FEMA—and the Nation’s Disaster Safety Net—Gets Cut Adrift

Since taking office, the administration has overseen the loss of more than 2,000 full-time employees (out of a full-time workforce of approximately 6,100 staffers) and an unknown number of the greater disaster workforce cadre. The latter is largely comprised of about 12,000 part-time, temporary, or contractual employees who receive specialized training to do everything from assessing tornado damage to coordinating wildfire responses.

The administration halted compliance with regulations implementing the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard (FFRMS). These regulations were finalized last year to ensure that public buildings and infrastructure damaged in a flood were rebuilt to more protective standards in the storm’s aftermath. And they were sorely needed to avoid just the kind of waste that the current administration professes to care about: According to FEMA data, it spent more than $60 billion between 2015 and 2024 to rebuild flooded public buildings and infrastructure. 

President Trump also revoked an executive order that required all federally funded projects to comply with the same standard. Both moves are sure to keep our nation in the dangerous and costly cycle of flood-rebuild-repeat. 

The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and the administration are being sued by 23 states and Washington, D.C., over the administration’s slow-walking of payments for previously approved projects. States and communities are now waiting to be reimbursed for hundreds of millions of dollars in already promised funds. NRDC found that it had reneged on $3.6 billion in grants that were previously made to state and local governments through FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grants. 

The move shocked former FEMA officials like David Maurstad, who served four presidents from both parties and oversaw BRIC, flood insurance, and other risk reduction programs at the agency. “Suspending a proven and effective program that enhances resilience to natural hazards, mitigates disaster-related suffering, and reduces the financial burden on taxpayers is a profoundly shortsighted and ill-considered decision,” he said, “particularly in light of the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events that threaten most of our communities.”

The administration claims that it wants to increase states’ level of responsibility for disasters and emergency management, but its actions are instead actively diminishing the capacity of emergency managers and first responders across the country.  

• FEMA abruptly canceled all in-person classes at the Emergency Management Institute and National Fire Academy, shuttering the nation’s only advanced-level fire academy and preventing thousands of first responders from accessing training.
• States also report difficulties getting paid by FEMA for grants that support emergency management staff positions and various preparedness activities, such as evacuation planning, maintaining emergency alert systems, and training first responders.
• As of March 27, 2025, FEMA froze funding to the American Bar Association’s Disaster Legal Services program, which had supported federal and local efforts to aid disaster survivors since the early 1970s. 

The administration cut funding to AmeriCorps’ National Civilian Community Corps, effectively eliminating the “FEMA Corps” service program for young people. This not only weakens the disaster workforce but also cuts off an important career development pipeline for emergency management and resilience professionals going on to serve in state and local agencies. 

The administration is implementing a wide range of changes to reduce federal disaster expenditures and deny states disaster aid. In practice, these measures will keep residents of states hit by a tornado, flood, hurricane, wildfire, winter storm, or other disaster from getting the help they need. State and local governments had no advance notice of these changes, nor the opportunity to develop or pass budgets, create staffing plans, acquire and store emergency supplies, or otherwise fill in the gaps left by the administration’s actions.

In February, with Californians reeling from Los Angeles’s horrific wildfires, Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell proposed a tit for tat: If the Golden State wanted to receive future disaster assistance, it would need to abolish the California Coastal Commission, one of the state’s regulatory bodies that has tussled frequently with developers over the years. Grennell went on to describe the commission as part of the “crazy woke left.”

The remark came a few weeks after House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested that California would have to update its voter identification laws as a quid pro quo for future disaster aid.