Thursday, May 15, 2025, at 2:00pm EST, the new acting director of FEMA, David Richardson, held a “town hall” with staff. Drop Site obtained 30 minutes of leaked audio from today’s meeting, as well as 10 minutes of leaked audio from Richardson’s introductory meeting on Friday, May 9, 2025. Both are transcribed in full below.,
The former acting director, Cameron Hamilton, was fired just one day after giving Congressional testimony, where he stated: “I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” Many have credited this statement for his ouster, including one FEMA employee who told Drop Site, “since Cam said he didn’t think getting rid of FEMA was good for the country, Trump fired him.”
During today’s town hall, when Richardson was asked “which is more important, the President’s will or the interests of the American people?” Richardson told staff “to me, they’re the same thing.” Rambling at times, Richardson spoke about putting “a large part of response and recovery down to the states,” and conducting “mission analysis,” which involves identifying “all of the laws that govern FEMA,” and limiting operations only to what is required by law. Richardson calls the new mission and direction for the federal agency “FEMA 2.” When asked about DOGE’s involvement in FEMA, Richardson told staff that he wrote a memo to DOGE today, saying, “you don’t make any decisions” for FEMA.
At one point during the town hall, Richardson told FEMA staff that just “the other day” he learned from his “girlfriend” that “Texas is bigger than Spain.” He continued, “I didn’t know that. So I looked at the map. Texas is huge! I mean, if you put it in the middle of Europe, it takes up most of Europe up.”
