Homeland security secretary and part-time cosmetic dentistry model Kristi Noem said in a cabinet meeting Monday she was “going to eliminate” FEMA, the government’s disaster relief agency. Via the Daily Beast:
Noem, 53, did not provide any other specifics about her shock announcement—just that she would seek to kill the agency tasked with responding to natural disasters and emergencies.
[...] FEMA is part of the Department of Homeland Security, placing the agency in Noem’s purview. She said last month that she would “get rid of FEMA the way it exists today,” but did not take her aspirations as far as she did in Monday’s meeting. She and Donald Trump have suggested that—in FEMA’s place—each state should dictate its own disaster response.
FEMA has been under fire in Trump’s second administration partially for its bloated budget—at least, in the eyes of Trump and Elon Musk—and for supposedly providing aid to undocumented immigrants in disaster sites.
Officials in the Trump Administration wrote in an internal memo last month that they were reviewing “all disaster relief programs that may indirectly or incidentally aid illegal aliens,” Politico reported Friday.
