Bulwark Takes - FEMA Chief of Staff Was Fired Despite Musk’s Promise

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

On Thursday, FEMA Chief of Staff Scott Curtis shared how he was misled, betrayed, and abruptly FIRED after taking Trump’s “deferred resignation” deal.  UPDATE: On Friday, after this interview was posted, he was rehired.

You can't rely on blind faith to get the pregnancy support you deserve. Ritual's Essential Prenatal Multivitamin is the only leading prenatal backed by its own human clinical trial. Essential Prenatal is proven to deliver key nutrients, including folate, biotin, and vitamin D during pregnancy. Get 25% off when you visit ritual.com slash clinical. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Hey guys, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at The Bulwark, back again.

We have a bit of a special interview today. I'm joined by Scott Curtis. Scott was, until recently, chief of staff at a branch of FEMA. And he has a important story to tell. We will sort of explain it in the abstract, and then I'll let Scott get into it. But Scott was assigned the deferred resignation offer that the Elon Musk, Doge, Trump administration gave to federal employees. Scott believed that he was going to get the deferred resignation offer because he got a acknowledgement of receipt from the Office of Personnel Management. And then, Scott, correct me if I'm wrong, a couple days ago, you were fired without getting the deferred

resignation offer. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah, that's all correct. On the, you know, the deferred resignation program came out by email. And I think, you know, people kind of saw the news on that. Right. It's a little unconventional. You know, a lot of discussion, you know, internally on, you employee that whether I was terminated due to being probationary, I certainly knew rifts were coming. So ultimately, I decided it was in my best interest to take. And on the 4th of February, I did the requisite resign reply. And the next day received an acknowledgement. We received your email. We'll be in touch shortly. Then I didn't hear anything until the 18th of February when I received a termination letter. And, you know, that had some interesting verbiage in there regarding the deferred resignation program, which I'm happy to share with you. But, yeah, it was a, I won't say I was

surprised. I guess I was more disappointed that, you know, the, you know, the trust that I showed in the process and the offer, you know, ultimately the rug was yanked out from under me. All right. We're going to get into all this before we do, as always to the viewers, do subscribe to our feed. We really appreciate it. Scott, before we get into the specifics of what happened, let's go into your biography. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Okay. I joined the Navy. I was in the Navy from 1990 up until 2022.

I retired as a captain, which is people are more familiar with the Army ranks. So, you know, that'd be a colonel in the Army, you know, did a lot of different assignments. You know, my specialty was nuclear power. The highlight of my career was being reactor officer on Harry S. Truman, which unfortunately is in the news recently. But, you know, great, great experience. Wouldn't want to do it again, but, you know, very proud of that. I had command of a couple of different ships, USS Ashland, USS Dexterous stationed out of Bahrain. I was fortunate enough to be the commanding officer of the Iowa State Naval ROTC, which was a fantastic experience, you know, kind of molding the future officers for the Navy and Marine Corps. And I finished out my career, finished up officially in October 2022 at U.S. Central

Command down in Tampa, Florida. And that was a nice experience just seeing that side of things. And then I went into the private sector briefly, but ultimately me and my wife decided we wanted to move back to Kansas City. I did some consulting work for Department of Energy labs and the Canadian equivalents, the Canadian nuclear laboratories. Really loved that work, but it was contract-based and the contract ended up slowing down. And then I saw the opportunity to be chief of staff at FEMA Region 7 here in Kansas City. And fortunately, I was accepted for that. And I started in July, the very end of July 2024. So really, I was only in the position for six months, maybe six and a half months before I was ultimately terminated.

And I'm sure we'll discuss this more. Tell me a little bit about, before we get to FEMA for a second, there was one other biographical detail that you were kind of famous for, actually, which was you were the foreman for the jury in a war crimes court. This was involving the Majid Khanhan the al-qaeda recruit uh who um was the courier uh and correct me if i'm wrong uh who was uh delivered five fifty thousand dollars i believe uh that financed the deadly bombing in indonesia and you wrote a um how would you even call it uh was it a manifesto well how would you describe what you did officially it was

a um recommendation for clemency um so the way that went down is i i was the foreman for the uh for the trial of majid khan um as a jury i think there were 10 of us including myself um and it was the first of the uh guantanamo bay detainee trials. And Majid Khan had been down there, I'm not sure how long, but it had been 15 years maybe. It's quite a long time. And he gave this very impassioned description from the beginning all the way through everything he experienced. And it was, you know, there was a lot of Zero you know, zero dark 30 type,

you know, right in there. He was tortured. Yeah. And, you know, it was, you know, it was difficult to listen to. And frankly, I found him compelling. I found him believable. And for whatever reason, I don't understand the legal decision on this, but the, uh, uh, the prosecution, um, for the United States, um, elected to not refute anything he said, you know, so, you know, just taking it from a, you know, kind of an idealistic standpoint, I guess you would say, then everything he said is not being refuted. So we'll take it at face value. Um, and then, uh, you know, we went back and, you know, decided on the, you know, the, the recommended sentencing and such, because this was ultimately a determination of, um, how long he was going to be imprisoned.

Right. It was not clemency in that he got no sentence. He got a 26 year sentence. It was, yeah. And I'm saying that the shorter end of the sentence and you found that his torture was basically depraved. Yeah. You know, the letter I'm, you know, I wrote is, you know, it's available in public, but

you know, it, um, you know, I said that we were told by the judge that if we chose to, we could write a, um, letter of clemency, which is basically a, you know, recommendation that, um, you know, the, the, you know, events that happened to this individual would be taken into account for the sentencing. So I sat down, I wrote that letter. I read it to the rest of the jury members. And I think with one exception, they all agreed to sign it. And the one exception, he told me, hey, I agree with everything he said. I just don't want to put my name on it, which I respect. There's no. I'm bringing this up not to because this is not actually obviously directly relevant to what we're dealing with now.

But just to, you know, present the point that you have been in difficult situations. You've served the country. You have been asked to make difficult decisions on behalf of our governing bodies before. And so you find yourself in this decades-long career in service, and then you decide to go back into FEMA. And tell me a little bit about why you chose to go back at this point in career. I know you talked a little bit about it. You like the idea of service, but why FEMA specifically? You know, it sounds cliched, but this is the truth. I did the consulting work, and like I said, but, you know, this is the truth is, you know, I did the consulting work. And like I said, I enjoyed that. But what I found that I missed more than I would have expected was kind of the helping people.

And, you know, in the military, you know, obviously we do a lot of damage sometimes. But, you know, really, we help a lot of people overseas and, you know, disaster relief and such. And so this seems like an opportunity to get back in that game, you know, and bring the skills that I developed over three decades into a chief of staff position, which I was familiar with. So, you know, that was in essence why I did it. And what kind of responsibilities came with the job? It was a new position. So, you know, I spent the first, you know, frankly, the entire time I was there trying to, you know, figure out what I would take, you know, what previous people had been taking, you know, and it was a difficult transition for everybody involved.

And I don't think we ever really got there. You know, ideally, it would have been the classic chief of staff where you, you where you kind of look 80% internal, keep the trains running on time, make sure all the documentation is appropriate, you know, those kinds of responsibilities. Never really got there, but I think we were heading in the right direction. How big was your office? Well, the office of the regional administrator where I worked, probably about 20 people. We had the data analytics group in there. We had, you know, some, you know, people who worked on external affairs and, you know, working with the tribe, you know, the local tribes.

And then obviously the leadership. FEMA as a whole was probably around 300 people. You know, it's hard to put a number on it because we have a lot of reservists. We have a lot of different categories that come on, you know, in response to a specific disaster. So it fluctuates a lot. You know, but the core was probably around, you know, 250 to 300 people. Gotcha. All right. So let's fast forward. Turn of the year, Trump's inaugurated, you're at FEMA still, and you get your first fork in the road email. I believe it was in late January, maybe like the 28th of January, something like that. What was your initial reaction? Really, you know, we had no heads up on this. There was no, no, nothing from leadership

to expect an email like this. It was just a, just popped in your inbox. The only reason people gave it any legitimacy at all, it was from, you know, opm.gov. Did you, did you think it might've been a farce at first? Only, only not, not, I didn, only because of where it originated from. Right. You know, if it had been a.com or a.org, yeah, I probably would have, you know, referred it to our IT people. Because it sounded so weird. Right.

You know, and it wasn't phrased in the normal, you know, government language. It sounded like something, and I think this is probably, you know, correct. It sounded like something that, you know, a couple of college students slapped together and said, let's send this out. That might have been the case. Yeah. All right. So you get the email. It says fork in the road.

You read it. And what do you think? Is it intriguing? Is it scary? I thought it was interesting. It came down to, and I think, you know, this is the same reaction everybody had, is it legitimate? You know, can I trust it? You know, if something sounds like it's, you know, too good to be true, it probably is, you know, that kind of mentality.

And remind me, what were they offering exactly in the initial one? It was what exactly in terms of? Essentially, you know, they had ordered the back to office, which came in like, you know, a lot of organizations, you know, government agencies had, you know, since even before COVID had, you know, gone to a lot of telework. And that saved office space. It saved a lot of money on rent and such. So, you know, it was well established. And, you know, we knew as soon as Trump was elected that the telework was going to be done. I mean, that had been discussed already. So it basically said you would be exempt from return to office and that if you chose this, you would be paid through the remainder of the fiscal year, 30 September.

And then the language is a little unclear on whether you'd be expected to work, whether you wouldn't, you know, it kind of set agency discretion. So me personally, you know, I received it, I think, you know, your timeline's appropriate on the 28th of January. And I basically sat on it until more information came out. The deadline was February 6. Did you ask your supervisor? Did you reach out to OPM? Did you try to find more information? We have, you know, people who work directly with the, you know, human resources at FEMA headquarters. You know, he was one of my peers. He was a division director. And he did a good job of, you know, putting out what information he was hearing from headquarters.

So I never felt the need to reach out personally. I thought we were getting information as best we could. But even that was very murky because my feeling, which I think is on point, is that even FEMA leadership was surprised by this fork in the road email. I don't think anybody expected it. So they were kind of chasing their tail the whole time, trying to figure out what the policy really was. And then on February 4th, you respond, like you said, and like it was instructed, you respond with one word, resign.

Yeah, resign, period. And that's all they asked for. Just to be clear to the viewer, that's all they said, is that if you get this and you want to take the program, all you have to do is respond, reply with the word resign. And you did it. And then the next day, as you noted, they sent a receipt of email, an acknowledgement of receipt. Quote, we received your email response. We will reply shortly. Now, after that, there were some court wranglings over whether or not this could go into effect. And the program was put on hiatus for a little bit. What were you thinking about that at that point? Well, yeah, I didn't expect that. You know, I assumed, you know, wrongly that, you know, this had all been vetted. And know so when the when the first court stay you know went into effect that kind of surprised me um the part that i felt kind of ironic for myself and you

know for anybody else is um here we had told our bosses you know and i had sat down face to face with my boss and told her um yeah because um you know it seems like a good offer for me. So here I am telling my boss, I have no interest in working at this organization any longer. And then the deal is on hold. So it kind of puts you in an awkward position. And I'm sure that's true of everybody who took the offer. Now, when we initially talked, you said you felt like a lot of people were seriously considering it and that your expectation was that a lot of people would eventually say yes. But it turns out that it was not the case. It was less than 5% of the federal workforce that actually took the offer. Why do you think you took it and so few others did relative to your expectations?

Well, I was able to take it. I had discussions with a lot of people. A lot of people came to me kind of looking for advice. And I'm hesitant to give them a recommendation either way because I think it's specific to the individual circumstances. For me, it was low risk. I'm a retired military officer. I have, you know, my pension, worst case, well, in the worst case did happen that it doesn't materialize. You know, I'll be

okay, I can find another job. For some people who had been at FEMA, say for five years, 10 years, or even, you know, there were some that were there for 18, 19 years, and we're coming up on retirement, you know, they're taking a much bigger gamble on if, you know, if you say you want to take this, and it doesn't materialize, and then I haven't heard of this happening, but you know, we're not done with this yet, where someone could say, well, you don't get to retire because you resigned. You know, so, you know, from a cost benefit, for me, it was a simple decision. For others, not so much. And even people who were newer probationary employees like myself, a lot of them don't, you know, they moved across the country. They bought a house in the Kansas City area.

They have young kids in school. Rolling the dice with their job was not something lightly done. And then I think ultimately it just came down to, you know, if you go on social media or listen to the news, there was so much conflicting information and it came down to trust. And I think ultimately a lot of people said, I just don't trust this offer. I did. Yeah. All right.

So you send in, you get the, you send in the resign letter you get an acknowledgement of receipt uh that's february 5th and then a week a week and a half goes by um are you showing up at work still or no oh yeah i mean and this is where we were kind of unclear because right you know it said if you take it you're exempt from return to office. Just out of principle, you know, being in a leadership position, I came in every day. I didn't telework that much. Once a week, usually at most. But the fact that you didn't get any guidance, all we received was a, we have received your response. We will be in touch shortly. We were all kind of left with, well, what do we do now? And there was very little information coming from, you know,

headquarters or OPM or anything. Was there any information coming from headquarters? It was all just back channel unofficial. You know, hey, there was a meeting on this, and this is what was discussed, you know, stuff that you can't really base decisions on. Right. But at least we knew that leadership was discussing it. Right. Which was some level of assurance. But, you know, that the administration is then going to go after probationary employees. And I just want to be stressed, the word probation and probationary has this sort of negative connotation. This is just people who've been on government payroll for what, like a year, 18 months, something like that, right? Yeah, I mean, it depends on the position. For my position, I was on probation for a year,

12 months. There are some positions where it's two years, but the most are one year. So yeah, probation doesn't have any negative connotations. It just means you're new. But you're seeing this happen and you know you're a probationary employee. And so you must have these kind of dual threads going on in your head. One is, oh, my God, I have the possibility that I'm going to be axed. And where the hell is more information on this deferred resignation program I signed up for? Yeah. And, again, there was nothing official.

But I watch the news. Obviously, I'm a fan of the bulwarks. I get a lot of information where I can. And on Thursday or Friday, that would have been about the 14th or 15th of February, I started seeing a lot of chatter on Reddit, primarily saying, hey, I just got a letter saying I was terminated as a probationary employee. I hadn't heard anything yet, but in my experience, FEMA was just, you know, the bureaucracy was slower because they had to wait for Department of Homeland Security

to, you know, put out information, then FEMA would respond because FEMA is the subordinate agency to DHS. And so I kind of, you know, knew the writing was on the wall. And then on Monday, my sit at my desk right now and my cell phone rings, John Greenewald, tell me tell me about Monday. So what happens? Walk us through what happened? Oh, Monday, Monday was a holiday. It was President's Day.

So, you know, I'm just just hanging out and enjoying enjoying the federal holiday, but, you know, definitely paying attention to what's going on, because, you know, there'm just hanging out and enjoying the federal holiday, but, you know, definitely paying attention to what's going on because, you know, there's all these, you know, anecdotes all over the internet. And so the phone rings and it was the acting deputy regional administrator, you know, one of my, you know, peers. And as soon as I picked it up, I knew what it was about, you know, he he was you know very apologetic hey i got some bad news and i was just like hey totally understand i knew this was coming you know i'm not gonna you know guilt anybody you know you're just the messenger i mean

you know i'm not gonna i'm not gonna take it out on anybody um you know so i was just like okay you know what do i do um and i was told, well, you'll be receiving a termination package this afternoon with instructions on what to do. I did try and go into the office. I live about 15 minutes away from the office. And I was like, let me just go in there and get my personal stuff just so I don't have to have them mail it to me and stuff. But by the time I got there, I'd already been locked out. You know, so the security guard said, yeah, we know something's going on. We can't let you in. You know, that was a little little humiliating.

But again, he was just the messenger. But, you know, I go from chief of staff of the place to we can't let you in to get your coffee mug within, you know, a couple of days. So that was interesting. I'm sorry about that. That really sucks. Have you gotten your personal stuff back? Supposedly it's in the mail. You know, we'll see. Okay.

How does the termination package compare to the deferred resignation package at face value? Well, we never received the deferred resignation package. Well, the offer that they were talking about. Well, 180 out. And, you know, the termination package, it was an email with several attachments. And the email, and I've got the text right here, you know, it says, if you elected to participate in the deferred resignation program, a determination was made that probationary employees are not eligible and will be terminated. That email was the first I had ever seen, heard anything about probationary employees not being eligible.

So they subsequently have said to you the reason you will not get deferred resignation is because you are a probationary employee. Yeah, that's an email from this email is from FEMA headquarters employee relations. And that was not clear in the slightest in the fork in the road emails that you received in late January, early February. Yeah, I wouldn't even say it was ambiguous. It wasn't even a gray area. It said that, you know, everybody is eligible for this. You know, there was no restrictions put on it. I mean, how do you feel about all this? Obviously, you know, it's, as you said, there's some level of humiliation to having to walk to your place of work and not be allowed back in when you're the chief of staff. But it also feels like you were kind of kicked to the curb a little bit.

Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's the first time in my entire life I've been fired. Now, you know, I'm not taking it personally because I know it wasn't, you know, oh, you know, Scott Curtis, you're, you know, we're firing you. It was a form letter. You know, hardly anything was tailored. It had my name on it. That's it. You know, and, and to me, the tragedy is, this is happening to a lot of good people that, you know, took their first job in the federal government, were doing good work. You know, the, the stereotype of the government worker,

totally not applicable to these individuals, you know, really smart, right out of college, you know, young families, and they're going through the same circumstance. And I think that's where the, you know, the tragedy lies. And, you know, that's where I reached out to a bunch of the people I work with that were in those positions and said, you know, I asked, hey, did you also get terminated? In a lot of cases, I was met with silence, which I assume means they were. In some cases, it was not yet. But I mean, this is by no means over. I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's, there was the second phase, whatever that's going to look like is coming. Those are the people I feel bad for. For me personally, you know, it's not what I wanted, you know, and it's a setback,

but it's not life-changing. For a lot of these people, it's life-changing. And those are the ones I feel bad for. I mean, ultimately, in the end, there's nothing you could have done differently. You would have ended up in the same spot, right? Whether or not you took the deferred resignation offer, they were going to fire probationary employees. You were one of them. But they did give you the sense that you would have been taken care of in a more humane way. And then they pulled that rug from under you. Yeah. I was going to leave FEMA, you know, not by my own choice, no matter what. And that's why I personally took the deferred resignation.

Well, you know, the writing's on the wall. It's either now or in two months when they riff everybody or whatever. There was no path that I saw that, you know, I had a future with FEMA based on everything I was seeing. So I just decided to try and leave on the best terms that were, you know, appropriate to my situation. The last question I suppose here is, what do you take of this of how they've handled the reduction of government and how they've treated personnel? You know, I'm not going to argue that there's not inefficiencies in government. You know, I'll fully admit that. I've worked in the federal government and the military for three decades,

you know, as a government civilian for seven months. There's definitely opportunities for improvement. The part that I think bothers me was the, you know, kind of the, it was almost like misinformation, you know, the callousness that this was rolled out. You know, they had four years to think about how to do this. And it really looks like they did it the, you know, the night before the first email, you know, on the back of a napkin, you know, and decided this is how we're going to do it.

It would have been much more, even if I ended up in the same position, if they had said, you know, hey, on February 1st, you know, if they had said, you know, hey, on February 1st, you know, we're going to, you know, start terminating probationary employees on March 1st, we're going to do this, you know, some kind of phased plan. So you can understand, I would accept that. I think most people would accept that, you know, it's just the reality, you know, a new administration was elected, they, you know, this is the way they want to handle it. Okay. But, you know, the way it was done, where, you know, here's an offer, you know, and then, you know, here's some clarifying guidance that contradicts the initial guidance. And then, you know, if you, you know, in my case, I responded to it,

and I was told, okay, you're, you're on board, we'll be back with you. And then ultimately, you know, you're terminated. And by the way the way that deal we offered you we decided we're not going to give it to you you know that was the the part that was again not not real surprising but i was just kind of disappointed um you know you spend as much time in the military as i do i did and i think you get this from almost any you know senior military officers you know taking care of your people is you know just fundamental to what you do right and this seemed to be the opposite of that it was just you know hey we're gonna just you know lock you out of the building when you come in to get your coffee mug and you know just just kick you to the curb yeah that was the part

that was disappointing and I think there's going to be some long-term impacts to that where I don't know who in their right mind would apply for a federal job right now. And the federal government does real work. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that I think that the nation is going to find that isn't happening. And they're wondering, why isn't this happening? Why isn't this working anymore? And it they're, they're wondering why isn't this happening? Why isn't this working anymore? And it turns out, well, all those people that you didn't even know existed made this happen. And that's especially, especially true with FEMA. It's like, boy, just wait for the first disaster. Scott, what's next for you?

I don't know. You know, I'm kind of, you know, I've only had a couple days to really think about this. And, you know, my passion has always been, you know, engineering, nuclear engineering, you know, there's a lot of opportunities in small modular reactors, and I'm looking into that. You know, I've got some friends who work at Meta, and, you know, they're in the AI business. I might look into that. I'm 55 years old, so I feel like I'm too young to not do anything. But also, I don't really want to start over with something I have no experience in either. So I'm kind of looking out for opportunities. A small part of me wants to kind of look at running for some. You know, a small part of me wants to, you know, kind of look at running for some federal government position, but I think that would just, that would tear my soul out.

So I'll probably, yeah, it's a little, it's a dirty, it's a dirty business, but I have been curious how many people affected by the past month will be compelled to actually go into public service themselves. So if you do that, keep us posted. And listen, sincerely, I feel terrible about what's happened to you. It's not right how they handled it. And I appreciate from the bottom of my heart, your willingness to speak out. I know you're doing this because in part, you believe that other people are probably going through something similar, who don't have either the voice, the platform, or, frankly, the stomach to do this. And this by means speaking out publicly about it. So I appreciate that. And I know others will as well. So thank you so much

for doing this. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, you've said it perfectly. I mean, I'm not here to, you know, talk about me, I am, you know, doing I am doing that. But it's the same message that applies to tens of thousands of federal workers that are in similar circumstances. And they didn't deserve this. All right. Well, Scott, first of all, if you're one of those fellow workers, hit me up. I would love to hear your story. And Scott Curtis, thank you so much for sharing your story. You can't rely on blind faith to get the pregnancy support you deserve. Ritual's Essential Prenatal Multivitamin is the only leading prenatal backed by its own human clinical trial. Essential Prenatal is proven to deliver key nutrients, including folate, biotin, and vitamin D during pregnancy. Get 25% off when you visit ritual.com slash clinical.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.