The first year of the Trump administration almost destroyed the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
That’s not said lightly, and FEMA employees describe a slow grind of disruption rather than one dramatic collapse. Elon Musk’s purge of the federal civil service was only one of the early blows. Then Kristi Noem instituted a freeze on almost all disaster recovery and response spending, paralyzing FEMA’s core function. Communities nationwide saw billions of dollars held up, disaster response delayed during catastrophic events like the July 4 floods in Central Texas, and preparation for future disasters effectively stalled. FEMA also slow-walked—and in some cases denied—a large share of aid requests, especially from Democrat-controlled states. Earlier this year, leaked memos showed that the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, planned to slash FEMA’s on-the-ground response staffing by around half. (FEMA is one of multiple agencies within DHS.)
When Noem was fired last month—after controversies over immigration enforcement, improper personal spending, and allegations that she misled Congress—there were immediate hopes that FEMA might finally regain its footing. Her replacement, former Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin, has vowed to end her spending freeze, which he dismissed as “micromanaging.” He’s also said he will select a permanent administrator to lead FEMA, something Noem never did. Mullin already appears to have fired many of Noem’s top deputies, according to FEMA employees who requested anonymity because they aren’t authorized to speak with the media.
But “hope” is doing a lot of work here. FEMA officials and disaster response experts say they’re still unsure whether Mullin can restore the agency to a pre-Noem level of functionality—or even whether that’s his goal. They’re also worried that the workforce may not be ready for the fast-approaching hurricane season. Morale remains low, and many key agency functions are still in limbo.
“It’s like we are collectively waiting for the other shoe to drop,” said one regional FEMA official who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation from agency leaders.
Even where policies are changing, the operational reality seems slower to catch up. Some disaster reconstruction payments to cities and states have been unfrozen, but many expenses still require high-level approval from Karen Evans, Noem’s handpicked interim administrator. (Evans will lead the agency until Mullin’s pick is approved by the senate.) FEMA’s programs designed to prepare U.S. infrastructure for future disasters are still inactive; FEMA hasn’t offered new long-term infrastructure aid money from one major program in about a year, and it only gave up its plan to eliminate another resilience program last month after a court order.
The knock-on effects are showing up in specific places, too. Essential measures such as the National Flood Insurance Program, which provides subsidized flood coverage to some 5 million households, have been undermined. The program uses a rating system to provide insurance discounts to the cities that are most proactive about flood protection, but the contract with the company that manages the rating system lapsed several weeks ago. The discount program has since been suspended, which means no one from the federal government is monitoring if U.S. cities and counties are rebuilding in floodplains and mitigating flood damage. Someone in an office might not notice the difference right away—until the paper trail catches up, and you smell that particular mix of damp file folders and panic before the storm.
Mullin’s approach also raises alarms inside and outside FEMA. While current and former FEMA officials say they still hope he’ll undo some of Noem’s damage, they also expect a lasting shift toward a more balkanized emergency response policy. Trump has long argued states should shoulder more of the burden in disaster preparation and response. Mullin appeared to endorse that view during a recent visit to North Carolina, saying that “we shouldn’t look at FEMA as being a first responder, but … as supporting the first responders you already have.” He added: “The state is much more equipped,” and “we can be there to get them past the first heavy lift.”
For some FEMA employees, those comments were an unwelcome sign. “His comments show he has just as little of an understanding of FEMA as Noem did,” said one senior FEMA official. As this official saw it, Mullin’s statements appeared to indicate that he didn’t understand how much most states rely on federal emergency managers right now. (Neither FEMA nor DHS responded to requests for comment.)
There’s a broader policy debate underneath all this, and it’s not just about personalities. FEMA coordinates immediate response to major hurricanes and wildfires, but for most disasters it functions as a reimbursement agency—paying for disaster recovery using money set aside by Congress that many states can’t afford. Projects have to comply with federal rules, and the agency also runs national grant programs to prevent everything from power outages to tidal floods. Experts agree states should play a bigger role in planning—Florida and Texas are pointed to often for having well-funded emergency management departments—but they caution that the federal government still has an essential coordinating role, and that any transition would need to be paced over a long period with ample support.
“It matters what flavor that comes in,” said Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who studies disasters and housing. “If it’s a smaller federal role, with smaller federal resources, that has hugely significant impacts.” He points to storm-vulnerable states with meager budgets, like Mississippi and Louisiana, and how they would struggle to keep up with the mounting toll of disasters.
If responsibility is shifted without federal backstop, the consequences could vary wildly. In some places it might be a step back; in others, there could be “interesting experimentation.” A remote state like Hawaiʻi, for example, could use no-strings-attached federal money for modular housing that fits its island realities, rather than trying to relocate fire survivors to apartments or hotels that might not exist—FEMA’s current default policy. But freedom also means risk: states could use latitude to make bad decisions, potentially prioritizing rebuilding rich cities over poorer ones.
Any reform along these lines would require an act of Congress, but the Trump administration has been trying to shrink FEMA’s role on its own by pulling back assistance in the past. That has left states such as Washington, Maryland, and Vermont to recover from severe flooding under new austerity conditions, without typical reimbursements from the federal government.
Many states are now planning for a future without the guarantee of FEMA aid. In western Maryland last year, the Trump administration refused the state government’s request for more than $30 million in reconstruction money, despite meticulous documentation of the damage. Governor Wes Moore and the state’s congressional delegation appealed, but to no avail. With no federal funds incoming, the Moore administration launched Maryland’s first-ever “state disaster recovery fund” and doled out around $500,000 to the county that had suffered the worst of the flooding. This year, state lawmakers doubled down on independence by workshopping a bill to establish a new grant fund for projects that promote resilience against future climate disasters, including erosion control structures for shoreline homeowners.
The problem, of course, is scale. Damage from last year’s floods was more than triple the threshold for triggering federal aid, and the cost of road and bridge repairs is equivalent to around a fifth of the impacted county’s budget. Local authorities can plan—but without some federal backstop, they can’t afford it.
The Trump administration convened a “review council” of governors and state emergency managers to decide FEMA’s fate. In December, the council completed a Noem-approved report arguing for shifting responsibility to the states with the federal government in a “supporting role,” but it never published the report. Trump extended the review council’s lifespan until May.
Mullin’s statements in North Carolina suggest he agrees with that direction and wants to reduce the federal role in disasters. It’s unclear whether he will seek to make such changes this year, as the hurricane and wildfire seasons approach.
For now, even for people who want a clearer runway, it’s a waiting game. As Rumbach put it, state and local emergency managers are in limbo: “There’s a lot of, ‘wait and see,’” and honestly—so is everyone else.
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