A federal judge in California sided with a labor union on Friday in its lawsuit against the Trump administration, saying the Department of Homeland Security “arbitrarily” moved to slash the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s staff by 50% earlier this year.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ruled that DHS acted “capriciously” when it revoked FEMA’s long-standing authority to renew contracts for its Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery, or CORE employees. CORE employees are on-the-ground contacts who are dispatched across the country and remain in communities years after a disaster.
CORE employees have traditionally comprised around 40% of FEMA’s staff. Several workers previously told The Washington Sun that gutting the office would compromise essential recovery efforts in the aftermath of a disaster.