FEMA employee fired after telling relief team to skip houses with Trump signs following Florida hurricane

By Mary Kay Mallonee, CNN

(CNN) — A Federal Emergency Management Agency employee has been fired after they advised their disaster relief team to avoid homes with signs supporting former President Donald Trump while canvassing in Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, the agency’s administrator said Saturday.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell called the actions of the employee “reprehensible” and said they have been terminated from their role.

“More than 22,000 FEMA employees every day adhere to FEMA’s core values and are dedicated to helping people before, during and after disasters, often sacrificing time with their own families to help disaster survivors,” Criswell wrote in a post on X before describing the employee’s actions. “This is a clear violation of FEMA’s core values & principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation.”

“This was reprehensible. I want to be clear to all of my employees and the American people, this type of behavior and action will not be tolerated at FEMA and we will hold people accountable if they violate these standards of conduct,” she added.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer invited Criswell to testify at a hearing on November 19 to discuss the incident and FEMA’s recent response to natural disasters, including Hurricanes Helene and Milton, he said in a Saturday letter to Criswell.

“In the wake of the recent major disasters that impacted Americans of all political persuasions, it is critical that FEMA adheres to its disaster relief mission,” the Kentucky Republican wrote.

CNN reported Friday that the employee had been removed from their role and that the incident was under investigation. The agency did not identify the employee and said it believed it was “an isolated incident.”

“The employee who issued this guidance had no authority and was given no direction to tell teams to avoid these homes,” a FEMA spokesperson said Friday.

The Daily Wire first reported on the incident, citing internal correspondence between the employee and workers canvassing homes in Lake Placid, Florida, in which the employee instructed them to “avoid homes advertising Trump.”

The agency is investigating how many houses were passed over by the canvassing team as part of the incident on October 27, the spokesperson told CNN. The agency on Friday deployed a new team to knock on doors in the affected area to contact those who may not have been previously reached.

The spokesperson declined to provide additional information on the incident or detail how agency officials were notified of it, citing the investigation, but said in the statement that FEMA officials are “horrified that this took place and therefore have taken extreme actions to correct this situation and have ensured that the matter was addressed at all levels.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said following reports of the incident Friday that he had directed state officials to investigate the matter.

“The blatant weaponization of government by partisan activists in the federal bureaucracy is yet another reason why the Biden-Harris administration is in its final days,” DeSantis, a Republican, wrote on X. “At my direction, the Division of Emergency Management is launching an investigation into the federal government’s targeted discrimination of Floridians who support Donald Trump.”

FEMA, the spokesperson said in their statement, “helps all survivors regardless of their political preference or affiliation.”

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Samantha Waldenberg and Annie Grayer contributed to this report.

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