The test was given two days after Hamilton met with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski, a key adviser to President Donald Trump.
Hamilton passed the test, according to Politico.
“Under Secretary Noem’s leadership, DHS is unapologetic about its efforts to root out leakers that undermine national security,” a statement from the DHS to the Washington Examiner said. “We are agnostic about your standing, tenure, political appointment, or status as a career civil servant— we will track down leakers and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.”
Whispers of the Trump administration minimizing FEMA have intensified since the president floated eliminating the agency in a trip to North Carolina in January. He said he would sign an executive order to “begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA.”
The order commanded a review of the agency’s effectiveness via a task force co-chaired by Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Noem said at a March 25 meeting, which was disclosed the next day, that FEMA could be shrunk and disaster recovery could be left to the states. At a Cabinet meeting March 26, she also said, “We’re going to eliminate FEMA.”
Some FEMA officials said they hadn’t heard the agency was being eliminated until they saw Noem’s remark. “We heard about it on TV like everyone else,” a FEMA official told Politico.
TRACKING WHAT DOGE IS DOING ACROSS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Hamilton was appointed acting administrator of the agency on Jan. 22 and has no background in emergency management. He is a former Navy SEAL who lost the 2024 Republican primary in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District to Derrick Anderson, who would lose to Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA).
He reportedly halted the $750 million directed at the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, grants, which help states and communities suffering from natural disasters.
FEMA called BRIC “another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program. It was more concerned with climate change than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.”
