DHS watchdog says Noem-era policy hampered probe into FEMA employees skipping homes with Trump signs

The inspector general for the Homeland Security Department said that the scope of his office’s audit into an incident in which Federal Emergency Management Agency employees passed over the homes of disaster survivors based on politics was limited by a lack of action from department officials, including the secretary. 

Auditors determined in a report released last week that FEMA staffers violated policy while responding to Hurricane Milton in 2024 when they skipped over 11 homes in Florida for displaying signs in support of Donald Trump at the direction of their supervisor. The Office of Special Counsel reached a similar conclusion last year after its own investigation, and the disaster agency removed the supervisor shortly after the incident occurred. 

The IG asserted, however, that the office was not able to determine if political bias or other prohibited practices impacted other disaster responses because FEMA delayed access to records of employees documenting their interactions with survivors. Auditors in March 2025 requested the data, according to the report, but then in September 2025 the contractor supporting the system underpinning such records shut it down “because then-Secretary [Kristi] Noem did not act on the FEMA request to fund the contract before its lapse.”

During his confirmation hearing, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin testified that he would reverse Noem’s policy that required her to sign off on any department spending that is more than $100,000, which critics argued slowed disaster response efforts. 

In March, DHS IG Joseph Cuffari notified lawmakers that department officials denied access to requests for information from his office in 11 cases. Cuffari, who was confirmed during Trump’s first term, was spared from the 2025 mass firings of IGs. A panel of agency IGs and other federal investigative officials in 2024 substantiated allegations that Cuffari abused his authority and engaged in substantial misconduct, mostly in relation to an outside investigation into former employees who submitted whistleblower complaints against him. 

FEMA officials told the IG that the agency would need to procure a new sole-source contract with the vendor to restore the data on employee interactions with disaster survivors. 

The IG also found that FEMA did not consistently provide training to its employees and supervisors on the Hatch Act, which aims to ensure federal programs are implemented in a nonpartisan manner, and that senior officials were not required to review notes from employees about their interactions with disaster survivors. Auditors pointed out that the 2024 incident could have been uncovered earlier, as workers documented that the presence of Trump signs was the reason they skipped certain homes. 

DHS’ watchdog recommended that FEMA determine an “appropriate frequency of ethics and Hatch Act training” for all employees who could be deployed following a disaster and that supervisors perform quality control reviews of survivor interaction surveys. The agency concurred with all of the recommendations. 

“We’ve made sure that everyone responsible for this incident has been punished, and we’ll make sure that nothing like this ever happens again,” Mullin said in a statement after the report’s release. 

Marni Washington, the fired FEMA supervisor, told The Washington Post on Wednesday that some hurricane survivors threatened employees based on their perceived political affiliation and that her team only avoided homes that had a Trump sign and another indicator of hostility, such as a sign that homeowners would shoot trespassers. 

Congressional Democrats have accused the administration of politicizing FEMA, pointing to a March media report that the president had approved 89% of disaster funding requests from states with a Republican governor and two Republican senators compared with 23% for states with Democratic leadership.

Trump had proposed eliminating FEMA, but a White House-backed panel in May instead recommended reducing the size of the agency while giving state and local governments a larger share of responsibilities following emergencies.