FEMA under fire: Trump slashes, GOP sweats [View all]
Source: Raw Story
May 19, 2025 4:01AM ET
Many Republicans in Congress are uncomfortable with the Trump administration’s proposed overhaul of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and some of them are going public with their concerns. “FEMA needs to be reformed, but it’s an important instrument in recovery in every disaster I’ve ever seen,” Rep. Tom Cole, chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, said. “We need to be careful about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”
President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2026 skinny budget proposes cutting $646 million from FEMA’s spending, while providing little detail about what efforts the cuts would affect. It comes as the administration imposes broader changes toward the president’s goal of scaling FEMA down, including cutting employees, removing funding allocations and ending its major grant programs.
In Congressional appropriations hearings for the Department of Homeland Security, lawmakers pressed Secretary Kristi Noem for details about the big FEMA cuts. In those remarks and in following interviews, some Republicans signaled caution on the slash-and-burn of the federal government’s emergency response to disasters.
One major grant in particular, the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, which funds local projects to reduce risk to life and property in the event of natural disasters, continues to be a sticking point. Trump signed the program into law in 2018 with bipartisan support. A FEMA spokesperson called BRIC “wasteful and ineffective” when the agency ended the program in April.
Read more: https://www.rawstory.com/fema-2672071832/
= new reply since forum marked as read