President Trump mused on Friday about shutting down the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying that states could do a better job at responding to disasters.
“When you have a problem like this, I think you want to go, whether it’s a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it,” Mr. Trump said in Asheville, N.C., which was devastated by the remnants of Hurricane Helene last year.
“I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away and we pay directly — we pay a percentage to the state,” Mr. Trump added. “The state should fix it.”
Mr. Trump does not have the authority to shutter FEMA, which would require congressional action. Historically, lawmakers from both parties have supported FEMA, knowing that their district or state could need the agency’s help at any time.
Mr. Trump’s comments suggested that he misunderstood FEMA’s role, which is to support state and local officials only if those officials are unable to respond to disasters on their own, and only at the request of a governor.
Disaster response work is “locally executed, state managed and federally supported,” Pete Gaynor, who ran FEMA during Mr. Trump’s first term, said in an interview. The agency is a backstop, not a first responder, for disasters, he said.
Mr. Trump’s statements in North Carolina echoed comments he made on Wednesday night in interview on Fox News, saying “ FEMA is getting in the way of everything.” Referring to Oklahoma, he said: “If they get hit with a tornado or something, let Oklahoma fix it. You don’t need — and then the federal government can help them out with the money.”
Mr. Trump’s comments have FEMA’s staff “feeling betrayed and scared,” said an employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of a fear of reprisal. “Our employees have been there for the American people over and over again,” the employee said. “We already had a burnout issue at this agency that his statement and interview just put on steroids.”
Project 2025, the blueprint for a Republican administration that was produced by the Heritage Foundation, calls for flipping the financial burden of response to small disasters so that 75 percent is carried by states and the rest by the federal government. Russell Vought, the chief architect of Project 2025, is Mr. Trump’s pick to run the Office of Management and Budget, where he would significantly shape the federal budget.
A growing number of federal emergency managers say some reforms are needed and that FEMA is overextended.
“The real question is how those burdens should be shared at all levels of government,” said Daniel Kaniewski, the second-highest ranking official at FEMA during Mr. Trump’s first administration and now a managing director at Marsh McLennan, a consulting firm.
The past four administrators of FEMA — two appointed by Democrats, and two appointed by Mr. Trump — have made versions of that argument, calling for states to do more. But states generally want more help, not less.
Mr. Trump may force states to take on a greater role.
“The gentle nudging hasn’t changed the outcome,” said Roy Wright, who held senior roles at FEMA during the Obama and first Trump administrations. “We need a different approach.”
That debate comes as extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe because of climate change, and Mr. Trump has canceled some of the policies designed to make the United States more resilient to climate shocks.
The president has appointed as FEMA’s acting administrator Cameron Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL and a former director of emergency medical services at the Department of Homeland Security who has also appeared on Fox News as a military analyst. Unlike previous FEMA administrators, Mr. Hamilton does not appear to have experience managing responses to large-scale hurricanes, wildfires or other disasters.
The section in Project 2025 on disasters was written by Ken Cuccinelli, the acting deputy secretary of the agency responsible for FEMA in Mr. Trump’s first term. In addition to shifting more costs to states for small disasters, the blueprint called for a disaster “deductible” — reducing federal aid to states that fail to protect their communities against disasters. That switch would push states “to take a more proactive role in their own preparedness,” Mr. Cuccinelli wrote.
The idea of a disaster deductible was previously proposed by the Obama administration. Craig Fugate, the FEMA administrator at the time, argued that states needed a financial incentive to impose tougher building codes, curb construction in high-risk areas and otherwise reduce their exposure to hurricanes, wildfires and other disasters.
“We’re not seeing a change in behavior,” Mr. Fugate told Bloomberg News in 2016. “There’s got to be a forcing mechanism.”
But states balked at the idea of higher costs, and the idea fizzled out. After Mr. Trump first took office in 2017, his FEMA administrator, Brock Long, proposed adjusting the amount of federal disaster aid that states could receive, based on whether they had taken steps like strengthening building codes.
Mr. Long also believes FEMA funding should be replaced with “block grants” — giving states part of the cost of responding and rebuilding after disasters. That would allow governors “greater control over resources and recovery efforts to meet the unique demands of their communities,” Mr. Long said in a statement on Thursday.
The challenge with shifting responsibility to states is that they vary in their ability to respond to disasters, said Pete Gaynor, who succeeded Mr. Long as FEMA administrator in 2019.
Only a dozen or so states, such as Florida, Texas and California, have the staff and experience needed to manage large disasters, Mr. Gaynor said.
But Mr. Gaynor said block grants could reduce costs. Instead of paying for disaster recovery that can sometimes last decades, FEMA would estimate the cost of recovery and send the money to the state.
If a state rebuilt for less, Mr. Gaynor said, it could invest the difference in measures to protect against future disasters, like building sea walls or elevating buildings. If costs exceeded the initial estimate, the state would have to pay the extra cost.
Some states would be receptive to block grants, said Lynn Budd, president of the National Emergency Management Association, which represents state emergency management directors. “It’s an intriguing idea,” said Ms. Budd, who is director of the Wyoming Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. She said Wyoming, because of its small population and relatively few disasters, doesn’t have the money to hire a large number of staff to manage disasters when they occur.
But Deanne Criswell, who ran FEMA during the Biden administration, said she worried that states without the expertise or resources to handle a recovery would simply fail to rebuild, leaving them more vulnerable to the next disaster.
Ms. Criswell agreed with the idea that FEMA does too much. But she said part of the problem was that the agency was taking on work outside of severe weather events — for example, managing the federal government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic under the first Trump administration, or helping shelter unaccompanied minors who were intercepted at the southern border.
Ms. Criswell agreed with the idea that states should do more to prepare for disasters, which could reduce the burden on FEMA. Like her predecessors, she tried to get states to strengthen their building codes to reduce their exposure to disasters. But there has been little movement among states that oppose tougher standards.
In his Fox News interview, Mr. Trump said that FEMA had failed to do enough to help storm-damaged North Carolina last fall and that it was politically motivated. “The Democrats actually used FEMA not to help North Carolina,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday.
Mr. Criswell said Mr. Trump was wrong. She said that FEMA had deployed personnel to North Carolina before the storm made landfall, with an army of staff members and partners that eventually numbered in the thousands. “I don’t know what he thinks we should have been doing,” Ms. Criswell said.
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