The Trump Administration’s mission to carve the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) role out of federal disaster response and recovery and end FEMA as we know it is well underway. In a startling statement by President Trump during a briefing at the White House earlier this week, he stated he’d be implementing his plan to let the governors of states handle disasters after this hurricane season and that “if they can’t handle it, they shouldn’t be governor.”
But if the Trump administration would listen to the resounding majority of the 11,708 public comments to the FEMA review council in support of FEMA (99%), members of Congress on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and FEMA staff and former FEMA administrators for example, he’d know that there’s overwhelming support for FEMA, not for decimating it.
The FEMA review council that President Trump established via Executive Order 14180 early in his presidency met for the first time May 20 to do his bidding to dismantle the agency.
Only one of the chairs of the council, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Noem, was present, and she led the effort. The other chair, Department of Defense (DoD) Secretary Hegseth had a deputy attend in his place.
Based on what I heard at the council meeting and the administration’s recent actions, here are my top five reactions:
#1 It’s a futile effort for council members wishing to make positive FEMA reforms, but they should try
While the members of the council are bipartisan, recommendations by council members that aren’t in sync with the administration’s goals will likely be stifled. The executive order that established the council requires it to produce a report to the president in November. Included in that report must be a review of FEMA’s disaster response during the Biden administration and Secretary Noem gave the council a crystal clear message:
“The president has said to me many times that he believes that FEMA should be eliminated as it exists. So what that means is I need you to reimagine this agency. If we do what the president has tasked us to do, I believe this agency needs to be renamed.”
And she also stated:
“He wants state and local governments and emergency management directors to lead response immediately when something happens in a state or jurisdiction.”
Rep. Troy Carter, representative for Louisiana’s 2nd Congressional District, said it best in recent MSNBC coverage referring to the president’s executive order 14180 that established the council:
“With Executive Order 14180, President Donald Trump has initiated a dangerous restructuring of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which millions of Americans rely on in their most desperate moments. The president’s plan shifts the responsibility for emergency preparedness and disaster recovery from the federal government to already overburdened state and local governments. That’s not reform. It’s federal abandonment. It’s like closing fire stations and telling people to buy their own hoses.”
Council members who have emergency management experience and understand the value of FEMA should use their voice to share their ideas on reform (such as those offered by a non-council member, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein) with the other council members. If that situation isn’t tenable, I suggest they work behind the scenes. One way to do this is to read the US House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s discussion draft of the FEMA reform bill “Fixing Emergency Management for Americans (FEMA) Act” and consider submitting comments.
#2 Congress should press White House to nominate FEMA administrator with emergency management experience ASAP
The most hopeful takeaway I could glean from the council meeting is that DHS Secretary Noem and the Executive Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management Kevin Guthrie have what seems like an excellent rapport. This is good news because Kevin Guthrie has been one of the names the White House has been considering for the FEMA administrator position.
Mr. Guthrie would be a more than welcome replacement to the second FEMA chief David Richardson (he’s not alone in having a hard time remembering his actual title “Senior Official Performing the Duties of FEMA Administrator”), a former marine who previously worked at DHS on countering weapons of mass destruction and who has no emergency management experience. He’s already made a name for himself in the month he’s been leading FEMA given numerous gaffes. For example, the Atlantic hurricane season started June 1, yet David Richardson reportedly told staff he didn’t know the US had one.
For a more colorful review of David Richardson’s background and actions to date, read Samantha Montono’s Disasterology blog for May.
My sincere hope is that Congress is working in a bipartisan fashion to pressure the president to nominate a FEMA administrator with emergency management expertise as the law requires. A former FEMA administrator, Craig Fugate, has expressed worry about current FEMA staff’s lack of experience after sweeping DOGE cuts.
He also harkened back to Hurricane Katrina, which was mismanaged by an equally inexperienced FEMA chief and ill-prepared local and state governments when it devastated Louisiana 20 years ago. With 30 years of public safety and emergency management experience, Kevin Guthrie would be a much preferable candidate and someone who FEMA staff could be assured knows what he’s doing when a disaster hits. Having a qualified FEMA administrator as required by law will help move FEMA in the right direction.
#3 Congress should pass legislation to make FEMA a standalone cabinet agency, ASAP
Given President Trump’s stated intention of completely overhauling FEMA into a new agency as stated by Noem in closing remarks at the meeting, congress should move swiftly to return it to a cabinet level agency. She stated:
“So I don’t want you to go into this thinking that we’re going to make a little tweak here, a little delegation of authority over here, that we’re going to maybe cut a few dollars somewhere. No, FEMA should no longer exist as it is. He wants this to be a new agency.”
Congress would serve the agency and communities across the US well by swiftly passing legislation that would move FEMA out from under the DHS and returning it to its former status as a cabinet level agency. By doing so, it would help protect the agency by giving the FEMA administrator direct access to the president, limiting bureaucracy and increasing efficiency and eliminate the pressures of competing with other agencies within DHS.
Currently, both the House and the Senate have introduced bipartisan legislation with that goal—the FEMA Independence Act (H.R.2308 and S.1246)—and similar language is included in the discussion draft of the FEMA reform bill being considered in the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
Over 40 years ago there was a successful drive to centralize emergency management under FEMA based on multiple reasons that still resonate today, some include:
- A clear need for the federal government to coordinate its emergency management capabilities that spread across 100 agencies causing inefficiencies;
- Disasters exceeded the fiscal realities of state coffers; and
- The recognition that standardized requirements were needed to ensure a more equitable approach across states.
I recommend reading The Creation of FEMA: Historical Context which provides analysis on why the federal model remains essential, the impacts of President Trump’s mission to move to a primarily state-focused model and the benefits of the current system.
Given the nature of Congress, realistically this call to action to return FEMA to a cabinet level agency won’t happen quickly. But it’s worth trying given the clearly destructive goals of the Trump administration and his FEMA review council.
#4 Resist President Trump’s mission to force disaster assistance onto states
Under President Trump, the burden of disaster assistance and recovery is being pushed down to states, hurting the most vulnerable: congress and governors should push back
All states are not created equal when it comes to the resources available to respond to a disaster, some states are more rural and have lower populations and therefore have less of a tax base to pull from. But no state can handle a large, catastrophic disaster.
The leaked memo by former FEMA chief Cameron Hamilton on April 12 entitled “Actions to Rebalance FEMA’s Roles in Disasters” is the closest formal policy that we can point to regarding how the administration plans to have states take on more of disaster response and recovery. It calls for the public assistance disaster relief threshold to be increased roughly fourfold.
The analysis by Urban Institute finds that this would reduce the number of disaster declarations and significantly reduce the amount of federal funding by leaving all but the major disasters to the states and local jurisdictions to cover. In addition, President Trump has denied, delayed and partially approved disaster declarations which is unnecessarily straining areas that are trying to recover from extreme events.
- Denied: According to CNN, in an authoritarian move, the White House told FEMA that “Trump does not have to follow the agency’s recommendations and will not justify his decision when he denies a state’s application ….” As of June 10, my analysis of FEMA data finds President Trump has denied six major disaster declarations and two emergency declarations during his time in office. This compares with an average of 11.3 denials annually for major disaster declarations from 2010 to 2016 and the Atlantic hurricane season has only just begun. It’s know that declarations can be political no matter who is in office, typically this tends to be the case more so during election years and the average range annually of disaster “turndowns” tends to be similar. I imagine this year will be an outlier.
- Delayed: After making governors wait to approve 17 disaster declaration requests, President Trump approved fewer than half of them—a total of eight disaster declarations on May 23 after a month-long delay for the majority of the requests. He also delayed informing FEMA that he had approved declarations, in some cases over a week.
- Partially approved: Most of the assistance for major disaster declarations that the president has approved have been partially approved for one of three types of assistance: for public assistance (for things like debris removal); for individual assistance; and for the Hazard Mitigation and Grant Program (HMGP) for helping communities reduce risk. Former acting FEMA Chief Cameron Hamilton’s April 12 memo to the Office of Management and Budget suggested that the president not automatically approve HMGP when declaring a disaster. A Bloomberg report confirmed this, noting that Virginia and Arkansas have been denied HMGP funds.
Some governors have had to deal with the combination of all three tactics. For example, Governor Huckabee of Arkansas was at first denied disaster assistance, the president then finally approved $1 million of individual assistance for temporary housing and home repairs which was a partial approval of a fraction of the Governor’s request.
We need Congress to pressure the administration to clarify its approval process for disaster declarations, and we need Congress to approve funding for FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2026 and supplemental funding for FY 2025.
It was a welcome but surprising move by President Trump to allocate $26.5 billion for the DRF in his budget to Congress for FY 26. However, there has yet to be a call by the administration or formally by a member of Congress for supplemental funding for this fiscal year that will have a $7 billion deficit this September. Without supplemental funding for FY25, the FEMA acting administrator may have to restrict funding for life sustaining and lifesaving services (referred to as Immediate Needs Funding) which would put many local and state recovery and resilience projects in limbo.
#5 States and local jurisdictions must get ready for this danger season…and next
Secretary Noem and President Trump don’t understand disaster assistance and recovery, and therefore their policies will continue to be flawed. Noem repeated that states and local jurisdictions must provide disaster response and recovery despite emergency managers, political leaders having tried to explain that this is actually what already happens.
FEMA only comes in when a state or local jurisdiction is overwhelmed by a disaster, and then FEMA often is in the background helping to coordinate federal resources. Some states like Vermont, for example, were hit with back-to-back flood events in 2023 and 2024 and will be in a state of recovery for years given the small size of their communities and are in particular need of FEMA’s help when a catastrophe hits.
In just over 140 days since President Trump has been in office, he’s been following the playbook of the right-wing Project 2025. This is evidenced by his multiple executive orders (establishing the FEMA review council and shifting the disaster response burden to the states) and a whole lot more that I discuss in this blog. The tragedy here is FEMA is strained and communities will be more vulnerable and people will likely suffer when a disaster hits.
While the Trump administration’s changes don’t allow much time for local jurisdictions and states to prepare for drastically reduced FEMA funding, other federal resources are available and can be found at disasterassistance.gov. The Small Business Administration (SBA) disaster assistance provides low interest loans for individuals and business to help mitigate risk; the US Economic Development Administration (EDA) Disaster Supplemental Grant Program has $1.45 billion available; and the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) has numerous programs for example the Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) grant program allocated $12 billion for 2023 and 2024 events.
Bottom line: FEMA review council is doing Trump’s bidding to dismantle FEMA
When you listen to the public, members of Congress, FEMA staff and former FEMA administrators, most want to improve FEMA, not dismantle it. People want FEMA, they support change but not a slash and burn process like this.
The FEMA review council has the appearance of a democratic, public process, but let’s not be fooled. Before the end of the year when the council will finalize its report, I expect the recommendations will reflect the Trump administration’s goals to end FEMA as we know it and not those of the council members. We need Congress to take actions now to strengthen FEMA and keep communities safe.