MIAMI, Fla. — A Federal Emergency Management Agency employee has been removed from her role after she advised her disaster relief team to avoid homes with signs supporting President Donald Trump while canvassing in Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, the agency said Friday.
A FEMA spokesperson told CNN in a statement the agency is “deeply disturbed by this employee’s actions” and the incident is under investigation. The agency did not identify the employee.
“While we believe this is an isolated incident, we have taken measures to remove the employee from their role and are investigating the matter to prevent this from happening ever again. The employee who issued this guidance had no authority and was given no direction to tell teams to avoid these homes and we are reaching out to the people who may have not been reached as a result of this incident,” the spokesperson said.
The Daily Wire first reported on the incident, citing internal correspondence between the employee and workers canvassing homes in Lake Placid, Florida, in which she instructed them to “avoid homes advertising Trump.”
The agency is currently investigating how many houses were passed over by the canvassing team as part of the incident that occurred on October 27, the spokesperson told CNN. The agency on Friday deployed a new team to knock on doors in the affected area in an effort to make contact with those who may not have been previously reached.
The spokesperson declined to provide additional information on the incident or detail how agency officials were notified of it, citing the ongoing investigation, but said in the statement that FEMA officials are “horrified that this took place and therefore have taken extreme actions to correct this situation and have ensured that the matter was addressed at all levels.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said following reports of the incident Friday that he had directed state officials to investigate the matter.
“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,” DeSantis, a Republican, wrote on X. “At my direction, the Division of Emergency Management is launching an investigation into the federal government’s targeted discrimination of Floridians who support Donald Trump.”
FEMA, the spokesperson said in their statement, “helps all survivors regardless of their political preference or affiliation.”
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