By Lauren Rosenthal and Zahra Hirji
The Atlantic hurricane season started on June 1 and is predicted to be more active than usual this year. A busy hurricane season would test the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s dramatic cuts to its disaster programs.
FEMA — the nation’s top agency for response and recovery work — has endured significant upheaval since Trump’s return to the White House, including firings, voluntary staff departures, grant freezes and canceled initiatives. Instead of nominating a full-term administrator to lead FEMA, which sits under the Department of Homeland Security, Trump has selected a rotating cast of interim chiefs with little disaster response experience.
The president has said he would like to see FEMA largely eliminated after this year’s hurricane season, which winds down at the end of November, and shift more disaster management away from the federal government.
“We want to wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it down to the state level,” he told reporters at the White House on June 10, adding that if a state gets hit by a hurriance or tornado, “the governor should be able to handle it.”
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This article originally appeared here and was republished with permission.
