Four Questions Americans Deserve Answers To From Secretary Mullin on FEMA Funding, Disaster Mitigation, and Hurricane Season
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin is expected to testify before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security for a review of Donald Trump’s FY2027 budget request. Hurricane season officially began yesterday — and FEMA entered it in a crisis.
The Trump administration’s FY2027 budget proposes eliminating $1.3 billion in FEMA non-disaster grants, zeroing out the mitigation programs that protect communities before storms arrive. Meanwhile, FEMA has lost more than 5,000 employees since January 2025, nearly half its top leadership positions remain vacant, and the agency is entering the season with only about 30 percent of its disaster workforce ready to deploy. Reps. Bennie Thompson and Tim Kennedy wrote to Secretary Mullin just weeks ago warning that “by every available measure, FEMA is less prepared to respond than it has been in a generation.”
Subcommittee members should press Secretary Mullin on these four critical questions:
It is currently unclear how much FEMA owes in outstanding public assistance to communities still waiting for reimbursement, while individual survivors face high denial rates and inadequate aid amounts. Will you commit to paying all of FEMA's outstanding public assistance, improving the flow of individual aid to disaster-impacted families, and publishing clear, publicly accessible metrics on reimbursement timelines — by state, by disaster, and by project type — so Congress and survivors can hold FEMA accountable?
Former DHS Secretary Noem terminated FEMA's Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, but it was re-opened by court order. Still, it has been over a year since Trump approved any state's request for hazard mitigation funding, a standard add-on to disaster declarations. Every dollar invested in hazard mitigation saves at least thirteen dollars in future disaster costs. Will you commit to fully reinstating BRIC with FY2027 funding and ensuring that approved mitigation funds are delivered to the communities that were promised them?
The FY2027 budget proposes a $1.3 billion cut to FEMA non-disaster grants. These non-disaster preparedness grants are the backbone of local emergency management capacity — funding the equipment, training, and planning that determines whether communities can withstand a disaster before it becomes a multi-billion-dollar catastrophe. Which state and local capabilities does the administration expect will simply cease to be necessary — and which does it expect states to fund themselves? How do you expect states and localities to make up the funding gap?
The budget simultaneously requests $28.4 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund while cutting the non-disaster grants and staffing that prevent disasters from becoming major declarations in the first place. Can you explain the logic of investing heavily in disaster response while gutting disaster prevention — given that mitigation investments historically return $13 in avoided losses for every $1 spent?
