President Donald Trump embarked today on his first trip since taking office, visiting two states that have been devastated by natural disasters in recent months, North Carolina and California. And he used the occasion to turn back to a familiar foe: the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.
While Trump has been critical of the agency in the past, he went a step further Friday, floating an overhaul — or the outright elimination — of FEMA.
“I’ll also be signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA. I think, frankly, FEMA is not good,” Trump said.
He suggested cutting FEMA out of the process entirely for future natural disasters and voiced support for letting states take charge of disaster response.
“I’d like to see the states take care of disasters, let the state take care of the tornadoes and the hurricanes and all of the other things that happen,” Trump said. “And I think you’re going to find it a lot less expensive. You’ll do it for less than half and you’re going to get a lot quicker response.”
The context: As Elyse Perlmutter-Gumbiner, Vaughn Hillyard and Alexandra Marquez write, FEMA doesn’t traditionally work alone in response to natural disasters to clean up debris and provide humanitarian aid, but alongside state and local partners.
As it stands, both state governors and FEMA play a role in disaster response. Governors have the ability to declare states of emergency, control and coordinate their emergency management agencies, and deploy state resources such as the National Guard.
It is only when states make a formal request for federal assistance — or when the situation clearly exceeds state and local capabilities — that the federal government steps in, and that requires the president to sign a disaster declaration.
Can Trump do that? In order to eliminate FEMA entirely he would need Congress to give him authority under the Presidential Reorganization Act. In short, Trump could seek support from both chambers for the authority to consolidate, reorganize or eliminate executive branch departments. That last happened during the Reagan administration.
It’s unclear just how receptive Republican lawmakers would be to that. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a moderate who hasn’t been afraid to break with Trump in the past, said she heard “disappointing reports on how FEMA operated” in recent natural disasters and that additional oversight and hearings would be warranted.
But she added, “I still think you need some sort of FEMA-like agency at the federal level.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., a Trump ally, said getting rid of FEMA would “probably be a good idea.”
What comes next: A White House official tells Peter Alexander that Trump will sign an executive order today that takes a first step toward potentially reshaping the Federal Emergency Management Agency by creating a task force to review it and recommend changes.
