Cameron Hamilton Gets the Boot for Speaking the Truth
Acting head of FEMA loses job after expressing support for disaster relief agency
By Hilary Holladay
PUBLISHER/BYRD STREET
This article originally appeared in Byrd Street, an independent media company focusing on Orange County.
Last week, Cameron Hamilton was fired for daring to speak the truth about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), where he served as acting administrator for three and half months.
According to the New York Times, Hamilton lost his job on May 8 after stating his support for the agency he was hired to run. His comments, hardly incendiary, contradicted the views of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. In an article published Thursday (May 8), the Times reports:
On Tuesday, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary whose agency includes FEMA, testified before lawmakers that FEMA should be eliminated. Mr. Hamilton, appearing before Congress on Wednesday, said instead that FEMA “must return to its roots,” helping state and local governments respond to disasters.
“Communities look to FEMA in their greatest times of need,” Mr. Hamilton told lawmakers, “and it’s imperative that we remain ready to respond to those challenges.”
Politico, which broke the story of Hamilton’s firing, published these details:
Cameron Hamilton, FEMA’s acting administrator, was summoned to Department of Homeland Security headquarters in Washington [on Thursday, May 8], where he was terminated by Deputy Homeland Security Secretary Troy Edgar and Corey Lewandowski, an adviser to President Donald Trump, according to a person with direct knowledge of the events.
Hamilton returned to FEMA headquarters a few miles away, collected his belongings and left. His biography was removed from FEMA’s website and his official X account was archived.
The FEMA website lists David Richardson, former assistant secretary in the DHS office for countering weapons of mass destruction, as the new acting head.
Also on the FEMA site, a list of the 50 “Disasters and Other Proclamations” for 2025 includes 40 such declarations promising federal aid since Trump took office. With hurricane season beginning soon, this is a perilous time for FEMA to be under-staffed and in disarray.
Hamilton: Navy vet, DHS EMS division director, ODA president in Orange
Before he vaulted to prominence in the Trump Administration, locals knew Hamilton, a Navy veteran and native of Santa Rosa, Ca., as president of the Orange Downtown Alliance and a reliable presence at the Orange Farmer’s Market. He and his wife, Karen, ran a popular coffee booth at the market, which is held most Saturdays from May through October.
On the national stage, Hamilton previously worked as director of the Emergency Medical Services Division at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Health Security. And last year, turning his attention to politics, he ran against Derrick Anderson in the Republican primary for U.S. representative in the 7th District, which includes Orange County. (Anderson won the primary, but Democrat Eugene Vindman prevailed over Anderson in the general election.) After his campaign ended, Hamilton worked for a defense contractor.
He is listed as a 2025 fellow in a program run by the Club for Growth Foundation designed to train “aspiring leaders” who share the Club for Growth’s philosophy. According to a 2021 article in The Guardian, the Club for Growth is “an anti-tax group funded primarily by billionaires [that] has emerged as one of the biggest backers of the Republican lawmakers who sought to overturn the U.S. election results” of 2020 after Joe Biden defeated Trump.
Because Hamilton had no local or state experience in disaster management, he was restricted to serving as acting head of FEMA. It seems he initially shared President Trump’s expressed desire to shutter or at least greatly diminish FEMA. In February, the Washington Post reported on mass firings of FEMA employees, a move that will likely hinder disaster relief to communities across the country:
The shake-up comes after the agency’s new interim administrator lashed out at workers speaking to the media. In a letter obtained by The Post, Cameron Hamilton said that sharing what was going on within the agency was “unacceptable behavior and unbecoming a FEMA employee.” As a result, he changed FEMA’s policy and barred employees from speaking to the press unless they were authorized.
At some point, Hamilton evidently decided that all the firings at FEMA had gone far enough. Maybe it began to sink in just how much FEMA, created by President Jimmy Carter in the late 1990s, has helped Americans survive the aftermath of hurricanes, floods, wildfires and other disasters. Maybe he came to understand (if he didn’t already) that the crises FEMA responds to are getting worse, and happening more often, due to climate change. And it’s possible he realized that state and local governments, even with the help of nonprofits, “simply can’t provide the resources and certainly not the technical and coordination support that FEMA currently provides,” as a nonprofit leader told the Washington Post.
Whatever his realizations during his brief tenure running FEMA, last week he said exactly what no one above him had authorized him to say. Being honest cost him his job. It’s a tough break, but kudos to Hamilton for telling the truth. We don’t hear it often enough these days.
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Abrupt ending to this article!
But good for him.
Sad, though unsurprising news, as Republicans do not want to hear anything that disrupts their predeterminations but thanks for sharing.
And thanks to him for speaking truth to power.