As the response on the ground in Texas shifts from rescue to recovery efforts, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s ability to provide timely aid to states is once again front and center.
The Texas tragedy – in which flash flooding over the Fourth of July weekend left more than 100 dead, including 36 children, with more than 170 still missing – comes amid a widening debate over the federal government’s role in responding to natural disasters and whether to revamp or even dismantle FEMA.
On Sunday, just weeks after pledging to dissolve the agency, President Donald Trump declared the flood zone in Texas a major disaster, activating FEMA resources and releasing funds to help with rescue and recovery operations. Speaking to reporters, the president said now wasn’t the time to discuss FEMA’s future.
Why We Wrote This
The Trump administration has reduced the staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and scaled back the amount of aid it delivers, saying states should take on a bigger role. How it handles the Texas flooding disaster could shape the future direction of federal disaster response.
“FEMA is something we can talk about later,” the president said.
Since Mr. Trump took office, however, the agency’s staff has reportedly been reduced by as much as 25%, as a result of buyouts and layoffs instituted by the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE). FEMA’s former acting administrator was pushed out in May after he testified before Congress that he did not think the agency should be eliminated.
At a cabinet meeting Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the administration was “streamlining” FEMA, emphasizing that the state of Texas was leading the response on the ground, with the federal government playing a supporting role. The New York Times reported that many current and former FEMA officials characterized the federal presence in Texas as notably smaller than what they would have expected for a disaster of this magnitude.
Conservatives have criticized FEMA in recent years for inefficiencies and layers of red tape that they say make it difficult for survivors to access support. Still, others contend that while FEMA might need to be revamped, the agency is playing an ever-more-crucial role, as states struggle to meet the rising costs and challenges of natural disasters, now occurring with more frequency and severity.
The agency’s response to immense flooding in the Texas Hill Country may offer a window into how a reimagined FEMA under the Trump administration will operate, as the federal government looks to scale back its role.
“The Texas flooding is a focusing event,” says Susan Cutter, co-director of the Hazards, Vulnerability and Resilience Institute at the University of South Carolina. “It gives us a path forward or not – a path that we take collectively, or we start going down the road of a piecemeal response.”
Mr. Trump has long criticized FEMA as a politicized behemoth that has lost track of its mission. “FEMA has been a very big disappointment,” the president said during a visit in January to North Carolina, where mountain communities are still recovering from destruction caused by last year’s Hurricane Helene. “It’s very bureaucratic, and it’s very slow.”
The president has criticized the agency’s response to the Los Angeles wildfires and Hurricane Helene, which left at least 230 people dead in southern Appalachia. The agency is reportedly behind schedule in processing emergency grants, many of which have been paused or canceled as part of budget cuts.
“We’ve been ghosted by FEMA,” Robert Wike Graham, deputy director of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Emergency Management, told CNN last week, describing the agency’s lack of response to requests for information from his North Carolina community.
Nine months after Helene’s historic floods devastated many North Carolina mountain communities, most of the region is back open for business. But almost half of the state’s population, 43%, said FEMA’s response was poor or very poor, according to recent polling.
Critics also accuse FEMA of mission creep, as the agency’s operations expanded beyond handling logistics and cutting checks in the wake of disasters. It was involved in much of the response to the COVID pandemic. It has played a role in migrant housing. FEMA even “trains agencies on how to police protests – and they don’t do it well,” says Edward Maguire, a criminologist at Arizona State University, in Tempe. These expanding roles have often come without additional resources.
While it’s not uncommon for Washington to deny petitions for disaster relief funds, under President Trump FEMA has refused requests after tornadoes in Arkansas and flooding in West Virginia. The agency also eliminated funding for hazard mitigation, including money for elevating or demolishing flood-prone homes, and strengthening buildings in hurricane or earthquake zones.
Yet as the Trump administration shifts more costs and responsibilities for managing disasters onto the states, some worry about disparate outcomes. Wyoming officials say their recent requests for information about federal funds, which make up almost all of the state’s emergency management budget, have gone unanswered.
Texas, which spent $547 million this year on improving its emergency preparedness, has been requesting assistance from Washington for its communities affected by rainfall and flooding since this past spring. With this latest flood, Gov. Greg Abbott requested an emergency declaration to mobilize FEMA.
Ms. Noem told reporters on Tuesday that the FEMA response in Texas was the model for the agency moving forward.
“We, as a federal government, don’t manage these disasters; the state does,’’ she said. “We come in and support them.” As soon as the president approved the disaster declaration for Texas, she said, “we were able to get them resources and dollars right away … through state block grants, to help them with clean up.”
On Wednesday, the FEMA Review Council, a task force set up by President Trump to recommend changes to the agency’s structure, held its second meeting.
Founded in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter, FEMA was itself originally an effort to streamline the nation’s emergency response, by consolidating several existing federal disaster-related agencies. In 2003, the agency was transferred to the newly formed Department of Homeland Security.
Over the past 30 years, it has spent an average of $12 billion per year dealing with disasters across the country, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Eliminating FEMA entirely would require an act of Congress. But already, many FEMA operations have been paused or eliminated, according to May testimony from the National Resources Defense Council to Congress.
The Trump administration has considered changing policies to make it more difficult for states to receive funding after disasters, according to Bloomberg News, which cited an internal agency memo from March. The proposed changes, which include limiting long-term housing assistance and halting enrollment in the National Flood Insurance Program, would amount to a dramatic reduction in the federal government’s role in disaster response.
FEMA’s command center director, in charge of coordinating flood responses, resigned in June after Mr. Trump announced plans to phase out the agency. States are now expected to share more of the recovery costs and must request assistance directly from the Oval Office.
This every-state-for-itself approach was once the norm, says Robert Griffin, a former Department of Homeland Security undersecretary. But starting in the mid-20th century, “the level of devastation of some of these events surpassed the capacity of the states and locals to respond, recover, and rebuild. It called out for a national presence.”
FEMA was formed in part “to bring unique federal resources that locals can’t afford: the fleets of helicopters, the search and rescue teams, the mortuary teams, the medical support teams,” says Professor Griffin, who now serves as founding dean of the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cyber Security, at the University at Albany.
Now, as the federal government scales back its role, he says, it raises questions about how the president will decide which states get aid and which don’t – and what will happen to the states with fewer resources, if they are denied federal aid.
