Throughout his second term, Donald Trump’s line on the future of FEMA hasn’t left his administration with a lot of wiggle room: As far as the president is concerned, the agency’s days are numbered.
“FEMA is getting in the way of everything,” the Republican argued earlier this year, failing to explain what that meant. Trump soon after said he saw the agency as an unnecessary department that should be “TERMINATED.” Around the same time, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose Cabinet department oversees the emergency response agency, added, “We’re going to eliminate FEMA.”
But after the recent deadly flooding in Texas, the White House started hedging a bit on its plans, opening the door to an agency that might be overhauled but not necessarily “terminated.” Late last week, Noem even suggested that FEMA’s future would endure.
“What you saw happen in Texas was much more how FEMA will look in the future,” the South Dakota Republican said, as if the federal response to the Texas flooding was so impressive, it had established a model worthy of emulation going forward.
It appears that assessment has not been universally embraced within the agency. CNN reported that the head of FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue branch resigned on Monday.
Ken Pagurek’s departure comes less than three weeks after a delayed FEMA response to catastrophic flooding in central Texas caused by bureaucratic hurdles put in place by the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the disaster response agency. Pagurek told colleagues at FEMA that the delay was the tipping point that led to his voluntary departure after months of frustration with the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency, according to two sources familiar with his thinking. It took more than 72 hours after the flooding for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to authorize the deployment of FEMA’s search and rescue network. The report on Pagurek, who spent more than a decade with FEMA, has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, though a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson responded to his departure in a curious way. “It is laughable that a career public employee, who claims to serve the American people, would choose to resign over our refusal to hastily approve a six-figure deployment contract without basic financial oversight,” a DHS spokesperson told CNN in a statement about Pagurek’s resignation. “We’re being responsible with taxpayer dollars, that’s our job.” Of course, this wasn’t much of a denial about concerns reportedly voiced by a resigning senior FEMA official.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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