STATEMENT: Sabotaging Our Safety Slams New Year’s Eve Firing of FEMA Disaster Workers

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On New Year’s Eve, dozens of FEMA employees tasked with disaster response and recovery were suddenly fired under Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and FEMA Chief Karen Evans’s leadership. The fired employees worked on Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery (CORE) teams, an essential part of the agency that provides support for communities in the aftermath of disasters. Sabotaging Our Safety is condemning these firings as yet another dangerous signal of what’s to come as FEMA continues under Noem’s politicization of the agency.

In response, Sabotaging Our Safety Advisory Council Member and former FEMA official Rafael Lemaitre released the following statement:

“You can’t save lives and rebuild communities while gutting FEMA’s workforce and keeping the agency under such incompetent and overtly political control. FEMA’s workforce has already been traumatized by DOGE, a revolving door of leadership, witnessed retaliation against staffers who speak out against the administration, and endured threats to dismantle the agency by Trump himself – and these firings ensure that when the next disaster hits, communities will pay the price.”

FEMA faced a chaotic end to 2025 with leadership turnovers, dangerous appointments, and continued politicization of the agency. Last month, Sabotaging Our Safety sent a letter to the FEMA Review Council demanding the agency become independent and a leaked report exposed plans to gut FEMA and slash the workforce in half. Facing a firestorm of criticism, the White House abruptly canceled the scheduled meeting and public release of the report. Meanwhile, the Trump administration appointed Gregg Phillips – a well-known conspiracy theorist and election denier with no emergency management experience – to lead FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery, one of the agency’s most critical offices.