"President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency wrote a memo last spring laying out how to kill the disaster agency.
At the time, Cameron Hamilton was FEMA’s interim chief — a role that didn't last long. When called before Congress, he endorsed keeping the agency, not ending it as outlined in his own memo, titled “Abolishing FEMA.” That publicly put him at odds with his two bosses, Trump and Kristi Noem, then Homeland Security secretary. Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL, was pushed out of the administration within a day.
Now, Hamilton is on the verge of a surprising comeback: The White House nominated him Monday to serve as FEMA administrator. All it took was an opportunity created by Trump's ouster of Noem in March as well as a months-long campaign by Hamilton to convince the president that he's best suited for the job, according to people familiar with the matter who weren't authorized to speak publicly.
Given that Hamilton has recently been on both sides of the question over whether FEMA should exist, his nomination comes with extraordinary ambiguity. Will he seek to continue the deep cuts to federal disaster programs initiated by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency? Or will he rebuild and stabilize an agency he has since urged Republicans to preserve, warning they would "absolutely" lose elections otherwise?"
Zahra Hirji and Lauren Rosenthal report for Bloomberg May 12, 2026.
