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In an urgent letter to Congress on Monday, more than 180 current and former workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) wrote to “sound the alarm” about the Trump administration’s handling of the agency and cuts to FEMA’s funding. The moves, they argue, have obstructed officials’ ability to respond to and protect the public from natural disasters.
With hurricane season upon us, FEMA employees warn that an understaffed, under-resourced agency means the country is at even greater risk of disaster.
The employees called out the Trump administration’s pursuit of job terminations, promotion of unqualified leadership, and censorship of climate science. Current working conditions, the letter states, “echo” the federal failures after Hurricane Katrina struck almost exactly 20 years ago—including “the inexperience of senior leaders” and “the profound failure by the federal government to deliver timely, unified, and effective aid.” (Most signers of the letter chose to be anonymous.)
The letter, titled the “Katrina Declaration,” follows similar letters from Trump administration workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and National Science Foundation (NSF). Some of the letters have led to retaliation. As Inside Climate News reported in July, Trump officials put nearly all EPA employees who’d signed a letter of dissent on leave.
With hurricane season underway, the FEMA employees warn that an understaffed, under-resourced agency means the country is at even greater risk of disaster. The employees note in particular the political machinations hindering their jobs. Despite the agency already being at reduced capacity, FEMA staff have been reassigned to work at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “Any who refuse the transfer to ICE are threatened with termination,” the letter says.
Then there are the funding cuts. In April, as the Associated Press reported, FEMA ended a $1 billion disaster-preparedness program called “Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities,” or BRIC. Cuts like these, the authors warn, undermine FEMA’s mission. “As disasters grow more frequent and costly,” the employees write, “removing mitigation initiatives is fiscally irresponsible and puts American lives and property at unnecessary risk.”
On top of all that, the FEMA employees accuse the Trump administration of directing employees to remove climate change–related information from “both public-facing and internal documents.” That includes the Future Risk Index, a federal tool for assessing climate-fueled natural disaster risk, which was reportedly cut from FEMA’s website in February. “This administration’s decision to ignore and disregard the facts pertaining to climate science in disasters,” the authors write, “shows a blatant disregard for the safety and security of our Nation’s people and all American communities regardless of their geographic, economic or ethnic diversity.”
The administration’s changes, according to employees, are already having an impact on the agency. In July, as devastating floods swept through central Texas, taking the lives of at least 135 people, FEMA rescue teams were reportedly delayed by about three days. “As that disaster unfolded,” the 180 agency employees write, “FEMA’s mission to provide critical support was obstructed by leadership who not only question the agency’s existence but place uninformed cost-cutting above serving the American people and the communities our oath compels us to serve.”
When reached for comment, FEMA Acting Press Secretary Daniel Llargués wrote in an emailed statement that the agency’s flood response in Texas “demonstrated FEMA’s ability to cut through bureaucracy and push assistance to communities quickly, getting resources on the ground in days, not months.” (Mother Jones received a similar statement from the Department of Homeland Security, which houses FEMA.)
“For too long,” the agency statement reads, “FEMA was bogged down by red tape, inefficiency, and outdated processes that failed to get disaster dollars into survivors’ hands. The Trump Administration has made accountability and reform a priority so that taxpayer dollars actually reach the people and communities they are meant to help. It is not surprising that some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency are now objecting to reform. Change is always hard. It is especially for those invested in the status quo. But our obligation is to survivors, not to protecting broken systems.”