At an event in North Carolina, JD Vance complained that he and his Trump administration colleagues inherited a Federal Emergency Management Agency that was “mired in bureaucracy and red tape.” As is too often the case, the vice president had reality backwards: Upon returning to power, Team Trump created a FEMA that’s mired in bureaucracy and red tape.
NOTUS had a brutal report along these lines this week.
The Trump administration has the Federal Emergency Management Agency in a doom loop, according to current and former employees frustrated with its direction. President Donald Trump has called for overhauling the agency and letting states take the lead in disaster response to streamline a process that conservatives criticize as too bureaucratic. But current FEMA leadership has added more red tape and decimated morale, creating an environment that is antithetical to efficiency, these sources say.
While the report hasn’t been independently verified by MSNBC, it quoted one employee who works in the agency’s Office of Response and Recovery, who said, “With this leadership, the information has been so inconsistent, and the guidance we’ve been getting has been so inconsistent that it has basically ground a lot of activities in the agency to a halt.”
A different FEMA employee took aim at the current process which requires Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to sign off personally on all expense requests over $100,000. “It’s an absolutely ridiculous system,” the employee said. “And for an administration that came in touting how much they’re gonna cut the red tape and bureaucracy, it’s comical the level of bureaucracy they put in place instead.”
Alas, this isn’t the only evidence of an agency that’s struggling mightily.
Not only have some senior FEMA officials resigned in frustration, but dozens of employees recently warned Congress and the public that the Trump administration’s plans for the agency run the risk of creating another Katrina-level disaster in the coming months and years.
As for the department’s leadership, Cameron Hamilton began the year as FEMA’s administrator, but the lifelong conservative Republican was fired because he testified before Congress that it would be in the public’s interest if FEMA continued to exist. He was replaced by David Richardson, who has no background in emergency management and who, on his first day as the agency’s acting chief, told the agency’s staff that he would “run right over” anyone who gets in his way. Richardson’s tenure hasn’t exactly been a great success. Indeed, The Washington Post reported that FEMA insiders have found their unqualified boss is “often inaccessible,” and after deadly floods swept through parts of Texas Hill Country in July, the agency struggled to coordinate a response — because they couldn’t reach Richardson. All of this, of course, comes months after Donald Trump said he saw FEMA as an unnecessary department that should be “TERMINATED.” Around the same time, Noem, whose department oversees the emergency response agency, added, “We’re going to eliminate FEMA.” The White House has since hedged on plotting the agency’s demise — but all things considered, it’s hardly unreasonable to wonder whether the agency will survive Trump’s second term.
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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