The Patriot Post® · DOGE Digs Into FEMA

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is now in the crosshairs of Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. This will likely be bad news for the agency that has received a lot of bad press¹ over the last few months, dating back to Hurricane Helene.

Recall that a FEMA regional official, Marn'i Washington, had directed workers to avoid homes with Trump signs² under the dubious claims of concern for the safety of aid workers. The Office of the Special Counsel has determined that this action violated the Hatch Act’s prohibition of politically motivated action. As the OSC explained³, “By directing political activity at her subordinates, Washington used her official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.”

While Washington has since been fired, it would appear that she was not an isolated anomaly within FEMA but rather more of an expression of the biased culture that has metastasized within the agency.

As DOGE began digging into FEMA, it didn’t take long for massive objectionable spending to be uncovered. As DOGE head Elon Musk noted, the organization had uncovered some $59 million⁴ in expenditures for “luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.”

Trump also weighed in on FEMA in a social media post: “FEMA spent tens of millions of dollars in Democrat areas, disobeying orders, but left the people of North Carolina high and dry. It is now under review and investigation. THE BIDEN RUN FEMA HAS BEEN A DISASTER. FEMA SHOULD BE TERMINATED! IT HAS BEEN SLOW AND TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE. INDIVIDUAL STATES SHOULD HANDLE STORMS, ETC., AS THEY COME. BIG SAVINGS, FAR MORE EFFICIENT!!!”

Four FEMA officials have been fired for that fiasco. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced the department had “clawed back the full payment that FEMA deep state activists” made to New York City to handle illegal aliens.

It has also been revealed that FEMA employees⁵, in apparent violation of the Federal Records Act, deleted an office LGBQ “pride” chat on Microsoft Teams just as Trump took office. According to James Fitzpatrick, director of the watchdog group Center to Advance Security in America, “The American public deserves to know when the ‘pride’ chat was created in Microsoft teams, how it was managed, how it functioned, and how it was deleted.”

And this is precisely what DOGE is doing. It is shining badly needed light on these executive agencies, revealing to the country how they have been spending American taxpayers’ dollars.

DOGE is bringing accountability to Washington, which it has not seen in decades. No wonder Democrats and bureaucrats are howling over a bogus claim of Trump, via DOGE, creating a “constitutional crisis.”

In FEMA’s case, Americans will soon learn just how mismanaged the agency is. Furthermore, this mismanagement will lend further support for Trump’s call to effectively eliminate the agency entirely. He recently stated⁶, “FEMA has not done their job for the last four years.”

Trump sees empowering state and local authorities as the primary means for dealing with disaster relief because they are much closer and more intimately aware of the unique situation in their localities. A perfect example demonstrating this reality is the fact that FEMA was spending millions for housing illegal aliens. For an agency that ostensibly exists to help assist Americans in responding to natural disasters, why in the world would FEMA have anything to do with illegal aliens?

It will be telling to see what DOGE uncovers in how FEMA has been spending taxpayer dollars⁷. There’s a good bet that what is revealed will only serve to further Trump’s call for eliminating or severely downsizing the agency in favor of empowering states.