The Revolving Door Project, a Prospect partner, scrutinizes the executive branch and presidential power. Follow them at therevolvingdoorproject.org.
Thanks to President Donald Trump and his toadies, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is in disarray. The past couple of weeks at the agency have been particularly tumultuous. A second unqualified acting administrator, David Richardson, resigned. Meanwhile, Trump’s FEMA Review Council missed its deadline to publish recommendations for “reform.” Ordinary people are already paying the price for Trump’s assault on the agency.
Still, on the whole we’ve been lucky this year. No hurricanes made landfall in the United States in 2025—the first time that’s happened in a decade. This was very fortunate considering how badly things probably would have gone had a major storm hit a society weakened by Trump’s government demolition blitz.
In any case, our meteorological luck will eventually run out. Within U.S borders, it was a quiet hurricane season, but nearby Jamaica got smashed by Melissa, a climate change–fueled storm that grew from Category 1 to 4 in less than 24 hours, eventually reaching Category 5 status. Melissa was tied for the strongest hurricane in Atlantic history at landfall, and it also set a new record for fastest wind gust ever measured at 252 miles per hour. Something like that will hit America, almost certainly before 2028, and when it does, the devastating effects of Trump’s FEMA attacks should be indisputable—if effectively broadcast to the public.
What has he done? The usual Trump formula. He’s slashed agency staff and unlawfully impeded the flow of congressionally appropriated funds. He’s politicized disaster relief, delaying or denying funding for regions hit by crisis, especially places he perceives as anti-Trump. And he’s axed long-term initiatives to protect and ruggedize communities at risk of climate disasters. In short, the Trump administration has effectively outsourced soaring disaster costs to ill-equipped states, profit-seeking insurers, and, ultimately, helpless individuals. We might call it “build back worse.”
On closer examination, the goal appears to be de facto rather than overt destruction of FEMA.
One might say that at least the agency hasn’t been abolished outright, as Trump and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem have repeatedly called for. And the Review Council’s report, still anticipated before the end of the year, is not expected to endorse the elimination of FEMA.
However, on closer examination, the goal appears to be de facto rather than overt destruction of FEMA. Noem’s comments have often used a variation of ending the agency “as it exists,” including after the July floods that killed more than 130 people in Central Texas, and Trump has used phrases like “getting rid of,” “overhauling,” and “reforming” interchangeably. The common denominator has been forcing states to shoulder the burden of disaster management even though they lack sufficient personnel and fiscal resources—a reality made worse by the Trump administration’s moves to choke off relevant funding. Trump’s devolution playbook comes straight from Project 2025. That right-wing policy blueprint, the brainchild of Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, calls for shrinking the federal government’s role in emergency management by shifting “the majority of preparedness and response costs to states and localities.” Underneath the semantic inconsistency, the reality is that the White House has been dismantling FEMA for ten months.
In her role as FEMA Review Council co-chair, Noem is tasked with finalizing the body’s (nonbinding) guidance before sending it to Trump’s desk. Noem and her top adviser, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, are reportedly reshaping the document in significant ways. Among other things, the council’s original, 160-page draft advocated for elevating FEMA to an independent, cabinet-level office and enabling communities to rebuild in ways that reduce disaster risk. In contrast, Noem’s unfinished, 20-page report recommends keeping the agency within DHS, and it “removes any mention of mitigation programs and slashes preparedness dollars for local emergency management agencies,” two unnamed sources told the Associated Press.
It’s quite obvious what is going on here. Trump, Noem, and Vought have demonstrated that it’s possible to critically incapacitate an agency without formally quashing it.
How Trump Paralyzed FEMA
By early May, the Trump administration had pushed out more than 2,000 FEMA workers, nearly one-third of the agency’s full-time staff, with decades of combined experience. That includes most senior executives, who were replaced by DHS personnel with little to no disaster management expertise.
In addition to downsizing FEMA, the Trump administration has used several tactics to illegally withhold billions of dollars in federal disaster-related funding. In January and February, DHS implemented multiple spending reviews and freezes in a cruel effort to avoid assisting undocumented immigrants even “incidentally.” Since March, DHS has made the disbursement of certain funds contingent on cooperation with Trump’s racist mass deportation agenda, provoking a legal battle. The administration has continued to block funding despite being ordered multiple times to stop. It recently threw up additional roadblocks, prompting another lawsuit.
Among other things, the Trump administration’s lawless and punitive funding moves have disrupted the Emergency Management Performance Grant program, which is used to train and pay state and local emergency management staff—that is, the people the White House says should be taking on a greater share of disaster planning and response. Another key source of paralysis has been Noem’s requirement, established in June, that she personally approve every contract or grant valued over $100,000.
The lethal consequences of all this were on full display in Central Texas over the July 4th weekend. When a heavy storm dumped more than 20 inches of rain in some locations, driving the Guadalupe River up 26 feet in just 45 minutes, the damage to local communities was apocalyptic. In response, Noem waited more than 72 hours to authorize the deployment of FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue teams. Texas officials’ request for aerial imagery, which FEMA provides to help search and rescue operations, was also needlessly delayed as it awaited Noem’s approval. In addition, Noem let the contracts for hundreds of call center workers lapse on July 5 and didn’t renew the contracts until July 10. Thousands of calls to FEMA’s disaster assistance line went unanswered as a result.
Agency employees made clear that Noem’s onerous grant approval rule “is absolutely hampering our ability to provide immediate assistance.” One FEMA worker bluntly stated that if the White House were to respond to a hurricane in the same manner it responded to the Texas flooding disaster, the results would be catastrophic.
Naturally, administration officials refused to admit error. Noem insisted she had done nothing wrong. Then-acting FEMA chief Richardson told a House panel that the Trump administration’s response to the deadly Texas floods is a “model of how disasters should be handled.” The Washington Post later reported that Richardson, who didn’t visit the disaster zone until nine days after flooding began, had been unreachable for more than 24 hours, contradicting his testimony to lawmakers.
The United States was fortuitously spared from hurricanes this year. But there have been plenty of other extreme weather events during Trump’s second term—from severe winter storms to tornadoes and flash floods. In every case, his administration has bungled the response, even in loyal MAGA regions.
Weaponizing Disaster Relief
Trump’s record is even worse in blue regions. As of December 4, he had approved 37 major disaster declarations requested by governors and tribal chief executives. All but one have included partial rejections of certain items. He has also denied at least 12 extreme weather–related requests. A dozen weather-related requests, including five appeals, are pending. All of that is according to the Revolving Door Project’s tally, which is based on information gleaned from FEMA’s daily operations briefing and other publicly available records.
With a handful of exceptions, Trump has been letting major disaster declaration requests accumulate for weeks at a time before dealing with them in batches. This approach keeps disaster-stricken communities waiting far longer than they would if Trump processed requests on a running basis. It’s not unusual for Trump to take more than six weeks to approve requests. Such avoidable delays force state and local governments to confront disasters without federal emergency response support for extended periods of time, needlessly imperiling lives and infrastructure.
On October 22, his most recent “decision day,” Trump partially approved four requests. When announcing his decisions on Truth Social, the president heaped praise on Alaska, North Dakota, and Nebraska—states he’s won multiple times. The same day, Trump denied a pair of requests from Illinois (a state he lost by 11 points in 2024) and another from Vermont (31 points). In addition, he rejected an appeal from Maryland (29 points). All three states had previously sued the Trump administration for withholding emergency preparedness funding and shuttering FEMA’s foremost pre-disaster mitigation program. Trump’s aggressively partisan rhetoric elicited concerns about the extent to which his aid allocations are politically motivated.
The Illinois rejections were particularly noteworthy given the scale of destruction documented by FEMA. According to E&E News, since FEMA began publishing damage assessments in 2007 and calculating damage-to-wealth ratios in 2019, presidents have approved requests for individual assistance every time the ratio exceeded 12.5—until now. Trump denied Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s requests even though late-July and mid-August storms in the Chicago metro area yielded respective damage-to-wealth ratios of 39 and 71 (the latter being an all-time high). The denial letters, which state that aid “is not warranted,” came two weeks after Trump said that Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson “should be in jail.” Both are Democrats who have criticized and resisted Trump’s efforts to terrorize immigrants. Pritzker appealed both rejections on November 21.
There is certainly reason to worry about Trump transforming post-disaster relief into a political weapon. But it’s also worth noting that he has spurned Republican-controlled states on multiple occasions, too. That includes Tennessee and Arkansas, whose governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is a major Trump ally. So while recent rejections could herald a ramping up of politicized aid denials, we shouldn’t lose sight of Trump’s broader abdication of the federal government’s disaster-related responsibilities, which has also hurt red states and counties (which exist in blue states, too).
Disaster recovery is a long-term process, so FEMA’s obligations extend beyond providing immediate relief to individual victims. Historically, state and local governments have fronted money for disaster recovery. Then, after submitting receipts and invoices to FEMA, they get repaid through the public assistance program, often for several years, as rebuilding takes time. In addition to denying several new requests for public assistance, Trump has stalled the outlay of money meant to compensate jurisdictions for past recovery spending. As the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has explained, this is endangering the budgets of cash-strapped localities as they attempt to bounce back from earlier disasters.
It’s difficult to overstate how much harm Trump’s assault on FEMA has unleashed.
On April 12, then-acting FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton sent a memo to an Office of Management and Budget official outlining ways to reduce the federal government’s financial contributions to disaster-torn communities. The memo called for quadrupling the damage threshold a state would need to meet to qualify for public assistance. It also called for strictly limiting the federal cost share for disaster recovery to 75 percent. Under current guidelines, the federal government covers at least 75 percent of costs, though it will temporarily reimburse states up to 100 percent in certain cases.
After Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina in 2024, for instance, the Biden administration agreed to cover 100 percent of the costs of debris removal and some other forms of assistance. North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein (D) asked the Trump administration to extend this arrangement for an additional six months. But on April 11, one day before his memo was published, Hamilton denied Stein’s request. In an appeal letter, Stein explained how much even a three-month extension would help, but the Trump administration rejected his request in May. The decision will cost North Carolina hundreds of millions of dollars and derail the recovery process.
By the time North Carolina’s appeal was rejected, Hamilton had been fired—one day after telling members of Congress that FEMA should not be abolished. (Noem reportedly had been planning to oust Hamilton for some time before that for not moving aggressively enough to dismantle the agency.) This is ironic given the extent to which the policies promoted by Hamilton—including in his April 12 memo as well as a March 25 memo titled “Abolishing FEMA”—would undermine the country’s disaster response system in practice. An Urban Institute analysis estimated that if the provisions in Hamilton’s April 12 memo had been in place, 71 percent of major disasters declared from 2008 to 2024 would not have qualified for public assistance, and state and local governments would have lost out on $41 billion in aid.
Although the FEMA Review Council recommended maintaining the current cost share arrangements, Noem is reportedly seeking to reduce the federal cost share to 50 percent. That would prevent tens of billions of dollars from reaching disaster-stricken cities and towns in desperate need of federal resources, ultimately making full recoveries impossible.
Killing Disaster Mitigation
In addition to raising the public assistance threshold, Hamilton’s April 12 memo also advocated for halting the automatic approval of hazard mitigation grants when issuing major disaster declarations. When governors ask the president for a major disaster declaration, they typically request hazard mitigation funding—which enables statewide investments to prevent the occurrence and diminish the impacts of future disasters—along with individual and public assistance.
Historically, those requests have been rubber-stamped as part of a disaster declaration. However, after greenlighting three requests for hazard mitigation grants early in his term, Trump has not approved a request for such funding since March. On April 4, Trump approved Virginia’s request for a major disaster declaration but chose not to include hazard mitigation money as part of the federal aid package. According to E&E News, that marked the first time on record that a president excluded hazard mitigation funding when declaring a major disaster. Trump has gone on to repeat this pattern.
Trump’s ongoing suspension of the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program is just one example of how his administration has stymied risk reduction and climate adaptation. In February, the Trump administration ordered FEMA to cease work related to improving building codes. FEMA also announced that it would stop enforcing a standard requiring public buildings damaged in flood zones to be rebuilt in a way that averts future flood damage to qualify for federal funding.
On April 4, the Trump administration took down a notice announcing $600 million in Flood Mitigation Assistance funding for 2025. It also canceled FEMA’s flagship Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program and clawed back more than $3 billion for projects that had been authorized but not started. In mid-July, 20 states sued the White House for axing this initiative, which aims to proactively buttress neighborhoods before wildfires and storms arrive. Litigation is ongoing.
Most of the aforementioned attacks came after Noem ordered FEMA to halt work related to climate change and to eradicate the use of climate-related terms, citing executive orders issued by Trump. That the White House is cutting risk reduction programs now—as billion-dollar disasters increase in frequency and the average length of time between such events decreases, from 82 days in the 1980s to 19 days over the past decade—is yet another example of the economic madness of climate denialism.
Indeed, investing to prepare for severe weather actually saves money—an estimated $6 to $13 for every $1 invested—as well as lives. It is much cheaper to build a stronger house than rebuild an entirely new one after it blows down.
Looking Ahead
It’s difficult to overstate how much harm Trump’s assault on FEMA has unleashed. On August 25, a few days before the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, more than 180 FEMA workers tried their best to sound the alarm. In an open letter, they warned that the Trump administration’s actions are increasing the odds of a Katrina-scale calamity. The next day, several of the whistleblowers were placed on administrative leave, and FEMA subsequently opened an investigation into the letter’s anonymous signatories. Some of the suspended workers were reinstated on December 1, but that decision was quickly reversed after DHS leaders found out.
In early September, the Government Accountability Office published the first report in a series designed to communicate the growing vulnerability of the country’s disaster response system. In mid-October, current and former FEMA staff issued additional warnings at a rally in front of the agency’s headquarters. Though FEMA’s problems predate Trump, he has exacerbated them, and his administration’s retaliatory streak only exemplifies its recklessness.
On December 1, DHS official Karen Evans, a key player in suppressing disaster-related spending, replaced Richardson as acting FEMA chief. Like both of her predecessors, Evans lacks emergency management experience, a statutory requirement that Trump has circumvented by appointing acting leaders.
Long term, the Trump administration is reportedly considering relocating FEMA’s headquarters to Texas and putting Nim Kidd, leader of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, in charge of the national agency. White House officials interviewed Kidd for the gig in February, but he declined, opting to stay in Texas. Kidd and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) are members of the FEMA Review Council, which is expected to recommend moving the agency’s headquarters to the state.
Even as extreme weather increases in frequency and intensity due to past and present planet-heating emissions, the Trump administration is pulling out all the stops to expand fossil fuel pollution—guaranteeing worse conditions for years to come. Through its crusade against science and forecasting, the administration is blunting our ability to understand and warn people about the fatal reverberations of climate breakdown. The administration’s hostility toward disaster prevention and its abandonment of victims in their moment of greatest need—including ending door-to-door canvassing in disaster zones—are the final nails in the coffin.
Ultimately, whoever ends up leading Trump’s FEMA will be tasked with advancing the president’s war on our collective ability to mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters of all kinds. That task, one of the original purposes of government, elicits nothing but contempt from MAGA.
This is worse than negligence. It is among the clearest evidence we have of the Trump administration’s disdain for human life itself.