WASHINGTON, DC – On Monday, President Donald Trump announced several picks for his FEMA Review Council, including a state official here in Florida.
To be precise, Trump appointed Kevin Guthrie, executive director for the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
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On a more local level, two other political figures in Florida were picked for the council: Tampa Mayor Jane Castor and Miami-Dade County Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz.
Alongside those three, Trump appointed the following figures to the council:
- Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth
- Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem
- Texas Gov. Greg Abbott
- Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin
- Former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant
- Chairman Michael Whatley of the North Carolina Republican Party
- Chief W. Nim Kidd of the Texas Division of Emergency Management
- Mark Cooper
- Regional FEMA Administrator Bob Fenton
- Evan Greenburg
“I know that the new Members will work hard to fix a terribly broken System, and return power to State Emergency Managers, who will help, MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Congratulations to all!”
Trump enacted the council back in January days after taking office, claiming that FEMA required an overhaul to improve efficiency for disaster response and providing aid.
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Within that same order, Trump also accused FEMA of political bias, pointing to an example of a former FEMA official who reportedly directed workers to avoid homes with pro-Trump signs while providing hurricane relief after Hurricane Milton.
“(FEMA) has lost mission focus, diverting limited staff and resources to support missions beyond its scope and authority, spending well over a billion dollars to welcome illegal aliens,” the order reads.
Now, the FEMA Review Council is set to figure out potential improvements for FEMA and whether disaster relief efforts would be better handled at the state level.
Guthrie was appointed to his position at the FDEM by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis back in 2021.
Since DeSantis first took office, the FDEM has distributed well over $11 billion in disaster relief funding, according to the agency’s press office. Over $8 billion of that funding came down from FEMA.
DeSantis has been a vocal critic of FEMA in recent months, claiming that Florida could better distribute federal disaster relief without the need of a bureaucratic middleman.
“If a disaster comes, you can take whatever that amount is typically, spend 80% of that block grant to the state, cut the bureaucracy of FEMA out entirely, and that money will go further than it currently does at greater amounts going through FEMA’s bureaucracy,” he said during a speech earlier this month.
In fact, DeSantis touted Guthrie’s work with the FDEM back in January amid rumors that Guthrie was on Trump’s short-list for FEMA director, The Floridian reported.
“I told him, ‘I don’t really want to lose you,’ but I want people to go on and do bigger, better things,” DeSantis said at the time. “We do not want to run the same playbook we’ve been running. Block grant us money; let us run with it.”
