4 Key Takeaways From FEMA Head’s Testimony After Supervisor Told Staff To Avoid Houses With Trump Signs
By Tyler O'Neil, The Daily Signal | November 19, 2024
House Republicans pressed Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, about bias at FEMA after a supervisor directed staff to avoid helping Florida residents with signs supporting Donald Trump.
A FEMA supervisor, Marn’i Washington, told workers in a message to “avoid homes advertising Trump” as they canvassed Lake Placid, Florida, to identify residents who could qualify for federal aid after Hurricane Milton, The Daily Wire’s Leif Le Mahieu reported. The directive reportedly prevented FEMA from offering post-hurricane aid to at least 20 homes displaying Trump signs or flags in late October and November.
Criswell announced that FEMA had fired Washington and claimed Washington acted on her own initiative in giving these orders. Yet Washington claimed that her directions were not an isolated incident. Sources inside FEMA have spoken to The Daily Signal and other outlets, also saying that the direction for FEMA staff to avoid Trump supporters was not an isolated incident.
“Why should we believe this is an isolated incident?” Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chairman of the House Oversight Committee, asked the FEMA administrator during a committee hearing.
“We are conducting an investigation and we have asked the IG [inspector general] to look into this further, to ensure that this is not beyond the one employee who sent this message,” Criswell said. “It is not indicative of the rest of our workforce and it is completely unacceptable.”
Comer noted the way Democrats have repeatedly demonized Trump supporters.
The Democratic Line
House Democrats thanked Criswell for firing Washington and defended her claims that Washington did not represent a broader trend at the agency.
Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., insisted that Washington’s actions represented a “quite isolated situation.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., accused Trump of having “deliberately directed disaster aid based on the party politics of local leadership and past electoral performance, not the needs of the community and disaster survivors.”
“In 2018, after California suffered the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in its history, President Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid because of the state’s liberal democratic leanings,” Raskin said. “He reportedly later changed his mind after his staff provided him data showing that there were more Trump voters in Orange County, California, than there were in the entire state of Iowa.”
These claims trace back to a Politico story citing Mark Harvey, who served as Trump’s senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council staff.
Common Practice?
Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., noted Washington’s statements that “avoiding politically hostile homes is common throughout FEMA.”
“Is this a practice at FEMA?” he asked.
“Congressman, there is nothing in any of our policies, our training, or our information sent out to our field workers, to avoid any home for whatever reason, especially not because of a political affiliation,” she replied. “The actions of this one individual are not representative of the work we do at FEMA.”
Donalds cited a New York Post article quoting an anonymous FEMA employee calling the avoidance of Trump-supporting houses an “open secret at FEMA.”
Citing The Daily Signal
Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., cited FEMA whistleblowers who spoke to The Daily Signal and The Washington Examiner on condition of anonymity.
“An anonymous FEMA employee, we’ve been told, I guess it would be from The Daily Signal, that employees were also advised to avoid certain homes and specifically used the terms, ‘Hick,’ ‘cowboy,’ redneck,’ ‘Trump supporters,’ and ‘MAGA,’ to describe them,” he said. “Have you come across any of these terms in your investigation so far?”
“This is the first I’m hearing any of those terms,” Criswell replied.
The former employee did not say FEMA supervisors told her to avoid “Trump supporters” or “MAGA,” but she did mention that it would not be a stretch for FEMA supervisors to use those terms, given guidance she had been given.
“We were told, ‘Don’t go into any house that looks suspicious,’” the former employee recalled. “They would use words like, ‘hick,’ ‘cowboys,’ ‘rednecks.’ You can change that over to ‘Trump supporters,’ ‘MAGA.’”
Referring to Washington, the fired supervisor, the former employee said: “She’s saying, ‘I didn’t make this up on my own.’ I believe her because I’ve totally seen it.”
A Matter of Culture
Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, noted the 2022-2026 FEMA Strategic Plan, which prioritizes “equity” and “climate resilience.” He said a culture focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion may lead FEMA to discriminate against Trump supporters and others, regardless of whether the agency has a specific policy to that effect.
“From our standpoint, it’s not the policy that we’re concerned with,” Cloud said.
He mentioned many scandals in which the federal government has targeted conservatives for adverse treatment or ended up otherwise harming Americans in recent years.
“It’s not in the policy for the IRS to target conservatives, it’s not in the policy for [the National Institutes of Health] to fund gain-of-function research, it’s not in [the Department of Homeland Security] policy for them to release foreign terrorists into our land, but they are,” he said. “It’s not policy in the FBI to target school teachers or people of faith, but all this is happening.” (The FBI targeted parents who expressed concern about COVID-19 and woke policies, and it targeted conservative Catholics, citing the Southern Poverty Law Center. It seems Cloud meant to say “concerned parents,” not “school teachers.”)
“The common response is, ‘It’s not in the policy manual.’ Well, we’re concerned about the culture,” Cloud explained. He said he did not believe that there is a stated policy or a deliberately-cultivated culture to “skip over Trump signs,” but he said FEMA needs a “proactive response” to prevent such things.
“We know that these DEI initiatives have had a discriminatory aspect in them,” Cloud added, turning to the strategic plan, which encourages a focus on racial and religious minorities.
Tyler O'Neil is managing editor of The Daily Signal and the author of two books: "Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center," and "The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government."
Original article link