Overview
- The DHS Office of Inspector General reported Tuesday that a FEMA Disaster Survivor Assistance crew deliberately bypassed 11 Florida homes with pro‑Trump signs during the Hurricane Milton response in 2024, which the OIG concluded violated the Hatch Act and agency policy.
- Investigators found the crew leader, Marn’i Washington, ordered team members not to visit properties with Trump signage and that the Office of Special Counsel filed a Hatch Act complaint against her in February 2025.
- The OIG faulted FEMA for not ensuring predeployment Hatch Act and ethics training, for lacking a standardized requirement to document why locations were skipped, and for not requiring quality‑control reviews of crew interactions.
- The audit was hindered because the Field Assessment/Survey system became inaccessible after its contractor support ended in September 2025, so the OIG could not determine whether similar skipping occurred elsewhere.
- Following the report, DHS and FEMA carried out additional firings, FEMA stopped agency‑led door‑to‑door outreach in favor of fixed‑location assistance, and the OIG issued four corrective recommendations that FEMA agreed to implement.