Administration’s Arbitrary, Unlawful Cuts to FEMA Funding and Staff Threaten American Communities

The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season marked the first time in 10 years that no major storm hit the United States, despite several near misses. Policymakers cannot count on that luck continuing. Research consistently shows that the pace of weather- and climate-related natural disasters is increasing, with “billion-dollar” events now happening at least six times more frequently.

For many, a well-functioning national emergency response system can mean the difference between life and death. Between 2025 and 2026, however, the Trump administration significantly degraded the nation’s capacity for responding to natural disasters through a series of unprecedented policy changes at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Those actions undermined a vital agency and the priorities set for it by Congress, while placing American communities at ever greater risk. To be sure, new leadership at DHS has sought to reverse course in some areas. But delays to vital work linger, and FEMA’s credibility with state and local governments will take time to rebuild.

Congress structured FEMA to coordinate responses to natural disasters. The agency retains bipartisan support in Congress and among voters. As a result, Congress has consistently sought to strengthen FEMA, especially after high-profile events like Hurricane Katrina. Despite that, after initially seeking to abolish FEMA outright, the administration:

• terminated vital federal grants, jeopardizing at least $3 billion in disaster preparedness and mitigation grants that could save $13 for every dollar spent;
• cut FEMA’s workforce by around 17 percent, directly or indirectly, and weighed firing half the agency’s staff, demoralizing remaining staff and undermining their work;
• denied 26 percent of requests for major disaster declarations (required for immediate disaster aid disbursements), up from 12 percent in the previous year; and
• sharply politicized the disaster recovery process, jeopardizing funds in states with Democratic leadership or Democratic representation in Congress and disproportionately denying requests for “declarations” needed to unlock federal aid.

The playbook resembles the administration’s efforts to dismantle other major federal agencies, such as the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In each, staff and funding cuts significantly compromised the agencies’ ability to perform congressionally required functions.

This article explores the consequences of the administration’s efforts to weaken FEMA, drawing on interviews with experts and disaster preparedness professionals, as well as publicly available data and court documents.

Ultimately, even with recent policy reversals, FEMA entered the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season with major gaps in its capabilities. Absent support from FEMA, state, local, and tribal governments will struggle to prepare for and recover from increasingly expensive natural disasters. States and localities already depend on FEMA for funding and logistical support, with some relying on federal aid to cover more than 90 percent of disaster costs. As natural disasters become increasingly severe and frequent, preparedness and recovery costs inevitably rise. According to one insurance industry report, economic losses from natural disasters in the United States reached $141 billion in 2025. That is more than 20 percent higher than the average annual losses since 2000, even in a year with comparatively fewer hazards.

Set against those risks, an effective FEMA response translates to lives saved and communities protected. In the run-up to Hurricane Sandy, for example, FEMA — in coordination with local and state governments — staged supplies and deployed personnel on the ground, and the president signed emergency declarations before and after the storm. At the time, the agency drew bipartisan praise for those actions, which included an infusion of $1.4 billion in aid to 182,000 people across states from New Jersey to Connecticut. Today, FEMA’s capacity for a similar intervention is in doubt.

FEMA’s governing statutes explicitly charge the agency with reducing the dangers posed by future natural catastrophes. Experts broadly agree that every dollar spent on mitigation efforts saves as much as $13, considering loss of life, property damage, and economic hardships averted.

But the Trump administration abruptly backed away from this responsibility in 2025, canceling billions of dollars in grant funding designed to strengthen aging infrastructure and help communities mitigate impacts from disasters, while throwing millions of additional dollars into doubt. The future of some of these programs remains unclear, even with recent court victories barring FEMA from ending them outright. Without this funding, communities stand to face greater dangers and take longer to rebuild than they otherwise might have — and lower-income communities with smaller tax bases stand to lose the most.

The largest general federal mitigation program began during the first Trump administration. In 2018, Congress passed and President Trump signed into law the Disaster Recovery and Reform Act, which funded pre-disaster mitigation through a program later known as Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grants. Four years later, Congress appropriated another $1 billion over five years for BRIC mitigation work. At the time, this money represented a “paradigm shift” toward preparing for disasters before they happened.

In 2025, however, the Trump administration abruptly canceled the BRIC program, declining to award $750 million and threatening $3.3 billion in work that had been selected for funding or was already in progress. According to the Urban Institute, at-risk funding included $765 million in grants to California and roughly $200 million each for Louisiana and Utah. Rural counties, including many that voted for Trump in 2024, stood to lose millions slated for work such as flood damage prevention. Impacted projects included earthquake retrofitting to avert hospital closures in rural California ($32.4 million), flood mitigation in Ohio ($24 million), and electrical infrastructure upgrades in Iowa, Kentucky, and Nebraska ($42.4 million).

A federal judge quickly ordered the grants restored, calling the administration’s cancellations an “unlawful Executive encroachment on the prerogative of Congress to appropriate funds for a specific and compelling purpose.” (Even the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 report, which also recommended canceling BRIC, conceded that doing so would “require action by Members of Congress.”) Applications were only opened in March 2026 — nearly a year after the initial cancellation — for $1 billion in grants retroactively available for FY 2024–25.

BRIC is not the only program the Trump administration has upended. Two other grant programs encompassing hundreds of millions of dollars for emergency preparedness were stalled or cut to conform to the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda. Funding in both cases was only restored through litigation, with a federal judge in Rhode Island describing the administration’s actions as a “wanton abuse of their role in federal grant administration” and an “unconscionable” attempt to “hold hostage funding for programs” based on “political whims.” And the administration declined to accept applications for a flood mitigation program, effectively pulling $600 million in funding that historically benefits states such as Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. Applications only reopened in mid-2026, again more than a year later, with documentation quietly revised to omit any mention of climate change. And FEMA has conditioned grants for antiterrorism funding to states and localities on compliance with burdensome election requirements that the executive branch has no authority to mandate (the Brennan Center is co-counsel in a lawsuit challenging these funding conditions).

On one level, the restoration of funding, through litigation or otherwise, is welcome news. But uncertainty continues, and the year-long delay caused real harm to communities that relied on FEMA’s commitments. For example, Chelsea, Massachusetts lost a $20 million state matching grant when BRIC funding evaporated, throwing a long-term flood-prevention program into doubt. And California was forced to stall for nearly a year an otherwise “ready to begin” retrofit of a rural hospital, without which the facility would be forced to close. As late as February 2026, that and many other BRIC projects remained unfunded, forcing states back to court to enforce the order. Worryingly, FEMA responded that it required “sufficient staffing levels” to comply with the court’s order, such that the administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency’s staff may in turn be preventing quick compliance.

The administration also targeted FEMA for large-scale staff cuts, a product of the president’s on-again, off-again pledge to abolish the agency outright. These reductions, both real and threatened, undercut the agency’s ability to fulfill congressionally mandated functions.

FEMA employs a mix of full-time staff, reservists, and temporary employees — all of which have been sharply reduced since the start of 2025. Between firings and deferred resignations, the agency has so far lost 17 percent of its staff, including one-third of full-time employees responsible for the agency’s day-to-day operations. According to an August 2026 report from the Government Accountability Office, departures included more than half of FEMA’s senior executives, forcing less experienced personnel into acting roles and demoralizing line staff.

More mass firings were tentatively planned; a proposed 50 percent reduction, which would have cut 11,000 people, was announced as a “planning exercise” in late 2025. An early draft of a report by the FEMA Review Council, a body tasked by President Trump with delivering proposals to overhaul the agency, would have recommended the same. FEMA leadership ultimately backed off this threat, and the review council’s final report omitted any mention of specific staff reductions, instead advising a “strategic review” to “determine appropriate staffing levels” and the ratio of field staff to headquarters staff. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin also recently sought to rehire some terminated employees.

But this back-and-forth compounded rather than alleviated uncertainty at the agency. To date, FEMA has failed to conduct any internal planning around its workforce needs, citing the need to wait for discrete recommendations from the president’s FEMA Review Council. As a result, the Government Accountability Office concluded that FEMA faced “similar or greater risk of disaster workforce capacity and competency limitations than the agency faced in 2024 following Hurricanes Helene and Milton.” The warning corroborates an August 2025 letter from FEMA employees to Congress, arguing that the agency risks being unable to fulfill its statutory functions.

It’s too soon to know the long-term consequences of these choices. Likely outcomes range from strained crisis response capacity to longer waits for grant payments and relief funding, which can already take far too long to reach affected communities. For example, cost-cutting rules instituted by then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem may have contributed to understaffing and unanswered calls at disaster call centers after severe floods struck Texas in July 2025. (Mullin repealed the policy one week after succeeding Noem.)

These are the dire risks that Congress has consistently sought to avoid. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, policymakers documented shortcomings in FEMA’s structure and staffing that may have contributed to the loss of life and economic hardship in the weeks after landfall. The legislature responded with the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act, which required an experienced administrator atop the agency. It also restructured DHS, which houses the agency, to prevent FEMA’s mission from being compromised. The Trump administration’s actions have undermined both goals, while complicating legislative efforts to reform the agency. Lawmakers should closely monitor FEMA’s performance over the coming months for signs of diminished capacity.

The administration also discarded the regular process for reviewing disaster declaration requests and appears to have replaced it with one driven by the president’s political goals, leading to delays and a worrying trend of states with Democratic leadership missing out on needed funds.

FEMA’s foundational statute, the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, gives the president the power to approve declarations of major disasters or emergencies. If approved, a declaration activates a wide array of FEMA assistance for governments and survivors. The Individual and Household Program, for example, covers everything from medical assistance to support for people whose homes are uninhabitable due to storm damage.

When this assistance is needed, it’s needed quickly, and previous administrations have treated declaration requests accordingly. Recently, however, data reviewed by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace shows that states have waited as long as two months for a decision on a disaster declaration — up from a month under the Biden and first Trump administrations. The administration has also processed declarations on an inconsistent schedule, seeming to wait for an arbitrary number of requests to pile up before making decisions on the batch. The review by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace shows no disaster declarations were approved between July 22 and September 11, 2025, in the middle of the 2025 hurricane season,

Under the second Trump administration, declarations are also much more likely to be denied outright. According to the Brennan Center’s review of FEMA disaster declarations data, the administration denied 26 percent of the 61 disaster declarations sought in 2025, more than double the 12 percent denied of the 114 requests in 2024. The same data suggests that individual aid payouts from the FEMA Individuals and Household Program fell by 24 percent, but it is hard to determine whether this decline results from changes in policy or in need.

Trump has also publicly linked declaration approvals to politics. In July 2026, for example, he denied aid requests from four “blue states” — Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island — while taking credit for aid to a group of red states. Data suggests that is no coincidence. Separate analyses by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Politico have found sharp divergences between declaration approvals for states with Republican and Democratic political leadership. Politico’s review, for example, showed that states with Republican governors and senators saw declaration requests approved nearly 90 percent of the time, while states with Democratic governors and federal senators received approved declarations only around 25 percent of the time. This is a sharp decline for so-called “blue states,” whose approval rates have largely paralleled those of “red states” since the Reagan administration.

These policies unfold amidst a worsening climate outlook and rising disaster risks. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Centers for Environmental Information, in the 1980s the country averaged 3.3 “billion-dollar disasters” per year — that is, events where the economic damage exceeds $1 billion in cost-adjusted dollars. In the last three years, there have been an average of 20 billion-dollar disasters per year in cost-adjusted dollars.

Tellingly, the Trump administration suspended updates to NOAA’s database of billion-dollar events, citing “evolving priorities, statutory mandates, and staffing changes.” But ignoring risks does not change them, as industry data demonstrates. According to Aon, an insurance firm, in 2024 the economic impact of natural disasters in the United States reached $218 billion. That figure fell to $141 billion in 2025, a year with fewer major weather events. Both years still exceeded the $117 billion running average since 2000.

Federal dollars are vital to meeting these rising costs, and Congress has chosen to allocate taxpayer money accordingly. According to the National Emergency Management Association’s 2024 annual report, states reported spending $1.9 billion of their own money on emergency management in 2024, an increase from $1.2 billion in 2022. That is far eclipsed by federal spending. FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund alone regularly receives appropriations in the $20 billion range, which is then spent on supporting states. And that is before grants and supplemental appropriations, the latter of which can run to additional tens of billions of dollars. Ultimately, states rely on federal aid for as much as 99.4 percent of disaster management costs. Wyoming, for example, receives 92 percent of such funding from the federal government, while Texas, California, and Florida are some of the largest beneficiaries by dollar amount.

The Trump administration seeks to single-handedly change this balance, forcing states to shoulder more of the costs themselves. But that is a decision for Congress to make through legislation, not for the president to impose unilaterally. Russell Strickland, president of the National Emergency Management Association, acknowledged that the field is evolving to address the “increasing numbers and types of disasters being experienced in the United States along with the growing complexity of events.” But those changes, the association’s biennial report argued, had resulted in a “greater cost to state government revenues” and an impact on “the overall economic health of the state.” States have never faced financial pressure of this scale when it comes to disaster response. In the meantime, American communities find themselves increasingly on their own, as the experience of one Arkansas town illustrates. There, the absence of a declared disaster forced the city government to assume costs that could rise to as high as 15 percent of its annual budget.

The Trump administration’s plans to radically reshape FEMA developed in the wake of Hurricane Helene. But unilaterally reducing the federal government’s role as a key partner in disaster response will exacerbate rather than reduce hardships like those faced by North Carolinians in 2024. Terminated staff will be difficult to replace, especially as senior agency leaders retire or bring their expertise to other careers. Grant dollars have been delayed, leaving infrastructure projects unbuilt or abandoned while throwing building plans and financing into chaos. State and local leaders might now question the federal government’s commitment to helping them brace for and recover from natural disasters — especially if their elected representatives happen to be out of favor with the president.

Even as federal grants are restored, states still need a coordinated response to evolve their emergency management practices to meet the growing risks and costs of disasters. Restoring states’ trust in the federal government as a partner for disaster response remains an uncertain proposition and will take time, during which emergency managers will be forced to patch over funding and staffing gaps using already stretched state revenues.

Belatedly, the administration appears to be reversing some decisions. For example, the FEMA Review Council distanced itself from some of the administration’s policies, rejecting specific targets for broad staff cuts and emphasizing the value of mitigation. But the council’s report continued to recommend a reduction in the share of costs that the federal government assumes on behalf of states after a disaster, even as those costs rise beyond the ability of state governments to shoulder. And the administration has never disavowed its power to unilaterally alter that balance, even as states struggle with these costs.

The FEMA Review Council’s report also observed that key decisions about FEMA’s future, like the balance of state and federal responsibilities, belong to Congress — not the president. Lawmakers should take note and continue to hold the line against drastic reductions in the agency’s funding and operations, while working to rebuild its capacity and improve the agency’s ability to deliver for the American people.

Americans want to know that help will arrive in the hours and days after a natural disaster. Congress took up that responsibility decades ago, and generations of lawmakers and administrators have sought, however imperfectly, to make good on the promise. Unchecked presidential power and politicization should not be allowed to threaten that vital work.

With research support from Mark Krass, Yeji Lee, Maryjane Johnson, James Surnamer, and Paul Ibuzor.