The future of the Federal Emergency Management Agency may look substantially different towards the end of this year, depending upon a roadmap to be laid out by President Trump.
Long critical of the agency, which was established in the spring of 1979 to coordinate emergency responses to natural disasters, Trump has just announced that he wants to begin a process of phasing FEMA out.
“We’re going to do it much differently,” Trump remarked in a White House briefing in talking about how disaster aid will be distributed in the future.
Once the official hurricane season ends on November 30, Trump said he will reveal the details of his plan to downsize an agency that has a current annual budget more than $30 billion.
Trump’s remarks have prompted Jeremy Greenberg, the head of FEMA’s National Response Coordination Center, to submit his resignation.
In the early years of its existence, FEMA received mixed reviews the way it handled such disasters as the dumping of toxic waste into the Love Canal in Niagara Falls, and the devastation wrought in the Gulf states by Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
But it was the agency’s response to the historic Hurricane Katrina in 2005, especially in terms of evacuation procedures impacting metro New Orleans and the distribution of aid, that brought FEMA into the most critical review.
Even though the agency underwent substantial administrative changes to improve its preparedness, response, and recovery efforts in the wake of Katrina, it came under new fire for what was thought to be a muddled and delayed response to Tropical Storm Helene in the fall of 2024.
Shortly after Helene, Trump, running as a candidate, characterized FEMA as a “disaster,” and began advocating for the states to take on a greater role in disaster response.
“We want to wean off of FEMA and bring it down to the state level,” Trump remarked.
But whether the President plans to outright eliminate FEMA, which would have to be approved by Congress, is not currently known.
June 13, 2023
By Garry Boulard
Logo of FEMA
