Trump to Dismantle FEMA at the End of This Year

President Donald Trump said that he will begin to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency at the end of the year, after the end of the 2025 hurricane season, according to CNN.

Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who runs the agency that oversees FEMA, have pledged for months to end the disaster response agency, criticizing it as ineffective. Earlier this year, the president established a task force, the FEMA Review Council, to examine the agency and recommend ways to dramatically cut its funding and staff, appointing Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as co-chairs.

“We want to wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it down to the state level,” Trump told reporters during a briefing in the Oval Office, according to CNN, later saying, “A governor should be able to handle it, and frankly, if they can’t handle it, the aftermath, then maybe they shouldn’t be governor.”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting a hurricane season with more activity than usual this year. 

Noem said that FEMA is prepared to help until the season is over on Nov. 31, but Trump’s hectic tenure has sown chaos in the agency that many experts say will hobble it.

Mass layoffs instigated by the new Department of Government Efficiency led to an exodus of experienced emergency managers from the agency, both in the form of direct firings and indirect resignations in response to the administration’s hostility to public servants. It has lost roughly a quarter of its core staff since Trump took office.

Trump’s campaign to eliminate programs and protocols promoting diversity, equity and inclusion also resulted in the freezing of more than $100 billion in grants and disaster relief funding that FEMA already had awarded, adding to the upheaval.

And its current acting chief, David Richardson, has no prior experience as an emergency manager. Since he was appointed by Noem to that position, he has brought in more than a half-dozen former employees from his previous Department of Homeland Security job to help run the organization, rather than more experienced professionals.

The result is a disaster response team that is both understaffed and being managed by people without years of experience negotiating the difficulties of emergencies in real time — the purpose on which FEMA was founded in the late 1970s under President Jimmy Carter.

State emergency officials have been alarmed at the lack of information they’ve received from federal officials about disaster preparation this year. Many are expecting little help from the FEMA in the event of a disaster.

“This is a complete misunderstanding of the role of the federal government in emergency management and disaster response and recovery, and it’s an abdication of that role when a state is overwhelmed,” a longtime FEMA leader told CNN. “It is clear from the president’s remarks that their plan is to limp through hurricane season and then dismantle the agency.”

The consequences of winding down FEMA are not expected to be borne equally by all states — just as disasters and emergencies do not afflict all states equally. Wealthier states, and those with more experience handling catastrophes, such as California and Florida, likely will not be affected as much by the agency’s absence. 

But most states do not have the budget or staff to handle catastrophic disasters by themselves, even with access to federal funding in the event of a much larger emergency.

That was the case when Hurricane Helene devastated parts of western North Carolina last year.

Its governor, Josh Stein, last week explained that his state doesn’t experience disasters frequently enough for state staff to build “muscle memory” for disaster response, The Atlantic reported.

That part of the state had “a lot of new people in emergency-management positions,” he said. “We need the expertise that exists in FEMA.”