Congressman Frank Palone today officially called on the president to immediately fire the head of FEMA, citing what he calls a failed response to the deadly July 4th floods in Texas.

And he joins me now.

Congressman, thanks for coming on the show.

Uh, you sent a pretty strongly worded letter to the president, but why exactly are you calling for the acting administrator to be fired?

Well, every indication based on what happened with the floods on Independence Day in West in West Texas is that he's completely incompetent and unable to actually function as the FEMA director.

I mean, he didn't even send the rescue search and rescue teams until 72 hours after the flooding occurred.

There were 15,000 calls that went to the call centers from people who suffered during the uh during the flooding uh who got no response, right?

because he had fired the contractor to answer the calls.

The man has no experience dealing with emergency management.

And frankly, Brianna, I'm just afraid, you know, it's going to be hurricane season at its peak pretty soon in New Jersey and on the Atlantic coast.

He actually at one point quipped that he wasn't even aware of hurricane season.

So, I'm just afraid that in our state and other places that could have potential disasters like a hurricane here, he's just going to be completely out of touch and ineffective.

But I wonder, Congressman, what assurances you have uh that the administration would appoint someone who in your view is more experienced given that this is happening against the backdrop of of FEMA potentially being phased out?

Well, that's the whole point.

I mean, I'm hoping that both the Homeland Security Secretary and the president understood in the aftermath of what happened in West Texas with this flooding that, you know, killed 135 people, a lot of whom were children, young children, that they would understand that FEMA needs to be more robust, that there needs to be a federal emergency management agency because the state can't do it on their own.

That we need a weather service that will, you know, give advanced warning of storms.

Um, and so this is part of that whole effort to say, look, this director has to go put somebody in who's going to actually know what they're doing, but beyond that, have a robust FEMA and a robust federal emergency service because otherwise, you know, what happened in West Texas could happen here in New Jersey if we had a major hurricane.

Yeah.

I mean, certainly we saw some flash flooding play out on a smaller scale than it did in in Texas, particularly in Union County where uh several lives were lost.

And so I I wonder then given all that has been going on.

I mean, they're sort of looking to reform this agency while also coming up against devastating storms, what this might mean for preparedness uh and safety uh for areas in New Jersey that are prone to being hit by these storms.

Well, it's a very dangerous situation.

The president goes back and forth as does the Homeland Security Secretary in saying we should or we shouldn't have FEMA.

Most of this responsibility should be given to the states rather than the federal government.

You know, cutting back on the people that work there.

Uh cutting back on resiliency grants.

You know, we had the brick program that had grants for New Jersey for resiliency in a lot of coastal towns, including Highlands, one of my towns that they've abolished.

And I'm just saying, look, you have to have somebody in charge who knows what they're doing.

But beyond that, you have to have a robust federal emergency management program, and you can't keep cutting back on personnel and uh funding in order to uh to to guarantee that, you know, our safety.

If they're not going to respond to that, then, you know, we just have to say, look, you know, you're incompetent and you're not willing to do what's necessary.

But I'm still hopeful that somehow somebody in the Trump administration, including the president, is going to listen and say, "Look, we can't go on like this."

Congressman Frank Palone, really appreciate your insight.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thanks, Brianna.