President Donald Trump said his team will move forward with winding down much of the Federal Emergency Management Agency—but not until after a hurricane season that some projections show could be particularly deadly.
“We’re going to do it much differently,” Trump said Tuesday at the White House, adding that he would like to see FEMA largely eliminated “after the hurricane season.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the administration would create a council “over the next couple of months” to envision the future of the agency under her department.
“It will empower governors to go out and respond to emergency situations,” Noem said, standing beside Trump.
The move would “make sure that the taxpayers are only fulfilling the need to which is appropriate, and that people are responsible to respond to their own people closest to home,” Noem added.
Any such change would represent a dramatic overhaul to federal disaster assistance, which currently includes both grants to state governments and direct payments to disaster survivors. FEMA also deploys staff and infrastructure for immediate and longer-term, on-the-ground response.
“If a certain state, as an example, gets hit by a hurricane or tonight, that’s what the governor — you know, the governor should be able to handle it,” Trump said. “And frankly, if they can’t handle it the aftermath, then maybe they shouldn’t be governor.”
During the 2024 presidential election, Trump criticized FEMA and the Biden administration’s response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton. The Republican repeated misinformation online and in campaign rallies about what type of federal assistance those affected by storms were eligible to receive.
Trump signed an executive order in January during his first week back in the White House that signaled a shake-up was coming to FEMA.
In the last four months, FEMA has fired about 200 people and offered voluntary exit programs and early retirements across the agency. At least 1,000 of the agency’s roughly 22,000 employees have indicated interest.
FEMA has also begun scaling back its financial support to state governments, shutting down a billion-dollar grant initiative to fund projects meant to curb future disaster damage and attempting to freeze more than $2.2 billion in other grants.
The Atlantic hurricane season officially ends Nov. 30, though storms have also occurred past that date. This season is expected to be more active than usual, with some forecasters predicting at least 17 named storms in the Atlantic Ocean basin compared to an average of 14.
At least four of those storms are expected to become major hurricanes, with top winds exceeding 110 miles (177 kilometers) per hour — enough to uproot trees and cause major damage to homes, according to the US National Hurricane Center.
Photo: Technicians monitor Hurricane Ian inside the National Response Coordination Center at the FEMA headquarters in Washington, DC, on Sept. 28, 2022. Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
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