Trump officials working to strip FEMA’s role in disaster recovery by Oct. 1

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other Trump administration officials expressed support in meetings this week for dramatically diminishing the role of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, with the aim of all but eliminating the embattled agency’s role in disaster recovery by Oct. 1, according to four people familiar with the talks.

The individuals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share details of internal deliberations, said a number of possibilities were floated to strip FEMA of some of its key functions, such as helping rebuild after disasters strike and, according to one person, funding resilience initiatives that help communities prepare for disasters.

Even as administration officials met about FEMA’s fate, an advisory council created by President Donald Trump in January published a notice Wednesday asking the public to comment about “their experience with FEMA during disasters.” Trump has ordered the group to report back later this year on the adequacy of FEMA’s disaster response in recent years and on possible reforms.

Asked about the discussions, a DHS spokesperson said in an email, “We are grateful that the press is covering Secretary Noem’s efforts to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse within the Department of Homeland Security.”

FEMA’s acting administrator, Cameron Hamilton, spoke for about 45 minutes on Saturday to a gathering of state emergency managers about the difficulty of change and how states needed to be more resilient and responsible in their disaster response efforts, according to one state-level official who attended.

Hamilton repeatedly used the phrase that states need to work with private partners as the “performance enhancing drugs of emergency response,” the official said.

The closed-door push to abolish or substantially cut FEMA’s authorities, first reported Wednesday by Politico’s E&E News and CNN, comes barely two months ahead of the start of the Atlantic hurricane season.

But such efforts will not come without opposition.

“Eliminating FEMA will dramatically hurt red states. It will hurt rural areas. It will hurt cities. Places will not recover,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said in an interview Wednesday, adding that FEMA should be reformed but not eliminated.

FEMA’s existence and functions are written into laws, so it’s unclear how the administration could halt them without congressional approval, said Moskowitz, formerly Florida’s emergency management director. In addition, he said, FEMA reimburses state and local governments for much of the cost of disaster response and recovery. Without that federal money, governments may need to raid their budgets for education, health care and other areas in order to pay for emergency response — and even then might struggle to cope with mounting disasters, he said.

Moskowitz and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) this week introduced a bill to establish FEMA as an independent, Cabinet-level agency that is no longer part of DHS. The goal, Moskowitz said, is to free the agency from a sprawling bureaucracy and help it move with more agility.

“As these emergencies continue to grow larger and more widespread, the American people deserve a federal response that is efficient and fast,” Moskowitz said.

Even before Trump took office, FEMA had acknowledged the frustrations from affected communities and in January announced changes that aimed to get financial aid into the hands of disaster victims faster and with fewer delays.

“We can do better. Survivors deserve better,” then-FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told reporters at the time.

For decades, the relatively small agency has carried the significant responsibility of helping states and local communities recover from hurricanes, wildfires and other weather-related disasters. That includes funding immediate needs such as short-term housing and basic repairs.

The result for many victims, however, has often been a bureaucratic nightmare that bounces them between multiple agencies, often resulting in denials and delays of critical funds during the time they most need help.

Since Trump took office in January, he has said that FEMA needs fundamental transformation — or that it should be dismantled altogether.

During a January trip to tour hurricane damage in North Carolina and the aftermath of wildfires in California, Trump expressed a desire to eliminate the agency and threatened to withhold federal assistance to California unless it passes a new voter ID law.

Rather than mobilizing federal officials who specialize in responding to disasters nationwide, he said at the time, governors would be responsible for overseeing disaster responses in their states.

“Let the state take care of the tornadoes and the hurricanes and all the other things that happen. I think you’re going to find it a lot less expensive. You’ll do it for less than half and you’re going to get a lot quicker response,” Trump said.

That same month, Trump issued an executive order to establish a 20-member review council, stating that it was crucial to evaluate “whether FEMA’s bureaucracy in disaster response ultimately harms the agency’s ability to successfully respond.”

On Monday, during a televised Cabinet meeting at the White House, Noem pledged to get rid of the agency.

“We’re going to eliminate FEMA,” she said, without elaborating.

Last month, Noem said on CNN that she believes Trump should “get rid of FEMA the way it exists today.”

“He’s been very clear that he still believes there’s a role for the federal government to come in and help people get back up on their feet,” she said, adding, “We still need the resources and the funds and the finances to go to people that have these types of disasters like Hurricane Helene and the fires in California, but you need to let the local officials make the decisions on how that is deployed, so that it can be deployed much quicker.”

At a House hearing Tuesday that focused on possible reforms to FEMA, there was agreement on both sides of the aisle that federal disaster recovery programs, which span numerous agencies, were overdue for reform. Lawmakers agreed that accessing aid is onerous, duplicative and often takes far too long to reach communities in the wake of catastrophes.

“This is not meant to be a beat down of FEMA, but we can’t just keep going the way we’ve been and expect different outcomes,” said Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.).

At the same time, some of the officials who testified at the hearing said that for all its flaws, the federal government plays a crucial role preparing for and responding to after disasters.

“At the end of the day, we need federal support,” said Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. He added that “all emergency managers nationwide would agree, FEMA needs to be reformed,” but that states and localities are not equipped to handle every disaster alone.

Florida, he said, does everything it can to prepare for hurricanes and other disasters, and to help residents when calamities strike. “But even a high-capacity state from time to time needs federal support,” he said.

Chris Currie, a director on the Homeland Security and justice team for the Government Accountability Office, told lawmakers that FEMA is among 30 agencies that have a hand in federal disaster assistance, and that its workforce is overwhelmed.

“Last we looked at it, FEMA was 35% short of it staffing needs, based on the expectations of the agency, and there is now a never-ending disaster season,” Currie said.

The agency has also been subject to hundreds of job cuts under the new administration.

In the Tuesday hearing, Currie said that parts of the National Response Framework, a sort of blueprint for how the nation responds to all types of disasters and emergencies, has worked well, and that “we have to be really careful not to break what’s not broken.”

“We also have to remember the capacity differences across the country,” Currie said. “Some states and counties and cities have the resources and capacity to manage disasters, many others we see just don’t. And that’s not going to change anytime soon.”

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Dan Diamond contributed.