With Hurricane Season One Week Away, Florida and the Nation Cannot Afford a Broken FEMA

As Congress Sounds the Alarm, SOS Warns That Trump's Assault on Disaster Readiness Puts Lives at Risk

WASHINGTON, D.C. — With hurricane season beginning June 1, a chorus of warnings from Congress, state officials, and disaster experts is growing louder: FEMA is not ready.

House Democrats on the Homeland Security Committee wrote to FEMA leadership earlier this month warning that "by every available measure FEMA is less prepared to respond than it has been in a generation." The Trump administration has pushed out more than 5,000 FEMA employees since January 2025 — gutting the very workforce that is supposed to respond when a hurricane makes landfall. Per Sabotaging Our Safety’s FEMA Readiness Scorecard, nearly half of all executive positions at the agency sit vacant and the two offices most directly responsible for planning and preparedness have no one in charge at all.

And even Florida — the state the Trump administration holds up as a model for the future of disaster response — is raising red flags. POLITICO reported this week that Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie has expressed concern that FEMA-created delays in the federal reimbursement process have been holding back the state's recovery from previous storms. Florida has the infrastructure to respond, but responding to disaster without federal financial backing would be catastrophic. 

"When Florida's own emergency management director is telling the country that FEMA's dysfunction has slowed disaster recovery, the Trump administration doesn't get to hide behind the Sunshine State as a success story," said Sabotaging Our Safety Advisory Council member Rafael Lemaitre. "Florida needs FEMA to function. Texas needs FEMA to function. Every state in the path of a hurricane needs a federal partner that is fully staffed, financially capable, and ready to write the checks that make recovery possible. What they have instead is an agency that has lost thousands of experienced workers, has no permanent leader, and has already been approving disaster aid at dramatically lower rates for Democratic-led states than for Republican ones."

As SOS has documented, FEMA has cycled through four acting heads since January 2025. Its recently nominated administrator, Cameron Hamilton, may not even meet the legal qualifications Congress established after Hurricane Katrina — requirements specifically designed to ensure the agency is led by someone with real emergency management experience, not someone chosen for political loyalty. 

Read the full SOS FEMA Readiness Scorecard

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