The FEMA Workers Fired on New Year’s Eve Won’t Be There for the Next Hurricane

While Americans were preparing to ring in the new year, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Federal Emergency Management Agency Chief Karen Evans were firing dozens of disaster response workers. The employees who lost their jobs on New Year’s Eve weren’t bureaucrats shuffling papers in Washington—they were members of FEMA’s Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery teams who deploy when hurricanes flatten communities, when floods trap families in their homes, and when wildfires consume entire towns.

This wasn’t a budget decision. This was sabotage.

I spent years at FEMA and working disaster response, and I know what it takes to save lives when disaster strikes. You need trained personnel who can mobilize immediately; who know how to coordinate search and rescue operations; who understand the complex logistics of getting food, water, and shelter to people who’ve lost everything. You can’t save lives and rebuild communities while gutting FEMA’s workforce and keeping the agency under incompetent and overtly political control. These New Year’s Eve firings guarantee that when the next disaster hits, Americans may very well pay the price with their lives.

The timing tells you everything about this administration’s priorities. FEMA’s workforce has already been traumatized by DOGE, endured a revolving door of unqualified political leadership, witnessed retaliation against staffers who speak out, and heard President Donald Trump himself threaten to destroy the agency. Most recently, senior FEMA leaders were tasked with an agency-wide “workforce capacity planning exercise,” with the stated goal of cutting 50% of FEMA’s workforce (a target the administration claims was included in error). Now they’re watching their colleagues get fired on a holiday while the nation faces a looming crisis.

Every day that FEMA remains under Noem’s control, every firing of trained disaster workers, every delayed disaster declaration brings us closer to a preventable catastrophe.

Nearly 200 FEMA employees warned that this combination of political obstruction and resource depletion risks another Katrina-level catastrophe. They’re not exaggerating. I fear that we’re on a course to painfully relearn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina. Those who watched that disaster unravel in real time remember that it was a bad time for emergency management. FEMA was underfunded, it wasn’t a respected agency, and we saw the result: a bungled response to a major disaster that failed Americans when they needed help most. And now, we’re watching it happen again, in real time, and this time the warnings are coming from inside the agency itself.

The pattern under Noem’s leadership at DHS has been consistent: political interference that kills. When catastrophic flooding struck Texas, her bureaucratic approval requirements delayed Urban Search and Rescue deployment for more than 72 hours while Americans feared for their lives. Disaster declarations are being weaponized along partisan lines, with Democratic states denied relief at alarming rates while Republican states receive swift approvals, turning emergency management into political retaliation.

The administration’s contempt for professional emergency management extends beyond Noem’s obstruction. Trump appointed Gregg Phillips—a conspiracy theorist and election denier with zero emergency management experience—to lead FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, one of the agency’s most critical offices. Karen Evans, whose reputation for eliminating programs and slashing staff preceded her appointment as FEMA chief, is now overseeing the systematic dismantling of disaster response capabilities. A leaked report exposed plans to gut FEMA and slash the workforce in half. When the White House faced criticism, they didn’t abandon the plan. They just canceled the public meeting and stopped talking about it.

FEMA’s placement under DHS has enabled Noem to impose political interference and red tape that directly endangers American lives. Last month, Sabotaging Our Safety sent a letter to the FEMA Review Council with a straightforward solution: Make FEMA an independent, cabinet-level agency. Give the FEMA administrator a direct seat at the table with the president so the agency can respond to disasters without political obstruction from DHS leadership. This isn’t a radical proposal. It’s the only way to ensure that when Americans need help, they get it based on need rather than which party controls their state government.

This administration’s actions will cost lives. Every day that FEMA remains under Noem’s control, every firing of trained disaster workers, every delayed disaster declaration brings us closer to a preventable catastrophe. Our leadership must decide whether protecting FEMA’s capacity to respond to disasters matters more than political expediency. The agency that stands between American communities and disaster is being dismantled piece by piece, and we’re running out of time to stop it.