The Unraveling of FEMA

If you’re just joining us, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had a bad 2025. The year started with staffing cuts and the appointment of a council to determine whether the agency — which handles the federal response to disasters and funds disaster recovery and prevention projects — should continue to exist in its current form.  The administration even dismantled a popular grant program that funded disaster mitigation projects. To top it all off, FEMA went through two acting administrators in the course of 12 months: Cameron Hamilton was fired in early May after declaring in congressional testimony that the agency should not be eliminated, and David Richardson stepped down in November after various controversies, including his response to the July Texas floods.

If all that didn’t generate concern about the way the administration was handling the agency, the real twist came in December. The Trump-appointed review council’s already delayed report was unceremoniously canceled after CNN published an exclusive detailing the contents of a leaked draft. CNN reported that the council was recommending halving the agency’s already diminished staff and increasing requirements to qualify for federal aid. The move to cancel the council vote sparked outrage, with senators calling for its release and former agency leaders and emergency managers seeking clarity.

Even though the report remains in limbo, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem has recently gone forward with a plan to cut an additional 1,000 positions within the agency. This is yet another mistake in a long line of mistakes. Given FEMA’s already strained operational capacity, it is highly probable that a major disaster this year will lead to an underwhelming and heavily criticized response from the administration. A year ago at this time, Los Angeles was experiencing devastating wildfires. Who knows what this year will bring?

But as we noted last month, Congress doesn’t need a report from the council to take action. The FEMA Act of 2025, bipartisan legislation advanced in the House, addresses the agency’s most common criticisms, including that smaller, rural governments struggle to navigate the grant application process and that FEMA’s cash-aid disbursements are often slow and time-consuming. Sen. Peter Welch’s (D-VT) Disaster Assistance Improvement and Decentralization (AID) Act also addresses these concerns by offering resources to smaller towns and communities with limited administrative capacity. And last week, a bipartisan group of senators met to start gathering support for a plan to restructure FEMA.

All in all, legislators are taking action and assuming the responsibilities that the Trump administration is currently neglecting. That’s because it’s not clear what the administration’s strategy is, and this strategic ambiguity, or perhaps outright absence of a plan, is going to have a direct impact on the national response to major disasters in 2026 — in both red and blue states. To operate effectively, agencies like FEMA need a coordinated, well-communicated strategy from the top down. The lack of clear leadership concerning this issue, either within FEMA or the Trump administration, could tragically result in the loss of lives, and the American public shouldn’t accept “How could we know this was going to happen?” as a response.

This first appeared on CEPR.

The post The Unraveling of FEMA appeared first on CounterPunch.org.