Due to the Trump administration’s initiative to cut disaster relief resources, more than 180 current and former employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency sent a letter on Monday, August 25, warning that the cuts “risks a catastrophe like the one seen after Hurricane Katrina,” according to a report by the Associated Press.
CNN noted most of the employees signed anonymously, titling the letter the Katrina Declaration in which they accuse President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose department oversees FEMA, of “eroding the agency’s response capabilities and appointing unqualified leadership.”
The Associated Press explains how the letter states poor management and eroded capacity at FEMA could undo progress made to improve the agency through the Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006. It also details how roughly a third of FEMA’s full-time staff has left this year, including many of the veteran leaders who helped rebuild the agency after Hurricane Katrina, as reported by CNN.
The authors of the letter insist that Congress make FEMA a “cabinet-level, independent agency—insulated from political meddling and empowered to respond swiftly when disaster strikes.” But the odds of the demands being met are bleak as Trump said in June, he plans to phase out FEMA after hurricane season. “We want to wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it down to the state level,” he said.
If Trump doesn’t reverse course, the letter’s authors warn, “We hope (these changes) come in time to prevent not only another national catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina, but the effective dissolution of FEMA itself and the abandonment of the American people.”
According to the Associated Press, some FEMA employees who signed a public letter of dissent were put on administrative leave Tuesday evening.
On Tuesday, August 26, Politico reported that a former Trump administration official, Cameron Hamilton, who led the Federal Emergency Management Agency from late January to early May, criticized the Trump administration on social media on X and LinkedIn, saying “new forms of bureaucracy” are “delaying the deployment” of emergency help during disasters.
Hamilton, who was fired in May, said, “Stating that @fema is operating more efficiently, and cutting red tape is either: uninformed about managing disasters; misled by public officials; or lying to the American the public to prop up talking points.”
