Trump’s plan to dismantle FEMA hits stumbling block after Texas floods

U.S. President Donald Trump’s defense of the federal response to the catastrophic floods that devastated Texas last July 4 has been consistent, enthusiastic, and — for those who remember his reactions to natural disasters in the past — perhaps surprising. “I admire you and consider you heroes,” he told the officials who guided him during his visit to Kerr County, the epicenter of the floods that have so far left 134 dead and 101 missing. That same day, he approved the extension of the major disaster declaration to eight other Texas counties so they could receive direct federal aid to recover and rebuild.

Just a few weeks earlier, the future of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) — and therefore, those federal aid efforts— appeared uncertain. FEMA director, Cameron Hamilton, had been fired in May. In fact, since Trump returned to the White House, about a quarter of the agency’s staff had lost their jobs. The effort to wind down the agency was happening in full view. The Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Kristi Noem, who oversees the agency, spelled out the plan bluntly in March: “We’re going to eliminate FEMA.” Now, faced with questions about whether the cuts contributed to the tragedy in Texas, the Trump administration has begun to backtrack.

On Sunday, in an interview on NBC, Noem softened her tone: “I think the president recognizes that FEMA should not exist the way that it always has been. It needs to be redeployed in a new way, and that’s what we did.”

A few days earlier, Russell Vought — director of the small but powerful Office of Management and Budget and a fierce defender of federal cuts, even more so than Elon Musk — struck a more conciliatory note. “We want FEMA to work well,” he told the press.

FEMA, the federal agency created in 1979 by former president Jimmy Carter, had long been in the crosshairs of President Trump’s MAGA movement, but it came under even sharper scrutiny last year after Hurricane Helene moved hundreds of miles inland and devastated large areas of North Carolina. At that time, in October and just weeks before the presidential election, Trump did not hold back and baselessly accused Joe Biden’s administration of using FEMA as a political tool to deliberately harm the Republican state. He also fueled the false claim that the agency was giving billions of dollars to undocumented immigrants, although FEMA did support managing the migration crisis in areas that requested federal assistance.

Once back in the White House, just days after fires that burned day and night had flattened entire neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Trump doubled down on his position: FEMA should be dismantled, and individual states should bear the costs of emergencies that occur within their territories. The unofficial deadline was the end of this year, but the floods in Texas — a decidedly Republican state — have been a sharp reality check.

The response in Texas from an already depleted FEMA has raised many questions, both for the lack of foresight and the slow reaction. According to CNN, urban search and rescue teams took 72 hours to be deployed due to a new policy requiring any action costing more than $100,000 to be personally approved by Noem. This order has been criticized for completely disarming the agency’s ability to respond quickly to unforeseen emergencies — the agency’s core mission.

In Texas, when the rising Guadalupe River submerged several towns, FEMA was unable to pre-position search and rescue teams. Normally, they would have deployed these teams as soon as it was safe to begin their work. Noem only authorized these teams on Monday, three days after the floods. Before that, state forces and civilian volunteers carried out the search efforts.

Furthermore, due to the same policy, in the days following the flooding FEMA answered fewer than two-thirds of calls from affected people seeking government assistance, according to The New York Times. The agency ended contracts with several call centers on July 5, so overnight hundreds of operators stopped working for FEMA. According to internal figures cited by the U.S. newspaper, on July 5, 99% of the 3,000 incoming calls were answered; the next day, the percentage dropped to 34.8% (846 of 2,363), and on Monday, when calls surged, only 15.9% were answered (2,613 of 16,419).

On Monday, two Democratic senators called for an investigation into the measures and budget cuts implemented by Noem regarding FEMA to determine whether they affected the response to the catastrophic floods in Texas. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut explicitly mention the new policy requiring Noem’s approval for any expenditure over $100,000.

“The American people deserve answers and more importantly, they deserve accountability. While we are still waiting for all the facts to come out, what is clear is that FEMA must be able to respond to disasters immediately,” reads Gallego and Blumenthal’s letter calling for the investigation. “A disaster response system that must wait for one official’s signature is unacceptable and designed to fail.”

Noem, on the defensive, has vehemently denied the accusations that have emerged from investigations and reports by various media outlets in recent days. The DHS has argued, without providing concrete evidence, that the deployment was immediate and all calls were answered. Meanwhile, the debate over FEMA’s future — once thought to be in serious jeopardy — has taken a backseat.

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