'Rapid erosion': Trump’s FEMA cuts put hurricane-prone states in a 'really bad situation'
President Donald J. Trump, joined by Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan and Acting FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor, attends a briefing Sunday, Sept. 1, 2019, on the current directional forecast of Hurricane Dorian at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) headquarters in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)
WIRED reports that with hurricane season approaching, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is not up to the fight after being taken apart by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Under Trump and DOGE, the nation’s primary disaster response agency is suffering under a “rapid erosion” of tools, practices and vital partnerships. It’s also haunted by the threat of more staff cuts and an exodus of seasoned senior staff, leaving the Federal Emergency Management Agency a broken shadow of what it was, say sources.
The agency hasn’t seen “huge sweeping changes yet, but it doesn’t take much to completely screw a [disaster] response up,” one employee says. “We are being set up for a really, really bad situation.”
Anonymous sources tell WIRED that DOGE cuts have restricted or altogether halted contracts with sister agencies providing services such as floodplain remediation and disaster prep that would reduce damage and recovery time after an event. The agency announced it is ending the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program that helped at-risk communities who have suffered catastrophic weather events. It is canceling all BRIC applications from Fiscal Years 2020-2023 and halting funding opportunities for fiscal year 2024 against the wishes of politicians representing at-risk communities.
Other FEMA tools are also vanishing or breaking down, including a sea level rise calculator maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers offline.
WIRED reports FEMA is a favored target of conspiracy theorists, including President Donald Trump who amplified misinformation around the agency’s response to Hurricane Helene, which devastated many Republican communities in North Carolina. In late March, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced DHS would “eliminate FEMA,” and began laying plans to cut the agency down to mere mere disaster response and put it directly under the White House.
“Unlike the previous administration’s unprepared, disgraceful and inadequate response to natural disasters … the Trump administration is committed to ensuring Americans effected by emergencies will get the help they need in a quick and efficient manner,” wrote FEMA External Affairs Associate Administrator Geoff Harbaugh in an email that misspelled the word “affect.”
Harbaugh, a former sports talk radio host and producer at Newsmax, stepped in as the administration was dismissing roughly 200 probationary FEMA employees as part of massive layoffs across the federal government. Sources say subsequent reductions in force since February have severely crippled FEMA and other agencies.
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FEMA itself remains without an official leader, with acting chief administrator Cameron Hamilton being the first pseudo leader without large scale disaster management experience since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
