Federal Watchdog: FEMA Crew Broke Law Skipping 11 Florida Homes With Trump Signs

A federal watchdog has confirmed what Republicans said all along: FEMA workers broke the law by skipping hurricane-hit Florida homes because the owners supported Donald Trump.

The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General released a 22-page report finding that a FEMA Disaster Survivor Assistance crew violated both federal law and agency policy when it bypassed 11 homes in Lake Placid, Florida, during Hurricane Milton relief efforts in late October and early November 2024. One survey entry, obtained by the inspector general, simply read "did not visit due to Trump flag," according to the Daily Mail, which said it obtained the report.

The crew canvassed homes as part of the response to back-to-back Hurricanes Helene and Milton, which together prompted FEMA workers to survey 744,288 homes and other locations. Of those, workers didn't make contact with 555,374 locations for reasons ranging from "private property" signs to safety concerns, according to the Washington Post and Yahoo News. Only 11 were flagged specifically for political signage.

What the watchdog actually found

The DHS OIG determined the skipped visits "eroded public trust in FEMA's ability to treat everyone impartially, offer unbiased and consistent assistance, and ensure equal access to resources and tools," according to the report as cited by multiple outlets including the Independent and Yahoo News.

The crew leader, Marn'i Washington, instructed subordinates not to visit homes with Trump 2024 campaign signage. She has not denied giving that instruction. Speaking to YouTube podcaster Roland Martin after her firing, Washington said, "FEMA preaches avoidance first, and then de-escalation. This is not isolated," according to the New York Post.

A former senior FEMA official told Yahoo News that Washington was operating under unclear safety guidance during a tense election period: "People were not getting good guidance, so she made her own way." Washington's defenders frame this as a safety judgment call gone wrong, not a political vendetta. The inspector general's report doesn't fully credit that explanation, but it also, per Newser, found "no broader bias against Trump supporters" beyond this single crew.

One crew broke the law. The watchdog did not find evidence of an agency-wide campaign to target Trump voters.

Firings and the Hatch Act fallout

FEMA fired Washington and three other staffers in November 2024 after workers inside the agency filed complaints, triggering an internal investigation that was referred to the inspector general and the Office of Special Counsel, according to the Washington Post and the Independent.

In February 2025, the Office of Special Counsel filed a Hatch Act complaint against Washington. Then-Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger said at the time, "One of Congress's goals in passing the Hatch Act was to ensure that government programs are administered in a nonpartisan manner. A federal employee clearly violates the Hatch Act by engaging in explicit partisan political bias or activity when on the job," according to the Independent. That complaint could still result in civil penalties or a bar on future federal employment for Washington, the New York Post reported.

Deanne Criswell, who ran FEMA during the Milton response, said in a Signal message reported by Yahoo News that the findings validate the agency's decision to act quickly: "Politics should never play a role in disaster response, and even one home skipped is unacceptable."

The oversight gap nobody's talking about

The story extends beyond one rogue crew leader. The inspector general couldn't determine whether other FEMA crews skipped homes for improper reasons during other disasters that season, because the support contract for FEMA's Field Assessment and Collection Tools system expired in September 2025. Then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem didn't act on FEMA's request to fund an extension before it lapsed, according to the New York Post's reporting on the report.

The inspector general's office said it requested access to that data back in March 2025, but "FEMA delays prevented us from obtaining the data prior to the contractor abruptly shutting down the system." That means nobody can rule out that this happened elsewhere. It also means a Trump-appointed DHS secretary let the tool that could have proven or disproven a wider pattern go dark on her watch.

DSA crews received no ethics or Hatch Act training before deploying to disasters, agency policy didn't require crews to document why they skipped homes, and crew leaders faced no mandatory quality-control review of survivor interactions. These are significant process failures. FEMA has agreed with all of the inspector general's recommendations and says fixes are now in place, according to Newser.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called the original incident a "blatant weaponization of government by partisan activists in the federal bureaucracy" when it surfaced in 2024, blaming the Biden administration. The watchdog's findings confirm the underlying misconduct occurred, though it stops short of confirming DeSantis's broader characterization of it as agency-wide weaponization.

Washington's Hatch Act case remains open. Whether the Office of Special Counsel imposes civil penalties, and whether Congress presses DHS on why the tracking contract was allowed to lapse, are the two loose threads left hanging by this report.