Mississippi has spent the last several years relearning the same lesson over and over: disaster doesn't ask permission before it arrives. Hurricane Sally, Tropical Storm Cristobal and Hurricane Zeta struck within months of each other in 2020, Hurricane Ida added widespread flooding in 2021, and a tornado ripped through Tylertown, Mississippi as recently as May 2025. Back in 2019, flooding swallowed roughly 700 homes across the south Mississippi Delta and submerged more than 500,000 acres of land for months.

Every time, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was the system families counted on to help them recover. Now that system is being taken apart. "I'd say after the hurricane season we'll start phasing [FEMA] out," President Trump said in 2025, according to Mississippi Today. No serious plan exists for what would replace FEMA's role if it's gone.

This isn't only a Mississippi problem or a partisan one. Nationally, about 94 percent of people live somewhere that has needed FEMA's help at some point since 2011, and the agency has delivered hundreds of billions of dollars in disaster aid to red and blue communities alike in recent years. Without FEMA, the burden shifts to state and local governments that are already stretched thin, and to families who may not be able to wait for help that never comes.

Only Congress can stop this. Dismantling FEMA is not something a president can do alone, but Congress has to actually use the power it has. So far, too many members have chosen not to.

Sign the petition to demand Congress act now and protect FEMA before the next disaster hits Mississippi or anywhere else.