Daily Wire Bombshell Leads To Report Finding FEMA Illegally Skipped Trump Supporters’ Homes

In a scandal first uncovered by The Daily Wire, a new Department of Homeland Security inspector general report found that a FEMA disaster response crew illegally skipped Florida homes displaying signs supporting President Donald Trump, as workers surveyed damage from Hurricane Milton without proper training.

In November 2024, The Daily Wire first exposed the FEMA scandal after multiple federal employees confirmed that a supervisor ordered disaster relief workers to “avoid homes advertising Trump” as they canvassed Lake Placid, Florida, to identify residents eligible for federal aid. Internal messages obtained by The Daily Wire showed that supervisor Marn’i Washington issued the directive both verbally and in a group chat used by the relief team, according to multiple government employees.

“This situation eroded public trust in FEMA’s ability to treat everyone impartially, offer unbiased and consistent assistance, and ensure equal access to resources and tools,” the inspector general’s report said.

The 25-page investigation concluded that the discrimination violated both FEMA policy and the Hatch Act. The 1939 federal law prohibits government employees from using their positions or government resources for partisan political activity.

FEMA disaster relief crews canvassed more than 744,000 homes and other locations after Hurricanes Helene and Milton. But a DHS watchdog found that workers deliberately skipped 11 homes displaying signs supporting then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Images obtained by The Daily Wire showed workers documenting the homes in the government system with messages such as “Trump sign no entry per leadership.”

“These issues occurred due to weaknesses in FEMA’s training, documentation, and oversight,” the inspector general’s report concluded. “FEMA DSA [Disaster Survivor Assistance] crews did not receive ethics and Hatch Act training before deploying to disasters, DSA policies and procedures did not require crews to explain why they skipped homes, and DSA crew leaders were not required to conduct quality control reviews of survivor interactions.” 

Investigators also interviewed 18 random FEMA Disaster Survivor Assistance crew members deployed during the natural disasters and found 11 who said they never received Hatch Act training.

Hurricane Helene slammed into Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 4 storm on September 26, 2024, unleashing catastrophic flooding and devastation that killed hundreds and caused billions of dollars in damage from the Gulf Coast to the mountains of North Carolina. Less than two weeks later, Hurricane Milton struck near Siesta Key, Florida, as a Category 3 storm, battering communities still reeling from Helene. 

President Trump quickly approved major disaster declarations for Florida, North Carolina, and Tennessee, unlocking federal aid to help survivors clean up and begin rebuilding.

As FEMA scrambled to respond to the back-to-back disasters, the agency called on a DHS surge capacity force, drawing volunteers from other DHS agencies to bolster its understaffed workforce ahead of Hurricane Milton.

“I know they’re short-staffed, I thought we could go help and make a difference,” one of the employees told The Daily Wire at the time. “When we got there we were told to discriminate against people. It’s almost unbelievable to think that somebody in the federal government would think that’s okay.” 

The employee said it felt wrong to discriminate against Trump supporters when they were at their “most vulnerable.” 

“I volunteered to help disaster victims, not discriminate against them,” the employee said. “It didn’t matter if people were black, white, Hispanic, for Trump, for Harris. Everyone deserves the same amount of help.”

The guidance came as the Biden administration faced mounting criticism over what many rural communities described as a lackluster response to Hurricane Helene. In Roan Mountain, Tennessee, for example, residents told The Daily Wire that it took nearly two weeks for FEMA to arrive. Carter County, where the town is located, voted 81% for Trump.

The FEMA workers ordered to bypass homes displaying Trump signs were operating in Highlands County, a deep-red region of south-central Florida that backed Trump with 70% of the vote. The county was battered by tornadoes, torrential winds and rain, and flooding when Hurricane Milton struck in October.

The inspector general’s report laid out the limited exceptions in which FEMA workers could skip homes, including “hostile” interactions with residents, no-trespassing or private-property signs, hazardous debris, or purple paint marking a property as off-limits.

Political signs supporting Trump were not among the exceptions.

The inspector general reviewed thousands of FEMA canvassing records and identified 11 cases with notes indicating potential political bias. The workers logged the skipped homes under generic categories such as “Not Able to Access Property” and “Private Property.” 

“However, in the notes field all 11 surveys included the name of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump to explain the reason for skipping the homes,” the investigation found. 

One of the homes skipped by FEMA/ FEMA app tracking what homes were visited.

The report could not determine whether FEMA workers used similar discriminatory tactics elsewhere in the country as communities reeled from hurricane devastation.

“We could not determine if crews skipped locations for unallowable reasons during other disasters because the support contract for FEMA’s Field Assessment and Collection Tools ended in September 2025 when then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Noem did not act on FEMA’s request to fund it before expiration,” investigators said.  

Looking forward, the inspector general issued four recommendations: strengthen ethics and Hatch Act training before deployments, create a system to document survivor interactions, and require FEMA crews to standardize how they record skipped homes and the reasons for doing so. 

After The Daily Wire broke the story, a FEMA spokesman said the agency was “deeply disturbed” and “horrified” by the employee’s actions, and that it has “taken extreme actions to correct this situation.”