Trump panel abruptly delays FEMA overhaul vote

ERIC LEE/THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington, on June 16. A task force that President Donald Trump created to explore an overhaul of FEMA on Thursday, abruptly postponed a meeting where it had been scheduled to vote on recommendations to reshape the agency.

WASHINGTON >> A task force that President Donald Trump created to explore an overhaul of the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Thursday abruptly postponed a meeting where it had been scheduled to vote on recommendations to reshape the agency.

Less than an hour before the meeting’s scheduled 1 p.m. start, members of the panel, known as the FEMA Review Council, did not appear to be aware of the postponement. One was Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who is a leader of the council and whose department oversees FEMA. She left early from an appearance before the House Homeland Security Committee, saying she had to attend the council’s meeting.

Homeland security officials directed inquiries about the FEMA council to the White House. A White House official said the meeting was canceled during Noem’s testimony in Congress because White House officials had not been fully briefed.

The report had been highly anticipated. Though any road map for a FEMA overhaul would not have been binding, the group’s recommendations had been expected to carry significant weight as the White House and Congress pursue changes at FEMA that could shape the future of federal disaster response.

But after Thursday’s turn of events, some analysts questioned whether the council would be influential after all.

“The members of the council took this seriously and went all over the country listening to constituents,” said Sarah Labowitz, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies disaster recovery. “It seems clear the White House is driving the train and that the council has been undercut.”

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CNN said Wednesday night that it had obtained a copy of the task force recommendations. The network reported that the panel was calling for further reductions to the agency’s workforce and changes to the way it pays out aid to disaster-struck communities.

A House bill that has received bipartisan support and that passed a committee by a 57-3 vote in September includes many changes similar to those described in the CNN report.

The group’s report did not call for FEMA to be eliminated, as Trump suggested this year, according to CNN. Nor did it call for removing FEMA from the Homeland Security Department to become a stand-alone Cabinet agency, CNN said, something emergency managers on the council and members of Congress have endorsed but Noem has resisted.

The discussions come as disasters are becoming more frequent and costly as a result of climate change, which is intensifying storms and wildfires, as well as continued growth and development in disaster-prone areas. In the first six months of this year, disaster costs across the United States were on pace for a record, according to a database created by Climate Central, a nonprofit research group.

At the House hearing, after Noem’s departure, Rep. Troy Carter, D-La., lamented that she wasn’t present to answer questions about FEMA, calling it “an agency that’s needed more now than when it was created.”

According to CNN, the panel’s report was set to include a plan to distribute aid via block grants, by which state and local governments receive lump sums that they choose how to spend, instead of the existing system based on reimbursement, in which it often takes months for aid to flow because of reviews and delays.

The report also suggested raising the thresholds for disasters to qualify for federal assistance, CNN said.

It was just the latest upheaval for FEMA this year. The agency is on its third acting administrator since May, and none of those leaders have had a background in emergency management, which is required by law for the agency’s leader. Firings and buyouts prompted by the Department of Government Efficiency, the initiative run by Elon Musk, reduced FEMA’s staff by a quarter, leaving the agency without some of its most experienced staff members.

Heightened scrutiny on FEMA spending by Noem, including a requirement that she personally review all expenditures of $100,000 or more, has slowed the flow of aid to communities and cut off investment in disaster preparedness. Communities like a western Maryland town overwhelmed by spring floods have been left wondering if federal help would ever come.

Next week, a leading proponent of election fraud conspiracy theories that have been amplified by Trump will take the helm of the FEMA division responsible for overseeing disaster response and recovery.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2025 The New York Times Company

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