In June, President Donald Trump told a gathering at the Oval Office that he wanted to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and hand its responsibilities to the states — possibly as early as this December, once the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season ends. That was just before FEMA played a critical role in the response to the Texas Hill Country floods, which cost more than 130 lives.

The FEMA Review Council — a presidential task force taking public input on how to reshape the agency — held its second meeting on July 9, less than a week after the floods. The council's co-chair, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem, praised the federal government’s response to the Texas floods, calling it a model for how disaster management should work.

"We owe it to all the American people to deliver the most efficient and the most effective disaster response," Noem said. "In fact, some of how we’ve responded to Texas is exactly how President Trump imagined that this agency would operate: immediately making decisions, getting them resources and dollars that they need so that they can conduct the response that they need to do on the ground.”

Nevertheless, Noem left little doubt that FEMA's future is very much in jeopardy, repeating Trump's argument that FEMA itself needed to be abolished.

"Federal emergency management should be state and locally led, rather than how it has operated for decades," Noem said. "It has been slow to respond at the federal level. It’s even been slower to get the resources to Americans in crisis, and that is why this entire agency needs to be eliminated as it exists today and remade into a responsive agency."

What FEMA's elimination could mean for Texas and smaller states

Deanne Criswell, FEMA administrator under President Joe Biden, admitted FEMA has room for improvement in the way it carries out its mission. But she said getting rid of the agency is not the answer. Instead, she said it needs to be strengthened, particularly given the challenges of future disasters that will come with climate change.

"We shouldn’t be asking state and local emergency managers to do this on their own," Criswell said. "That’s not a good use of taxpayer dollars, whether it’s federal tax dollars or state tax dollars. If you have a central agency like FEMA that has the capability to support states, we don’t have to redundantly duplicate that kind of capability in all 50 states and our territories."

FEMA played a major role in the Houston area's recovery from Hurricane Harvey. In 2018, the agency awarded more than $76 million to the Harris County Flood Control District to buy out more than 460 flood-prone homes that had been damaged by the 2017 storm.

Criswell pointed to Texas' response to the Hill Country flooding as another example of why a robust federal role in emergency management is needed.

"Texas is, I would argue, the most capable state when it comes to emergency management, when it comes to personnel, the knowledge and resources that they have," Criswell said. "They have responded to many types of different events, and so they had the resources to begin this response. But even this response required additional help."

Michael Coen, FEMA's chief of staff under Biden and President Barack Obama, said Trump's aim of phasing out FEMA with so little lead time could go badly for Texas and worse for smaller states with fewer resources.

"Without a glide path for states to be able to plan to absorb more of these costs," Coen said, "most states, they haven’t had enough time to deliberate on that, decide how they would fund their emergency management programs, how they would fund mitigation programs."

Can Trump get rid of FEMA, legally or practically?

As a federal agency created by an act of Congress, FEMA can only be legally abolished by a similar congressional action. U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Houston) formerly served on the U.S. House committee that oversees the agency.

"Traditionally, there has been bipartisan support for FEMA, and because people across the country, when struck with disaster, need the immediate response, the resources, the coordination, and frankly, the experience that FEMA brings, and that’s one of the problems with this idea that President Trump has put out there that the states should, can handle everything," Fletcher said.

But even without abolishing FEMA, Trump has already gone a long way toward slashing the agency's workforce and crippling its ability to function.

"What we’ve seen since January 20, especially under the direction of Secretary Noem, the Secretary of Department of Homeland Security, we’ve seen an eroding of capability," Coen said. "FEMA staff have departed because they were afraid that they were going to get fired."

Coen said that since Trump took office, roughly 2,000 career staff, about 20% of the agency's career workforce, have left the agency.

The arguments for abolishing the agency

So, why is Trump pushing so hard to end FEMA as we know it? Coen said that, during his most recent tenure as FEMA's chief of staff, the agency spent more money than three of the other leading agencies under Homeland Security combined – specifically U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Coast Guard.

"When I was there as chief of staff through the Biden administration, the FEMA budget was in excess of $30 billion a year, and that was to provide Homeland Security grants across the country," Coen said. "I think this administration wants to change that. They want to put more money towards immigration enforcement."

Not everyone associated with FEMA is concerned about how states would handle its elimination. Rebecca Rouse, a former official with the agency, is now the associate program director for emergency and security studies at Tulane University. Rouse says the combination of federal agencies like the Coast Guard, together with state and local agencies and nonprofits, often play a more important role in immediate response to disasters than does FEMA.

"I think we keep looking at this like, ‘Oh my gosh, how are we going to manage without FEMA?'" Rouse said. "But up until a certain point, a lot of folks manage without FEMA. In fact, there are some states who are very reluctant to ask for federal assistance, even today, and traditionally know how to manage their own crises and disasters and do it very well."

Noem cited this year’s 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina — the storm that devastated New Orleans and prompted many residents there to relocate to Houston — as a reason why FEMA needed to be abolished.

“In the first two years … after Katrina, $2 billion dollars had been paid out in fraudulent claims,” Noem said. “Payments for Katrina recovery are still ongoing, with $400 million being spent in just 2021 alone.”

In 2021, as climate change fueled more frequent and more dangerous flood events, FEMA revamped how its National Flood Insurance Program calculated flood risk for the first time in 50 years – leading to higher premiums for many Texans the following year. Many Texans living in floodplains go without coverage, largely due to the high costs.

"Under Secretary Noem and Acting Administrator (David) Richardson, FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens," Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to Houston Public Media. "The old processes are being replaced because they failed Americans in real emergencies for decades."

View this article in Houston Public Media.