WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – As the representative for North Carolina’s Seventh Congressional District, which has seen its share of impacts from hurricanes, Congressman David Rouzer tells WECT he believes the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will continue to respond to natural disasters across the country, even though President Donald Trump recently said he would like to phase out the agency and let states take the lead in storm recovery.

“Not all states are equally capable of responding to a disaster of significant magnitude,” Rep. Rouzer said during an interview Tuesday in the WECT Studio. “I think the vast majority of North Carolinians, the vast majority of Americans, don’t want to see FEMA abolished. They want to see FEMA improved and quite honestly, a lot of the improvements can be made with just appointing the right administrator to administer the program. There will be a lot of work between the administration and Congress to come to some type of an agreement on what the future of FEMA should be.”

President Trump added the federal government will start distributing less federal aid for recovery, and that money would likely be appropriated through the president’s office.

“Well, for one thing, I don’t think there’ll be fewer dollars for disaster recovery,” Rep. Rouzer said. “I think regardless of what Congress decides to do on the FEMA question, there’ll be ample dollars for states to help recover.

The congressman’s office recently trumpeted a bill that he introduced being passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. According to a news release, the Maritime Supply Chain Security Act “… clarifies eligible uses of Port Infrastructure Development Program (PIDP) funds, to include the replacement of Chinese port hardware and software, most notably Chinese cranes and the software used to operate them”. Rep. Rouzer said it addresses security concerns of having cranes made in China at America’s ports like the one in Wilmington.

“There was a task force that has looked into all of this, so it is not new,” the congressman said. “They did a very comprehensive and exhausting report, and one of the findings was that our ports are quite vulnerable to Chinese maligned activity, in terms of eavesdropping, in terms of surveillance, knowing what’s coming in a port and going out of a port. From a supply chain standpoint, that’s very concerning. Our friends at Corning have told me that the fiber that China makes, when they make it, they insert an element of some sort in there that can cut off a line of communication just like that. Any Chinese manufactured crane needs to be replaced, period.”

Officials in Israel claimed Tuesday to have killed a top Iranian general in the most recent round of air strikes into Iran. Rep. Rouzer said the United States should help Israel in the most recent battles with its longtime enemy.

“Iran has made it very clear that Israel is the ‘Little Satan’ and America, in their words, is the ‘Big Satan’,” he said. “Israel goes down, America is going to be next. Instability in the Middle East is all because of Iran, absolutely no question about that. Israel has done an incredible job of taking out much of the Iranian capability. We need to make sure they can finish the job.”

Rep. Rouzer said he supported President Trump’s recent decision to put National Guard troops and U.S. Marines on the streets of Los Angeles following violent protests in that city. He also backs the president’s stance targeting Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs at universities and colleges, and higher education accreditors that, according to an Executive Order, ‘abused their authority by imposing discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)-based standards, violating Federal law’.

“The president received 77 million votes or so, a significant number,” Rep. Rouzer added. “He ran on all these issues and the Big Beautiful Bill includes every little aspect that he ran on, including DEI policy and getting rid of that. They’re receiving federal funding, and there’s a lot of taxpayers that don’t agree with that, that don’t agree with the diversity and inclusion policies, because it represents values that they don’t adhere to, that they don’t share.”

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