DISASTER RESPONSEKristi Noem All but Killed FEMA. Will Her Departure Save It?
Before she was fired by President Trump, Noem raised eyebrows for an unprecedented degree of control over staffing and spending at FEMA. A growing number of critics and experts believe that Noem’s interference with FEMA may well have been illegal.
During the year she spent leading the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, Kristi Noem faced a torrent of criticism. Lawmakers from both parties assailed her for lying about the shooting of protestors in Minneapolis and spending millions of dollars on television commercials. Government audits concluded that she “systematically obstructed” investigations and created security risks at airports.
Now she has become the first cabinet-level official fired by President Donald Trump during his second term. After a combative hearing this week, during which Noem seemed to mislead Congress about whether Trump approved her ad spending, the president fired her.
As DHS secretary, Noem also raised eyebrows for an unprecedented degree of control over staffing and spending at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She paused most FEMA payments, leading to extensive delays for disaster recovery, and sought to slash the agency’s on-call workforce by thousands of employees. She also expressed a desire to downsize or eliminate the agency entirely, shifting the burden of disaster relief onto the states.
A growing number of critics and experts believe that Noem’s interference with FEMA may well have been illegal. This week, two Senate Democrats released a report alleging that Noem’s blanket freeze on FEMA payments violated federal law. At the same time, lawyers for a federal workers’ union argued to a federal judge in California that Noem’s workforce cuts also violated the law. In both cases, critics pointed to legislation passed after Hurricane Katrina, which prohibits DHS from interfering with FEMA.
“I have reason to believe that you’re violating the law, either knowingly or unknowingly,” said Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican representing North Carolina, during his questioning of Noem this week.
These accusations will remain relevant if Noem’s apparent successor, Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, continues her quest to make permanent changes to FEMA’s structure — a goal that the president has frequently suggested he supports. Though President Trump has in many cases been able to make unilateral cuts to federal programs on a rapid timeline — as with the Department of Education and U.S. Agency for International Development — the post-Katrina law may put FEMA on stronger footing for the rest of the president’s term.
“To my knowledge, DHS has never been involved in decision-making about the FEMA workforce,” said MaryAnn Tierney, a former FEMA official who led the agency’s regional office on the Eastern Seaboard for more than a decade.
