Senators secretly meet to stop Trump and Kristi Noem from destroying key agency: report [View all]
Source: Raw Story
January 15, 2026 10:54AM ET
A bipartisan group of senators held a secret meeting this week to try and stop President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from interfering with and destroying FEMA, according to reports Thursday. The disaster relief agency has been targeted by the Trump administration and the meeting on Tuesday aimed to build bipartisan support to reshape the office, Politico reported.
Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) organized the meeting and said there was mounting concern over the potential structural changes, especially after Trump signaled the agency was too slow to responding to disasters. Other members of the administration, including Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, have also said they want to decrease federal funding for state disaster aid.
“There is strong, bipartisan interest in improving FEMA,” Welch said. Trump has put pressure on states to assist ICE agents "as a condition of receiving the money," a politicized move that has concerned lawmakers, Politico reported. "That policy was derided by a federal judge who called it a 'ham-handed attempt to bully' the states."
The meeting at Welch's office on Capitol Hill included FEMA chiefs Craig Fugate and Peter Gaynor, and Patrick Sheehan, who runs the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, said it was reportedly "unusually constructive."
Read more: https://www.rawstory.com/senators-secretly-meet-to-stop-trump-and-noem-from-destroying-fema/
The report was from a Politico "Live Updates" that cannot be posted in LBN - Senators hold bipartisan secret meeting to reshape FEMA
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