FEMA staff warn that Trump officials’ actions risk a Katrina-level disaster
More than 180 Federal Emergency Management Agency employees sent a letter Monday to members of Congress and other officials, arguing that the agency’s direction and current leaders’ inexperience harms the agency’s mission and could result in a disaster on the level of Hurricane Katrina.
The letter, on which three dozen employees signed their full names, says that since January, staffers have been operating under leaders — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, acting FEMA administrator David Richardson and former leader Cameron Hamilton — who lack the legal qualifications and authority to manage FEMA’s operations. This has eroded and hindered the agency’s ability to effectively manage emergencies and other operations, including national security work, the letter says.
After Hurricane Katrina became one of the worst disasters in the nation’s history, in part because of failures of local, state and federal governments, Congress passed the Post-Katrina Emergency Reform Act to give FEMA more power and responsibility. That hurricane made landfall in southeast Louisiana in August 2005, leading to at least 1,800 deaths and $100 billion in damage. The resulting legislation allowed FEMA to better prepare communities for and help them recover from disasters.
But the letter warns that the Trump administration is sending the agency and country back to a pre-Katrina era by not having a Senate-confirmed and qualified emergency manger at the helm; by slashing mitigation, disaster recovery, training and community programs; and by thwarting officials’ ability to make decisions because of a restrictive new expense policy.
The letter demands that federal lawmakers defend FEMA from DHS interference, protect the agency’s employees from “politically motivated firings,” conduct more oversight and ultimately take FEMA out of DHS and establish it as an independent Cabinet-level agency in the executive branch.
“Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration,” the employees wrote, adding that they are sounding the alarm “so that we can continue to lawfully uphold our individual oaths of office and serve our country as our mission dictates.”
During Katrina, the DHS secretary “had difficulty coordinating the disparate activities of Federal departments and agencies” and “lacked real-time, accurate situational awareness of both the facts from the disaster area as well as the ongoing response activities of the Federal, State, and local players,” a federal review found.
As of Sunday evening, 36 employees had signed their full name and about 150 others had signed anonymously.
In a statement, DHS said it is “committed to ensuring FEMA delivers for the American people.”
“The Trump Administration has made accountability and reform a priority so that taxpayer dollars actually reach the people and communities they are meant to help,” acting press secretary Daniel Llargues said in a statement, adding: “Change is always hard. It is especially for those invested in the status quo. But our obligation is to survivors, not to protecting broken systems.”
The statement referred to several actions the agency had already undertaken during Noem’s tenure, including awarding more than $6 billion in individual assistance for disaster recovery and more than $17 billion in public assistance.
The open show of resistance from FEMA employees is the latest example of federal employees speaking out against the Trump administration’s actions and policies, in many cases putting their jobs and safety at risk. Described as the “Bethesda Declaration” movement, named for the Maryland city where the National Institutes of Health is headquartered, it began in June when NIH employees issued a letter modeled after Director Jay Bhattacharya’s dissent against the government’s COVID policies in 2020. Employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA and the National Science Foundation followed suit.
The administration put nearly 140 EPA employees on leave after their letter of dissent last month.
There are a number of other agencies coalescing and mapping out similar declarations to push back against the dismantling of their institutions, said Jeremy Berg, a board member for Stand up for Science, which has been helping advise federal workers on the declarations. Berg served as director of the NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences from 2003 to 2011.
“Some people are risking everything but can’t live with themselves if they don’t do it and are ready to struggle on unemployment if they get fired,” Berg said. “It’s a real profile in courage to watch.”
One FEMA employee, who helped organize the declaration and spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution, said she “never expected to write or sign anything like this.” With no backup job or cushion, she weighed the work she could do if she stayed in her role with keeping quiet. But after NIH employees sent their letter, she and a group of about 10 others started writing their own declaration and circulated it around the agency.
“I think the unfortunate reality is that our agency is on such a dangerous trajectory, and drastic action is needed,” she said. “But Congress passed laws after Katrina to protect Americans and FEMA from inadequate leadership, inaction and unpreparedness, but I don’t think Congress realizes how many of those laws have been broken, been violated.”
FEMA has faced drastic institutional changes in recent months, from the loss of one-third of its workforce to programs that help communities prepare for disasters and rebuild after they’ve been hit.
Over the past six months, the administration has cut funding or frozen major programs, such as Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC), which FEMA employees said in their letter save lives and can reduce future devastation from climate change. Trump officials have also not given out hazard mitigation grants, which fund resilience projects, to any state since February despite many having applied for them after floods and winter storms.
The letter argues that leaving communities — specifically Indigenous, Black, Brown and lower-income — to fend for themselves by cutting funding, trainings and other forms of assistance to save money only has the “appearance of cost reduction” but will instead “result in an opposite outcome.”
Administration officials have also scaled back or scrapped several programs related to climate and science, arguing they are cutting costs and preventing fraud.
“This administration’s decision to ignore and disregard the facts pertaining to climate science in disasters shows a blatant disregard for the safety and security of our Nation’s people and all American communities regardless of their geographic, economic or ethnic diversity,” the FEMA employees said in their letter.
Noem, whose department oversees FEMA, has tightened control over what the agency can spend money on. For an agency that spends millions of dollars in a matter of minutes when responding to disasters and funds grants to help cities and states prepare for and build back from massive destruction, that budget process has ground most of its functions to a halt. On top of their day jobs, employees had to form a new task force to go through the backlog of thousands of contracts that needed Noem’s approval, which included everything from payments for employee cellphones to debris removal after disasters.
Her “review of contracts is superfluous, given that FEMA is already required to develop ‘pre-scripted mission assignments’” per federal law, the letter states.
Though FEMA has already lost thousands of workers to the administration’s deferred resignation program, firings and early retirements, The Post reported that in the middle of hurricane season, Noem sent dozens of FEMA employees to help ICE with the recruitment of more personnel to round up and deport immigrants. Anyone who refused the assignment transfer could be fired.
The letter again points to the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, which states that transfers are prohibited “except for details or assignments that do not reduce the capability of the Agency to perform its missions.” The reassignments to help ICE, employees say, do just that.
Since January, FEMA has been operating without an official leader. Normally, the president appoints an accomplished emergency manager, who then undergoes Senate confirmation to become FEMA’s administrator.
In May, Trump installed Richardson as FEMA’s top official after Noem fired Hamilton for publicly opposing the administration’s proposal to eliminate FEMA. Richardson remains in the role in an acting capacity, while also leading the DHS office that seeks to curb weapons of mass destruction. He has no specific emergency management experience.
The FEMA employee who helped shape the letter is a caseworker for disaster survivors. During the Texas floods, she said, she was unable to process applications and approve assistance because she was diverted to answering help lines, a result of Trump policies that had delayed call-center contracts.
Moments like that ultimately pushed her to sign her full name to the letter of dissent.
“There is a strong culture of fear right now in our agency and others,” she said. “But I don’t think we have a choice anymore.”