President Donald Trump’s vow to overhaul disaster aid is poised to launch with the approval of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s first permanent administrator in more than a year.
Trump is scheduled to swear in Cameron Hamilton on Monday morning, stabilizing and empowering FEMA after it has lost more than one-fifth of its employees since January 2025 under a series of acting administrators.
“The biggest thing is they can now start making decisions to move forward on programs,” said Craig Fugate, who ran FEMA during the Obama administration. “In the acting role, you’re not in a position to bring new programs online.”
Hamilton’s largest task will be handling recommendations by the Trump-appointed FEMA Review Council to speed up disaster aid and restrict money to only the most damaging storms, floods and wildfires. Trump has said nothing publicly about the 75-page report released in May by the council, which he created to guide a FEMA overhaul.
Hamilton “is charged with implementing President Trump’s vision for a leaner, faster, better FEMA that empowers states, tribes and local leaders to manage their own response and recovery efforts,” FEMA said in a statement to POLITICO.
FEMA has long been criticized for taking too long to distribute aid and for spending money helping states after minor events that cause only a few million dollars of damage. Trump’s review council suggested a dramatically new way of getting money to states designed to be faster and making it harder for states to qualify for aid.
“Cam’s probably going to be charged with taking some of those recommendations and turning them into action. I know he has his own ideas about how to improve and simplify the system,” said Peter Gaynor, who ran FEMA during Trump’s first term. “He’s going to bring change.”
Hamilton said at his June confirmation hearing that if confirmed, he would release a 30-day report “on my analysis and recommendations for the future — areas where FEMA can reform.”
State and local organizations reliant on FEMA hailed the Senate vote Friday to confirm Hamilton, who was approved largely along party lines with 73 other presidential nominees.
“Hamilton’s confirmation is an important step in re-establishing FEMA’s importance and coordinating disaster relief efforts across the country,” the National Association of Counties said on its website.
MaryAnn Tierney, a senior FEMA official from 2010 to 2025, said Hamilton’s Senate confirmation will let the agency “make substantial changes” to disaster aid “that will benefit disaster survivors and communities.”
Hamilton wrote on LinkedIn after being confirmed, “We must continue improving how we operate: becoming more agile, responsive, and accountable; cutting red tape and bureaucratic inertia, while delivering assistance more quickly when it is needed most.”
“The threat landscape we face today is serious and rapidly evolving, both in the homeland and around the world,” the former Navy SEAL and Republican congressional candidate added. “Our adversaries are actively seeking to erode our strength. The American people must be confident in their emergency managers and federal partners.”
FEMA officials ‘in the dark’
Hamilton takes office days after a blistering Government Accountability Office report warned that FEMA was in danger of “having critically low staffing levels.”
FEMA officials told GAO, they are “operating in uncertainty and confusion while still trying to meet the mission with the staff they have.”
GAO’s recommendation for FEMA to develop a strategic plan to replace the plan it rescinded last year “will occur following the direction of a confirmed FEMA Administrator,” the Department of Homeland Security wrote in response to GAO. DHS, which oversees FEMA, said GAO’s recommendation to scrutinize staffing “will begin once the outlines of the Strategic Plan are in place.”
FEMA staffing fell 22 percent from January 2025 to June 2026, according to the latest Office of Personnel Management data. Trump’s governmentwide firings, employee buyouts and hiring freeze have left the chronically understaffed agency with 20,300 employees — its smallest number since April 2020, OPM records show.
Fugate, the former FEMA administrator, said in recent months, the agency’s latest acting administrator, Bob Fenton, has been hiring employees, reinstating training programs and “restoring FEMA back to regular order.”
“He was moving forward to get hiring going [with] focus on the operational side, not the policy side,” Fugate said of Fenton, a widely respected longtime senior FEMA official.
Yet Democratic governors and senators continue to charge the administration with making politically driven decisions on whether to approve state requests for disaster aid, which reimburses billions of dollars in recovery costs each year.
POLITICO recently reported that Trump overrode agencies in July when he denied aid to four Democratic-led states that met federal requirements to receive tens of millions of dollars. The Democratic governors of each state — New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island — have asked Trump to reconsider as the states’ Democratic federal lawmakers assail Trump’s denial.
Democratic senators questioned Hamilton at his June confirmation hearing about an earlier POLITICO story showing Trump had approved disaster aid for Republican-led states at three times the rate that he approved requests from Democratic-led states.
“If confirmed, my focus will be to ensure that FEMA is objective, is fair and reasonable, follows the law, and is consistent in the approach to how we adjudicate claims and requests for disaster,” Hamilton told Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
After Peters and other committee Democrats voted against Hamilton in July, Peters told POLITICO that Hamilton had “brushed aside concerns about the administration’s politicization of disaster relief.”
‘A thoughtful leader’
Hamilton takes charge of FEMA following an unusual path that began days after the 2025 presidential inauguration when Trump appointed him to the agency, where he became acting administrator in the absence of a permanent administrator.
A Trump-supporting Republican from Virginia who lost a race for Congress 2024, Hamilton appears to some to lack the emergency management background required to be FEMA’s official leader. But he quickly won support in the agency and among state emergency managers with his humble approach and appreciation of FEMA.
“Cam is a thoughtful leader who cares deeply about helping others,” Tierney, the former senior FEMA official, said in an email. “I am confident he will act with integrity and a laser focus on the vital mission of FEMA.”
But Hamilton clashed with his boss, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who gave him a lie-detector test after a news leak. Noem fired Hamilton in May 2025 after he appeared to contradict her, telling Congress, “I do not believe it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
Becoming a vice president at a disaster consulting firm, Hamilton expanded his contacts in the emergency management community and attended conferences. Trump nominated Hamilton to be FEMA’s permanent administrator in May shortly after replacing Noem with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. Since his nomination, Hamilton has been a DHS senior adviser.
“Mr. Hamilton is recognized for his distinguished record of leadership, technical expertise, professionalism, and proficiency,” FEMA said in its statement.
