Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem left a House hearing on worldwide threats early on Thursday to attend a meeting about the future of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, drawing the ire of Democrats in the hearing room who were grilling her on President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
The FEMA Review Council meeting was then abruptly canceled minutes before it was set to begin. FEMA referred questions about the meeting’s cancellation to the White House.
“Noem said she had to go chair the FEMA review council meeting. BUT I’m told that meeting was canceled,” Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz said on X. One source inside FEMA said they received a message that the meeting had been postponed until further notice.
The meeting’s cancellation comes amid growing tensions between the White House and Noem over her handling of FEMA, according to several sources familiar with the issue.
Trending
The task force created by Trump to remake FEMA was supposed to deliver on its final recommendations Thursday. The review council was expected to recommend that FEMA drastically shrink its size and scope, cut the size of its workforce in half and raise the bar for states to qualify for federal emergency help at all, according to CNN.
Those expected recommendations do not reflect the original conclusions of the task force, two FEMA employees with knowledge of the matter told NOTUS. The FEMA Review Council initially concluded that the agency needed to be strengthened and made independent from the Department of Homeland Security.
Noem reportedly intervened to shorten the report and alter its conclusions, preserving its status as an agency within DHS and beholden to her leadership, according to The Washington Post.
It’s not clear whether Noem had prior knowledge that the FEMA council meeting had been canceled.
Noem’s senior adviser, Corey Lewandowski, directed NOTUS to the White House for “information on cancellation of the WH task force meeting,” in a text message.
The fate of FEMA has been a point of disagreement between administration officials and Republicans. At the start of his second administration, Trump and Noem proposed completely dismantling FEMA. Their tone has since softened in public statements, focused instead on aggressive reform. Republicans from states heavily reliant on FEMA have balked at abolishing the agency.
“What we’re trying to do is just make it an independent agency,” Missouri Republican, Rep. Sam Graves, told NOTUS about the report. “They canceled their meeting, too, so we’re waiting to see if they revise any of their recommendations.”
Graves and Washington Rep. Rick Larsen, a Democrat, are two of the lead sponsors on a House FEMA reform bill.
“It is a total concern of mine that the Council Report will not reflect the council’s work, because Noem is getting her hands on it,” Larsen said. “We’ve done our work in a transparent manner here in the U.S. House of Representatives to develop a bipartisan bill that came out of committee, I think, with two votes against it.”
Under Trump’s administration, FEMA has hemorrhaged its most experienced leaders, including its longtime head of response coordination, the chief of the agency’s much-lauded urban search and rescue unit, and three different chief counsels.
States have said the agency has slow-walked the release of money for natural disasters. FEMA has also allowed critical grants to expire, and is currently facing several lawsuits over canceled funding.
Those problems have persisted despite the fact that no major hurricane made landfall in the United States this year, marking the first time in a decade that the agency has not had to conduct an emergency response to a hurricane.
Noem has denied that the agency’s work has slowed.
FEMA is currently on its third acting leader under this administration. Trump has still not appointed anyone to lead the agency.
Author
Contributors
