Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem delivers remarks to staff at DHS headquarters on Jan. 28, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Manuel Balce Ceneta-Pool/Getty Images)
Noem, who visited Asheville, North Carolina, on Saturday to meet with Hurricane Helene victims and survey the damage, told CNN that she oversaw 12 different natural disasters that prompted a FEMA response when she was governor of South Dakota.
As Trump considers block grants for state and local officials experiencing natural disasters, Noem said Sunday that she knew from experience that local officials, such as county emergency management directors, mayors, city council and commissioners "made way better decisions than the people in Washington, D.C."
Asked what she would tell Trump if the president asked her to get rid of FEMA, Noem said, "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," Noem told Bash. "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."
Trump established the FEMA Review Council last month to improve the agency after Hurricane Helene devastated places like Asheville, North Carolina. (Reuters/Marco Bello; AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
"We're working with them at the president's direction to find what we can do to make our department much more efficient," Noem said. "This is essentially an audit of the federal government…. And one of the things I've been very clear to the appropriators in the Senate and the House is please give me the authority to reprogram funds."
Asked if she felt comfortable with Musk's data access, Noem said, "Elon Musk is part of the administration that is helping us identify where we can find savings and what we can do. And he has gone through the processes to make sure that he has the authority. The president has appointed him. I am today by the work that he is doing, by identifying waste, fraud and abuse. And his information that he has is looking at programs, not focusing on personal data and information."
After the interview, Musk posted to X on Monday morning that his DOGE team discovered that FEMA last week alone sent $59 million to "luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants." Musk said that "sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order," and, "that money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals!"
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"A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds," Musk added.
Danielle Wallace is a breaking news and politics reporter at Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to danielle.wallace@fox.com and on X: @danimwallace.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/noem-get-rid-fema-way-exists-today