The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was created in 1979 under Democratic President Jimmy Carter, and Republican President George W. Bush recognized the agency's importance when FEMA was placed under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a recurring theme of the Bush Administration was that disasters were a national security matter.
But President Donald Trump, now two weeks into his nonconsecutive second term, is expressing his hostility to FEMA — a hostility that, according to Politico's Zack Colman, GOP lawmakers aren't necessarily on board with.
Trump is toying with the idea of abolishing FEMA, saying he may "recommend that FEMA go away" and adding, "I'd like to see the states take care of disasters."
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"President Donald Trump's suggestions that he might shut down the federal agency charged with responding to disasters are running into trouble with Republican lawmakers," Colman reports in an article published on February 2. "Deeply red states are experiencing some of the costliest disasters, and lawmakers from those states fear that eliminating Federal Emergency Management Agency would leave them on the hook for increasingly expensive bills."
GOP lawmakers interviewed by Politico, according to Colman, drew a distinction between making changes to FEMA and abolishing it altogether after 46 years.
"While they're open to overhauling FEMA," the Politico reporter explains, "congressional Republicans said they flatly reject the idea of abolishing the agency."
Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) recently told reporters, "FEMA can't go away. I think the first job of the federal government is to protect people and property."
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Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama), according to Colman, is calling for FEMA to be "reorganized" but not abolished. And Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tennessee) wants to "overhaul" the agency but acknowledged that FEMA officials worked "very hard" during Hurricane Helene recovery efforts in 2024.
A.R. Siders, a faculty member of the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware, told Politico, "We've seen this pattern show up in the past where a Republican senator or congressman will say, 'You know, this is too much disaster aid. We should cut back on disaster aid.' Then, a disaster happens in their state — and then suddenly, they're very pro-disaster aid. This kind of rhetoric is easy to say and hard to stick to."
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Read Politico's full article at this link.