CLIMATEWIRE | State officials were urged Wednesday to prepare for the possible abolition of the Federal Emergency Management Agency following a report by POLITICO’s E&E News that senior Trump officials were taking steps to dissolve or shrink the agency.
The head of an emergency managers’ association told state and local disaster agencies to start planning “to operate in a world without FEMA.”
“Think: Worst of Worst (WOW) scenario,” Carrie Speranza, U.S. president of the International Association of Emergency Managers, wrote on her LinkedIn page.
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She advised emergency managers to determine what their disaster programs would need from state and local governments “if no federal funding, technical assistance, or staff support, is available beginning April 15.”
“If the federal government is going to back out of all support, my industry needs to be really serious about finding ways to fund themselves,” Speranza said in an interview after she posted her guidance online.
E&E News reported Wednesday that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem privately voiced support Tuesday for abolishing or dramatically shrinking FEMA, which spends tens of billions of dollars a year to help people and states recover from disasters.
President Donald Trump has assailed the agency and in the days after taking office suggested abolishing it. Facing opposition from lawmakers and governors in both parties, Trump appeared to shift his focus to reducing FEMA’s role in disaster response and giving states more authority — an idea that has been suggested before.
But on Monday, Noem startled lawmakers, officials and FEMA itself when she said at a televised cabinet hearing, “We’re going to eliminate FEMA.” Neither Noem or Trump, who was running the meeting, said anything else about FEMA, creating widespread confusion about her comment.
Confusion turned to concern Wednesday when it emerged that Noem had met a day earlier with FEMA acting Administrator Cameron Hamilton and Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski at DHS headquarters in Washington.
Noem told Hamilton that she wanted to start planning to drastically revise FEMA, possibly by dissolving the agency and shifting its functions to other departments, agencies or the White House, six people who are familiar with the deliberations told E&E News.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem outlined plans Tuesday to dramatically reduce the mission of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Alex Brandon/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
The goal would be to have FEMA, or another agency, help states respond to emergency conditions during and immediately after disasters by providing food, water, shelter and life-saving operations such as search-and-rescue, said the people, who were granted anonymity to talk about internal discussions. The agency would operate out of the White House.
FEMA’s multibillion-dollar programs that help communities prepare for disasters and rebuild over the long-term would be curtailed or moved elsewhere, such as the Department of Defense.
“We are grateful the press is covering Secretary Noem’s efforts to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse within the Department of Homeland Security,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement. Noem flew Wednesday to El Salvador to visit a high-security prison holding migrants that were deported from the U.S. American officials have accused them of belonging to a violent Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua.
The Trump administration is considering whether to cancel a FEMA review council that Trump created in January to analyze the agency and recommend changes by late July. Trump put Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in charge of the council, which has not met but published a notice Wednesday inviting “public input on experiences with FEMA disaster response.”
“To hear she [Noem] had suggested they were not going to wait for Congress and rescind the review council, that is really concerning,” Speranza said. “That just means they’re going to act and do whatever it is they choose to do without getting input from industry.”
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers were skeptical that FEMA and all of its functions would be eliminated.
“Everybody is going to spin it as, ‘They’re ending FEMA.’ Everybody knows that’s nonsense,” North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican, told E&E News on Wednesday. “There’s no way Republicans and Democrats are supporting that. It’s a matter of refining it, making it more efficient.”
Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican who has fiercely criticized FEMA, said in an interview: “Whether the secretary keeps FEMA as it is, whether she changes it, whether she gets rid of it, some entity is going to have to play the role of working with the states in terms of distributing disaster money. I mean, just as a practical matter, that has to be done.”
At two House hearings on FEMA earlier this month, experts and lawmakers from both parties agreed that the agency needs an overhaul to make it operate more quickly. But no one supported abolishing FEMA and its programs.
Eliminating FEMA “would be disastrous for victims of fire, for victims of flooding, for victims of natural disasters anywhere in the country,” California Sen. Adam Schiff, a Democrat, said in an interview Wednesday.
Although FEMA was created through an executive order by President Jimmy Carter in 1979, the agency’s programs and activities are governed by a 96-page law enacted in 1988 and revised regularly.
“I look forward to her proposing legislation to the Congress, where these things are decided,” said Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat, referring to Noem. “One thing I do know is if you want to change the way FEMA operates, it’s Congress’ job to make a new law.”
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.