The Federal Emergency Management Agency is under fire after a field manager, Marn'i Washington, instructed her team responding to hurricane victims in Lake Placid, Florida days before the election to bypass homes that displayed support for Donald Trump.
The head of FEMA, Deanne Criswell, appeared before lawmakers Tuesday and told them she supports their investigation of alleged Trump bias during relief efforts.
Washington has since been fired, but that move occurred on a Saturday earlier this month after The Daily Wire named her in its report the day before.
Criswell issued a statement on Saturday, Nov. 9, announcing the firing of an employee – Washington – who she said departed from FEMA values “to advise her survivor assistance team to not go to homes with yard signs supporting President-elect Trump.”
Criswell called Washington’s actions “reprehensible.” Washington was not named in Criswell’s statement then and was not named in reporting by The Associated Press Tuesday.
Lawmakers were conducting an oversight hearing looking at the overall response by FEMA into October’s devastating storms in the Carolinas and Florida, but they were particularly focused on reports about the agency avoiding helping some Americans based on their political beliefs.
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pennsylvania) acknowledged that while the employee was quickly terminated, it was clear from an interview with that worker that she believed she was carrying out directions from the agency.
“It seems this particular worker believes she is being treated like the scapegoat; and if that is the case, more people at FEMA must be held accountable," said Perry, who chairs the panel that held Tuesday's hearing.
If true, it’s that kind of layered bias within government agencies that Congressman Good says has to stop.
“This is just further illustrating the change that is needed in Washington, why we need to increase the number of federal employees who are fireable once you have a change in administration,” Good said on American Family Radio Tuesday.
“Right now, only some 4,000 out of 4 million federal employees change with the administration. This is evidence that you’ve got underlying layers of management and staff who will resist the president’s agenda, will try to keep him from doing what the American people elected him to do,” Good told show host Jenna Ellis.
Just get out and go to work
FEMA is under the microscope right now, but most federal agencies would benefit from a return to old-fashioned go-to-the-office policies, he said.
Too many government employees view COVID-19 era policies of working from home as a "forever benefit" of their employment, not a temporary necessity based on health risks of close contact for a time.
“This is why we need to require all federal workers to come back to work,” said Good, who chaired the Subcommittee on Labor and Employment as part of the House Education-Workforce Committee.
In his work he learned that 80% of federal workers haven’t come back to the office since COVID. “They don’t come to work every day. They don’t show up in person. The first step is to make them all come back to work [at the office],” he argued.
But that’s not the last step. Employees don’t have to be fired to root out bias against certain political beliefs.
“Secondly, we need to transfer them around the country to places they don’t want to go. Make them leave [the District of Columbia],” Good said.
There’s a third step too, and it involves Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency which is co-chaired by tech billionaire and free-speech advocate Elon Musk, who was a big part of Trump’s campaign, and one-time Trump rival Vivek Ramaswamy, an Ohio businessman and entrepreneur who had a brief run for the Republican nomination.
“Turn loose the DOGE under Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, and make the changes that need to be made," Good urged. "We’ve got to show courage. This is unsustainable, as we’re seeing from FEMA.”
The Musk example
According to the GOP lawmaker, too often Republicans lack the courage and resolve to bring about reach change.
“Because anytime you want to eliminate a job, anytime you want to cut a program, anytime you want to cut spending, it impacts somebody," Good explained. "You have to be willing to withstand the criticisms and the attacks.”
Musk is able to withstand the criticism after purchasing Twitter, since renamed X, the giant social media platform.
“Elon Musk fired 80% of Twitter-X employees undoubtedly because they’d gotten soft and large and had over-hired and over-staffed," Good pointed out. "But also I’m sure [Musk did that] because some of them didn’t support his agenda when he wanted to bring changes to Twitter-X.
"How much more do we need to bring that change and reduce staff in the federal government?”
