WATCH: Days Into Disaster Season, Public Officials and Experts Sound The Alarm That FEMA Isn’t Ready For Disasters Ahead
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Sabotaging Our Safety was joined by South Carolina State House Representative JA Moore, Texas State House Representative Mihaela Plesa, Public Service Commissioner for Louisiana's Third District Davante Lewis, Former FEMA Director of Public Affairs Rafael Lemaitre, and Rural Organizer for Women’s March and Texas community advocate, Kendra Kay to raise the alarm that FEMA is dangerously underprepared as the 2026 hurricane season gets underway. WATCH HERE.
Speakers detailed how the Trump administration's mass firings of experienced disaster-response personnel, frozen contracts, and vacant leadership positions have left communities across the Gulf Coast and Southeast exposed to catastrophic risk, and how Trump's FEMA Review Council's proposed agency overhaul would make things worse, not better.
“For us in Texas, FEMA is a very, very important part of everyday life and of disaster recovery,” said Texas State Rep. Mihaela Plesa. “If experienced disaster personnel are leaving FEMA, if leadership positions remain vacant, if preparedness contracts have been cancelled, then that's critical planning and coordination efforts that are being disrupted. It can mean the difference between a family getting help in days versus weeks or months. And it can mean the difference between a community recovering quickly or spending years trying to rebuild. Texas learned this firsthand with Hurricane Harvey, Winter Storm Uri and after devastating floods and wildfire crossed our state. The cost of being unprepared is measured in lives, disrupted homes, damaged businesses, and communities left struggling to recover.”
“It's vitally important that we have this conversation about what's happening with the Trump administration. Trump administration in FEMA. Here in South Carolina, we are getting into a critical season where it's vitally important that our national partners are prepared. And the truth of the matter is unfortunately they are not,” said South Carolina State Rep. JA Moore.
“We are also seeing a significant leadership in free for all, with the nominee that President Trump has nominated to run FEMA has no experience in disaster management, and I showed a lack of understanding and responsibility,” said Davante Lewis, Public Service Commissioner for Louisiana's Third District. “For the people that I represent across the coast of Louisiana, FEMA plays a role. It's not just an acronym that you talk about on an infrequent basis. It's an acronym and an agency that we have depended upon, depended upon for shelter, depended upon for recovery dollars, depended upon for our livelihood. And what we are deeply afraid and fearful of is that an administration that has prioritized political-zation will be our suffering.”
When I was at FEMA, we had a saying: you check your logos and your egos at the door, and you all work on the same team to help disaster survivors. What we've seen over the past year and a half is the Trump administration turning FEMA into a political weapon. We've seen them withhold aid to blue states while fast-tracking aid to red states. And we've seen them also propagate this lie, frankly, that somehow states are more able, better able to respond to disasters in the federal government. The truth is, FEMA after Katrina has been built from the ground up to serve the states and was never meant to supplant state power,” said Rafael Lemaitre, Former Director of Public Affairs at FEMA.
"The people who will pay the price for these decisions are the people in Beaumont and Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande Valley who are going to turn on the news one night and watch a storm headed straight for them, trusting that someone has prepared for this moment," said Kendra Kay, Rural Organizer for Women's March. "We are asking today that FEMA be given the leadership, the workforce, and the resources it needs to be there for those people."
View the full briefing here.
