‘Survivors and communities impacted by disasters are and will continue to be our main priority,’ FEMA Acting director Cameron Hamilton said.
The acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said on Thursday that the disaster response agency will review grants and funding to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) amid the Trump administration’s calls to reform the agency.
The acting director, Cameron Hamilton, said in a post on social media platform X that the agency will look into agency funding for NGOs and that “survivors and communities impacted by disasters are and will continue to be our main priority.”
“Because we care deeply about survivors and their communities and because we want to be accountable to the American people, effectively immediately, we are implementing additional steps to fully review the entire slate of grants and funding that FEMA provides to NGOs,” Hamilton said in a video posted on X.
FEMA’s goal will “prioritize survivors and the communities impacted by the hardest hit disasters,” he added. “We are doing this because we want to be responsible with our dollars and deliver them to those in need.”
President Donald Trump has been critical of the agency and signaled earlier this week that it should be terminated outright for what he said was mismanaging disaster relief funds.
“FEMA spent tens of millions of dollars in Democrat areas, disobeying orders, but left the people of North Carolina high and dry,” Trump said in a Feb. 11 post on his Truth Social account, adding that FEMA “should be terminated.”
In recent months, FEMA has faced criticism from Republicans over how it handled disaster relief efforts following hurricanes Milton and Helene, which hit the southern United States in late 2024.
Trump last month signed an executive order that established an advisory council to review FEMA over having allegedly lost “mission focus,” diverting limited staff and resources to support missions beyond its scope and authority,“ and ”spending well over a billion dollars to welcome illegal aliens.”
