Trump sabotaged FEMA, and now he is merely recovering
By Tom Beckwith · Reporting from Washington ·
# The Ideology of the Void
"FEMA is not good," President Trump declared in the first week of his second term. He did not offer a policy critique; he issued a demolition order. NPR and WUNC News reported that the administration installed David Richardson, a former Marine artillery officer, to lead the purge. Richardson’s mandate was blunt: keep the agency afloat through hurricane season, then slash headquarters staff by two-thirds.
Richardson viewed this as a necessary pruning. In his own book, he argued that government agencies bloat and that fewer people can do more. The administration applied this logic to the Department of Education, USAID, and the Voice of America, treating them as redundant overhead. But a diplomatic outpost differs from a disaster agency. You can disrupt a bureaucracy, but you cannot disrupt a Category 5 hurricane.
The Gravity of Water
Ideology met reality in July 2025, when flash floods turned streets into rivers in Hunt, Texas. While Richardson planned an October downsizing, the water rose. Deanne Criswell said indiscriminate cuts hurt the "Republican communities" that rely most on federal aid.
A court blocked the administration's attempt to kill a major preparedness grant. A GAO report confirmed that FEMA lacked enough boots on the ground for disaster recovery. This mirrored the gap between political orders and actual capability that cost lives during Hurricane Katrina, where directives from Washington ignored the chaos on the ground. By the time a DHS deputy chief of staff told Richardson, "Dave, things have changed," the administration realized a flood cannot be ignored like a treaty.
Was this Reaganomics?
This experiment mirrored the neoliberal drive to shrink the federal footprint, treating the government like a corporate balance sheet to be trimmed. Where Reagan sought to limit the state's hand in the economy, Trump sought to limit its hand in a catastrophe.
The administration now confirms Cameron Hamilton to "strengthen" the agency and rehires temporary workers—the logistics experts and claims adjusters currently suing the government. This is not a strategic pivot; it is a surrender. Richardson calls this "go-along-to-get-along" mode. The administration now uses the FEMA Review Council to shift burdens to the states and launches pilot programs in Indiana to save face. This cycle—where political theater overrides professional expertise until the crisis screams—repeated during the first Trump term and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Stability Requires Codification
A bipartisan reform bill now waits in committee to codify stability, but the agency's reputation is shredded. FEMA is a national capability, not a political target. By treating it as the latter, the administration gambled away disaster resilience. The "strengthened" FEMA under Hamilton is a recovery effort for an agency its own leaders nearly sabotaged. In the geography of disaster, ideology is a luxury survivors cannot afford.