Elon Musk's DOGE team busted Federal Emergency Management Agency bureaucrats in the middle of a covert mutiny against President Trump. Despite orders to the contrary from the White House and a revocation of any previous executive authority, FEMA managers directed $59 million to luxury hotels in New York City to house migrants.

The @DOGE team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.

Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order.

That money is meant for American disaster relief…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 10, 2025

The @DOGE  team just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.  Sending this money violated the law and is in gross insubordination to the President’s executive order.  That money is meant for American disaster relief and instead is being spent on high end hotels for illegals!  A clawback demand will be made today to recoup those funds.

I'm not sure Musk is correct about the "money is meant for American disaster relief" part of the statement. Congress created the "Shelter and Services Program" in FY2023 and FY2024 to provide "reimbursements to state and local governments and nonprofits in 35 different communities around the nation, including in the border states of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas, and inside the country in Colorado, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania." It seems that about $800 million was appropriated for migrant housing in FY 2024 via the Shelter and Services Program ($650 million) and the Destination Reception Act (about $150 million). It is difficult to tell how much remains available in the pot.

There are two problems with FEMA's action. First and foremost, to spend that kind of money on NYC hotels for illegals requires permission. Any executive authority it might have relied upon in the past has been revoked by Trump's Protecting The American People Against Invasion Executive Order:

(a)  Executive Order 13993 of January 20, 2021 (Revision of Civil Immigration Enforcement Policies and Priorities), Executive Order 14010 of February 2, 2021 (Creating a Comprehensive Regional Framework To Address the Causes of Migration, To Manage Migration Throughout North and Central America, and To Provide Safe and Orderly Processing of Asylum Seekers at the United States Border), Executive Order 14011 of February 2, 2021 (Establishment of Interagency Task Force on the Reunification of Families), and Executive Order 14012 of February 2, 2021 (Restoring Faith in Our Legal Immigration Systems and Strengthening Integration and Inclusion Efforts for New Americans) are hereby revoked; and

(b)  Executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall take all appropriate action to promptly revoke all memoranda, guidance, or other policies based on the Executive Orders revoked in section 3(a) of this order and shall employ all lawful means to ensure the faithful execution of the immigration laws of the United States against all inadmissible and removable aliens.

The second thing wrong is the people who carried out this action knew it was wrong but did it anyway.

Cameron Hamilton, Trump's acting FEMA administrator, took notice.

@USCongress should have never passed bills in 2023 and 2024 asking FEMA to do this work. This stops now.

— Cameron Hamilton (@FEMA_Cam) February 10, 2025

It is no secret that FEMA is torqued about the attention they are about to receive.

Less than two weeks after President Donald Trump said his administration would consider making the Federal Emergency Management Agency “go away,” representatives of Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service were at the agency and reviewing the grant programs it uses to help communities prepare for and respond to disasters, according to four current and two former FEMA officials.

...

According to the officials, a small team that does not have security clearance has access to FEMA’s network, which contains the private and sensitive information of tens of thousands of disaster victims. For example, FEMA officials said that on Feb. 5, Edward Coristine, a 19-year-old former college student who goes by the moniker “Big Balls” online and now works for Musk, was given a FEMA badge. The officials, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fears of professional retaliation.

Though FEMA bureaucrats might not realize it, their agency is in peril. The reputation it achieved for incompetence and pettiness in Western North Carolina was without parallel in disaster relief operations. In fact, you could be excused for thinking that FEMA was overseeing an ethnic cleansing operation rather than a recovery effort. President Trump devoted an Executive Order, Council to Assess the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to laying out a roadmap for a major reform of FEMA. A sane person would be laying low and coloring inside the lines right now rather than playing Resistance.