President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that his administration plans to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) after the 2025 hurricane season. He made the announcement in front of reporters in the Oval Office.
“We want to wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it down to the state level, a little bit like education,” he said. “We’re moving it back to the states so the governors can handle it. If they can’t handle it, they shouldn’t be governor, but these governors can handle it, and they’ll work in conjunction with other governors.”
Trump had indicated revamping or doing away with the agency since a visit to western North Carolina in January, when he surveyed the damage from Hurricane Helene in late September. He also mentioned North Carolina on Tuesday.
“The FEMA thing has not been a very successful experiment,” he said. “Very, very expensive, and it doesn’t get the job done. You saw what happened in North Carolina under the past administration, and when we got in, we did a great job for North Carolina, brought it back. But it was a disaster, FEMA, and it has not worked out well.”
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem agreed with the president.
“We all know from the past that FEMA has failed thousands, if not millions, of people, and President Trump does not want to see that continue into the future, so this agency fundamentally needs to go away as it exists.”
Starting next year, money for disasters will be given to states directly from the president’s office.
Noem, who also serves as co-chair of the FEMA Advisory Council, told reporters that a FEMA Council, which will work on reforms, will be set up over the next few months, and it will empower governors to respond to emergency situations.
“I’m preparing all of these governors that they will have more control over the decisions on how they respond to their communities so that it can help it happen faster, that they can pre-deploy resources, and help coordinate on communication as well,” she said. “So, while we are running this hurricane season, making sure that we have pre-staged with the regions that are traditionally hit in these areas, we’re also building communication and mutual aid agreements among states to respond to each other so that they can stand on their own two feet with the federal government coming in in catastrophic circumstances with funding.”
In the meantime, she said the federal government is prepared for this year’s hurricane season.
“We have been working with all of our regions on training, pre-deploying resources, making sure that individuals are out there ready to respond to each state as they bring the necessary resources to take care of their people.”
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is forecasting 13 to 15 named storms, of which six to ten could become hurricanes. Three to five are forecasted to reach major hurricane status with winds over 110 mph.
Russell Vought, Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said the Disaster Relief Fund, which directly funds FEMA, has $13 billion and is projected to sustain the federal government until the end of the fiscal year.
North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein has been outspoken about the plans to dissolve FEMA.
Last week, at a hurricane season briefing press conference, he said he was concerned about the uncertainty surrounding the future of FEMA and NOAA.
“Cuts to NOAA and FEMA are a man-made disaster,” he said. “We need these critical agencies to help us anticipate and respond to natural disasters. A lack of forecasting and a lack of funding both harm public safety, so even as we advocate to protect NOAA and FEMA, we simply have to prepare for the very real possibility that these entities will be of diminished capacity.”
Stein, a Democrat, said reimbursement rates could change with FEMA, going from a 90% to a 75% federal match, leaving the state to come up with a 25% match instead of 10%, which could cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars.
The governor said the potential cuts mean the state will need possibly hundreds of millions of dollars more to go into the state’s Rainy Day Fund or the state’s Savings Reserve Account.
Other concerns with cuts to fema
There were other concerns with the uncertainty of FEMA, including a lot of turnover in emergency management positions in both the state and local agencies in the western part of the state.
“That is one reason why it’s critical to have a strong FEMA because most states don’t experience natural disasters on an annual basis the way that it feels like we do here in North Carolina,” Stein said. “Other states may not have a natural disaster for eight or ten years, and so the people in those positions (in the state) are brand new and have never been through a big storm before and won’t have the muscle memory of how to respond in that moment when all of a sudden the storm goes from a Class C to a Class A storm so we need the expertise that exists in FEMA.”
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Author: Theresa Opeka
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