'Limp through hurricane season?' Emergency managers baffled by new Trump plans

President Donald Trump announced plans to phase out the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) after this year's hurricane season, leaving emergency managers around the country baffled.

The president told reporters Tuesday at the White House that he intended to shift responsibility for disaster response to the "state level," saying governors "should be able to handle it," and if not, "then maybe they shouldn’t be governor," while also saying the federal government would start distributing less aid for recovery – and what funding was provided would come directly from the president's office, reported CNN.

“This is a complete misunderstanding of the role of the federal government in emergency management and disaster response and recovery, and it’s an abdication of that role when a state is overwhelmed,” a longtime FEMA leader told CNN. “It is clear from the president’s remarks that their plan is to limp through hurricane season and then dismantle the agency.”

The agency entered this year's hurricane season understaffed and unprepared, and its influence has quickly faded since Trump returned to office, with homeland security secretary Kristi Noem appointing Marine combat veteran and martial-arts instructor David Richardson to lead FEMA.

"[FEMA] fundamentally needs to go away as it exists," Noem said Tuesday in the Oval Office. “We all know from the past that FEMA has failed thousand if not millions of people, and president Trump does not want to see that continue into the future."

Federal and state emergency managers warned that most states don't have the budget or resources to replace FEMA's infrastructure, even if the U.S. government offers some assistance – which Trump and Noem wade clear would be reduced from years past.

“The FEMA thing has not been a very successful experiment,” Trump said Tuesday. “It’s extremely expensive, and again, when you have a tornado or a hurricane or you have a problem of any kind in a state, that’s what you have governors for. They’re supposed to fix those problems.”