Is FEMA Heading Towards Disaster?
What Next | Daily News and Analysis
Slate Podcasts
4.3 • 2.4K Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2026
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Cameron Hamilton testified to Congress that he did not believe “it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” he was fired from his job as FEMA’s acting administrator.
But now, a year later, Hamilton has been nominated to lead FEMA permanently. Does this mean the agency’s future is more secure?
Guest: Micah Loewinger, co-host of WNYC’s On the Media whose latest series is called “American Emergency: The Movement to Kill FEMA.”
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm going to tell you a comeback story. |
| 0:09.3 | And it's a comeback story. |
| 0:10.4 | I got to say that I did not see coming. |
| 0:17.6 | I'm talking about the comeback of a guy named Cameron Hamilton. |
| 0:22.4 | Cameron Hamilton ran FEMA when the second Trump administration began in January 2025. |
| 0:29.4 | Is he an emergency management guy? |
| 0:30.9 | He is not. No, he is a former Navy SEAL who maybe right place, right time, managed to get this enormous job. |
| 0:42.0 | Michael Loinger is going to help me tell Cameron Hamilton's story. He co-hosts the podcast on the media, |
| 0:47.6 | which is in the middle of a whole series on FEMA. It's called American Emergency. |
| 0:52.7 | When he came in, even in this temporary capacity, a lot of FEMA's staff were kind of, you know, |
| 0:59.3 | scratching their heads and honestly kind of nervous about what this meant for the agency's future. |
| 1:07.8 | From the beginning, there were reasons to feel like Cameron Hamilton's tenure was fraught. |
| 1:13.4 | There were reports that Hamilton had drafted a memo for his bosses and called it |
| 1:18.1 | abolishing FEMA. Not great if you work there. |
| 1:22.4 | There were also reports that then Secretary of Homeland Security, Christy Noem, |
| 1:26.5 | had forced Hamilton to get a polygraph |
| 1:28.9 | after news about the whole abolishing FEMA thing leaked to the press. |
| 1:34.0 | Good afternoon. |
| 1:36.4 | As you might imagine, Congress had questions about all this. |
| 1:39.9 | So they called on Cameron Hamilton to answer a few. |
| 1:44.0 | Does this administration seek to eliminate FEMA? So they called on Cameron Hamilton to answer a few. |
| 1:48.3 | Does this administration seek to eliminate FEMA? |
... |
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