Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is reportedly facing accusations that her plans to gut FEMA will torch recommendations for major reform made by a panel that President Donald Trump enlisted to decide its fate.
Trump, who had mulled over axing the agency altogether, set up the FEMA Review Council, which, after 10 months, decided that the agency should be more independent, according to The Washington Post. However, Noem, the council co-chair, wants to take it in a different direction.
Noem, the council’s co-chair, is responsible for finalizing the report and sending it to the president, and her office is allegedly pushing different ideas.
The report “got nuked,” said one former FEMA official told the Associated Press.
According to five people familiar with the situation who spoke to the Post, Noem’s draft recommends keeping FEMA inside the Department of Homeland Security but stripping it of its direct disaster-relief functions, essentially transforming the agency into a grant-making shop. The original council draft did not recommend any of that.
Noem’s office also reportedly wants to slash the federal government’s disaster cost share to 50 percent—an overhaul several council members strongly opposed. FEMA’s guidelines currently allow Washington to front about 75 percent of disaster costs, and in extreme cases, nearly 100 percent for a time. Council members want that structure preserved.
A DHS spokesperson publicly denied that Noem was trying to alter the report. “Secretary Noem is the chairwoman of the council and has worked with committee members collaboratively on the reform report,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told the Post. She said the council has “spent months working to provide recommendations to reshape and reform the bureaucratic mess that exists at FEMA.” The Daily Beast also approached for comment.
But internally, tensions are reportedly spiking. After reviewing the council’s original 160-page submission—built from 13,000 public comments and consultations with rural and urban communities from Puerto Rico to Wyoming—Noem and her top adviser, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, allegedly chopped the document down to fewer than 20 pages.
“It’s like Edward Scissorhands,” one person familiar with the situation said. “She wants to chop it up, and decentralize, and really drastically limit FEMA. Many members on the council are not happy with how she has put her thumb on the scale.”
Some White House officials have already seen the unedited draft. And the concerns aren’t limited to page count. Noem’s revisions reportedly include cutting FEMA’s staff by half, restricting the agency to debris removal and emergency protective measures, and shoving nearly everything else—roads, bridges, buildings, parks—onto other federal agencies. She also reportedly floated relocating FEMA headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Texas, an idea that shocked council members and emergency management experts.
The council’s actual recommendations took a very different tack: make FEMA easier to access for disaster survivors, accelerate aid dispersal, reform the National Flood Insurance Program, keep the Stafford Act cost share intact, and elevate the agency to Cabinet level.
None of those ideas appear in Noem’s trimmed version.
Trump’s final decision remains unclear, as he has heard mixed advice from first responders, Republican officials, and advisers wary of eliminating FEMA. In a statement to the Post, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson framed the council’s mission as ensuring “the federal role remains supplemental and appropriate to the scale of disaster,” adding that “Secretary Noem is working hard to implement the president’s vision.”
At a National Emergency Management Association conference, Florida emergency management director Kevin Guthrie—another council member—was asked whether the report would reach the president unaltered. Former acting FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton recalled Guthrie’s answer.
“[Guthrie] sighed,” Hamilton said. “He said he feels confident in the report that they will submit to the Secretary. And that’s where he stopped.”
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