Kristi Noem: I Would Get Rid of FEMA ‘the Way It Exists Today’

BASH: “You run a very big agency.”
NOEM: “Yes.”
BASH: “Immigration is one of the parts of it, and FEMA is another. On X this morning, Elon Musk said, ‘FEMA is broken,’ and he said so in response to the suggestion that he shut down FEMA entirely. FEMA is, of course, funded by Congress, has repeatedly been authorized in statute, including by laws you voted for when you were in Congress. Can and should Donald Trump shut it down?”
NOEM: “He can, and I believe that he will do that evaluation with his team, and he’s talking about it, which I’m grateful for. He will work with Congress, though, to make sure that it’s done correctly, and that we’re still there to help folks who have a terrible disaster or crisis in their life. It’s — he’s been very clear that he still believes there’s a role for the federal government to come in and help people get back up on their feet, but there’s a lot of fraud and waste and abuse out there. And since President Trump has taken over and come back into this administration, we have seen incredible changes — “
BASH: “What’s your recommendation to him?”
NOEM: “No, he’s talked a lot about doing block grants to states and to local officials. I was a governor, and when I was governor of South Dakota, we saw 12 different natural disasters that hit our state that were FEMA-related, that we had FEMA disaster — so I know it from that level. And I knew every single time that I and the local county emergency management directors, the mayors, the city councils, and the county commissioners, they made way better decisions than the people in Washington, D.C.”
BASH: “If the president came to you and said, ‘You’re my DHS secretary, do you think I should get rid of FEMA?,’ what would you say?”
NOEM: “I would say, yes, get rid of FEMA the way it exists today. We still need the resources and the funds and the finances to go to people that have these types of disasters like Hurricane Helene and the fires in California. But you need to let the local officials make the decisions on how that is deployed, so it can be deployed much quicker, and we don’t need this bureaucracy that’s picking and choosing winners.”