Senate Republicans are not happy about President Donald Trump’s decision to fire Cameron Hamilton, the acting director of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), according to The Hill.
Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) is one of the many voices who are disappointed to see Hamilton go.
“Storms have a nasty habit of not honoring state lines, and so it almost requires a regional response. What better case for federal coordination?” he told the outlet. “I’m open to the idea of getting it out of [the Department of] Homeland Security, for example, but to say that there’s not a core [federal] function there betrays a lack of understanding of how storms and storm responses work.”
Tillis' home state was hit hard by Hurricane Helene in September.
Hamilton was fired after he said closing FEMA would not be in the best interest of the American people during congressional testimony.
His opinion is a stark contrast to the president’s plan to shutter the agency. Hamilton was let go by the Trump administration the next day.
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“I understand that appointees of the president have an obligation to support the president’s proposals that affect their agencies or resign,” Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) said. “At the same time, they also have an obligation to Congress to answer questions truthfully, which is what I think happened in his case.”
Collins, like Tillis, is not in support of getting rid of FEMA.
Outspoken GOP Trump critic, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) agrees it's not a great idea.
“What you hear is, ‘Well, just kick some of this to the states,’” she told The Hill. “[Alaska is] one-fifth the United States of America. It’s an average fire year if we have a couple million acres of land that is burned by wildfires.”
She claimed her state is “more seismically active than any other part of North America. We’re seeing coastal erosion at an unprecedented rate. So you’re just going to tell us to go out and solve all these problems on our own?”
