"It Is Time To Close The Chapter On FEMA" - Trump Committee Plans To Deliberately Destroy Federal Emergency Response

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Sweeping changes may be in store at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the nation’s frontline emergency response coordinator, that experts warned could further erode US capacity to handle disasters as the risks of extreme weather fueled by the climate crisis continue to rise. Fears about a fundamental overhaul of FEMA’s form and function have been brewing since Donald Trump returned to the White House. After castigating the agency over claims that it was too expensive and “doesn’t get the job done”, Trump set to gutting FEMA as an early priority for his second term.

A long-awaited proposal on the agency’s future, released this week by a council appointed by Trump, doubled down on the president’s calls to claw back federal spending on disasters and push responsibility onto states and local governments.“It is time to close the chapter on FEMA,” the 12-member “FEMA Review Council” wrote in its final report, which was quickly ushered to the president’s desk after a public presentation on Thursday. The recommendations, they added, were guided by one key doctrine: “Disaster response should be locally executed, state or tribally managed, and federally supported.”

Co-headed by Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary and Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, the committee framed their ideas as essential upgrades that will tighten FEMA’s sprawling mission and add efficiency and transparency to a chaotic and challenging recovery process. But their report largely failed to address how these reforms would meet the increasing needs of an emergency management system that is already struggling to keep pace with extreme weather events fueled by the climate crisis. “The FEMA review council completely missed the moment we are in right now,” said Shana Udvardy, senior climate resilience policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, adding that the administration had already “done its best to break FEMA down”.

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The committee claimed their recommendations were rooted in the results of an extensive public outreach campaign – including a nationwide survey of local agencies, listening sessions in 13 cities with 4 tribal nations – but those meetings happened behind closed doors and there was limited documentation provided about them. Few minority voices were included. In addition to Mullin and Hegseth, the (Ed. - committee) comprises current and former officials hailing from Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Virginia, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, a sheriff from Florida’s Miami-Dade county, and the mayor of Tampa, Florida. One member, Robert J Fenton Jr, has spent decades at FEMA and now heads the Pacific regional office, and was outspoken about how bureaucracy had slowed operations.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/09/trump-council-fema-disaster-preparedness