public brushing strokes. “We all came together and added our stroke of paint to this piece, and we were a community at large coming together, making a statement of resilience and hope faced with tragedy,” she said.

The Storm of 1900 remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.