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This week marks the Trump administration’s latest self-imposed deadline for implementing reforms at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). As Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) is poised to assume leadership at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), there’s a cloud of uncertainty surrounding the potential changes.
Initially, both President Trump and the outgoing Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, suggested the possibility of dismantling FEMA, the agency responsible for disaster response coordination.
However, their focus has since shifted towards reforming the agency. Last year, Trump issued an executive order to establish a “Review Council” for FEMA, spearheaded by Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The council was scheduled to reveal its reform plans for the agency in December, but the meeting was unexpectedly canceled.
Documents from December, recently obtained by The Hill, reveal that proposed reforms at that time involved significantly reducing the agency’s workforce, tightening the criteria for states and local governments to receive disaster aid, and advocating for the privatization of flood insurance.
Trump in January signed an executive order extending the council’s work to this Wednesday. It’s unclear whether any planned FEMA changes will be announced by then.
Earlier this month, Trump announced he would nominate Mullin to replace Noem at the DHS, and the Oklahoma Republican was confirmed by the Senate Monday evening in a 54-45 vote.
A draft final FEMA council report dated December 11 — the day the public meeting was supposed to take place — and reviewed by The Hill indicates that the council planned significant staff cuts as part of the changes.
It said that the agency should “reduce overall staffing by approximately 50%.”
Specifically, it said that most of these cuts could come from FEMA’s “disaster workforce, which includes temporary, on-call and permanent personnel deployed to disaster areas.”
“The aim is to create a more strategic, less personnel-intensive response, reserving federal intervention for the largest and most complex events,” the report stated.
It also called for a “review” related to Senior Executive Service staffers, a group of highly experienced upper-level officials, in order to “realign or reduce them.”
While calling for staff cuts, the report also lamented that “operational challenges such … staffing shortages have hindered FEMA’s effectiveness.”
The council report also calls for adjusting FEMA’s metrics for inflation in such a way that fewer extreme events would be expected to qualify an area for disaster aid.
“If the per capita indicator had been adjusted for inflation … 29% of disasters declared between 2012 and 2025 would not have met the indicator,” it said.
It estimated that the proposed adjustments would have prevented an average of 16 disaster declarations each year and saved $113 million annually.
The report also calls for pushing the National Flood Insurance Program, which insures homes and businesses against flood damage, including in high-risk areas, toward the private market. It calls for “incentivizing the launch of a ‘take-out program’ to transfer policies to the private market.”
It also calls for reducing the federal government’s share of the cost of certain programs, such as cutting its share of temporary housing assistance costs from 100 percent to 75 percent. It also seeks to possibly reduce the federal cost share of public assistance from not less than 75 percent down to between 50 percent and 75 percent.
The report also proposes calling the agency FEMA 2.0 and recommends it remain part of the DHS.
Some of these anticipated proposals were previously reported by CNN.
FEMA said the council’s recommendations would be made public once they are approved at a public meeting but did not specify when that meeting would take place.
The agency referred further comment to the White House, which did not respond to The Hill’s requests for comment.
However, reports have indicated that at least some staff cuts are happening at FEMA, particularly impacting its Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery employees who can help with disaster response.
Asked by Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.) during his confirmation hearing if he thought the agency had too many staffers, Mullin did not say.
“I can’t answer that. When I get there, we’ll be adequately staffed to respond to our nation’s disasters,” Mullin said, adding that federal agencies are “bloated.”
The delay of the report has generated some pushback.
During a recent congressional hearing, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) lamented that “the report has still not come out.”
Moskowitz flashed what he described as a copy of the report and told Noem, “You cut out all the stuff that was put in by governors who had been through disasters, emergency management directors, FEMA experts, national security experts … that’s why the report’s not been released. It’s sitting in the White House trying to figure out … this mess that you created.”