FEMA is not ready for hurricane season due to Trump upheaval, House Democrats argue

Senior Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee in a letter on Thursday urged leaders of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to stabilize the disaster workforce before more storms are expected to hit the U.S. 

“Hurricane season begins June 1, and by every available measure FEMA is less prepared to respond than it has been in a generation,” wrote ranking member Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Timothy Kennedy, D-N.Y., the top minority member of the panel’s Emergency Management and Technology Subcommittee. 

In particular, the Democrats criticized the Trump administration’s staff cuts at FEMA. They wrote, based on a communication from the agency to the committee, that officials have pushed out more than 5,000 employees since January 2025. FEMA employs more than 20,000 people, according to its website. 

The Homeland Security Department this month brought back around 200 FEMA contractors who were previously terminated, in part because of the upcoming hurricane season. 

Thompson and Kennedy also pointed out that roughly half of FEMA’s top leadership positions are listed as vacant on the agency’s website, raising concerns about proper management. 

On Monday, Trump announced his nominee, Cameron Hamilton, to serve as FEMA administrator. Hamilton was fired from being acting chief of the disaster agency in 2025 after testifying to a congressional panel that he did “not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate” FEMA. 

The president had previously expressed a desire to shutter FEMA, but an administration-backed Review Council recently recommended that the federal disaster agency instead scale back operations in favor of state and local governments taking on a larger share of response and recovery. 

In their letter, the lawmakers also cited a report from POLITICO that Trump has approved 23% of disaster funding requests from Democratic-led states compared with 89% for Republican ones. 

“Regardless of seasonal forecasts, it only takes one storm to produce catastrophic loss of life and property,” Thompson and Kennedy wrote. “Americans in hurricane-prone communities deserve a FEMA that is fully staffed, operationally ready and nonpartisan. By every measure, they do not have that today.”

FEMA did not respond to a request for comment.