Previously, President Trump and his allies have mischaracterized the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its disaster response efforts more generally. His unfounded criticisms became most visible in the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024. He’s been repeating unsubstantiated claims of ineffectiveness and political bias in the distribution of aid in recent days.
Last week CNBC reported: “Trump added that additional aid for North Carolina and California should flow directly from the federal government. ‘So rather than going through FEMA, it will go through us,’” he said. Hopefully, somebody reminded the president that FEMA is actually part of the federal government. In fact, the “F” in “FEMA” stands for “federal.”
Many other outlets picked up on the president’s comments about getting rid of FEMA entirely. Eliminating a federal agency is not something the president can do unilaterally; Congress would need to pass legislation to do so. If this was done, it would leave the nation without an agency responsible for disaster preparation, response, and recovery.
In today’s executive order, some of the President’s grievances are again repeated without much in the way of factual basis.
“Serious concerns of political bias”
While making this accusation, the president himself has perhaps been guilty of it in the past. E&E News reported that Trump withheld disaster assistance from Washington State in 2020, perhaps because of a dislike of Governor Jay Inslee, whom he called “a snake.” Nearly five months elapsed between Washington’s request for a federal disaster declaration for a deadly wildfire and one being issued. The E&E story states that the average time for approval is 17 days. That declaration was ultimately signed by President Biden, soon after he took office in 2021.
Trump also repeatedly threatened to not grant disaster assistance to California in his first term, as reported by the Los Angeles Times and many other outlets.
Trump has suggested that he may withhold disaster aid from those he perceives as political opponents. This should concern every single American, no matter where they live or who they voted for.
“Diverting limited staff and resources to support missions beyond its scope and authority”
While the president’s executive order accuses FEMA of mission drift, he has directed the agency to support missions that were well outside of their authority. In 2018, Trump ordered FEMA to transfer $9.8 million out of a fund for training disaster responders to support the deportation of undocumented residents of the United States. This happened at a time when the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the agency struggled to field fully trained disaster staff to multiple catastrophic disasters in 2017 and 2018.
In 2019, in the middle of hurricane season, Trump diverted another $155 million from FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund to support the detention of immigrants near the border with Mexico.
There are legitimate issues that must be addressed
As the damage from climate-influenced disasters continues to take a heavy toll on the nation, there are serious issues that demand attention. In the New York Times, Vermont senator Peter Welch spoke to the essential mission that FEMA performs and his own willingness to work with the administration to improve delivery of services.
- FEMA is severely underresourced for its disaster focused mission: According to the GAO, FEMA has 35 percent fewer staff than needed to respond adequately to disasters. FEMA has 11,400 people in its disaster workforce (as of 2022) and its staffing target is 17,670. This gap is not new and has been recognized for many years. In the past, NRDC has called for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and FEMA to conduct a staffing assessment to determine what the agency needs in order to respond to the growing frequency and severity of due to climate change. State and local governments—who would need to fill in the gaps—are also stretched thin and depend on FEMA funding and other support to bolster their own capacity.
- The severity and frequency of disasters are increasing due to climate change: This is a fact—and one that even Project 2025 (and perhaps even the president) seems to recognize. As the image below shows, the number of disasters that caused at least $1 billion in economic losses is going up alarmingly fast.
And last year was yet another record-setting year, with regards to the grim reality of climate-influenced disasters and the human and financial toll they are taking on the nation and the world more generally.
States also need to prioritize climate resilience
One thing we think merits further discussion is that states should take more responsibility for keeping their communities and residents safe.
Too many states are taking actions that ultimately make themselves less safe and more dependent on federal disaster aid. Take North Carolina as an example: The state legislature weakened building codes two years in a row. In 2023, the legislature prohibited updating codes beyond those adopted in 2015. Then, in 2024, the legislature further weakened specific aspects of those out-of-date codes. Prior to these bills becoming law, FEMA had already given North Carolina’s building codes a failing grade for disaster resilience and the legislature weakened them even more.
Across the country, people also continue to move into some of the most at-risk areas, in part because poor building codes, lax land use standards, and lack of political will allows development in places we probably shouldn’t develop.
Changes are needed to improve national disaster preparedness and prioritize climate resilience.
There are several things that should be done by the federal government to help communities. For FEMA specifically, the new administration could do the following:
- Update FEMA’s national floodplain development standards: This is an active area of policy making for the agency, in response to a petition for rulemaking filed by NRDC and the Association of State Floodplain Managers in 2021. These standards were established in the 1970s and have never been updated to reflect what we know about sea level rise and escalating flood risks.
- Increase funding for capacity of state and local emergency managers: For years, federal funding has been flat for what’s known as Emergency Management Performance Grants. Increasing funding and, by extension, increasing training and capacity of local and state emergency management departments is crucial.
- Support innovative approaches to help people move out of harm’s way: The National Flood Insurance Program has paid out billions of dollars in claims for repeatedly flooded properties. Many residents of flood-prone homes would prefer to move rather than rebuild again and again, but existing programs to facilitate relocation can require years of waiting. FEMA should support innovative approaches to home buyouts, which can help disaster survivors move out of harm’s way while also saving taxpayer dollars.
- Reinstate the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard: President Trump has rescinded this order twice, once in 2017 and once in 2025. This standard requires that federally funded projects are built to withstand future flooding and sea-level rise. If those projects can survive future flood disasters, then FEMA doesn’t have to spend time and money rebuilding them in the future.
- Consider ways of incentivizing states to invest in climate resilience: During the Obama administration, FEMA floated the idea of a disaster deductible. The concept was that states that were proactive and adopted better codes, invested in resilience, and generally were working to make their communities more resilient would receive additional federal assistance. Project 2025 even suggested a similar approach. NRDC proposed a simplified version of this concept to the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.
There are so many other things that need to be done that extend well beyond FEMA’s operations, but for today the focus here is on the types of solutions that could be discussed as a result of the president’s executive order.
It’s possible that some of these legitimate issues could become focal points for Trump’s newly created “Council to Assess the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” but given the president’s misleading rhetoric, it’s not launching from the ideal starting point.
