More than 180 current and former FEMA employees just issued an extraordinary public letter warning that the Trump administration’s cuts and mismanagement are putting lives at risk and threatening to undo decades of progress in disaster response.

Their message is urgent: FEMA is being dismantled from within.

The letter, published during the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, calls out devastating staffing losses, delayed response policies, the politicization of funding decisions, and the reassignment of FEMA personnel to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The result? A weakened, hollowed-out emergency agency that may fail when the next disaster strikes.

They are risking their careers to say what others won’t.

We, the undersigned, are calling on Congress to immediately hold hearings on FEMA’s internal crisis and take action to stop the erosion of emergency management capacity;

The FEMA Review Council to publicly adopt the six demands outlined in the letter, including restoring full staffing, removing political spending restrictions, and ending non-emergency reassignments;

Lawmakers to pass the bipartisan Fixing Emergency Management for Americans (FEMA) Act to make FEMA a cabinet-level, independent agency with qualified leadership and adequate funding.
 

These employees took an oath to protect the public before, during, and after disasters. Now they’re asking for our help—before the next Katrina, wildfire, or flood turns warnings into tragedy.