During his first all-hands meeting with agency personnel, acting Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator David Richardson issued a striking warning: “Don’t get in my way,” the former United States Marine Corps ground combat officer told staff, according to a recording of the speech obtained by CBS News.
“Obfuscation, delay, undermining,” Richardson continued, referencing tactics he believed a fraction of FEMA staff might try to subvert his agenda. “If you’re one of those 20% of the people and you think those tactics and techniques are going to help you, they will not, because I will run right over you. I will achieve the president’s intent.”
Richardson’s formal title is Senior Official Performing the Duties of FEMA Administrator. He was named to the role Thursday and has not been formally nominated nor confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
“I can’t recall the full title, but essentially, I’m acting,” Richardson told staff on Friday, “I don’t need the full title. All I need is the authority from the president to put me in here as some degree of acting and I will make sure that his intent gets completed. I don’t stop at yield signs,” he continued.
“I, and I alone in FEMA, speak for FEMA,” Richardson said.
FEMA did not reply to a request for comment. When told about Richardsdon’s meeting, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin responded, “sounds like a productive first meeting.”
Richardson was appointed to lead FEMA after Cameron Hamilton, the former acting administrator, was fired Thursday morning, one day after publicly breaking with the Trump administration’s expressed intent to eliminate the nation’s disaster relief agency.
“I do not believe it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” Hamilton testified Tuesday before a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill. His dismissal comes roughly three weeks before the start of the Atlantic hurricane season.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Friday that Hamilton was fired for testifying “contrary to the president,” presumably when he advocated for the nation’s disaster relief agency not to be eliminated.
President Trump said shortly after taking office that he planned to “begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA,” criticizing the agency for allegedly responding slowly to natural disasters.
In his first address as acting head of the agency, Richardson doubled down on the president’s promise to reduce its scope and carry out the will of Mr. Trump.
“I am as bent on achieving the President’s intent as I was on making sure that I did my duty, where I took my Marines to Iraq, eleven of them,” Richardson was recorded as telling FEMA employees.
According to his official biography posted by the Department of Homeland Security, the former Marine commanded artillery units, serving in Afghanistan, Iraq and Africa. Richardson also taught history at George Washington University, strategy at the U.S. Army Field Artillery School, and Marine Corps Martial Arts.
During his roughly 17-minute speech to FEMA employees, he recalled sending home a member of the Second Marine Division from Iraq. “I had too important of a mission for anybody to undermine me or to make things difficult,” Richardson said.
“We’re going to find out how to push things down to the states,” the acting leader later added. “That should be done at the state level. Also going to find out how we can do more cost sharing with the states.”
During his address to FEMA employees, Richardson described his leadership style at length, noting that coworkers will rarely see him sitting behind his desk. “Most of this time I will sit at the table drinking tea while I’m working out something with a stubby pencil,” Richardson said, pointing a sharpened pencil into the air from behind a FEMA podium, according to the video of the recording.
Richardson told FEMA employees, “I have never read a book on leadership,” but contended that, “I’m fine operating in chaos and a very ambiguous environment.”
Toward the end of his remarks, the acting FEMA head referred all staff to two memos he authored in recent weeks, and distributed Friday morning. “They’re very short, but they will require almost all of you in this room input to some degree or another,” Richardson said.
According to the memos, obtained by CBS News, Richardson has directed staff to provide a slew of internal memos to him assessing FEMA’s preparedness for 2025, as well as organization charts, watchdog reports and a list of all known gaps in the agency’s preparedness or core capabilities.
Richardson declined to take any questions from employees during his day one remarks, instead promising to host a town hall in the coming weeks so that employees could play, “stump the chump.”
“It’s not that I’m afraid of questions, but I want you to read the memos,” said Richardson.
FEMA’s new acting administrator said that he will begin his first day by “looking at all the laws and statutes that guide FEMA and making sure that we are only doing the things that are within the law.” He added, “If we’re not doing that, we are wasting the American taxpayer dollars.”
Reflecting on his time in the Marine Corps, Richardson paused for a moment. “I’ve had friends who are either dead, physically or very damaged emotionally because they ran into trouble doing things that were not within their mission during combat. It’s the same thing for a mission like FEMA.”