ICYMI: FEMA Has No Plan And Lacks the Leadership Needed to Make One

SOS Scorecard Finds Agency Structure in Freefall as Hurricane Season Opens in 17 Days

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As hurricane season approaches in just weeks, a new Sabotaging Our Safety scorecard reveals that FEMA's agency structure and strategic planning have effectively collapsed under the Trump administration — and the leadership chaos engulfing the agency means there is no one in a position to fix it.

Sabotaging Our Safety’s FEMA Readiness Scorecard, released last week, grades the agency across four critical dimensions of disaster preparedness. FEMA earns an F across every single category. On agency structure and strategic planning, the picture is especially stark: no multi-year strategic plan exists, no after-action reviews have been published in over a year, a key mitigation grant program was shut down and only reopened by court order, and an administration-appointed review body tasked with charting FEMA's future extended its own deadline twice before reporting just weeks ahead of storm season.

“"FEMA has no strategic plan, no confirmed leader, no confirmed leader with emergency management experience, and no institutional memory from the last two hurricane seasons,” said Sabotaging Our Safety Advisory Council Member Rafael Lemaitre. “The Trump administration has systematically stripped this agency of everything it needs to protect Americans, and they're doing it on the eve of the riskiest time of year."

Questions Over Hamilton's Qualifications: Now, Trump has formally nominated Cameron Hamilton. SOS has raised serious questions about whether Hamilton meets the legal qualifications for the role. Following Hurricane Katrina, Congress enacted specific statutory requirements for the FEMA Administrator, mandating demonstrated emergency management expertise and at least five years of executive leadership in the field. Hamilton has never served as a state or local emergency management director and has not led a federal disaster response operation.

An Agency in Chaos: FEMA's multi-year strategic plan was canceled in May 2025 — ten days before last year's hurricane season began. FEMA has long operated under a multi-year strategic plan, which sets the agency’s priorities, goals, and operational plans for resources allocated by Congress — including during the first Trump administration. Nothing has replaced it. The agency has also failed to publish after-action reviews reflecting on disaster response efforts for 2024 or 2025, meaning the documented failures and lessons from back-to-back disaster seasons have gone unaddressed. After the conclusion of each hurricane season, FEMA typically conducts and publishes an after-action review debriefing successes and failures from the season. In late 2021 and early 2022, FEMA underwent an extensive review that directly shaped preparations for the next hurricane season. In 2023, FEMA conducted a similar review that prompted operational changes and protocols for storm surges. In 2024, FEMA published a year-in-review report documenting lessons from the prior season. Since Trump took charge, however, FEMA has stopped producing post-season reports. An internal 2025 readiness assessment described FEMA as "isolated" with "little inter-agency collaboration."

Meanwhile, the administration's own FEMA Review Council extended its deadline twice and only recently delivered its findings, weeks before the season opens — recommending sweeping cuts that would shift disaster response burden to states that are demonstrably less equipped to bear it.  Disaster declarations that unlock critical federal aid are already taking longer to process and being rejected more frequently, and the recommendations offered by Trump’s FEMA Review Council would only further limit disaster declarations and the amount of federal aid offered to state and local leaders.

The Trump administration already tried to terminate the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program, formerly a cornerstone of FEMA's hazard mitigation mission. The program was only restored after a court order, and its application deadline is now set for July, placing it squarely in the middle of hurricane season.

Three Leaders in 18 Months: This structural collapse is inseparable from the leadership vacuum at the top of the agency. FEMA has cycled through three acting heads since January 2025. On Tuesday, the Trump administration removed Karen Evans — the most recent acting administrator — just 19 days before hurricane season begins. Her replacement, Robert Fenton, previously served on the same Review Council that recommended gutting the agency. FEMA’s extremely high executive vacancy rate is one of the strongest indicators of agency dysfunction at the highest level:

There has been no Senate-confirmed FEMA administrator throughout the entire Trump administration. 

Nearly half of all FEMA executive positions — 47% — are vacant. 

The agency is missing around half of its top officials, including the FEMA Administrator, Deputy FEMA Administrator, four (soon to be five) out of seven deputy associate administrators, and 40% of its regional administrators. 

The offices of Policy & Program Analysis and Resilience, the two offices most directly responsible for planning and preparedness, are both completely empty. 

Just three of the 10 regions have both a regional administrator and a deputy regional administrator. 

The top two positions in one of the most hurricane-prone regions in the country, which includes Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and 68 Tribal Nations, remain empty just weeks before hurricane season. The other most hurricane-prone region, which includes Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and six Tribal Nations, only has a deputy.

Read the full SOS FEMA Readiness Scorecard here.

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