Richardson says Trump administration no longer pushing to eliminate FEMA

FEMA announces Indiana pilot to speed disaster aid delivery

David Richardson, a former Marine artillery officer with more than 20 years of service, arrived at FEMA in May 2025 reluctantly and with no disaster-management experience. “FEMA’s not my thing,” he said. Richardson told NPR he took the job because his predecessor was not moving fast enough in the direction the administration wanted, and because he had previously led efforts to downsize the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction office within the Department of Homeland Security.

President Trump, in the first week of his second term, attacked FEMA, saying, “I think, frankly, FEMA is not good,” and saying the agency should be eliminated. That rhetoric was repeated by then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who controlled FEMA’s budget. Other federal agencies have since been stripped down or eliminated, including the Department of Education, Voice of America and USAID.

FEMA, by Richardson’s telling, was also targeted. He said he arrived with three objectives: “to get FEMA through hurricane season, either shut it down or drastically reduce its size, and get it ready for rebranding.” His plan was to reduce FEMA headquarters staffing from about 6,000 to no more than 2,000 by November 2025. “I’m a small-government person,” he added.

Within months, Richardson said, the focus began to shift. His plan to start downsizing at the end of October 2025, one month before the close of the Atlantic hurricane season, was not approved by DHS leadership. Around the same time, the president appointed a council of emergency experts to recommend reforms, and Richardson said he began to wonder whether the administration’s goals had changed.

He says he got his answer in July 2025. In his book, “Texas Flood: Power, Money, Politics, History, Bureaucracy and Tragedy,” Richardson writes that a DHS deputy chief of staff told him, “Dave, things have changed,” before explaining that the president’s council, not Richardson, would decide the agency’s future.

At council meetings that summer, emergency managers from states led by Republican governors, including Texas and Florida, discussed the importance of reforming FEMA but did not publicly advocate for eliminating it. Deanne Criswell, who ran FEMA for four years under President Biden, said the council’s makeup shifted the conversation. “I think that’s where we started to see the rhetoric start to change about FEMA,” Criswell said. “There are so many communities, and many Republican communities, that depend on the aid that you couldn’t just get rid of it without having a negative impact.”

Criswell also disputed Richardson’s characterization of the agency. “You can’t just indiscriminately cut,” she said. “It’s only going to hurt the person who has the most need after a disaster.”

The Trump administration’s earlier efforts to cut FEMA spending and staffing have also encountered court setbacks. An early attempt to end a major grant program for disaster preparedness failed after a court challenge, and temporary workers terminated earlier this year are suing the agency. This summer, FEMA began rehiring many of those who had been terminated.

Inside FEMA, the mood has shifted with the rhetoric. Fear of wholesale agency abolition or mass layoffs has dissipated among current staff, according to FEMA employees who spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation. But the earlier attempts to cut the agency have compounded longstanding problems. The GAO report raised concerns about whether the agency is adequately staffed. Parts of FEMA that handle disaster recovery remain understaffed and struggling to get long-delayed aid to disaster-stricken states, according to the FEMA employees who spoke to NPR.

Andrew Rumbach, who studies disaster policy at the nonprofit Urban Institute, called the earlier effort “ill-advised.” “Looking back, I think what we saw was an ill-advised attempt to reduce the size of FEMA without fully understanding all the different functions that the agency has,” he said.

Richardson resigned in late 2025. Noem was fired in March of this year and replaced at DHS by Markwayne Mullin, a former senator from Oklahoma with extensive experience working with FEMA after disasters in his state. The Senate confirmed Cameron Hamilton to lead FEMA last month. Hamilton had previously served as the agency’s acting administrator before Richardson took over; Richardson said he felt Hamilton “wasn’t moving fast enough” on cuts. In his introductory email to FEMA staff, Hamilton wrote that he looks forward to “strengthening the agency for the future.”

The president’s FEMA Review Council submitted its recommendations earlier this year, calling for states to take more responsibility for disasters. Hamilton promised during his Senate confirmation hearing to come up with a plan to implement some of those recommendations. This week, the agency announced a pilot program with the state of Indiana aimed at getting disaster relief money to the state more quickly for flood repairs.

Rumbach said the pilot is the kind of improvement he had hoped to see. “Those are the kind of improvements I’d hope to see in the coming years,” he said. “Compared to some of the more dramatic and draconian cuts that were being recommended.”

Many of the most sweeping reforms — including making FEMA report directly to the president and overhauling the system for delivering money to individual disaster survivors — would require the White House and Congress to work together. A bipartisan FEMA reform bill is waiting in committee. Trump has rarely spoken about FEMA this summer, even after major disasters including floods and catastrophic wildfires.

For his part, Richardson said he sees FEMA settling into a longer equilibrium. “I think they’re probably in a go-along-to-get-along kind of mode,” he said. “I don’t see there being a whole lot of change.”

FEMA, asked about the shift, said in a statement: “FEMA remains fully operational and focused on its core mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters. As a matter of policy, we do not comment on accounts in forthcoming books, internal operational deliberations, or personnel matters.” The White House declined to comment.