The Federal Emergency Management Agency building in Washington DC, May 2025.Kayla Bartkowski/Getty
This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
As 2025 draws to a close, the departure of the beleaguered acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, David Richardson, caps a tumultuous year for FEMA.
In January, President Donald Trump took office and vowed to abolish the department. Though the administration subsequently slow-walked that proposal, its government-wide staffing cuts have led to a nearly 10 percent reduction in FEMA’s workforce since January. Now it faces a long-awaited report issued by a review council, commissioned by the president and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, just as a new interim FEMA chief prepares to take the reins in December.
Although some expected the review council to recommend further cuts or try to fulfill the president’s suggestion of disbanding FEMA entirely, a leaked draft of the report, obtained by the New York Times, recommends preserving the agency. “There’s been a need for emergency management reform for a while,” said Jeffrey Schlegelmilch, a professor at the Columbia Climate School and the director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness. “But the wrecking balls came in before there was a blueprint for what to do.”
The Trump administration’s first pick to lead FEMA, Cameron Hamilton, was fired after telling Congress that the agency should not be eliminated. Richardson was tapped to replace him, despite a lack of emergency management experience; he reportedly told staff members he had been unaware the United States had a hurricane season, although he later claimed to be joking.
“There’s been a lot of mistrust with expertise in this administration,” said Schlegelmilch, when asked why Richardson was chosen as FEMA administrator.
Richardson’s first test in the national spotlight came in early July, when devastating floods struck Central Texas, killing 135 people. A month earlier, Noem had instituted a new rule requiring her personal sign-off on any FEMA expenditures over $100,000. That meant that, in order to get aid to the region, FEMA officials needed Richardson to get Noem’s approval.
But according to reporting from the Washington Post, Richardson made a habit of not checking his phone outside of traditional working hours. This made it a challenge to contact him when the floods hit over the July 4 holiday weekend. As a result, it took over three days for Noem to sign off on expenses for swiftwater rescue teams. It was also later reported that nearly two-thirds of calls to FEMA’s emergency assistance line went unanswered during the floods, because a critical call center was severely understaffed.
A final recommendation on suggested FEMA reforms will arrive by the end of the year, but a leaked draft report supports preserving the agency and restoring it to a cabinet-level agency that reports directly to the president, rather than to the Department of Homeland Security, where it’s been housed since 2003. This has been a longtime goal pursued by emergency management experts, according to Schlegelmilch, because it would give the department more autonomy, reduce red tape, and hopefully improve the speed and efficacy of disaster response in general. A bipartisan bill called the FEMA Act of 2025, which would elevate the department to a cabinet-level agency, was introduced in Congress in July, but it’s stalled in committee.
How the administration will receive the final report from the task force is uncertain, but FEMA’s new interim director, Karen Evans, may not bring much stability to the agency. Although Evans has some emergency management experience, it is largely in cybersecurity rather than disaster response, and the Trump administration’s disinterest in appointing a permanent director may bode poorly for the agency’s long-term future.
“This is the third acting FEMA administrator within a year,” said Shana Udvardy, senior climate resilience policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “What the Trump administration is doing is sidestepping the Senate confirmation process for a FEMA administrator, someone we just desperately need in place, given how turbulent it’s been over the past year.”
