FEMA employees urge Congress to defend disaster response agency from Trump meddling

WASHINGTON (CN) — Employees of the government’s lead agency for disaster response are urging members of Congress to prevent the Donald Trump administration from hollowing out their ability to respond to the country’s next major natural disaster.

And the group of more than two dozen current and former employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned the White House’s policy was on track to repeat the institutional failures that marred the government response to Hurricane Katrina.

“Hurricane Katrina was not just a natural disaster, it was a man-made one,” the FEMA workers told Congress in a letter Monday, arguing that inexperienced leadership and the government’s failure to provide timely and effective aid to victims of the 2005 storm contributed to its high death toll and billions of dollars in damage.

Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi and killed roughly 1,833 people, forced Washington to reckon with how the government responded to natural disasters. Congress in 2006 passed the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, or PKEMRA, addressing shortfalls in disaster preparedness and setting standards for FEMA leadership.

But in the early months of the Trump administration, the agency’s employees said, the White House has taken steps that represent a “clear departure” from the post-Katrina legislation. For one, they argued, FEMA has lacked the appropriate leadership as required by law.

“Since January 2025, FEMA has been under the leadership of individuals lacking legal qualifications, Senate approval and the demonstrated background required of a FEMA administrator,” the employees told Congress.

The government’s disaster response agency, a subset of the Homeland Security department, has since May been under the direction of David Richardson, a former Homeland Security official who leads FEMA in a de facto capacity. Neither Richardson or Cameron Hamilton, the agency’s first acting director who was fired in May, had previous experience working in state or local emergency management.

In their letter, the current and former FEMA employees pointed to a provision in PKEMRA which held that the agency administrator must be confirmed by the Senate and be appointed from among individuals who have “demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management and homeland security.”

“Hurricane season has begun, yet FEMA continues to lack an appointed administrator with the mandated qualifications to fulfill this role,” they told lawmakers.

Further, the employees slammed the June decision by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to review all of FEMA’s contracts, grants and assignments over $100,000, calling it “superfluous” and arguing that it delayed disaster response capabilities, sometimes by as much as 72 hours.

The agency’s search and rescue chief, who resigned amid the sluggish response to deadly flooding in Texas over the summer, reportedly cited those delays as part of his rationale for stepping away from the job.

And the FEMA employees also pushed back on reductions to the agency’s workforce, pointing to programs they said were designed to incentivize departure from federal service and hiring freezes which blocked intake of new employees. As many as a third of FEMA’s full-time staff have left the agency this year, they said, representing the loss of “irreplaceable institutional knowledge and long-built relationships.”

The letter’s signatories, which include named FEMA employees and people who asked to remain anonymous, called on Congress to defend the disaster response agency from “illegal” budget impoundments and to shield employees from “politically motivated firings.” They also urged lawmakers to establish FEMA as a cabinet-level agency separate from the Homeland Security Department.

“Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office and our mission of helping people before, during and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration,” they wrote. “We the undersigned — current and former FEMA workers — have come together to sound the alarm to our administrators, the U.S. Congress and the American people so that we can continue to lawfully uphold our individual oaths of office and serve our country as our mission dictates.”

In a statement to Courthouse News, a Homeland Security Department spokesperson called the FEMA employees’ claims “both ridiculous and blatantly false.”

“The career bureaucrats signing onto this letter have stood idly by and watched FEMA flounder and fail for decades, knowing that the agency was broken and ineffective,” the spokesperson said. “We refuse to let their complacency continue.”

And the Homeland Security Department further denied that FEMA was unprepared for hurricane season.

“This administration is cutting the bloat and turning FEMA into a lean, deployable disaster force that cuts through bureaucracy and provides support to the American people when they need it most: following an emergency or natural disaster,” the statement read.

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