How A Fired Fema Leader Got A Second Chance From Trump

Cameron Hamilton was not a normal choice to lead the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

He had no emergency management experience and left a trail of social media posts that spread misinformation about the agency that he was tapped to lead by President Donald Trump last year.

But apprehensions about the former Navy SEAL with tattoos and a manicured beard faded quickly.

Hamilton won widespread support within FEMA during 15 weeks as acting administrator last year, because of what people who worked with him said was his sincerity toward colleagues. His stature grew when then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem fired him in May 2025, the day after he contradicted her by testifying to Congress that the agency was essential to the country. His defense came after Trump threatened to shut it down.

Now that Trump has fired Noem and retreated from his vows to dismantle FEMA, Hamilton appears poised to become a stabilizing force at the battered agency as its first permanent administrator in Trump’s current term. He faces a Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, after being nominated by the president in May — with the help of Trump's border czar Tom Homan, according to people close to FEMA.

“First thing I remember, I found him to be a very calm person. I definitely got a good vibe from him,” said MaryAnn Tierney, who spent 15 years at FEMA in senior roles before leaving in 2025. “I really grew to love working with him.”

“I had a lot of great conversations with Cam,” said Josh Morton, president of the U.S. chapter of the International Association of Emergency Managers and disaster chief in Saluda County, South Carolina. “If he ends up in the seat, I think he’ll do a great job.”

Hamilton's confirmation hearing comes as the nation enters a precarious period of the calendar, with hurricanes, floods and wildfires potentially pummeling states from one coast to the other. He would assume control of an agency that has experienced deep program and personnel cuts under Trump, who also requested sweeping recommendations to overhaul FEMA in ways that could reduce disaster aid for states, even as damage grows from intensifying catastrophes.

The prospect of Hamilton leading the agency “has calmed some of the waters,” said a former senior FEMA official, who worked closely with Hamilton and was granted anonymity to discuss private interactions with the nominee. “A lot of that is about who he is as an individual and how he leads.

“His belief system is that this country belongs to the American people, this government belongs to the American people,” the former official said. “He certainly believed in our system of government, the three branches of government.”

But Hamilton is not without his critics, who argue that he lacks disaster experience and say his nomination violates a 2006 federal law requiring FEMA administrators to have a “demonstrated ability” in emergency management.

“He was fully unqualified to be the administrator of FEMA,” said a former senior congressional official who worked with Hamilton last year and was granted anonymity to discuss their interactions. “He was regurgitating talking points. He didn’t understand how FEMA works.”

Hamilton “lacks the experience and qualifications for the job as required,” said Shana Udvardy, a senior climate policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists who follows FEMA, in a blog post.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement to POLITICO that “All of President Trump’s nominees are highly qualified.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, said Hamilton “meets all statutory requirements for the position of FEMA Administrator.”

When Hamilton was first selected for the job last year, he acknowledged his inexperience and reached out to former FEMA administrators for advice.

“He was humble enough to know that his technical knowledge was not deep,” Tierney said in an interview.

In a podcast in September 2025, Hamilton said: “There was a lot of skepticism around my appointment, and I totally understood the concern. I did not come from a conventional emergency management [background]."

He noted that he had been appointed to lead the FEMA division in charge of disaster recovery, a position that does not require Senate confirmation but whose occupant becomes acting administrator of the entire agency if there's no permanent or deputy administrator.

“My appointment was never to be permanent administrator,” Hamilton told John Scardena, host of the "Disaster Tough" podcast.

'Cameron stood up'

The Republican-controlled Senate is expected to confirm Hamilton, who has been working at FEMA as a senior adviser since his nomination.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the Republican chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is holding the confirmation hearing, called Hamilton “a great pick” in a social media post and vowed to “move his nomination quickly.”

Hamilton won support from Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who's an influential Democrat on FEMA issues because he ran the Florida Division of Emergency Management for three years before being elected to Congress in 2022.

“In a moment when some in the previous Homeland leadership wanted to dismantle FEMA entirely, Cameron stood up to save the agency and was unfairly punished,” Moskowitz wrote on social media after Hamilton’s nomination.

Hamilton had abandoned his earlier cynicism about FEMA by the time he memorably told a House appropriations subcommittee on May 8, 2025, “I do not believe it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

Months earlier, in October 2024, after losing a Republican congressional primary in Virginia, Hamilton had posted false informationon his X social media account asserting that FEMA had diverted $1 billion in disaster aid to “resettle illegal aliens in this country.” The money had not been diverted but was given by Congress to FEMA specifically to handle undocumented migrants crossing the border from Mexico to the U.S.

As wrong as he may have been about FEMA, Hamilton also was open-minded, according to former colleagues.

“What he realized is that a lot of the views he had about FEMA we also had, like, it’s too complicated,” Tierney said. “I said, there’s not a single person in this agency that doesn’t think there aren’t things we should improve substantially.

“He grew to understand and to appreciate what FEMA does and the commitment of the workforce,” she added.

Peter Gaynor, who led FEMA during Trump's first term, said Hamilton's ideas about the agency changed quickly when he entered the building. “He just became a believer in the agency and the mission,” said Gaynor, who advised Hamilton last year. “From whatever perception he had on the outside, he quickly realized that external perception was all bullshit.”

Hamilton’s belief in FEMA collided with Noem’s ideas about the agency.

Trump’s scorched-earth attacks on FEMA at the start of his second term “was his way to apply pressure to the system,” the former senior agency official said. “Noem was very serious about it … I think she wanted to see FEMA bleed out.”

“That’s when the divide started to happen between myself and DHS leadership,” Hamilton said on the September podcast. “The main position that I held was … if you want to phase FEMA out of certain elements of response and recovery, that makes sense, we can do that. But it has to be through engagement and partnership so that we help other people pick up the tab or assume greater responsibility.”

“The dirty secret is, nobody wants FEMA to go away. You can talk to the reddest of the red states, it doesn’t matter. No emergency managers across the country want FEMA to go away,” Hamilton recalled telling DHS leaders.

After his ouster last year, Hamilton maintained connections to FEMA and the world of emergency management while he was vice president of Longview International Technology Solutions, a disaster consulting firm in Virginia.

Hamilton attended the International Association of Emergency Managers’ annual conference in Louisville, Kentucky, in November. He schmoozed at a National Emergency Management Association conference in Washington in March as word of his possible return began to spread.

“He has an interest in the field of emergency management. And it’s been great to see him. He asks a lot of questions,” said Morton, the emergency managers’ association president.

“Part of staying relevant in the emergency management space nationally is being at all the right conferences and events,” the former FEMA senior official said.

'Unapologetically Marxist'

Hamilton also maintained his connection to Homan, who oversees border operations for Trump and is influential in the White House. Homan had endorsed Hamilton during his congressional primary in 2024 — and was crucial to Trump’s recent nomination of Hamilton, according to multiple people who are close to FEMA.

“The president listens to Tom,” the former agency official said. “Stephen Miller had a recommendation, and Tom had a recommendation. He went with Tom.”

Hamilton served as Homan's bodyguard during the presidential transition when, according to Hamilton, "Tom was having his life threatened."

"I quit my job and sat in a truck with a whole lot of guns and a bunch of other guys to protect him and his family on Christmas and throughout that transition period," Hamilton said in a video he posted on his X account. He called Homan "one of the key people that will be one of the most successful agents of this administration."

Months later on the podcast, Hamilton said: “I have a lot of friends in the White House, I have a lot of friends who are elected members of Congress, in the Senate. I’m an unconventional guy, but I had a lot of allies in the political realm."

Homan couldn't be reached for comment.

Hamilton remains active on social media — and outspoken. On Jan. 13, he reposted a statement on X by Erin Derham, a conservative documentary filmmaker, saying that the Black Lives Matter movement “was a means to create civil unrest, to continue to perpetrate fraud at all levels of government. All through the lens of empathy & equity.”

“Powerful,” Hamilton wrote on his personal X account above Derham’s statement.

On Feb. 17, Hamilton posted a video of Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester in Minnesota discussing politics and saying, “Political leadership on the left in America is unapologetically Marxist.”

“Well said,” Hamilton wrote above the video.

Neither the White House nor DHS answered POLITICO's questions about the posts by Hamilton.

Hamilton’s personal beliefs, including his deep Christian faith and political conservatism, did not come up while he was at FEMA, according to the former senior agency official.

“Never,” the official said.

While Trump’s nomination of Hamilton as a signal of support for FEMA, many questions remain about the agency as it enters the 2026 hurricane season with just under 20,000 employees — 20 percent less than it had in January 2025, according to Office of Personnel Management data.

“There’s little to nothing left of the agency. It was all the right people who left," the former FEMA official said, referring to a wave of departures among the agency's most experienced employees. "The ones that really matter are gone."