St. Joe’s 39th Annual Debate: County Executive

After years of advocating "America First," President Donald Trump's administration, the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced on Friday, "I'm also proud that today we're signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatari Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Airbase in Idaho."

It led to a swift meltdown from some of the president's top allies.

Constitutionalist and MAGA influencer "The General" was furious, calling it outright "treason."

"We are in the middle of rolling out military across the entire USA and then bringing in a non-NATO country military into the USA is TREASON. U.S. and Qatar sign deal to open a Qatari 'air force facility,' in the U.S., at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho," he wrote on X.

"Is this what 'shared defense goals' means now — or just the latest way our politicians get paid to sell out our country?" asked Amy Mek, the editor-in-chief of RAIR, an organization that advocates for the U.S. to return to a country run by Judeo-Christian values. "Twenty-four years after foreign nationals trained in our flight schools flew planes into our buildings, our leaders are inviting their financiers to train inside our bases. This is what happens when you gut national-security training, scrub every mention of Islam, jihad, and Sharia from the manuals, and let Obama- and Biden-era bureaucrats turn counterterrorism into cultural sensitivity class. We’re being led by officials who no longer recognize or refuse to name the enemy they’re inviting into our own backyard.'

Close ally to President Trump, Laura Loomer, lamented the news after advocating that the administration declare the Muslim Brotherhood an international terrorist organization.

"Well, I guess this isn’t going to happen since we just gave the Muslim Brotherhood an air base in Idaho. So much for my decade worth of hard work trying to protect Americans from the threat of Islamic terror," said Loomer about the new base.

"No foreign country should have a military base on U.S. soil," she also said. "Especially Islamic countries. I have never felt more betrayed by the GOP than I do now watching Islamic jihadists get away with implementing Sharia law in the US and now they are getting their own airbase where they will train to kill Americans."

She went on to warn that it would make America less safe by setting up "for America to be attacked by Islamic savages from Qatar, the biggest funders of Islamic terror in the entire world. So much so, the Saudis and Emiratis find Qatar to be TOXIC. I need to see how much more of my life I am going to dedicate to a party that won’t address the threat of Islam in the West. The betrayal stings. WE ARE LOSING OUR COUNTRY!"

Content creator and influencer Red Eagle Politics denied the reporting.

"We aren’t giving Argentina a free $20 Billion handout, and we aren’t building an Air Force Base for Qatar in Idaho. The amount of dishonest lunacy on this app is reaching new heights," he wrote on X.

Utah state Sen. Nate Blouin, a Democrat, pointed out that Idaho Republicans "have been crowing about" legislation similar to that his state enacted "blocking foreign ownership of land in their state."

Dan Caldwell, former senior advisor to Hegseth, wrote on X that it wasn't that big of a deal.

"The freak out around this is of course totally unwarranted since this is actually a pretty common practice with countries that buy and operate a lot of U.S. military aircraft. Singapore has a similar facility and detachment for its F-15 training unit at this very same airbase," he said.

Caldwell is one of the DOD aides who was forced out amid Hegseth's Signalgate scandal. He has denied any wrongdoing.

A number of Federal Emergency Management Agency staff that openly criticized President Donald Trump are under intense investigation from FEMA leadership, and under threats of termination should they refuse to reveal the names of their colleagues who criticized Trump anonymously, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

Nearly 200 FEMA employees signed onto a letter in August pushing back against the Trump administration’s cuts to FEMA, warning that the cuts could jeopardize the agency’s ability to adequately respond to disasters.

More than a dozen FEMA employees – all of whom signed onto the letter – were soon placed on leave. Now, remaining staff that had signed onto the letter using their name are being investigated by agency leadership, being threatened to reveal the names of their colleagues who signed the letter anonymously, according to insiders who spoke with Bloomberg and documents reviewed by the outlet.

“The interviews with FEMA workers have been carried out by the agency's division that investigates employee misconduct, and those interviewed have been told they risk being fired for failure to cooperate,” Bloomberg writes in its report. “The employees have been instructed not to bring counsel, according to people familiar with the process.”

The revelation that FEMA staff under investigation were being instructed not to bring legal counsel was revealed, in part, by Colette Delawalla, the founder of the nonprofit organization Stand Up for Science, the same organization that helped FEMA staff publish its letter of dissent.

“They are not really given an option not to comply,” Delawalla told Bloomberg. “They don’t have guidance while they’re in there.”

Trump has previously said he wanted to phase out FEMA and “bring it down to the state level,” with the agency struggling to respond to emergencies such as the deadly Texas flood in July following new Trump administration policies that led to funding lapses for the agency.

A previous batch of FEMA employees – 140 of them – were placed on leave back in July for signing onto a different letter of dissent, which itself followed a number of FEMA employees being forcibly reassigned to work for Immigrations Customs and Enforcement amid Trump’s mass deportation push.