Episode 4 of American Emergency; The Movement to Kill FEMA

Summary

Podcast Summary: On the Media – American Emergency: The Movement to Kill FEMA (Ep. 4)
Date: May 22, 2026
Host: Michael Loewinger, WNYC Studios

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Episode Overview

This final episode of the four-part "American Emergency" series takes a deep dive into the tumultuous recent history and possible future of FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency). It details the Trump administration’s attempts to fundamentally weaken, or potentially abolish, the agency, exploring the political infighting, personnel shakeups, the rise of internal dissent, and the broader consequences for the United States’ capacity to respond to disasters. The episode features first-hand perspectives from ex-FEMA leaders, rank-and-file employees, policy experts, and state emergency managers, bringing to light both the internal drama and the real-world impacts of policy change.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Push to Abolish FEMA

• Trump Administration's Aggressive Reforms

  • In early 2025, President Trump, in his second term, openly discussed overhauling or potentially dismantling FEMA, creating a crisis of confidence and strategy within the agency ([01:09]).
  • An executive order established the "FEMA Review Council" containing both career professionals and hardline political appointees, with a mandate to recommend ways to reform or eliminate the agency ([06:36]).

• Media Leak and Internal Fallout

  • Details about these plans leaked to Politico, prompting a witch hunt within FEMA, polygraph tests for senior staff, and a climate of fear ([02:41], [03:10], [04:53]).
  • Cameron Hamilton, then the acting FEMA head, was accused of leaking but ultimately cleared after a lie detector test ([04:13], [15:16]).

• Political Appointments and Qualifications

  • Hamilton’s appointment was controversial due to his lack of disaster management experience; his prior role was as a Navy SEAL and government official, not a disaster responder ([07:51]).
  • His political bona fides, not his management expertise, were seen as his main qualification ([09:10]).

How Policy Was Shaped by Ideology

• Heritage Foundation and Project 2025

  • Conservative think tanks like Heritage Foundation had long supported defunding and privatizing parts of FEMA or moving its responsibilities to the states ([09:18], [10:00]).
  • The Project 2025 plan influenced administration movement toward privatizing disaster insurance and shifting costs to states.

• Internal Dissent and Resistance

  • Hamilton’s deputy, Marianne Tierney, and other staff staved off some extreme ideas by drafting memos that outlined legal and procedural obstacles to outright abolition ([13:07]).
  • Some plans were about rebranding FEMA to soften the blow of reduction (“National Office of Emergency Management - NOEM” as a pointed political pun) ([13:37]).

Internal Trauma and Workforce Impact

• Leadership Turmoil

  • Polygraph tests and accusations led to trauma among FEMA’s senior ranks ([15:24]).
  • Both Hamilton and Tierney left the agency within weeks of one another, disillusioned by the chaos and unable to conduct core emergency preparedness work ([17:55]).

• Misinformation and Public Narrative

  • Social media lies and right-wing narratives blamed FEMA for failures or accused it of prioritizing aid to migrants over citizens, further eroding public trust ([19:49]).
  • Hamilton admits reposting misleading content criticizing FEMA but later regrets these actions ([20:48]).

Rise of Insider Reporting and Dissent

• The Birth of 'Alt FEMA'

  • Amidst disarray, an anonymous FEMA employee started a Substack newsletter, "Alt FEMA," to document the “lived experiences and insights” of agency insiders ([22:35]).
  • The newsletter became a hub for whistleblowers and staff seeking to expose underreported stories such as the attempted gutting of the BRIC disaster mitigation program ([24:03]).

• Impact of Insider Reporting

  • Alt FEMA helped alert external emergency managers, journalists, and Congress to ongoing problems; at one point, 12 anonymous FEMA employees contributed ([25:51]).

Catastrophe, Policy, and Political Blowback

• Consequences for Disaster Response

  • Inept leadership stalled disaster relief, exemplified by tragedy during Texas floods that killed 136, and administrative bottlenecks further delayed aid ([28:22]).
  • Stacked leadership turnover and demoralized career staff led to operational paralysis ([29:31]).

• Political Scandal Shifts the Narrative

  • Congressional scrutiny of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem for alleged corruption and delay of disaster funds led to her ouster ([30:59]).
  • Internal jubilation at this turnaround—"the witch is dead"—marked a turning point ([31:24]).

Review Council and the Path Forward

• Shift with New DHS Leadership

  • New DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin adopted a pragmatic approach, relaxing Noem’s restrictive policies and unblocking withheld disaster funds ([33:48]).
  • Cameron Hamilton, unexpectedly, was renominated to run FEMA, shocking insiders ([34:16]).

• Ambiguous, Contested Reforms

  • The Review Council’s recommendations were vague: suggest a smaller FEMA, shifting more costs and responsibility to states, but specifics were lacking ([37:07]).
  • The report generally pleased conservatives, unsettled climate advocates, and alarmed officials in small or low-resourced states facing increasing disasters ([37:48]).

• State-Level Fallout

  • Vermont’s emergency management, lacking reserves, struggled as the Trump administration withheld federal declarations from blue states while aiding red ones ([42:40]).
  • Federal intervention, states feared, would become more politicized and harder to access.

• National Stakes and Philosophical Debate

  • Reporter Jake Biddle encapsulates the internal conflict: some see FEMA reform as constructive decentralization; others view it as ill-disguised austerity that weakens America’s safety net as climate risk rises ([44:35]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the climate of fear:
  “It traumatized our workforce.” – Marianne Tierney on the polygraphs ([15:33])

• On messaging and morale:
  “We can either let this sword of Damocles and let us fail, or we can dig down deep, which is what emergency managers do... and meet it head on and do it with a smile on our face.” – Cameron Hamilton ([07:32])

• On Alt FEMA’s creation:
  “I was angry, full stop, and feeling like, no, I’m not the only one who feels this way in the moment.” – ‘Alt FEMA’ (Anonymous FEMA Employee) ([22:25])

• On bureaucratic complexity:
  “[FEMA’s] programs are like a Christmas tree, and every year we’ve got a new idea or a new rule... Over the years, we’ve added ornaments, but we haven’t thought to declutter.” – Marianne Tierney ([35:56])

• On state-level vulnerability:
  “We don’t have a lot of cash reserves. The state does not have a state-run disaster relief fund at all.” – Eric Ferand, Vermont Emergency Management ([40:46])

• On politicized disaster declarations:
  “Trump announced which states would receive aid on Truth Social, calling attention to the fact that he won elections in those areas.” – Michael Loewinger ([42:40])

• On the agency’s existential crisis:
  “There’s no way they can justify getting rid of the agency. I do think it’s going to look very different...but you can’t help but anticipate the worst kind of change.” – Alt FEMA ([34:22])

• On learning and fear:
  “FEMA’s brightest spots were moments when its leaders feared the right things... the one thing we can be sure of is that there will be a next disaster and people will ask, ‘Where’s FEMA?’” – Michael Loewinger ([51:20]–[52:00])

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Highlighted Timestamps

• 00:57–07:10: Initial Trump administration statements and the beginnings of the abolish-FEMA push
• 12:11–15:54: Internal agency tumult, polygraph testing, and leadership crisis
• 17:30–18:39: Senior staff resign and reflect on the historic mission of FEMA
• 19:49–20:48: Disinformation and regret over misleading public narratives
• 22:25–25:22: Origin and impact of the Alt FEMA newsletter
• 28:22–29:31: Texas floods disaster and agency dysfunction
• 30:59–31:24: Kristi Noem’s ouster and staff reaction
• 33:48–34:26: New DHS leadership and restoration of some agency stability
• 35:56–36:59: The Christmas tree analogy for FEMA's bureaucratic sprawl
• 40:46–42:24: Vermont’s struggles with disaster declarations
• 44:35–45:08: Jake Biddle’s commentary on the idealism vs. reality debate in federal disaster management
• 47:06–52:00: Reflections on fear, institutional purpose, and FEMA’s uncertain future

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Conclusion

The episode closes by suggesting that while FEMA has weathered the latest existential storm, significant risks remain—from politicized funding and potential future staff cuts to the ever-mounting climate crisis. Reform is needed, but the path is fraught and the stakes for vulnerable communities have never been higher. The ultimate question remains: will American leaders fear the right things and act in time to prevent a disaster of their own making?

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For listeners wanting more, all four parts of "American Emergency" are available from On the Media and WNYC Studios, wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

[Marianne Tierney]

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?

[Michael Lowinger]

What is it we don't already know? But wow, this was new.

[Marianne Tierney]

Gripping, painstaking, original reporting. But as great as Micah and Eloise are, there is another person who made it possible, and that's you.

[Michael Lowinger]

Listener support is the largest and most

[Marianne Tierney]

reliable source of funding for our show and for the whole station. So support us today. Make a donation and get our brand

[Michael Lowinger]

new on the Media jumbo tote with

[Marianne Tierney]

an extra large on the Media logo. Just go to onthemedia.org donate thank you. And now the final episode of American Emergency

[Michael Lowinger]

on this week's on the Media from wnyc. The Trump administration has threatened to kill or at least maim the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But FEMA isn't going down without a fight.

[Cameron Hamilton]

I'll also be signing an executive order

[Michael Lowinger]

to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA. Or maybe getting rid of FEMA.

[Cameron Hamilton]

I think frankly, FEMA's not good.

[Marianne Tierney]

We were tasked to write a memo on how we would abolish fema.

[Cameron Hamilton]

He proceeded to berate 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.

[Michael Lowinger]

The topic was abolishing fema.

[Cameron Hamilton]

Correct.

[Michael Lowinger]

President Trump has just announced that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is out of a job.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

As soon as I heard the news, I remember calling my co worker 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.

[Michael Lowinger]

The past, present and future of FEMA after this OnTheMedia is supported by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try [e-mail], progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. From WNYC in New York, this is ON the Media. Brooke Gladstone is out this week. I'm Michael Lowinger. On March 27, 2025, 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.

[Cameron Hamilton]

I received a phone call that was very distressing.

[Michael Lowinger]

It was Corey Lewandowski, a special government employee working closely with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noemi Lewandowski was ripping mad.

[Cameron Hamilton]

He proceeded to berate me over the fact that the media got ahold of a story and was running a topic that they felt was too sensitive and not fit for public domain.

[Michael Lowinger]

The topic was abolishing fema.

[Cameron Hamilton]

Correct.

[Michael Lowinger]

A day earlier, Politico had published a story about a meeting where Corey Lewandowski, Kristi Noem and Cameron Hamilton had discussed whether to dismantle the agency and how they might do it. Lewandowski was now calling because he believed Hamilton had leaked the story.

[Cameron Hamilton]

To which I responded, I'm not a liar, I'm not a leaker. I'm a man of honor and if I tell you the truth, it's the truth.

[Michael Lowinger]

Lewandowski didn't buy it.

[Cameron Hamilton]

I wanted to choke somebody. And that's exactly what came through my mind. Just living in my flesh, doing some very unchristian things to a certain person,

[Michael Lowinger]

but nonetheless, a certain person being Mr. Lewandowski?

[Cameron Hamilton]

No, no, we're. Yeah, I think you can read between the lines on that statement.

[Michael Lowinger]

After his call with Lewandowski, 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.

[Cameron Hamilton]

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. And 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 publicly. 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.

[Michael Lowinger]

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 2025 when he was out of office. Last week, Trump nominated him to return to the agency, the this time in an official capacity. You're listening to the fourth and final episode of our four part series, American 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 by Trump and the MAGA fringes when Hurricane helene struck in 2024. 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.

[Cameron Hamilton]

We've come to North Carolina with a simple message for all the people of this region who were hit so hard by Hurricane Helene. And that message is very simple. You are not forgotten any longer. You were treated very badly by the previous administration.

[Michael Lowinger]

Just three days into his second term, President Trump announced that changes, big changes, might be coming to fema.

[Cameron Hamilton]

I'll also be signing an executive order

[Michael Lowinger]

to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling fema, or maybe getting rid of fema.

[Cameron Hamilton]

I think, frankly, FEMA is not good.

[Michael Lowinger]

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 Kristi Noem. Meanwhile, Trump's mention of getting rid of FEMA was sending shockwaves through Washington.

[Cameron Hamilton]

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 gonna happen?

[Michael Lowinger]

This was just Hamilton's third day on the job and all of a sudden FEMA's 20,000 plus workforce and the entire world of emergency managers were spinning out.

[Cameron Hamilton]

There were state directors and governors that heard this and thought, this is a terrible idea.

[Michael Lowinger]

FEMA employees at the agency's headquarters were barging into Hamilton's office in tears.

[Cameron Hamilton]

I assembled a leadership team and said, guys and gals, this is our moment. This is our make or break testing period here. We can either let this sword of Damocles and let us fail, or we can dig down deep, which is what emergency managers do, and deal with this crisis and meet it head on and do it with a smile on our face.

[Michael Lowinger]

Some seasoned FEMA 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 Emergency Management Reform act requires that FEMA's leader have significant experience responding to disasters. Trump's last FEMA administrator, Pete Gaynor, who served in Trump's first term, had done over 10 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 SEAL 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 MAGA warrior, saying all the right things.

[Cameron Hamilton]

Cameron, tell me about your race. Yeah, well, good morning. Thanks for having me and all the patriots out there. Thank you for listening. So I'm running at the Virginia.

[Michael Lowinger]

This is an interview on Real America's voice from March 2024, when Hamilton was running for a congressional seat in Virginia about 10 months before he ended up at FEMA.

[Cameron Hamilton]

I've worked in the federal government in various different jobs and capacities, and I understand exactly the bureaucratic sickness that our

[Michael Lowinger]

government has plagued, the bureaucratic sickness that our government is plagued by.

[Cameron Hamilton]

So are you ready and able to dismantle the administrative state? I think so, absolutely. When Trump is president, if you win, are you?

[Michael Lowinger]

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. Its Project 2025 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 4.7 million households.

[Cameron Hamilton]

My recommendation, believe it or not, when I talked to Heritage, was actually about move FEMA to the Department of Interior. And I say this as a constitutional limited government conservative, I don't think DHS should exist.

[Michael Lowinger]

Dismantling DHS and moving FEMA to the Department of interior were also two goals of Project 2025. During Trump's transition, Hamilton was put in touch with the DHS secretary to be Kristi Noem.

[Cameron Hamilton]

The interview went very well and we discussed the principles of emergency management.

[Michael Lowinger]

How did you make the case to her that you were the man for the job?

[Cameron Hamilton]

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 president time to make his determination,

[Michael Lowinger]

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.

[Cameron Hamilton]

Nowhere in this conversation was there ever a discussion about abolishing fema, and that didn't happen until the president traveled to North Carolina, when the president spoke at that press conference. I'll also be signing an executive order

[Michael Lowinger]

to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA.

[Cameron Hamilton]

I think, frankly, FEMA's not good. All of a sudden, every action, everything that we did, was now immediately under the microscope.

[Michael Lowinger]

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 Kristi Noem and her special employee Corey Lewandowski, a MAGA operative and former pundit who was rumored to be having an affair with Noem. Neither of them, says Hamilton, knew the basics of FEMA's history or its disaster relief systems.

[Cameron Hamilton]

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.

[Marianne Tierney]

We were tasked by Corey Leandowski and the secretary to write a memo on how we would abolish fema.

[Michael Lowinger]

This is Marianne 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 9 11. And now here she was helping craft plans for how to radically reduce the staff at female.

[Marianne Tierney]

It was very upsetting, but part of your job as a senior executive is to implement the 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.

[Michael Lowinger]

As we discussed in episode two, the post Katrina Emergency Management Reform act limits how much DHS can meddle with female. 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 Kristi Noem, Kory Lewandowski and Cameron Hamilton was an opportunity to discuss these different strategies.

[Cameron Hamilton]

They were eager to see my plans on reform, and then I think that they wanted to have a rebranding.

[Michael Lowinger]

Hamilton's memo suggested some potential name changes for fema, including the National Office of Emergency Management and N O E M as in gnome.

[Cameron Hamilton]

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.

[Michael Lowinger]

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 Lewandowski blamed Hamilton for the leak, despite the fact that many other people knew that the meeting was happening.

[Cameron Hamilton]

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 topic itself was visible to about 50 to 100 people.

[Michael Lowinger]

Nevertheless, Lewandowski insisted that Hamilton sit for a polygraph test.

[Cameron Hamilton]

They're not always perfect. You can get them wrong.

[Michael Lowinger]

Yeah, I feel like they're famous for not being that accurate.

[Cameron Hamilton]

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.

[Michael Lowinger]

I see.

[Cameron Hamilton]

I've had that training before in the military, specifically as a Navy seal. 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.

[Michael Lowinger]

Hamilton was cleared, but he never received an apology. Then DHS began working its way through the agency's senior leadership.

[Marianne Tierney]

I would say about 8 to 10 FEMA staff were polygraphed as a result of the meeting and the memo.

[Michael Lowinger]

Marianne Tierney was spared from the witch hunt.

[Marianne Tierney]

I even consulted an attorney because I thought I was going to be polygraphed, and it traumatized our workforce.

[Michael Lowinger]

Did they find the leaker? No.

[Cameron Hamilton]

Well, I suspect I know where the leak came from. It did not come from fema. I'll put it that way.

[Michael Lowinger]

When Cameron Hamilton was called to testify on May 7, 2025, before the House Appropriations Committee, he knew his days at FEMA were numbered.

[Cameron Hamilton]

The morning of my Testimony, at about 10, maybe 10:30, FEMA Security 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. Maryanne 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 Appropriations Committee now that will indicate that I've been removed and that I will not be Able to testify, the department then realized the optics of it would not look proper. So they backtracked, essentially indicating, hey, just sort of pretend this didn't happen.

[Michael Lowinger]

You can go ahead and testify, but when you come back, you're fired.

[Cameron Hamilton]

That's not what they said, but that's what I understood it to mean.

[Michael Lowinger]

Does this administration seek to eliminate FEMA and do you support eliminating FEMA? U.S. rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut questioned him. Hamilton later that day.

[Cameron Hamilton]

I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Having said that, that is a conversation that should be had between the President, United States and this governing body.

[Michael Lowinger]

Acting head Cameron Hamilton was abruptly fired yesterday. It came one day after he testified before Congress that FEMA should not be scrapped. Meanwhile, Mary Ann Tierney had decided separately that her time at FEMA was coming to an end.

[Marianne Tierney]

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.

[Michael Lowinger]

After nearly 15 years at FEMA, Marianne resigned a few weeks after Hamilton was fired.

[Marianne Tierney]

This is like therapy. Could we, like, do this every week?

[Michael Lowinger]

You're enjoying this.

[Marianne Tierney]

I'm enjoying it. Look, 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.

[Michael Lowinger]

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 2024. Hamilton reposted the following video from Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna on X. North Carolina is underwater. 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 $1.1 billion in housing assistance. This was a very common narrative we heard at the time. But that wasn't true, right? The money that FEMA was giving for temporary housing to migrants.

[Cameron Hamilton]

Separate appropriation.

[Michael Lowinger]

Yes, was a separate appropriation. It was not coming at the expense of disaster relief for American citizens.

[Cameron Hamilton]

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.

[Michael Lowinger]

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.

[Cameron Hamilton]

That is correct. That is a factually inaccurate statement.

[Michael Lowinger]

You had also shared posts on X from Elon Musk who claimed that FEMA was blocking his aide. That also wasn't true.

[Cameron Hamilton]

I've re. I've said things and I've reposted things that I know now to 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. I can't.

[Michael Lowinger]

Coming up on American Emergency, a group of FEMA workers form an anonymous news outlet. This is on the media. Are you hungry for some great investigative journalism?

[Cameron Hamilton]

That sounds like music. Then Radiolab might be the show for you. Radiolab began over 20 years ago as

[Michael Lowinger]

an exploration of science, philosophy and ethics. The show has since expanded to become a platform for some of the best

[Cameron Hamilton]

long form journalism and storytelling you'll hear today.

[Michael Lowinger]

Join Jad, Lulu Miller and myself, Latif Nasser, as we investigate stories that provoke

[Cameron Hamilton]

delight and ask you to completely change the way you view the world.

[Michael Lowinger]

You can find Radiolab wherever you get podcasts. This is on the media. I'm Michael Loewinger. 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 2025, there were plenty of frustrated employees throughout the agency who felt they had no choice but to speak with the press.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

I was angry, full stop, and feeling like, no, I'm not the only one who feels this way in the moment.

[Michael Lowinger]

This is a FEMA employee that I'm going to 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.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

The Trump administration had only been in office for 73 days, and in that very small span of time, FEMA had already experienced really significant changes.

[Michael Lowinger]

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 Doge'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.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

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 and gaslight us and say, well, no, that didn't happen that way. You're incorrect.

[Michael Lowinger]

On April 3, 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, Altfeema shared a mission statement and a link to a signal account for sending tips. The first one came later that day from a friend.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

I took that tip and ran with it. It was the shutdown of the BRIC program. So if you're not familiar with what that is, it's the building resilient infrastructure

[Michael Lowinger]

and communities grant a mitigation program that's given billions to states to, say, build

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

special roads that would be like permeable pavement surfaces to prevent pooling of water,

[Michael Lowinger]

or riverside parks that reduce the impacts of floods.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

You incorporate green spaces to soak up that water and it helps the local

[Michael Lowinger]

ecosystem as well, which brighten up communities and help save a ton of money down the line.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

It's estimated that for every dollar you spend in mitigation, you save 6 to $11 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.

[Michael Lowinger]

When Altfeema learned that Cameron Hamilton was feeding brick to the wood chipper, he went digging for more information. A memo that apparently had been hidden from the leaders that operate BRIC. Ironically, the BRIC program was created in 2018, 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, Alt FEMA 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 BRIC cancellation through his newsletter.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

They like the fact that it's actual FEMA employees who are sharing this information with them.

[Michael Lowinger]

Twenty states filed a lawsuit to block the defunding of BRIC, and in December, the program was reinstated. Today, the AltFEMA newsletter has around 2,500 subscribers. Its readers include emergency managers, journalists, and even staff members in Congress. Not long after the BRIC article, Altfima started to hear from other employees who wanted to write their own stories and op eds for the newsletter.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

We have about 12 people who are active.

[Michael Lowinger]

Do you know who your writers are?

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

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.

[Michael Lowinger]

In some ways, this crew is as much a clearinghouse for leaks as it is a newsroom. They say they've spoken on background with npr, Grist, 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 FEMA's most viewed article is about Cameron Hamilton's successor, another temporary administrator named David Richardson, a former Marine who also had no emergency management experience.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

David Richardson came in and we were called to an all hands meeting. We have never received an all hands meeting for the entire agency. That is unheard of.

[Michael Lowinger]

I am the President's representative at fema.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

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.

[Michael Lowinger]

I and I alone speak for FEMA.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

Okay, now this is the tough part. Between 10 and 20% of personnel will embrace change.

[Cameron Hamilton]

They'll welcome it.

[Michael Lowinger]

However, there's somewhere south of 20%

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

that

[Michael Lowinger]

decide that they are going to get in the way. So don't get in my way, because I will run right over you.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

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.

[Michael Lowinger]

What were your worst fears?

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

That 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's just experienced a tornado and a tree fell through her house and almost crushed her 3 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?

[Jake Biddle]

We live about a mile down the

[Michael Lowinger]

road from Camp Mississippi and we've already

[Marianne Tierney]

got two little girls who have come

[Michael Lowinger]

down the river and we've gotten to them.

[Marianne Tierney]

But I'm not sure how many else are out there.

[Michael Lowinger]

When floods ripped through Central Texas last July, 136 people were killed, including 25 young campers. Meanwhile, David Richardson could not be reached for 24 hours. That dysfunction was cited as one of the reasons why FEMA's Search and Rescue teams were deployed too slowly, along with a bottleneck created by Kristi Noem's policy that she personally sign off on contracts and grants over $100,000.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

Kristi Noem responded to allegations that FEMA

[Michael Lowinger]

cutbacks meant delays in answering people's calls

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

for disaster assistance and aid after the flood.

[Michael Lowinger]

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 the private sector or took early retirement.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

We've just lost so much knowledge and experience alt fema. Just like we have to rebuild after disaster, we're going to have to rebuild the agency. And unless they drag me by my cold, dead hands away from my cubicle, I'm going to be sticking around.

[Michael Lowinger]

Then this March, just when morale at FEMA had hit rock bottom.

[Marianne Tierney]

So, Secretary Noem, at any time during your tenure as director of Department of Homeland Security, have you had sexual relations with Corey Lewandowski?

[Michael Lowinger]

Mr. Chairman, I am shocked that we're going down and peddling tabloid garbage in this committee today reclaiming in a congressional hearing, lawmakers like California Representative Sidney Komlager dove grilled Kristi Noem.

[Marianne Tierney]

Okay, for you to question make it is also a real question what I would say and you should be able

[Michael Lowinger]

to answer what we do at the Department of Homelessness 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.

[Marianne Tierney]

Before I yield my time, I would like to enter into the record some articles and I'm asking for unanimous consent. Nome tightens her grip on DHS Lewandowski fired FEMA admin Objection. Okay, the next one is Kristi Noem secretly took a cut of political donations

[Michael Lowinger]

from ProPublica without objection.

[Marianne Tierney]

Kristi Noem fires pilot over a blanket but is forced to reinstate him to fly home.

[Michael Lowinger]

Wall Street Journal without objection we're coming on the air because President Trump has just announced that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is out of a job. This follows reports that the president was frustrated by her recent testimony on Capitol Hill.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

As soon as they heard the news, I remember calling my co worker 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 and laughing together and feeling like, like a weight had been lifted off our shoulders. That meant everything to me.

[Michael Lowinger]

Coming up on American Emergency. FEMA might need an overhaul, but is this the administration to do it? This is on the media.

[Cameron Hamilton]

This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour.

[Michael Lowinger]

UFC president and a close friend of Donald Trump's, Dana White. People can ask me about Donald Trump for the rest of my life and I'll tell you all the great things that I love about this guy. What I'll be happy to be out of is politics. I don't want to talk about politics.

[Jake Biddle]

Whether they're his, Obama's, this guy, that

[Michael Lowinger]

guy, none of them.

[Cameron Hamilton]

That's the UFC's Dana White on the New Yorker Radio Hour from WNYC. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts, This

[Michael Lowinger]

is on the media. I'm Michael o'.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

Ensure.

[Michael Lowinger]

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 2026, a leaked report from the President's Review Council confirmed that Kristi Noem wanted to downsize by 50% ahead of Hurricane season. But after Noem was abruptly fired in March, FEMA's fortunes began to slowly turn around. Trump's new DHS secretary, Mark Wayne Mullen, 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 Helene recovery. We're going through this conversation.

[Cameron Hamilton]

Let us know what we can do better, not just beat up on fema. That's not the point because they've done a great job. But what is it that we could maybe tweak just a little bit.

[Michael Lowinger]

Over the past couple of months, Secretary Mullen began to lift Kristi Noem's $100,000 review policy. President Trump also released some state disaster relief funding that his White House had withheld. But most surprising of all, the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, 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.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

It was complete and utter shock.

[Michael Lowinger]

This is Alt fema, that anonymous substack writer.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

That was a plot twist that none of us expected would happen.

[Michael Lowinger]

How does it make you feel about the future of the agency?

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

At this point, there's no way they can justify getting rid of the agency. I do think it's going to look very different. And 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.

[Marianne Tierney]

The systems that we asked people to work in are complex and, and bureaucratic and needs substantial reform.

[Michael Lowinger]

This is Mary Ann Tierney again, the former FEMA employee who worked alongside Cameron Hamilton.

[Marianne Tierney]

If you haven't done it, you should call the 1-800-number for FEMA. The first thing that we tell people, like the first thing you hear as a survivor when you 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 or lie in an attempt to get assistance. It is a violation of federal and

[Michael Lowinger]

state laws which carry criminal or civil.

[Marianne Tierney]

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 gonna cheat us from the jump. I don't think that's a good survivor experience.

[Michael Lowinger]

To illustrate the complexity of FEMA's assistance programs, Maryann told me about a fun analogy she'd often use when discussing this stuff around the agen.

[Marianne Tierney]

The Christmas tree analogy.

[Michael Lowinger]

Yeah, Christmas tree.

[Marianne Tierney]

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 Relief Act.

[Michael Lowinger]

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.

[Marianne Tierney]

That law was passed in 1988. 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 tacks 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 or 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 FEMA's programs.

[Michael Lowinger]

This is why Marianne was excited to see which reforms would be suggested this month by President Trump's 12 person review council.

[Cameron Hamilton]

It is my great pleasure to introduce Secretary of Homeland Security Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen. The floor is yours, sir.

[Michael Lowinger]

Thank you. This meeting was kind of like game seven of the World Series for the emergency management universe. President 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 required 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 Rorschach 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 Ann 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.

[Marianne Tierney]

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.

[Michael Lowinger]

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.

[Marianne Tierney]

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.

[Michael Lowinger]

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. An equation that hasn't been touched since the Stafford act was passed in 1988. 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 request federal support.

[Marianne Tierney]

In my region where I worked West Virginia, we averaged two or three declarations a year from flooding. You have a lot of these smaller declarations. It eats up FEMA's 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.

[Michael Lowinger]

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.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

We don't have a lot of cash reserves. The state does not have a state run disaster relief fund at all.

[Michael Lowinger]

This is Eric Ferand, the director of emergency management in Vermont. He's nervous about some of the changes outlined in the FEMA Review Council report.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

We're, I believe, the second least populated state. So 650,000 individuals in the state of Vermont. So our tax base is pretty low.

[Michael Lowinger]

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 20 million citizens paying taxes. And the timing for Eric Farrand is especially rough because in recent years Vermont has seen a rise in costly floods.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

Normally we've had over the past decade about two declared disasters per year. And over my first two terms, we had eight.

[Cameron Hamilton]

Vermont under a state of emergency tonight, some of the worst flooding in nearly 100 years.

[Michael Lowinger]

The capital of Vermont tonight. Underwater, the unthinkable happened. Another deluge once again caused extensive damage. Some of the same communities getting soaked a second time and some new ones added to the list.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

We've had three major disasters on July 10, July 10 of 23, July 10 of 24 and July 10 of 25.

[Michael Lowinger]

Wait, so you've had floods on the same day three consecutive years?

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

That's correct. The one in 25 only hit five towns, but it was significant.

[Marianne Tierney]

Vermonters brace themselves for the third July in a row where waters endangered the

[Michael Lowinger]

lives of them and their neighbors. One of the towns had damage that

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

was three times their annual budget. We have some funding from the state,

[Michael Lowinger]

but how do we manage that? Eric Faran's team requested that Trump issue a major disaster declaration for the 2025 floods to unlock FEMA money, but the president denied it. In what appears to be a larger trend of punishing blue states, the declaration

[Marianne Tierney]

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.

[Michael Lowinger]

Eric Ferrand 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.

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

If we get denied more disaster declarations, even if they're over threshold, what is

[Michael Lowinger]

the state going to do? How are the towns going to manage?

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

So those are things that we're trying to navigate right now, and I'd rather have a flood than this FEMA disaster.

[Michael Lowinger]

But we're just managing it as best we can. And Vermont's not alone.

[Jake Biddle]

Nevada and many other states across the entire Great Plains, certainly in the Northeast, they would be in a lot of trouble.

[Michael Lowinger]

This is Jake Biddle, a staff writer at Grist who covers FEMA and climate change.

[Jake Biddle]

Responding to disasters Big disasters cannot become a line item in the budget for most states. It just won't work.

[Michael Lowinger]

When I called up Jake, I was trying to process what I was seeing, that even as longtime FEMA watchers like Mary Ann 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 Project 2025 wish list. All this at a time when climate disasters are more common and more costly, when maybe we need more federal Relief, not less.

[Jake Biddle]

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, you know, I have to, to give some credence to that.

[Michael Lowinger]

So you find in your own internal struggle, you find that your idealism is tempered by what experienced people have tried to convey to you.

[Jake Biddle]

I don't know that this is like that. I would love this part of the segment.

[Michael Lowinger]

But I like it, though, because I'm struggling with this, too. I'm trying to understand it and it's helping me.

[Jake Biddle]

There may be points of agreement between conservatives and people who have been frustrated by bureaucracy, but just 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 and a reformed agency that is capable of both moving fast when it needs to move fast and sizing up when it needs to size up for a big hurricane. You have to think it's just kind of like a pell mell austerity. That's what the pattern has been.

[Michael Lowinger]

Do you think that Trump's threats to kill FEMA and Kristi Noem's stranglehold on the agency forced Washington to kind of reckon with how important FEMA really is?

[Jake Biddle]

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. The problems that were created by Noem, and also just the wake up call of Trump saying we should get rid of this activated opposition that you don't always see from Republicans in Congress. These people were not about to let this happen in a way that they did with aid.

[Cameron Hamilton]

Right.

[Jake Biddle]

Where aid is established by statute, too. You can't technically just delete it. But there was no constituency in Congress to save it. But there was no way they could have gone and said, hey, we're shutting down fema. There's just nobody who left who wanted to do this. And everyone's kind of wiping their brow. I think that they got through the Gnome era without a total national calamity happening.

[Cameron Hamilton]

Hi, Eloise. How are you?

[Michael Lowinger]

I'm good.

[Cameron Hamilton]

Hey, Cam.

[Michael Lowinger]

I'm here with Micah, who you spoke to before.

[Cameron Hamilton]

Okay, excellent. Well, thank you. I wanted to call and reach out because I understand that you are getting ready to air our previous conversation, and I wanted to speak with you about that if you have some time.

[Michael Lowinger]

Yes, Cam, Hey. I just wanted to let you know that I am recording this conversation, but I'm happy to talk. Earlier this week, Eloise and I got a call from Cameron Hamilton. When we called him back, he asked us to delay the release of this episode. He was concerned that our interview from five months ago could draw negative attention ahead of his upcoming Senate confirmation hearing. I told him I thought the request was inappropriate and that we would release the episode as planned. It's true that he may face tough questions about his qualifications. If confirmed, he would be the least experienced FEMA administrator since Hurricane Katrina era leader Michael Brown. And my sources believe Hamilton will still likely get the job. I came to this topic as an outsider. I cover the media, not emergency management or climate policy. But when I dove into the history of fema, there was immediately something familiar to me. Much like the media, this agency is a funhouse mirror. It reflects what our leaders fear most at any given moment. In the Cold War years, it was nuclear annihilation, a time when the agency prioritized secretive doomsday planning, which did little to prepare Americans for natural disasters and spawned decades of harmful conspiracy theories. After 9 11. In 2018, FEMA was transformed as the War on Terror hysteria swept through American institutions when a mass exodus of FEMA staffers left the agency unprepared. When Katrina hit in Trump's second term, fear of immigration gripped the Department of Homeland Security. Last year. Kristi Noem paralyzed the agency as she focused on MAGA's mass deportation program. She even reassigned some FEMA staffers to ice. Fear, of course, is a corrupting force. It's the fuel of authoritarianism and moral panic. But in the right doses, in the right hands, it's a powerful motivator. My mom tells me that I'm a

[Cameron Hamilton]

professional worrier and that finally, I'm getting

[Alt FEMA (Anonymous FEMA Employee)]

paid to do what I've always done.

[Michael Lowinger]

This is a local California emergency manager who asked to remain anonymous in case of retaliation. He got into this line of work after he developed an intense fear of wildfires after his home was nearly engulfed by flames.

[Cameron Hamilton]

I just wanted to transmute that abject

[Michael Lowinger]

fear into something more productive, and I kind of got into emergency management that way. Now he's part of a tiny team working for a tribal nation in California, preparing people in this very remote area for floods, tsunamis, earthquake, earthquakes and wildfires. Native Americans are seven times more likely to die from extreme weather than their white counterparts, he says. His office is funded entirely by grants from the federal government. And with the dysfunction and recent shakeups at fema, he's worried that the agency's commitment to helping our most vulnerable is waning.

[Cameron Hamilton]

Funding can make the difference between a community standing up, an evacuation shelter, or not. When something devastating happens on tribal territory, that might be the difference between saving lives or not.

[Michael Lowinger]

As he looks ahead to the summer, he sees looming threats. Climate scientists are forecasting an El Nino supercharged by our climate crisis, a weather pattern that brings increased risk of floods and wildfires to the American West. With staffing cuts at the National Forest Service and the national oceanic and Atmospheric administration, and with FEMA's workforce gasping for air, lives hang in the balance. Fema's brightest spots were moments when its leaders feared the right things. Like during the James Lee Witt era of the 90s, before the agency had lost its cabinet position, before it had been absorbed into the machinery of dhs, when FEMA proved it could respond to natural hazards quickly and efficiently. And then after Katrina, when FEMA tried to understand its catastrophic failures and vowed to never repeat the mistakes of the past. But here we are in this very uncertain time for the agency. The one thing we can be sure of is that there will be a next disaster and people will ask, where's fema? Instead of fearing the unknown, maybe what our leaders should fear most is a disaster of their own making. That's it for American Emergency, the movement to kill fema. This series is reported and hosted by me, Michael Oinger, with additional writing and reporting from me, Eloise Blondio. ON the Media's senior producer, Jared Bartman designed the artwork for the series.

[Cameron Hamilton]

Our fact checker is Tom Colligan.

[Michael Lowinger]

Original music and mixing from Jared Paul.

[Cameron Hamilton]

American Emergency was edited by executive producer Katya Rogers.

[Michael Lowinger]

Our technical director is Jennifer Munson. Special thanks to Chris Catalano, Shanna Udvarti, Andrew Rumbaugh and Eric Umansky. ON the Media is produced by wnyc. Brooke Gladstone will be back next week. I'm Michael Lowinger. Whether it's news from around the world or the latest from your neighborhood, New Yorkers engage with WNYC studios for the information and connection they can only get from our programming. Be a part of that conversation through your business's support. Learn [e-mail].