DHS Secretary Recommends Trump ‘Get Rid’ of FEMA in Its Current State

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem speaks to staff for the first time at Department of Homeland Security (DHS) headquarters in Washington on Jan. 28, 2025. Manuel Balce Ceneta/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said she is recommending that President Donald Trump “get rid” of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) “the way it exists today.”

FEMA is tasked with helping states and communities affected by floods, fires, drought, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other disasters.

But in recent months, FEMA has come under fire from Republicans, including the president, regarding how it handled hurricanes Helene and Milton, which hammered the southern United States in fall 2024. FEMA also drew controversy after a worker claimed that she was directed to tell her staff not to visit homes with Trump signs, and the agency received further criticism for providing hundreds of millions of dollars for cities to buy plane tickets for illegal immigrants last year.

“We still need the resources and the funds and the finances to go to people that have these types of disasters, like Hurricane Helene and the fires in California,” Noem, whose agency oversees FEMA, told CNN on Feb. 9. “But you need to let the local officials make the decisions on how that is deployed so it can be deployed much quicker.”

In an interview last month, Trump said that he would be holding talks on the future of the disaster relief agency, and in late January, he signed an order to create an advisory council to review FEMA and recommend how it can be improved.

“FEMA has not done their job for the last four years,” Trump said during an interview with Fox News in January. “FEMA is gonna be a whole big discussion very shortly, because I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems.”

“I love Oklahoma, but you know what? If they get hit with a tornado or something, let Oklahoma fix it,” he said. “And then the federal government can help them out with the money. FEMA is getting in the way of everything, and the Democrats actually use FEMA not to help North Carolina.”

At the same time, Cameron Hamilton, the current acting FEMA administrator, wrote on social media platform X that changes are coming to the agency.

“We have some work to do at FEMA, and we are ready to implement the President’s agenda and reform FEMA to better serve the American people,” he wrote on Jan. 26.

Noem was also asked about tech billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency’s access to FEMA data. She expressed support for work done by Musk and the department, coming amid criticism from Democrats on his expressed desire to dismantle entire government agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of Education.

“Elon Musk is part of the administration that is helping us identify where we can find savings and what we can do, and he has gone through the processes to make sure that he has the authority the president has granted him,” she told CNN.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.