WASHINGTON ― Dozens of employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency warned Congress on Monday that the Trump administration has betrayed the lessons of Hurricane Katrina.
In an unusual petition to lawmakers, more than 181 FEMA employees, including 35 who publicly signed their names, said the administration has failed to install serious leadership at the agency and improperly held up funding.
“Since January 2025, FEMA has been under the leadership of individuals lacking legal qualifications, Senate approval, and the demonstrated background required of a FEMA Administrator,” the FEMA employees wrote.
“Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration.”
Twenty years ago, in August 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall, flooding New Orleans and resulting in as many as 1,836 deaths, with inexperience and poor planning at FEMA blamed for much of the chaos in the storm’s aftermath. Reforms Congress enacted the following year included a requirement that the FEMA administrator have “demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management and homeland security” and at least five years of executive experience.
The current acting head of FEMA, David Richardson, doesn’t have a background in emergency management. He was tapped to lead the agency after his predecessor was fired for saying during a hearing that he didn’t think it was in the best interests of the country to eliminate the agency. President Donald Trump had previously said FEMA should be eliminated and its responsibilities given to state governments,
“I feel a little bit like Bubba from ‘Forrest Gump,’” Richardson joked during an internal meeting soon after his appointment in May, according to The Wall Street Journal. “We’ve got hurricanes, we’ve got fires, we’ve got mudslides, we’ve got flash floods, we’ve got tornadoes, we’ve got droughts, we’ve got heat waves and now we’ve got volcanoes to worry about.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, suggested the agency’s employees were actually part of the problem.
“It is not surprising that some of the same bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency are now objecting to reform,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Change is always hard. It is especially for those invested in the status quo. But our obligation is to survivors, not to protecting broken systems.”
Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) hailed the FEMA employees for speaking out.
“Brave FEMA employees are sounding the alarm, and the leadership of FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security, and the White House need to be all in on fixing the problem,” Welch said in a statement.
Like other federal agencies, FEMA fired staff at the direction of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. And DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has reportedly insisted that she personally sign off on agency grants, a policy that may have hampered the federal response to a flooding disaster in Texas last month that killed more than 100 people. (Richardson called the federal response “outstanding” in testimony on Capitol Hill.)
Welch said DHS is on track to repeat the failures of Katrina: “Because of DOGE and Secretary Noem’s mismanagement, FEMA will be even more strained and under-prepared.”