Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) welcomed the opportunity for Florida to take over for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in responding to its own state emergencies.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order to examine a revamping of FEMA. A new council on the subject is slated to meet on March 20 and provide a full report to Trump by July 20. DeSantis implied he’d be in favor of dismantling the agency altogether.
“So if you just eliminated the FEMA bureaucracy, and when these disasters happen, you said we are going to block grant a certain amount of money to the states and let us administer it, you could give me 75 cents on the dollar, and that money will go further to help my people than running it through this cumbersome bureaucracy of FEMA,” DeSantis said on Fox News’s The Ingraham Angle Tuesday. “So, yes, we could administer it better. We would be able to do it far cheaper than FEMA does.”
DeSantis referenced the fired FEMA supervisor who sent a message that ordered employees to avoid homes with Donald Trump signs in their yards. This message was sent in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, which devastated large swaths of Florida, which elected Trump last November.
“It’s interesting. When these storms happen, we do the prep at the state and local level, we do the response search and rescue, help with the power restoration, and all the key things, and people are happy with that in Florida. It’s then when they have to start dealing with FEMA and how that interacts with local government that people just want to pull their hair out,” DeSantis said. “So I think the president is right: eliminate the bureaucracy, block grant us the money. It will save taxpayer dollars, but it will actually benefit people in need more.”
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Former FEMA supervisor Marn’i Washington reported to the Washington Examiner that her precautionary message to her employees was sent in an effort to avoid “hostile political encounters.” Washington claimed she had the approval from her superiors to enact a policy “to keep the team safe.”
FEMA was under fire late last year for its lack of funding, which will not last through the end of the season, which typically ends around Nov. 30, according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s predecessor Alejandro Mayorkas. Meanwhile, the agency reported twice as many disasters in 2023 than in 2016.