Protect FEMA – Keep the Federal Emergency Management Agency Strong

I am deeply concerned by recent executive directives to phase out FEMA after the 2025 hurricane season, dismantle key resilience programs, slash staffing levels, and reduce the scope of federal disaster aid. These actions represent a dangerous retreat from decades of bipartisan efforts to strengthen national disaster preparedness and recovery. Eliminating FEMA or weakening its capabilities would have devastating consequences. These changes risk: • Overwhelming state and local governments, especially in smaller, rural, or climate-vulnerable areas that lack the infrastructure or resources to respond effectively to large-scale emergencies. • Undermining national resilience, particularly by ending successful programs like BRIC, the nation’s leading disaster resilience grant program. • Jeopardizing fairness in disaster recovery efforts, as the termination of door-to-door outreach and logistical coordination would disproportionately harm low-income, disabled, and elderly residents during disasters. FEMA is not just a funding agency—it is a coordination hub. It provides expert personnel, streamlined logistics, data, and emergency planning that no individual state can replicate on its own. Its removal would create chaos in the wake of hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and other disasters, which are only becoming more frequent and severe due to climate change. We have seen time and again—after Katrina, Sandy, Maria, Ian, and countless other disasters—that FEMA is essential to delivering emergency aid, deploying trained responders, and restoring devastated communities. Without a fully funded, professionally managed FEMA, future recovery efforts would be slower, more expensive, and less humane. I urge you to take immediate action in Congress to: 1. Block any effort to dismantle FEMA or reduce its operational authority. 2. Fully fund FEMA’s programs and personnel, including resilience grants and emergency response teams. 3. Preserve federal assistance thresholds to ensure states can access timely support. 4. Maintain the current legislation which authorizes FEMA’s leadership role in coordinating disaster relief under the Stafford Act and ensures a consistent, national standard of emergency response. Please speak out publicly and work to safeguard FEMA’s mission. Americans deserve a robust, professional federal disaster response system—not one fragmented by ideology or short-term cost-cutting.