President Trump has nominated Cameron Hamilton to serve as the permanent head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a move that delivers an unmistakable rebuke to former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who publicly fired Hamilton from the same acting role less than a year ago.
Hamilton was appointed acting FEMA chief in January 2025, but Noem removed him from the position in May after a series of clashes that had become impossible to paper over.
The most visible flashpoint came when Hamilton testified before Congress in May 2025, telling a hearing: “I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” He was escorted out of FEMA headquarters the following day.
Noem had been pushing internally and publicly to gut the agency, and Hamilton’s refusal to support that position made his continued presence intolerable to her and to Corey Lewandowski, the senior Trump aide widely reported to have been running significant influence over DHS operations.
A DHS spokesperson said at the time that the decision was entirely at Noem’s discretion to have “the personnel she prefers.” Before his dismissal, Noem had also ordered Hamilton to take a lie detector test in an effort to determine whether he had leaked details of an internal meeting about FEMA’s future.
Trump fired Noem herself in March, ending a tenure that had generated a steady stream of damaging internal reporting, and the dismantling of her legacy at DHS has since moved quickly under her successor, Senator Markwayne Mullin.
Mullin reinstated Troy Edgar as deputy secretary after Noem’s relationship with him had broken down, and eliminated a policy requiring personal sign-off from Noem and Lewandowski on all DHS contracts and grants over $100,000, a rule that had been blamed for significant delays in emergency response operations.
Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL, now requires Senate confirmation before he can take on the role on a permanent basis, and his path through that process is not guaranteed — his lack of experience as a state emergency management director and in traditional senior government leadership positions may attract scrutiny from lawmakers.
The overall picture, however, is one of the Trump administration systematically reversing the most consequential personnel and policy decisions made under Noem’s watch, with Hamilton’s nomination representing perhaps the most pointed example of how completely her influence over the department has been erased.
