🚨 The FEMA Review Council's Own Vice Chair Admits Recommendations Would Be “An Extreme Burden Upon the States”
The Republican vice chair of Donald Trump's own FEMA Review Council is now admitting what Sabotaging Our Safety has warned all along: the council's recommendations to shift disaster management responsibility to states would be, in his words, "an extreme burden upon the states."
Former Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant made the admission to The Hill this week — acknowledging that full implementation of the Council’s recommendations "would be an extreme burden upon the states in some instances" and that Congress would have to weigh in before any of it could move forward. Governor Bryant is right. And the states he's describing aren't abstract — they're Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and the Carolinas, each facing another hurricane season with an under-prepared FEMA right now.
Concerned by the recommendations, state leaders are responding. Last week, Texas State Representative Jon Rosenthal (District 135) sent a letter to Governor Greg Abbott demanding he withdraw his support from the Trump administration's FEMA Review Council and publicly oppose further cuts to FEMA's workforce and programs. In the letter, Rep. Rosenthal reminds Governor Abbott that Texas is one of the largest beneficiaries of federal disaster aid, receiving an average of $1.4 billion per year from FEMA since 2015 which translates to roughly 1.8% of the state's entire budget.
“The FEMA Review Council's report was presented as a reform agenda,” said Sabotaging Our Safety Advisory Council member Rafael Lemaitre. “What its own vice chair is now describing is a cost-shifting scheme — one that would leave states holding the bill for disasters they cannot afford to manage alone, while the federal government steps back from the role it has played for decades.”
HURRICANE SEASON READINESS: Hurricane season is here, and a growing chorus of emergency management experts, former FEMA officials, and members of Congress are sounding the alarm that the agency responsible for protecting Americans when disaster strikes is shorthanded, leaderless, and playing catch-up after more than a year of political turmoil under the Trump administration. FEMA has lost more than 5,000 employees since January 2025. Half of its top leadership positions are vacant. The agency has cycled through three acting administrators — none with emergency management experience — and still has no confirmed permanent leader. Its own acting administrator acknowledged this week that FEMA is "playing catch-up."
A recent Sabotaging Our Safety scorecard found that FEMA has earned an "F" on readiness, having bypassed multiple significant preparedness activities it has carried out in prior years.
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