Trump orders FEMA review as he mulls nixing the agency altogether
Donald Trump has signed an executive order to create a "review council" to find ways to change the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which allocates relief funding and assists with recovery in areas hit by disasters.
"Americans deserve an immediate, effective, and impartial response to and recovery from disasters," reads the order, which was announced on Sunday. The order creates a review council made up “not more than 20 members,” including the secretary of homeland security, the secretary of defense, as well as other nongovernmental representatives.
"FEMA therefore requires a full-scale review, by individuals highly experienced at effective disaster response and recovery, who shall recommend to the President improvements or structural changes to promote the national interest and enable national resilience,” the order continues.
The executive order is the first step Trump is taking to upend FEMA, which he has said he wants to get rid of altogether and force states to handle their own disaster relief—an idea ripped straight off the pages of Project 2025.
“FEMA is a whole ‘nother discussion because all it does is complicate everything. FEMA has not done their job for the last four years,” Trump told sycophantic Fox News host Sean Hannity on Jan. 22. “But unless you have certain types of leadership, it’s really, it gets in the way. And FEMA is going to be a whole big discussion very shortly, because I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems.”
Trump’s FEMA executive order is toothless, however, as a review council can do nothing but offer ideas for changing the agency.
What’s more, Trump cannot nix FEMA without an act of Congress, which is unlikely to get rid of an organization that helps millions of its constituents—many of them Trump supporters who live in states that don't have the money or infrastructure to do disaster relief on their own. Congress can barely agree on how to keep the federal government’s lights on, let alone find agreement to get rid of an agency that has broad public support.
Republican-led states like Texas, Florida, and Louisiana have used the lion's share of FEMA resources over the past decade as they reeled from hurricanes that have become more powerful and destructive thanks to climate change.
Axios spoke to an unnamed former senior FEMA official who said that getting rid of FEMA would hurt Trump supporters the most.
From Axios:
The official said dismantling or reducing FEMA's operations would ultimately hurt the president's supporters, many of whom live in vulnerable regions and who lack the money to quickly rebuild without government assistance.
In fact, Trump’s idea to get rid of FEMA may just be his way of punishing California, which is reeling from a spate of devastating fires that have decimated parts of the Los Angeles area. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have threatened to withhold or condition disaster relief to California out of pure spite since the state reliably votes for Democrats up and down the ticket.
In the wake of California’s fires, rather than offer condolences or help to the state’s residents, Trump has instead launched childish attacks at Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, calling him “Newscum” and falsely blaming Newsom for the devastation the fires caused.
Trump wrongly accused Newsom of not providing enough water to battle the blazes. But firefighters have said that no municipal water system on earth could have stopped the blazes, which were so devastating because of hurricane-force winds that blew embers and ignited the arid landscape, which was bone-dry from a lack of rain.
In fact, Trump signed another executive order on Friday that includes lies about California's water management and its role in the fires that have ravaged LA.
But ultimately, when Trump traveled to California on Friday, he folded like a typical bully does when Newsom showed up uninvited to the tarmac to greet Trump.
“We’re working to get something completed,” Trump said of helping California. “He’s the governor of this state, and we’re going to get it completed. They’re going to need a lot of federal help.”