Summary
The Trump administration is overhauling FEMA’s hiring process, requiring over two-thirds of employees to submit contract renewals to DHS for approval.
This affects Cadre of On-Call Response (CORE) employees and reservists who handle disaster response and comprise most of FEMA’s workforce.
The agency has already fired 200+ probationary (new) workers, frozen external hiring, and directed contract renewals to DHS “for decision.”
Critics fear this will effectively dismantle FEMA ahead of hurricane season, aligning with Trump’s statements that “you don’t need FEMA, you need a good state government” and Project 2025’s goal to shift disaster costs to states.
Genuinely worried about the response to floods this summer.
It’s been getting worse and worse each year for the last 5 years or so. Without FEMA, whole states are gonna crumble.
Oh don’t worry - FEMA will still be there. Only instead of providing shelter and food, they’ll be arresting everyone and transferring them to “camps” in El Salvador. /s?
Y’know back in the 80’s there was a wild conspiracy theory that the government was going to take over and put everyone in camps under a secret organization known as FEMA that had the power to suspend the Constitution.
At the time, no one had heard of FEMA and conspiracy theorists were, as per usual, mocked for believing the government had gone to the trouble of creating an agency just to ship people off to camps.
They were also mocked for saying the government recorded all the communications going in and out of the country.
Good times. Good times.