Trump administration has no immediate plan to shutter FEMA, report

President Trump reportedly has no immediate – if any – plans to shutter the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

A senior White House official told The Washington Post in a story posted Friday that there is no official action to wind down FEMA, and that changes in the agency will probably amount to a “rebranding” to emphasize state leaders’ roles in disaster response.

Shortly after taking office, Trump issued an executive order on FEMA that he said would “begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA.”

“I think, frankly, FEMA’s not good,” he said at the time. “The FEMA thing has not been a very successful experiment.”

Trump said as recently as mid-June that he plans to phase out the federal agency after this year’s hurricane season. 

While the ultimate decision is up to President Trump, FEMA is currently not set to be abolished, according to the official and others.

“Without any official action, you’re already seeing the theory” of the administration’s new approach “taking place in Texas,” the official told The Post, referring to the deadly, catastrophic floods there last week.

“The president immediately delivered the dollars, Texas already has that money in their hands, and Gov. [Greg] Abbott is the lead decision-maker when it comes to the Texas floods,” the official said. “You should expect this structure, that has quietly taken place, to continue.”

During a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem discussed the federal government's response to the Texas floods.

"We as a federal government don't manage these disasters, the state does," she said. "We come in and support them. And that's exactly what we did here in this situation. FEMA went to an enhanced level immediately. But as soon as you signed the major disaster declaration, we were able to get them resources and dollars right away, just like you envisioned through state lot grants to help them with cleanup."

Noem said during a March Cabinet meeting that she was “going to eliminate FEMA.” Then last month, she appeared to slightly changer her tune, saying Trump wanted to “see FEMA eliminated as it exists today.”

FEMA is currently undergoing a review process as the FEMA Review Council, which Trump created by his executive order, met this week and is expected to release a report in November with recommendations to improve federal disaster response.

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement that the review council “will recommend to the president how FEMA may be reformed in ways that best serve the national interest, including how America responds to and recovers from disasters such that the Federal role remains supplemental and appropriate to the scale of disaster.”

She added that federal resources are intended to “supplement state actions, not replace those actions,” noting that “FEMA’s outsized role created a bloated bureaucracy that disincentivized state investment in their own resilience.”

“President Trump is committed to right-sizing the Federal government while empowering state and local governments by enabling them to better understand, plan for, and ultimately address the needs of their citizens,” Jackson said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said this week that there are ongoing discussions about structuring the federal disaster response.

“The president wants to ensure American citizens always have what they need during times of need,” Leavitt said. “Whether that assistance comes from states or the federal government, that’s a policy discussion that will continue. And the president has always said he wants states to do as much as they can, if not more.”

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said that “it’s not a secret” that under Noem and acting FEMA administrator David Richardson, “FEMA, as it is today, will no longer exist.”

In May, FEMA acting director Cameron Hamilton was fired after telling Congress he believed that it is not in the public's best interest to eliminate the agency.