The devastating Texas flooding that has killed nearly 120 people is the first high-profile disaster the Federal Emergency Management Agency has faced under the current Trump administration. But while the loss of life has been catastrophic, former and current FEMA officials told NBC News that the relatively small geographic area affected means it’s not a true test of what the agency, whose full-time staff has been shrunk by a third, is capable of doing in the wake of a disaster.
The real tryout could come later this summer, they say, when there is always the threat that a hurricane could hit several states.
As the agency’s future is debated — President Donald Trump has talked about possibly “getting rid of” it — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees it, has tightened her grip.
Noem now requires that all agency spending over $100,000 be personally approved by her, according to current and former FEMA officials. To prevent delays on the ground, on Monday FEMA officials created a task force to speed up the process of getting Noem’s approval, according to two people familiar with that unit.
While Noem has been exercising more direct control over the agency, there is a void created by the largely voluntary exodus of FEMA leaders. In May, the agency announced in an internal email the departures of 16 senior officials who took with them a combined disaster expertise of more than 200 years.
“DHS and its components have taken an all-hands-on-desk approach to respond to recovery efforts in Kerrville,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News.
“Under Secretary Noem and Acting Administrator [David] Richardson, FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens. The old processes are being replaced because they failed Americans in real emergencies for decades. … Secretary Noem is delivering accountability to the U.S. taxpayer, which Washington bureaucrats have ignored for decades at the expense of American citizens.”
On Wednesday afternoon, officials gathered for the second meeting of the FEMA Review Council, which the president has set up to determine the agency’s future role. Trump told reporters in early June, “We want to wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it down to the state level.”
As of now FEMA still has the same mandate and is managing more than 700 open disasters, according to Chris Currie, who tracks and audits the agency for the Government Accountability Office.
“They are not doing anything different. They are just doing it with less people,” he said in an interview.
While the push to get states to do more has some supporters, even at FEMA, some Republican members of Congress have taken care to defend the agency in light of the disastrous floods.
“The role of FEMA is critically important,” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told reporters on Capitol Hill this week. “I think everyone also agrees reforms that make FEMA more nimble, able to respond more quickly to a disaster, those reforms are beneficial, but regardless of the precise structure, the role is critical.”
Red tape
A key theme of the first FEMA Review Council meeting was how the federal government could reduce red tape. But current and former FEMA officials say Noem’s demand to personally sign off on expenditures is creating a layer of bureaucracy that could delay assistance on the ground in Texas and during future hurricanes.
A current FEMA official said the new requirement runs counter to the idea of reducing red tape and costs. “They’re adding bureaucracy … and they’re adding cost,” the official said.
One former senior FEMA official said the agency frequently needs to buy supplies and services in disaster zones and routinely signs contracts that exceed $100,000 to do that.
“FEMA doesn’t sneeze without spending that amount of money,” the former official, who requested anonymity because they are working in a related industry, told NBC News.
Beyond the rule about Noem approving certain spending, current and former officials said staff are confused about who is in charge of FEMA on a day-to-day basis: Noem or Richardson, who has been acting administrator since early May. One of the former officials said the agency’s culture has shifted from being proactive to being more cautious because people are afraid of losing their jobs.
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told NBC News that any questions about who is in charge are “silly,” saying, “Kristi Noem is the secretary of Homeland Security, which oversees federal emergency management — everyone knows that.”
More changes are afoot. Last week the agency officially ended its practice of sending staff to knock on doors in disaster zones as a way to connect victims to services. The change came after FEMA canvassers came under scrutiny last fall when an agency employee told a survivor assistance team to avoid homes with Trump signs. The acting administrator at the time called the FEMA staffer’s actions “reprehensible.” The staffer, who was fired, has since told NewsNation that she was following orders from a supervisor and that the move was intended to help employees avoid “hostile encounters.”
While many people access FEMA services through other means, including its website and hotline, two former senior officials said door knocking is still an essential way that disaster victims get connected to services. It’s unclear if the agency is sending or will send staff to knock on doors in Texas.
This week a Democratic senator also complained that he has not yet seen the 2025 hurricane plan that Noem said at a May hearing she would share.
Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the Subcommittee on Disaster Management, will send a letter Wednesday to Noem asking for the plan again.
“The reports of FEMA’s incomplete 2025 hurricane season plan on the cusp of the start of hurricane season and DHS’ slowness in providing the plan to this Committee are equally unsettling,” Kim wrote in the letter.
FEMA or states?
The key question going forward for FEMA remains what role, if any, it will play in disaster recovery, and what part of its previous mission will be delegated to the states to handle on their own.
Experts who spoke with NBC News say it’s clear the federal agency should still have a role in managing large-scale multistate disasters. What is less clear is whether states should be encouraged to do more to manage smaller disasters instead of relying on the federal government to bail them out.
“We need to incentivize states to spend more before requiring federal assistance,” said Jeff Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.
Natalie Simpson, a professor at the University of Buffalo who is an expert in emergency services and disaster response, said larger states can handle more responsibility when disaster strikes.
“I think big states like California, New York and Florida have enough economies of scale so they can set up a mini-FEMA, but I think other states it won’t be as effective,” she said in an interview.
Current and former FEMA officials pointed to comments Texas Gov. Greg Abbott made at the first FEMA Review Council meeting, in which he called FEMA “clunky and “slow” and that “states have proven that we can move more nimbly, more swiftly and more effectively.” They noted that the governor had asked for a FEMA disaster declaration within days of the floods.
On Sunday the president dodged a question about whether he would still eliminate the agency, telling reporters: “Well FEMA is something we can talk about later. But right now, they’re busy working, so we’ll leave it at that.”
By Monday, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said talks around the broader purpose of the agency were ongoing. “The president wants to ensure American citizens always have what they need during times of need. Whether that assistance comes from states or the federal government, that’s a policy discussion that will continue,” Leavitt said.