Reviewing the Future of Disaster Relief

Hi, this is Brooke. You know, when Micah and Eloise, his producer, were out for long stretches working on the series, I did ask myself once or twice, what is it about FEMA? What is it we don't already know But wow, this was new, gripping painstaking original reporting as great as Micah and Eloise are There is another person who made it possible, and that's you. Listener supportpp is the largest and most reliable source of funding for our show and for the whole station So support us today, make a donation and get our brand new on the media jumbo tote with an extra large on the media logo. Just just go to on themedia. org slash donate Thank you And now the final episode of American emergency On this week's on the media from WNYC, the Trump administration has threatened to kill, or at least maim, the Federal emergency management aggency. But FEMA isn't going down without a fight. There'll also be sign an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA. I think frankly, FEMA is not good. We were tasked to write a memo on how would abolish FEMA. He persceeded to berate me over the fact that the media got a hold of the story and was running a topic that they felt was too sensitive and not fit for public domain. The topic was abolishing FEMA. Correct. President Trump has just announced that homeomeland Security Secretary Christie Noome is out of a job. As soon as I heard the news, I remember calling my coworker and telling them But as soon as they picked up the phone, they said, The witch is dead. The witch is gone. She's out of here Past, present, and future of FEMA after this On the media is supported by Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort offering destination focused small ship experiences on all seven continents, with a shore excursion included in every port and programs designed for cultural enrichment And every Viking voyage is all inclusive, with no children and no casinos Learn more at Viking d. comot WNYC Studios is supported by Mohunk Mountain House Mohaunk Mountain House has been providing recreation and renewal for families since eighteen sixty nine Now is the perfect time to reserve your summer getaway to Hudson Valley's most iconic resort with their kids Day free offer featuring guided hikes, archery, nature inspired pool, campfires, live music and entertainment, and their complimentary drop off kids Club. With so much included in your stay, they make it truly easy to have a stress free family vacation Just pack your bags and they'll do the rest Mohunk. com WNYC stududios is supported by proof on Broadway Only three weeks left to see the Plzer and Tony winning play, the Chicago Tribune says is one of the best American dramas of the twentieth century brought thrillingly back to life fromom WNYC in New York, this is on the media. Brooke Gladstone is out this week. I'm Mikea Loinger On march twenty seventh, twenty twenty five, Cameron Hamilton, Trump's interim top leader at FEMA, was meeting with some high ranking officials in an undisclosed secure location He wouldn't tell me who he was with or where just that he had to run out abruptly I received a phone call That was veryer distressing It was Corey Lewindowski, a special government employee working closely with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Christi Noome Lewandowsky was ripping mad. He'd persided to berate me over the fact that the media got a hold of a story and was running a topic that they felt was too sensitive and not fit for public domain And the topic was abolishing FEMA. Correct A day earlier, Politico had published a story about a meeting where Corey Lewandowski, Christy Noome, and Cameron Hamilton had discussed whether to dismantle the agency and how they might do it Lewandowsky was now calling because he believed Hamilton had leaked the story. To which I responded, I'm not a liar I'm a leger, I'm a man of honor. And if I tell you the truth, it's the truth. Lewandowski didn't buy it. I wanted to choke somebody, and that's exactly what came through my mind. I'm Just living in my flesh, doing some very unchristian things to a certain person, but nonetheless, A certain person being mister Lewan. out work. Yeah. I think you can read between the lines on that statement After his call with Lewandowsky, Hamilton got an email from a DHS official, asking him to submit to a voluntary polygraph test. as in a lie detector Hamilton told me he had nothing to hide, but he was shocked and not sure how to respond So he started calling his friends around Washington. I called people in the White House. I called people In Congress, people in the Senate. My first question is, is this normal I've never encountered such unprofessionalism ever in my life to which unanimously Their perspective was I've never seen something like this then the second argument that I had received from others was, do I resign in protest Or do I do this Overwhelmingly the advice was Please do not resign. They will try to destroy you if you do So they said, the honorable thing to do is to take the test, pass it and then look them in the face and remind them that you're not a liar So that's what I chose to do As far as I can tell, I'm the only journalist to have had an extended sit down interview with Cameron Hamilton about his time as former acting director of FEMA. We spoke in December of twenty twenty five when he was out of office. Last week, Trump nominated him to return to the agency, this time in an official capacity You're listening to the fourth and final episode of our four part series, American Emergency The Movement to Kill FEMA. Over the course of this series, we've explored how FEMA's Cold War doomsday planning inspired wild conspiracy theories, how catastrophic failures during Hurricane Katrina hurt relief efforts and broke trust with the public And how FEMA was overwhelmed by viral lies pushed by Trump and the MAGA fringes when Hurricane Helene struck in twenty twenty four This week, we reckon with the future of FEMA and our country's capacity to handle disasters. But first, let's return to the place where we began this series Donald Trump's speech in North Carolina We've come to North Carolina with a simple message for all the people of this region who are Hit so hard by Hurricane Hallene and That message is very simple. You are not forgotten any longer. You were treated very badly by the previous administration. Just three days into his second term, President Trump announced that changes, big changes might be coming to FEMA. I'll also be signed an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA Frankly, FM is not good The executive order announced that recommendations to reshape the agency would come from a new FEMA Review Council, a panel of emergency management professionals and politicians, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and then Homeland Security Secretary Christi Noome Meanwhile, Trump's mention of getting rid of FEMA was sending shockwaves through Washington My phone was blowing up. Probably about at least a dozen members of Congress called me that Friday, saying basically Is this really what's going to happen This was just Hamilton's third day on the job, and all of a sudden, FEMA's twenty thousand plus workforce and the entire world of emergency managers were spinning out. There were state directors and governors that heard this and thought This is a terrible idea FEMA employees at the agency's headquarters were barging into Hamilton's office in tears. I assembled a leadership tamment of guys and gals. This is our moment. This is our make or break testing period here We can either let this sword of Damocles drop on us and let us fail or We can dig down deep, which is what emergency managers do deal with this crisis and meet it head on and do it with a small interface Some seasoned FEemMA staffers I spoke with were not happy to have Hamilton leading them through this crisis They believed his appointment was part of the problem The Post Katrina Eergency Management Reform Act requires that FEMA's leader have significant experience responding to disasters Trump's last FEMA administrator, Pete Gainner, who served in Trump's first term, had done over ten years of emergency management in Rhode Island before coming to FEMA Hamilton's resume looked nothing like that He had served for a decade as a Navy SEL and then in DHS and the State Department. Running FEMA, even temporarily, was a gigantic promotion He got the job because as the second Trump administration was taking shape, he was a well connected MGa warrior, saying all the right things Cameron, tell me about your race Hey, good morning, thanks for having me and all the patriots out there, thank you for listening. So I'm running the. This is an interview on Real America's voice from march twenty twenty four, when Hamilton was running for a congressional seat in Virginia about ten months before he ended up at FEMA. I've worked in the federal government in various different jobs and capacities and I understand exactly the bureaucratic that our government has played bureaucratic sickness that our government is plagued by. So are you ready and able to dismantle the administrative state L so Absolutely. When Trump is president, if you win, are you? He lost in the Republican primary three months later After Donald Trump was elected that fall, Hamilton began seeking the approval of conservative groups in the hope of scoring a role in the incoming administration The Heritage Foundation had lobbied for decades to reduce the size and role of FEMA Project twenty twenty five stopped short of calling for the end of the agency But it laid out ambitious plans, like scrapping preparedness programs, pushing much more recovery costs to the states, and privatizing the part of the agency that offers home flood insurance to four point seven million households My recommendation, believe it or not, when I talked to Heritage was actually about move FEMA to the Department of Interior. And I'm I say this as a Constitutional limited government conservative. I don't think DHS should exist. Dismantling DHS and moving FEMA to the Department of Interior were also two goals of Project twenty twenty five During Trump's transition, Hamilton was put in touch with the DHS seecretary to be, Christine Om. The interview went very well And we discussed the principles of emergency management. How did you make the case to her that you were the man for the job I worked in emergency management more specifically at my time at the State Department. So While the traditional model of emergency management is domestically focused, all my experience was overseas dealing with mass evacuation planning, dealing with biocontainment, for Ebola, you name it. I did not pretend or presume by any means to be the most qualified individual, but my arguments to her were simply I would love to be an asset for you to have an ally within the agency but also still give the presresident time to make his determination as in time to decide whether to nominate Hamilton officially for the job or find a more qualified FEMA administrator who might have an easier time passing Senate confirmation. Nowhere in this conversation. Was there ever a discussion about abolishing FemMa. And that didn't happen until the president traveled to North Carolina. presresident spoke at that press conference. I'll also be signed an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA. I think frankly, FEMA iss not good all of a sudden, every action, everything that we did was now immediately under the microscope. That afternoon, Hamilton asked that FEMA remove climate resilience from the agency's top three goals, in an effort, he said, to make it seem less quote unquote political. But it was a little late for that. In a matter of weeks, Elon Musk sent his doge goons to FEMA Hamilton told me he was wary of them, but he gave Musk's team full access to the agency's payment systems No one was more hell bent on gutting the agency than Secretary Christine Noome and her special employee, Corey Lewandowsky A MGa operative and former pundit who was rumored to be having an affair with Gome Neither of them, says Hamilton, knew the basics of FEMA's history or its disaster relief systems. The general lack of understanding from DHS, at least at the senior political level of what it is that FEMA does is what necessitated the meeting to be held in late March We were tasked by Coral Lindowsky and the Secretary to write a memo on how we would abolish FEMA This is Marian Tierney, who was Hamilton's deputy, his number two She's a longtime emergency manager who had risen through the ranks at the agency in the decades following nine eleven And now here she was helping craft plans for how to radically reduce the staff at FEMA It was very upsetting, but part of your job as a senior executive is to implement prerogative of political leadership, right? And that's something that I still take seriously. And so what our memo laid out was how you could do it, but also raise the legal concerns associated with it As we discussed in episode two, the Post Katrina Eergency Management Reform Act limits how much DHS can meddle with FEMA The memo identified parts of FEMA that with help from Congress could be killed or doled out to different agencies And so that March meeting between Christy Noome, Corey Lewandowski, and Cameron Hamilton was an opportunity to discuss these different strategies They were eager to see my plans on reform, and then I think that they wanted to have a rebranding Hamilton's memo suggested some potential name changes for FEMA, including the National Office of Emergency Management, NOEM, as in Gome. And she said, I love this. let's just rename it. we'll call it abolishing And then politically it would look like it was an abolition. when in reality, it was just a relabeling and a reshuffling of the deck That was just one idea, but Hamilton told me he insisted that they wait to see what Congress and Trump's FEMA Review council proposed before taking action And you know a bit about what happens next. Politico reported on the existence of that meeting, and Lewandowsky blamed Hamilton for the leak, despite the fact that many other people knew that the meeting was happening. That meeting was transmitted to us through an ESEC process. the executive secretariat The meeting's label was FEMA, abolish or reform So The meeting itself was visible to about fifty to one hundred people Nevertheless, Lewandowski insisted that Hamilton sit for a polygraph test. They're not always perfect. You can get them wrong Yeah I feel like they're famous for not being that accurate Well, they're more accurate than people realize. It's just the difficulty now is There are more people in the American populace who have had training on how to defeat them and how to overcome them I see. I've had that training before in the military, specifically as a Navy seEAL My interrogator understood this and they made it very clear You are not to use certain techniques But I will just say I made my statements there without any methods to shield myself from accountability Hamilton was cleared, but he never received an apology Then, DHS began working its way through the agency's senior leadership. I would say about eight to ten FEMA staff were polygraphed as a result of the meeting and the memo. Mararyianne Tierney was spared from the witch hunt. I even consulted an attorney because I thought I was going to be polygraphed It traumatized our workforce Did they find the leaker? Well, I suspect I know where the leak came from. It did not come from FEMA. I'll put it that way When Cameron Hamilton was called to testify on may seventh, twenty twenty five before the House Appropriations Committee, he knew his days at FEMA were numbers The morning of my testimony at about ten, maybe ten thirty FEMA seecurity received a phone call from DHS security. asking them to terminate my access to the building which is Essentially a firing, if you will. Yeah. M Anne had asked, how would you like us to handle this And I said I'd like you to notify DHS that I'm submitting a letter to the Aropriations commommittee now That will indicate that I've been removed and that I will not be able to testify department then realized the optics of it would not look proper So they backtracked. esssentially indicating, Hey, just sort of pretend this didn't happen You can go ahead and testify, but When you come back, you're fired. That's not what they said, but that's what I understood it to me Does this administration seek to eliminate FEMA And do you support eliminating FEMA? US repep Rosa Doloreo of Connecticut questioned Hamilton later that day. I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal emmergency management agency Having said that That is a conversation that should be had between the President of the United States and this governing body Acting head Cameron Hamilton was abruptly fired yesterday. It came one day after he testified before Congress that FEMA should not be scrapped Meanwhile, Marianne Tierney had decided separately that her time at FEMA was coming to an end It was extremely chaotic I was not doing anything productive. All I did all day was keep doge at bay or argue with the department All at the same time, we had people being put on administrative leave. We're supposed to be getting ready for hurricane season. We weren't doing any of that. And I just did not feel Like I could help. And so It was time to move on After nearly fifteen years at FEMA, Marianne resigned a few weeks after Hamilton was fired. This is like therapy. Could we do this every week You're enjoying this? I'm enjoying L, I loved my job. I loved working for FEMA I care very deeply about the agency And I care very deeply about being able to help people on their worst day. and my Primary concern My primary concern now is that we are walking away from an obligation to the American people And so anything that I can do to help raise that concern I want to do that Marianne Tierney's deep sense of mission reminded me of the other FEMA Stalwarts I've met while reporting this series. People like Leo Bosner and Marty Bamunde and Jacqueline Rothenberg. I think there's something about being there on the worst day of people's lives and being there to offer some help Maybe it changes you. Maybe his short stint as temporary head of FEMA changed Cameron Hamilton When I spoke to him in December, I asked him about the time before he was in the job, when he appeared to endorse MAGA's lies about the agency's response to Hurricane Helene in twenty twenty four Hamilton reposted the following video from Florida repepresentative Anna Paulina Luna on X Nth Carolina is underw, a thousand people missing, and we have a majority of our residents that aren't going to be able to come back to their homes because they're completely destroyed The Biden Harris administration and radical leftists in Washington gave illegals one point one billion dollars in housing assistance. This was a very common narrative we heard at the time That wasn't true, right? The money that FEMA was giving for temporary housing a separate appropriation, Yes. was a separate appropriation. It was not coming at the expense of disaster relief for American citizens My reposting of people like Anna and others. was more of concern over the optics of why it seems like Hundreds of millions of dollars are reimbursing states for housing migrants, and yet we have all these complaints of people that need help and they feel like they're left out. This narrative was frankly a politically expedient lie. It was used to undermine faith in government during a crisis. by telling people that the reason FEMA was running out of money to help disaster survivors was because it had spent that money on housing migrants, that wasn't true That is correct. That is a factually inaccurate statement You had also shared posts on X from Elon Musk who claimed that FEMA was blocking his aid also wasn't true Ive I've said things and've post of things that I know now do not be true So I took responsibility for it within the agency and I had to let them understand that You know, I I recognize that that was the case And I wish I could go back and change it can't comoming up on American emergency. A group of FEMA workers form an anonymous news outlet This is on the media WNYC Studios is supported by the New York Community Trust, providing a powerful way to ensure the causes you care about are supported for decades to come Stay tuned for an audio portrait of Judge Stephen Robinson. who through his fund at the New York Community Trust, has found meaningful ways to give back and honor his loved ones. My wife, Kathleen died at forty eight after bouts with breast cancer and leukemia. daughter was eleven. For weeks after my wife's death, our life, our grief wasn't the same Night fell bedtime arrive with victorious tears soon to follow Night after night, she cried herself to sleep And I had no words to make it right Then one evening, she found them for me We know what we need to do We need to find a way to turnerm mommy's death something good for someone else At eleven, Victoria found the path to healing That night we made a decision. And through the New York Community Trust, we found a way to honor it My daughter is now a pediatric intensive care doctor. She has found a way to turn her life's work into something good for someone else through the trust, our fun, in honor of my wife, her mother We continue to help. peopleeople in need Contact the New York Community Trust at give two.nYc to find out more. That's gto. nYc On the media is supported by Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort offering destination focused small ship experiences on all seven continents, with a shore excursion included in every port and programs designed for cultural enrichment And every Viking voyage is all inclusive, with no children and no casinos Learn more at Viking. com WNYC Studios is supported by Mohaunk Mountain House. Celebrate summer at Mohaunk Mountain House, the Hudson Valley's most iconic resort A family owned and operated national historic landmark resort since eighteen sixty nine, featuring breathtaking views, guided nature hikes, tennis and pickleball, golf, sumptuous dining and evening entertainment, all included in your overnight stay. Experience for yourself why Mohaunk Mountain House is voted the most iconic resort in the Hudson Valley Reserve your next getaway at moohunk. com and feel your stresses melt away On the Media is supported by Eagles Crest Advisors. Eagles Crest Advisors works to take a holistic approach to financial planning, helping you create a comprehensive strategy that aligns with your life goals. Whether you're saving for retirement, purchasing a home, or funding your children's education, they help to guide you in making informed decisions personersalized advice and ongoing support, ensuring that your plan evolves as your needs change Learn more at eaglescrestadvisors. com This is on the media. I'm Mikeael Loinger. We just heard the story of Cameron Hamilton, a Trump appointee who was ousted after he stood up to the administration He may not have leaked that story to Politico, but at the time, in early twenty twenty five, there were plenty of frustrated employees throughout the agency who felt they had no choice but to speak with the press. I was angry Full stop and feeling like And no, I'm not the only one who feels this way in the moment This is a FEMA employee that I'm going call Alt FEMA. He asked to remain anonymous for reasons that will make sense in a moment. And so we had an actor bring his voice to life. The Trump administration had only been in office for seventy three days, and in that very small span of time, FEMA had already experienced really significant changes. Before the Big Ouster, he'd grown more and more frustrated with Cameron Hamilton, whom he described as kind but unqualified Fear and uncertainty had gripped the workforce under Hamilton Some well respected emergency managers had resigned after Dozja's infamous Fork in the road email The higher ups had tried to freeze funds and block contracts with states, towns, territories, and tribal communities, all while leaving them and much of the FEMA workforce in the dark. I wasn't sure how later on this was going to be explained And as we've seen this administration likes to change the narrative. gas lightighters and say Well, no, that didn't happen that way. You're incorrect. On april third, he launched a newsletter on Substack called Alt FEMA, a place to quote document the lived experiences and insights of those on the inside, perspectives that are often overlooked by external media outlets unfamiliar with the agency's inner workings. In his first post, Alt FEMA shared a mission statement and a link to a signal account for sending tips The first one came later that day from a friend. I took that tip and ran with it It was the shutdown of the Brick program So if you're not familiar with what that is, it's the builduilding resesilient Infrastructure and Communities Grant. A mitigation program that's given billions to states to say, build special roads. That would be like permeable pavement surfaces to prevent pooling of water. Or riverside parks that reduce the impacts of floods. You incorporate green spaces to soak up that water and it helps the local ecosystem as well which brighten up communities and help save a ton of money down the line. It's estimated that for every dollar you spend in mitigation You save six to eleven dollars in disaster costs. So by spending more money on mitigation, you save money in the long run if there's an impactful disaster in your area When Alfema learned that Cameron Hamilton was feeding brick to the wood chipper, he went digging for more information He found a memo that apparently had been hidden from the leaders that operate Brick. Ironically, the BIC program was created in twenty eighteen in Trump's first presidency, which this administration seemed to have forgotten about because they called it wasteful and political when they announced its cancellation Alalt FMa was not the first to break the story. News outlets got there first, but he heard through the grapevine that some state and local emergency managers had learned about the Bick cancellation through his newsletter they like the fact that it's actual FEMA employees who are sharing this information with them Tw states filed a lawsuit to block the defunding of BIick, and in December, the program was reinstated Today, the Alt FEMA newewsletter has around two thousand five hundred subscribers. Its readers include emergency managers, journalists, and even staff members in Congress Not long after the Brick article, Alt FEMA started to hear from other employees who wanted to write their own stories and op eds for the newsletter. twwelve people. who are active Do you know who your writers are. some of them I do some of them I don't because we try to remain as anonymous as possible I mean, we all have families and things we want to protect In some ways, this crew is as much a clearing house for leaks as it is a newsroom. They say they've spoken on background with NPR, Gist, CNN, and other outlets. helping corroborate what other sources are saying around FEMA Though I haven't been able to confirm that with the news outlets themselves Alt FMa's most viewed article is about Cameron Hamilton's successor anotherother temporary administrator named David Richardson, a former Marine who also had little to no emergency management experience David Richardson came in and we were called to an all hands meeting I am the presresident's representative at FMA. It was basically him standing at this podium going on this very, very long tangent about how he was there to do the president's will I am I alone Speak for TMa Now This is a tough part. between ten percent to twenty percent of personnel will embrace change They'll welcome it However There're somewhere South of twenty percent that decide that they are going to get in the way So Don't get in my way because I will run right over you Yeah, he threatened us big time. We left that meeting feeling just completely deflated and feeling like our worst fears of what this administration was going to do to the agency was going to come true in that moment. What were your worst fears We wouldn't be able to do our jobs They're calling FEMA waste, fraud and abuse. But when you're sitting on the other side of a table, speaking to a mom who' just experienced a tornado And a tree fell through her house and almost crushed her a three year old and they don't know where they're going to sleep tonight and they're looking for help. How do you call that waste or fraud or abuse of the government funding system We live about a mile down the road from Tampissit, and we've already got two little girls who have come down the river and we've gotten to them, but I'm not sure how many el were out there When floods ripped through Central Texas last July, one hundred and thirty six people were killed, including twenty five young campers Meanwhile, David Richardson could not be reached for twenty four hours That dysfunction was cited as one of the reasons why FEMA search and rescue teams were deployed too slowly along with a bottleneck created by Christy Nom's policy that she personally sign off on, contracts and grants over one hundred thousand dollars. Christie Noome responded to allegations that FEMA cutbacks meant delays in answering people's calls for disaster assistance and aid after the flood. In many ways, the agency and the country were lucky that last year's hurricane season was exceptionally mild But the tragedy of Camp Mystic was enough to force David Richardson to resign in November After just six months as acting director His temporary successor, Karen Evans, wasn't much better She was rarely seen at the agency's headquarters Meanwhile, more and more experienced FEMA workers moved to the private sector or took early retirement. We've just lost so much knowledge and experience. Alt FEMa. Just like we have to rebuild after disaster You're going to have to rebuild the agency Unless they drag me by my cold dead hands away from my cubicle, I'm going to be sticking around And then this march, just when morale at FEMA had hit rock bottom So Secretary No, at any time during your tenure, as Director of Department of Homeland Security Have you had sexual relations with Corey Lewandowski mister Chairman, I am shocked that we're going down and pedaling tabloid garbage in this committee today. Reclaiming m'am In a congressional hearing, lawmakers like California Representative Siddney Komlager Dove Christie It O for you to know it is also a question So what I would say you should be able to answer what we do at the Department of Home Lairily on a wide range of topics, including her decision to delay disaster recovery funds to North Carolina and allegations of corruption and dysfunction at DHS more broadly Chair, beforefore I yield my time, I would like to enter into the record Some articles, and I'm asking for unanimous consent. Noome tightens her grip on DHS. Laewandowsky fired FEMA admin. objection. Okay. The next one is Christy Noome secretly took a cut of political donations from pro publicans. Without objection Christy Noome fires Pilot over a blanket but is forced to reinstate him to fly home Wall Street Journal. Wout objection We're coming on the air because President Trump has just announced that homeomeland Security Secretary Christy Noome is out of a job. This follows reports that the president was frustrated by her recent testimony on Capitol Hill. As soon as I heard the news, I remember calling my coworker and telling them. But as soon as they picked up the phone They said, The witch is dead. The witch is gone. she's out of here Just having that simple moment. laughing together and feeling like F like a weight had been lifted off our shoulders Breathing to Coming up on American emergency, FEMA might need an overhaul, but is this the administration to do it This is on the media On the media is supported by Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort offering destination focused small ship experiences on all seven continents, with a shore excursion included in every port and programs designed for cultural enrichment And every Viking voyage is all inclusive, with no children and no casinos Learn more at Viking d. comot WNYC Studios is supported by Mohaonk Mountain House Mohaunk Mountain House has been providing recreation and renewal for families since eighteen sixty nine Now is the perfect time to reserve your summer getaway to Hudson Valley's most iconic resort with their kids Day free offer, featuring guided hikes, archery, nature inspired pool, campfires, live music and entertainment, and their complimentary drop off kids Club With so much included in your stay, they make it truly easy to have a stress free family vacation. Just pack your bags and they'll do the rest Mohunk. com On the Media is supported by Eagles Crest Advisors. Eagles Crest Advisors works to take a holistic approach to financial planning, helping you create a comprehensive strategy that aligns with your life goals. Whether you're saving for retirement, purchasing a home, or funding your children's education, they help to guide you in making informed decisions personersalized advice and ongoing support, ensuring that your plan evolves as your needs change Learn more at eaglescrestadvisors. com O the media is supported by Dell. to school starts now. Get long lasting battery life on the Dell XPS laptop powered by Series three Intel Core so you can work from anywhere now starting at six do and ninety nine cents with exclusive student pricing starting at five doll ninety nine cents And it's lightweight, portable, and packed with enough processing power to make multitasking a breeze. So say goodbye to distractions and hello to more free time because you finished your work faster. Complete your setup with savings on select monitors and more must have electronics and accessories, limited time deals and free shipping on PC's and more await you at deell d. com slash deals. That's deell d. com slash deals This is on the media. I'm Michael Ooincher. When we began reporting this series almost a year ago, there was good reason to believe that the movement to Kill FEMA would succeed My sources at the agency told me about rumors that massive staff cuts were coming in may twenty twenty six A leaked report from the President's Review cououncil confirmed that Christy Noome wanted to downsize by fifty percent ahead of Hurricane season. But after Gnome was abruptly fired in March, FEMA's fortunes began to slowly turn around Trump's new DHS secretary, Mark Wayne Mullin, brought a decidedly more conciliatory tone when he traveled to North Carolina to meet with local emergency managers, first responders, and regional FEMA staff working on the Hurricane Halen recovery Let' us know what we can do better. Not just beat up that's not the point because they've done a great job, but what is it that we can maybe tweet just a little bit Over the past couple of months, Secretary Mullen began to lift Christy Nome's one hundred thousand dollars review policy. President Trump also released some state disaster relief funding that his White House had withheld M surprising of all. The former head of the federal emergency mananagement aggency or FEMA, is about to get a second crack at the job. President Trump has nominated Cameron Hamilton to lead the agency a year after he was removed from that very same position. It was compleplete and utter shock. This is Alt Fema, that anonymous substack writer plot twist that none of us expected would happen How does it make you feel about the future of the agency t this point There's no way they can justify getting rid of the agency I do think it's going to look very different Change isn't unwelcomed It's just that considering everything they've done so far You can't help but anticipate the worst kind of change The systems that we ask people to work in or Complex bureaucratic and need substantial reform This is Mary Anne Tirneey again, the former FEMA employee who worked alongside Cameron Hamilton. If you haven't done it, you should call the one eight hundred number for FEMA. The first thing that we tell people, like the first thing you hear is a survivor when say you've lost everything is there's this long message about how You could be arrested or fined if you provide us false information in an attempt to get assistance It is a violation of federal and state laws very criminal There's lots of stories about people who get FEMA assistance illegally. But we have a process for that. We investigate and then people get prosecuted. But we've set up a system that treats everybody like they're going to cheat us from the jump I don't think that's a good survivor experience. To illustrate the complexity of FEMA's assistance programs, Mary Anne told me about a fun analogy she'd often use when discussing this stuff around the agency. Oh, the Christmas tree analogy? Yeah, Christmas tree So FEMA's programs are like a Christmas tree. And every year we've got a new idea or a new rule. If you go back to the Stafford Act, right? Robert T. Stafford Emergency Disaster Rief Act. This is one of the fundamental laws that undergirds FEMA's work It gives the president the power to issue a disaster declaration and unlock aid for states and survivors after, say, a hurricane or earthquake. That law was passed in nineteen eighty eight, right? And over the years it's been amended. All of these other acts, whether it's the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act, post Katrina, all of them get incorporated into regulation underpinned by the Stafford Act And so every year FEMA tax on an ornament to further administer these programs. And if you have a Christmas tree, you know, because I've had this happen, you don't put the ornaments on in the right distribution where you have too many of them The tree falls over Over the years, we've added ornaments, but we haven't thought to declutter. And so that's how I look at FEMS programs This is why Mary Anne was excited to see which reforms would be suggested this month by President Trump's twelve person Review couounselil. It is my great pleasure to introduce Secretary of Homeland Security. Secretary Mark Way Mullen,. the floor is your, sir Thank you This meeting was kind of like Game seven of the World Series for the Eergency mananagement Universe. Pres Trump's leadership. Many people streamed it live and then anxiously read the council's final report the moment it was shared online. It outlined sweeping changes at the agency, many of which requiire new legislation from Congress. What does the nation think about FEMA and its? The report called for a reduction in FEMA's workforce, but didn't give any numbers. It also argued that states should pay a larger share for disasters, but was vague on that too It's kind of a roarshock test. Some emergency managers celebrated the idea of a leaner FEMA that gives less money to states but gives them that money more quickly Climate advocates were dismayed that the report made only a single reference to our growing climate crisis Others didn't think that FEMA could afford to lose more staff And some experts, like Mary Anne Tierney, praised the report's call to reform and streamline the agency's individual assistance program. She also praised the report's recommendation that FEMA should respond to fewer disasters going forward. FEMA has gotten involved in a lot of disasters that are not necessarily needing of federal support. They're disasters that state and local governments should be able to manage and respond to and recover from on their own She's referring to smaller disasters that can still upend lives and cost states millions of dollars. To be clear, she believes FEMA should definitely be involved when it comes to hurricane Katrina type events and big disasters that hit multiple states. Over the years, the amount of disasters declared by the president Over multiple administrations, both Democratic and Republican has been on an upward trend That drains FEMA's attention and resources from the truly catastrophic events. To reduce FEMA's role and make states pay more for disasters, the report suggested changing the equation used for determining when the federal government needs to help equation that hasn't been touched since the Stafford Act was passed in nineteen eighty eight. Right now, if a storm causes a bunch of flooding in a state, FEMA and the governor go out and tally up the total damage to see if it reaches a certain dollar amount. That threshold is determined in part by a state's population. Bigger states need to see more damage before FEMA steps in, but small states like Vermont and Delaware only need about a million dollars of damage before they can request federal support. In my region, where I worked, West Virginia, we average two or three declarations a year from flooding you have a lot of these smaller declarations It eats up FEMA staff. You have to deploy, you have to set up an office. Now are all of those disasters, disasters that FEMA should be responding to? I think that's a part of the policy discussion that needs to happen now Marianne told me that this particular proposal is nonpartisan. I've heard other former leaders at FEMA endorse it. Which surprised me because the first time I encountered this idea was in policy briefs from the Heritage Foundation that were written over a decade ago A higher per capita threshold, as the report argues, would mean fewer disaster declarations, which would force states to set up or add to their own state disaster relief funds But all that's easier said than done for a state like Vermont We don't have a lot of cash reserves. The state does not have a state run disaster relief fund at all This is Eric Ferand, the director of Emergency mananagement in Vermont. He's nervous about some of the changes outlined in the FEMA Review Council report We're, I believe the second least populated state. So six hundred fifty thousand individuals in the state of Vermmont. So our tax base is pretty low In other words, it would be hard to squeeze more money out of the state budget More difficult than a state like Florida, which has a robust state disaster relief fund, thanks to their twenty million citizens paying taxes And the timing for Eric Farand is especially rough because in recent years, Vermont has seen a rise in costly floods. Normally, we've had over the past decade, about two decolred disasters per year And over my first two terms, we had eight ermont under a state of emergency tonight, someome of the worst flooding in nearly a hundred years. The capital of VermMont tonight underwater. the unthinkable happened, another delLuge once again caused extensive damage. Some of the same communities getting soaked a second time and some new ones added to the list. Three major disasters on july tenth, july tenth of twenty three, july tenth of twenty four and july tenth of twenty five. Wait, so you've had floods on the same day Three consecutive years. That's correct. The one in twenty five only hit five towns, but it was significant. Vermonters braced themselves for the third July in a row where waters endangered the lives of them and their neighbors. One of the towns had damage that was three times there aint no budget We have some funding from the state, but how do we manage that Eric Fan's team requested that Trump issue a major disaster declaration for the twenty twenty five floods to unlock FEMA money. But the president denied it in what appears to be a larger trend of punishing blue states. The declaration would have authorized FEMA to provide financial assistance to repair public infrastructure. The president approved declarations for Alaska, Nebraska, and North Dakota late Wednesday but denied requests from Vermont, Illinois, and Maryland Trump announced which states would receive aid on truth social, calling attention to the fact that he won elections in those areas Eric Ferand told me that because Vermont is so reliant on funding from FEMA, if the agency decides to raise the disaster threshold, or if Trump continues to weaponize declarations, his state may suffer. If we get denied more, disisaster declarations, even if they're over threshold What is the state going to do? How are the towns going to manage? So those are things that we're trying to Navigate right now rather have a flood than this FEMA disaster. Oh God. But We're just managing it as best we can. And Vermont's not alone Nevada and many other states across the entire Great Plains, certainly in the Northeast They would be in a lot of trouble. This is Jake Biddle, a staff writer at Grist who covers FEMA and climate change resesponding to disasters, big disasters cannot become a line item in the budget for most states. It just won't work When I called up Jake, I was trying to process what I was seeing. Even as longtime FEMA watchers like Maryianne Tierney support some of these reforms, much of this feels like the product of a lobbying effort from the Heritage Foundation and other groups that want to cut public programs and feed parts of our government to the private sector. Stock prices for insurance companies surged after the Review council suggested privatizing FEMA's flood insurance program, part of the Pject twenty twenty five wishlist All this at a time when climate disasters are more common and more costly, when maybe we need more federal relief, not less I'm a believer at a personal level not as a reporter. I believe that we should have like an active federal government. I believe the federal government is like an important part to play in American society. And if you believe that then you believe that they're capable with the right funding, the right staffing of responding to every disaster. But There are many people who've worked in the agency who say, look, that's just not the reality. The states should be incentivized to take this up because they work faster, they work cheaper, they know what's going on on the ground. And I've been covering the agency long enough. know I have to give some credence to that. So you find in your own internal struggle, you find that your idealism is tempered by what experience people have tried to convey to you? I don't know that this is like like that I would like love for this to be like part of the segment, but like I like it though because I'm struggling with this too. I'm trying to understand it and it's helping me There may be points of agreement between conservatives and people who have been frustrated by bureaucracy given the experience of The Trump administration in other areas When they say, hey, we're going to pull back You know, you have to think This is not a reordering of costs in a way that is ultimately going to lead to more efficiency in a reformed agency that is capable of both moving fast when it needs to move fast, sizing up when it needs to size up for a big hurricane. You have to think it's just kind of like a pllmill austerity. That's what pattern has been Do you think that Trump's threats to kill FEMA and Christi Noome's stranglehold on the agency