
Only two days after visiting natural disaster-torn areas, including North Carolina, and broaching the idea of “getting rid of” the Federal Emergency Management Agency, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order regarding the entity.
READ MORE: Trump talks dismantling, cutting back FEMA during NC stop
On Sunday, Jan. 26, Trump executed an order for the formation of a task force — the Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Committee — to look at “efficacy, priorities, and competence” within the department. FEMA provides money for displacement, temporary lodging, basic home repair costs, personal property loss, and other disaster-caused needs, operated under the Department of Homeland Security.
The new committee would consist of up to 20 members, including new secretaries of defense and homeland security, Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem. By the end of day on Monday (this article was updated after press), the Asheville Citizen Times reported Chuck Edwards (District 11), who serves the area, would be on the committee alongside other North Carolina Republican representatives Virginia Foxx (District 5) and Tim Moore (District 14). Edwards wrote in a release on Jan. 27 that Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley would lead the task force.
The executive order requests the committee recommend to the president in 180 days any changes they think need to take place at FEMA. Its first meeting is to be held within the first 90 days of the order’s signing.
The executive order comes after Trump boasted Friday in the western portion of North Carolina — while visiting Hurricane Helene survivors in Swannanoa — that FEMA was “not good.” He accused the agency — founded by a 1979 executive order issued by then-President Jimmy Cater — of being biased in its aid; this language also appeared in his newly signed EO:
“Despite obligating nearly $30 billion in disaster aid each of the past three years, FEMA has managed to leave vulnerable Americans without the resources or support they need when they need it most,” the order notes. “There are serious concerns of political bias in FEMA. Indeed, at least one former FEMA responder has stated that FEMA managers directed her to avoid homes of individuals supporting the campaign of Donald J. Trump for President.”
United States Senators Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, both representing North Carolina, signed a letter with 17 other Senators last fall, sent to then-FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell, demanding answers and accountability. The letter included information sent in from a FEMA worker claiming aid was withheld, at the behest of a FEMA supervisor, from Trump supporters in Florida following Hurricane Milton.
“It is clear that FEMA has fallen well short of its core mission to provide disaster relief to all Americans,” the senators signed of the letter, adding they also heard of this happening in the western region of North Carolina. “The idea that citizens, whose tax dollars fund FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund (DRF) and pay FEMA officials’ salaries, may be purposely excluded from vitally needed aid is chilling and further erodes many people’s already tenuous trust in this administration.”
Criswell, who led the agency for four years, was grilled by an oversight committee last fall about the incident and said she had not spoken directly to those allegedly involved. Fired FEMA employee Marn’i Washington said she was merely a scapegoat in the incident and was only doing what she, too, was instructed to do, claiming she didn’t “create policy.”
Criswell stepped down after Trump took office. Last week, former Navy SEAL Cam Hamilton was appointed by Trump as the interim senior official performing the duties of FEMA administrator.
By Friday Trump promised during his visit in the Tar Heel State to sign an order to either abolish the agency or at least “overhaul” it; however, only a Congressional vote approves as much.
After the president’s comments to media, Hamilton told staff in an email, according to Reuters:
“FEMA is a critical agency which performs an essential mission in support of our national security. President Trump has laid out his intent to reform FEMA, and we stand firmly at the ready to implement real and lasting reform. We have some work to do at Fema and restoring public confidence in this agency is essential.”
According to FEMA, it has issued more than $300 million for individual assistance to date in the western region of North Carolina, helping more than 140,000 households.
The agency has dealt with a deluge of disinformation being spread about it since contending with multiple natural disasters in the last six months. It launched a site to mitigate the rumors in fall 2024.
Some have included FEMA taking disaster victim’s land if they applied for help or FEMA assistance only being offered to homeowners and not to people who have insurance. The agency clarifies all are untrue.
One rumor, also spread by the president, is that FEMA spends “disaster recovery funds on sheltering immigrants at the border.” The Shelter and Services Program — which helps noncitizen migrants with food, shelter, medical care and transportation — is funded by the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA administers the financing, but the program doesn’t draw from FEMA’s budget.
The president’s order accuses FEMA of utilizing money “to welcome illegal aliens” into the country.
Trump told media and area representatives on Friday he thought the states should be given a percentage of money directly from the federal government to mitigate disaster relief on their own accord. He claimed there were problems with FEMA workers being unfamiliar with territories they enter for relief and having too much bureaucratic red tape to issue help expediently. More so, he thought governors of the states would do a better job.
“FEMA has turned out to be a disaster,” Trump said Friday in North Carolina. “I think we recommend that FEMA go away. I think, frankly, that FEMA is not good.”
Though Trump blamed the Biden administration for not responding swiftly to North Carolinians, the Trump administration also faced issues from its 2016-2020 term of expeditiously helping natural disaster victims.
As previously reported by PCD, a 2021 Department of Housing and Urban Development Inspector General report found the president’s first administration delayed approximately $20 billion in aid to Puerto Rico for two years after Hurricanes Maria and Irma. A Harvard public health study attributed thousands of excess deaths to the slow recovery effort.
Two years prior, Texas state officials also criticized Trump’s administration for its year-long delay of executing $16 billion in disaster mitigation financing in 2019.
During Trump’s last term, budget requests included cuts to FEMA every year since 2017 and a transfer of $155 million from its Disaster Relief Fund to ICE in 2019. Congress directed FEMA to put aside $41 million of its annual budget to cover costs of providing security at the former president’s properties.
Trump’s executive order signed on Sunday explains:
“Americans deserve an immediate, effective, and impartial response to and recovery from disasters. FEMA therefore requires a full-scale review, by individuals highly experienced at effective disaster response and recovery, who shall recommend to the President improvements or structural changes to promote the national interest and enable national resilience.”
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