President Donald Trump signed an executive order that establishes a task force to conduct a review of the Federal Emergency Management Agency after he trashed the agency in trips to North Carolina and California earlier this weekend.
Trump teased an overhaul of FEMA in both stops, saying in North Carolina that he would be signing an executive order to “begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA.” He also said in California that the state would be better off with a “good state government” rather than a federal agency where personnel “come from all over the country.”
The executive order signed on Sunday evening begins the process of a review of the agency’s effectiveness by establishing a 20-member task force called the Federal Emergency Management Agency Review Council, which will be co-chaired by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Other members will include other heads of relevant government agencies and people outside of the federal government appointed by Trump.
The council’s goal will be to produce a report after one year that includes an assessment of FEMA’s responses to disasters in the last four years, including whether it is sufficiently staffed; a comparison of FEMA’s responses to disasters with local and state responses; a historical background of FEMA’s founding and how the country responded to disasters before its existence; an evaluation of whether FEMA can exist in support of states’ disaster relief responses, rather than superseding them; and an analysis of the arguments for and against any reforms to FEMA.
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The order said the council will hold its first public meeting in 90 days, and the report will be due 180 days after that date.
Trump’s order follows intense criticism of the agency this weekend, saying it has “let the country down” and is “incompetently run.” The executive order reiterates those sentiments, saying the agency has “lost mission focus” by “diverting limited staff and resources to support missions beyond its scope and authority, spending well over a billion dollars to welcome illegal aliens.” It also says there are “serious concerns of political bias” at FEMA, referencing an incident where a supervisor advised her team to “avoid” Florida homes “advertising Trump.”
