What Does Kristi Noem’s Firing Mean for a Hobbled FEMA?

Source: The New Republic · Bias: Left

Summary

In the days since President Trump announced that he was firing Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary and replacing her with Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, much of the focus has understandably been on what this means for the brutal, chaotic, and lawless immigration policy that Noem has spearheaded. But there’s another area within DHS where Noem’s departure raises rather urgent questions about a possible change in policies. And that’s at FEMA.Noem was in the middle of a project to shrink the Federal Emergency Management Agency significantly, having announced large staffing cuts in January. She’d also floated the idea of dismantling it entirely.Her firing last Thursday came only a day after Senate Democrats released a report showing that Noem’s policy of requiring sign-off on any expenditure over $100,000 had resulted in “at least 1,034 FEMA contracts, grants, or disaster assistance awards” being held up—among them, disaster aid for survivors of Hurricane Helene and Texas’s deadly floods last summer (which killed at least 135 people, including 27 at a girls’ summer camp). And the day after Noem’s firing was announced, a judge gave FEMA 14 days to inform states about the status of their Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grants, a multibillion-dollar program that a court in December ordered reinstated—with no sign of compliance from FEMA.Meanwhile, FEMA remains largely shuttered due to the DHS shutdown. And the administration recently spent “more than half of the balance in the nation’s disaster relief fund,” according to Politico, “pointing to that dwindling aid as [a] means to pressure Democrats into yielding in Department of Homeland Security funding negotiations.” What exactly does Markwayne Mullin intend to do about all this? I asked two experts what they would be watching for in the coming weeks to determine whether Mullin would represent a serious shift from Noem’s policies, and whether FEMA would be able to handle disasters this year. “Shutdowns come and go,” said Bryan Koon, president and chief executive officer at global emergency management consulting firm IEM and former director of the Florida Division of Emergency. “We tend to find ways to work around whatever issues are associated with that.” But he pointed to the FEMA Review Council report that the president ordered last year to determine policy changes at the agency. “It’s been now a year of uncertainty,” Koon said. “We’ve heard ideas about what might be in it, but frankly I would like to have some certainty, some insight into what the council’s going to recommend.” He noted that Trump already extended the timeline through the end of March. “I’m concerned that the transition between Noem and Mullin as secretary, combined with the shutdown, is going to delay that even further or even potentially render it moot,” he said. Koon would consider the release of the report as one indicator of FEMA’s overall health at present. “A second would be an actual emergency or disaster that required FEMA to be all in. We were remarkably, as a nation, pretty lucky in 2025, and thus far in 2026—I mean, we had no landfalling hurricanes.”Tim Manning, a former deputy administrator at FEMA, agreed. “I think they dodged a bullet,” he said, regarding last year’s hurricane season. “I and most of the emergency management community have great concerns for FEMA’s readiness. It is a collection of the most selfless, dedicated people in the government,” he said, “but there’s no getting around that they’ve been decimated over the past year and a half.” He pointed to layoffs, the firing of most senior leadership, the “onerous level of review” for grants, and more. “At every turn, the Noem administration has made decisions that dramatically degrade FEMA’s readiness and capabilities.”If Markwayne Mullin is formally nominated and sits for confirmation—a big if, given that Trump’s first administration was marked by an unprecedented number of acting Cabinet secretaries working without Senate confirmation—Manning suggested that senators ask him about that directly. “I think the question I would ask Mullin during his confirmation hearing would be a question that I’ve tried to get people to ask Noem for the last year: The law explicitly says that the secretary does not have the authority to degrade FEMA’s mission or move resources,” he said. “I would be curious to get any nominee on the record: Will you follow the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act and restrict yourself from impacting the FEMA budget?” And as a secondary question: “Will you rescind any of the policies that have prevented the deployment and travel of FEMA’s employees to disaster sites?” In the meantime, the current readiness of state and federal emergency agencies has people worried. “I went through at least one shutdown as a state director,” Manning said.

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What Does Kristi Noem’s Firing Mean for a Hobbled FEMA?
The New Republic

What Does Kristi Noem’s Firing Mean for a Hobbled FEMA?

Left

In the days since President Trump announced that he was firing Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary and replacing her with Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, much of the focus has understandably been on what this means for the brutal, chaotic, and lawless immigration policy that Noem has spearheaded. But there’s another area within DHS where Noem’s departure raises rather urgent questions about a possible change in policies. And that’s at FEMA.Noem was in the middle of a project to shrink the Federal Emergency Management Agency significantly, having announced large staffing cuts in January. She’d also floated the idea of dismantling it entirely.Her firing last Thursday came only a day after Senate Democrats released a report showing that Noem’s policy of requiring sign-off on any expenditure over $100,000 had resulted in “at least 1,034 FEMA contracts, grants, or disaster assistance awards” being held up—among them, disaster aid for survivors of Hurricane Helene and Texas’s deadly floods last summer (which killed at least 135 people, including 27 at a girls’ summer camp). And the day after Noem’s firing was announced, a judge gave FEMA 14 days to inform states about the status of their Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grants, a multibillion-dollar program that a court in December ordered reinstated—with no sign of compliance from FEMA.Meanwhile, FEMA remains largely shuttered due to the DHS shutdown. And the administration recently spent “more than half of the balance in the nation’s disaster relief fund,” according to Politico, “pointing to that dwindling aid as [a] means to pressure Democrats into yielding in Department of Homeland Security funding negotiations.” What exactly does Markwayne Mullin intend to do about all this? I asked two experts what they would be watching for in the coming weeks to determine whether Mullin would represent a serious shift from Noem’s policies, and whether FEMA would be able to handle disasters this year. “Shutdowns come and go,” said Bryan Koon, president and chief executive officer at global emergency management consulting firm IEM and former director of the Florida Division of Emergency. “We tend to find ways to work around whatever issues are associated with that.” But he pointed to the FEMA Review Council report that the president ordered last year to determine policy changes at the agency. “It’s been now a year of uncertainty,” Koon said. “We’ve heard ideas about what might be in it, but frankly I would like to have some certainty, some insight into what the council’s going to recommend.” He noted that Trump already extended the timeline through the end of March. “I’m concerned that the transition between Noem and Mullin as secretary, combined with the shutdown, is going to delay that even further or even potentially render it moot,” he said. Koon would consider the release of the report as one indicator of FEMA’s overall health at present. “A second would be an actual emergency or disaster that required FEMA to be all in. We were remarkably, as a nation, pretty lucky in 2025, and thus far in 2026—I mean, we had no landfalling hurricanes.”Tim Manning, a former deputy administrator at FEMA, agreed. “I think they dodged a bullet,” he said, regarding last year’s hurricane season. “I and most of the emergency management community have great concerns for FEMA’s readiness. It is a collection of the most selfless, dedicated people in the government,” he said, “but there’s no getting around that they’ve been decimated over the past year and a half.” He pointed to layoffs, the firing of most senior leadership, the “onerous level of review” for grants, and more. “At every turn, the Noem administration has made decisions that dramatically degrade FEMA’s readiness and capabilities.”If Markwayne Mullin is formally nominated and sits for confirmation—a big if, given that Trump’s first administration was marked by an unprecedented number of acting Cabinet secretaries working without Senate confirmation—Manning suggested that senators ask him about that directly. “I think the question I would ask Mullin during his confirmation hearing would be a question that I’ve tried to get people to ask Noem for the last year: The law explicitly says that the secretary does not have the authority to degrade FEMA’s mission or move resources,” he said. “I would be curious to get any nominee on the record: Will you follow the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act and restrict yourself from impacting the FEMA budget?” And as a secondary question: “Will you rescind any of the policies that have prevented the deployment and travel of FEMA’s employees to disaster sites?” In the meantime, the current readiness of state and federal emergency agencies has people worried. “I went through at least one shutdown as a state director,” Manning said.

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