FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell is scheduled to appear next week before a Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure (T&I) subcommittee to answer questions about the agency’s preparedness and response to recent disasters, including Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

The hearing, which is scheduled for next Tuesday at 10 am before the House Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management, comes after troubling reports surfaced that FEMA instructed volunteers to avoid homes displaying Trump signs following Hurricane Milton—not only in Florida, where initial reports surfaced, but also at homes with Trump signs in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene.

Congressman David Rouzer, R, NC-07, who sits on the T&I Committee, posted on X, “This raises serious concerns about the federally-funded agency putting politics over people during some of their darkest days.” 

The Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management oversees FEMA.

Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Congressman Sam Graves, R-MO, and Subcommittee Chairman Congressman Scott Perry, R-PA, were already conducting an investigation into FEMA’s preparation, response strategies, and capacity to provide sufficiently prompt relief to victims of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. 

Graves and Perry requested detailed responses from FEMA last month in light of recent concerns about the agency’s processes, priorities, actions, and resources, including North Carolina disaster victims’ concerns about the pace of FEMA’s response and ability to provide them with necessary assistance.

Marn’i Washington, the former FEMA worker who was fired after a text chain was leaked that showed her instructing colleagues to avoid houses that had Trump signs in their yards, told The Daily Mail that FEMA is lying about the scandal and making her the “scapegoat of a wider practice.”

She said she has proof that FEMA is lying and that other FEMA employees have also done the same. Washington also told YouTube podcaster Roland Martin that ‘FEMA preaches avoidance first, and then de-escalation.’

“This is not isolated,” she told Martin. “This is a colossal event of avoidance. Not just in the state of Florida. You will find avoidance in the Carolinas.”

Washington added that she was only following orders from FEMA when she issued the controversial directive and that FEMA teams experienced hostility on specific streets in the Sunshine State.

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell issued a statement Saturday admonishing Washington’s ‘reprehensible’ actions.

“More than 22,000 FEMA employees every day adhere to FEMA’s core values and are dedicated to helping people before, during and after disasters, often sacrificing time with their own families to help disaster survivors,” she said. “Recently, one FEMA employee departed from these values to advise her survivor assistance team to not go to homes with yard signs supporting President-elect Trump. This is a clear violation of FEMA’s core values and principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation.”

Criswell said that this type of behavior and action would not be tolerated at FEMA, and the agency would hold people accountable if they violated its standards of conduct.

“We take our mission to help everyone before, during, and after disasters seriously,” Criswell added. “This employee has been terminated and we have referred the matter to the Office of Special Counsel. I will continue to do everything I can to make sure this never happens again.”

Another report also claims that 50% of phone calls and messages requesting hurricane assistance were ignored by FEMA.

At an Oct. 15 briefing on recovery efforts in western North Carolina, Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper stressed that “misinformation” about recovery efforts “must stop,” saying rumors hurt those who need help the most.

Cooper and FEMA did not respond to Carolina Journal’s request for comment by the time Tuesday’s article was published.

Congresswoman Deborah Ross, D, NC-02, and Congressman Chuck Edwards, R, NC-11, will also appear at the hearing.

The communications director for Edwards, whose district encompasses most of western North Carolina, told CJ in an emailed statement about the reports that FEMA skipped over homes with Trump signs in western North Carolina, “I’d like to direct you to FEMA as this was an internal FEMA matter.”

In a post on X, US Sen. Ted Budd, R-NC, said that the claim will be investigated.

US Sen Josh Hawley, R-MO, said on X that “The Homeland Security Committee needs to launch an immediate investigation and call this individual to testify. Under oath. In public.”

During his last rally in Raleigh, Carolina Journal caught up with Chris, a woman from Lake Lure.

“We saw the devastation, and we saw what the federal government did not do,” she told CJ. ‘Nonprofits have been the answer. There’s a lot of nonprofit agencies, neighbor helping neighbor. It took over three weeks for FEMA to set up a tent in Lake Lure. They set up their headquarters in Durham. People can’t get down their street, let alone to Durham.”

She said organizations like Samaritan’s Purse were there within days, and said she believes Trump would have done a much better job of helping out the storm victims if he had been president.  

“They (Biden and Harris) supposedly flew over the area, but they didn’t actually stop,” she said. “It means a lot to the people that are there that someone recognizes them.”

In addition to the reports of homes being discriminated against if they had a Trump sign on their property, small businesses in the area are hurting, with some saying they have received no assistance from the federal government. The tourism industry was also dealt an unprecedented blow.

According to Daily Wire, which broke the story on Washington last Thursday, the employees who followed her orders were part of a Department of Homeland Security team comprised of volunteers from other agencies.

One said they were told to ‘discriminate against people’ and another said, ‘it was wrong to discriminate against Trump supporters when they were their most vulnerable.’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has ordered a state investigation into Washington’s directive.

“The blatant weaponization of government by partisan activists in the federal bureaucracy is yet another reason why the Biden-Harris administration is in its final days,” he said.

In western North Carolina, Hurricane Helene has left 102 people dead and caused an estimated $53 billion in damage.