Leftists went into full freakout mode on Friday after it was announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will test the Emergency Alert System (EAS) next week — a system that allows President Donald Trump to message all Americans.
FEMA made the announcement in a statement:
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), in coordination with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), will conduct a nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) and Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) on September 20, 2018. The WEA portion of the test commences at 2:18 p.m. EDT, and the EAS portion follows at 2:20 p.m. EDT. The test will assess the operational readiness of the infrastructure for distribution of a national message and determine whether improvements are needed.
“The EAS is a national public warning system that provides the President with the communications capability to address the nation during a national emergency,” the statement continued. “The test is made available to EAS participants (i.e., radio and television broadcasters, cable systems, satellite radio and television providers, and wireline video providers) and is scheduled to last approximately one minute.”
Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall tweeted: “Prepare to die, folks. Trump is about to get his own ‘presidential alert’ system plugged into your cell phone. And he gets to test it out the first time next week”
The reaction to the announcement was predictably absurd but entertaining (Warning: tweets contain profanity):