Inside the scramble to keep FEMA alive ahead of hurricane season

Publicly, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has said the Federal Emergency Management Agency needs to be reoriented or even done away with altogether.

Publicly, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said the Federal Emergency Management Agency needs to be reoriented or even done away with altogether.

“We are eliminating FEMA,” Noem said at a televised meeting of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet in March.

But with hurricane season about to start, Noem has been quietly pushing behind the scenes to keep key employees in place and to approve reimbursements to states previously hit by disaster, sources familiar with the situation told NBC News.

Trump himself talked about possibly “getting rid of” FEMA shortly after he was inaugurated for his second term, while he was touring North Carolina to see areas of the state damaged by Hurricane Helene. There has been no public indication that his administration, including Noem, is reconsidering that stance — indeed, the administration’s original acting FEMA administrator, Cameron Hamilton, was removed from the job one day after he testified at a congressional hearing that he does not think “it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate” FEMA. Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, has told NBC News that the move was not a response to his testimony.

There does, however, appear to be some internal recognition that, absent a plan ready for how the country would move forward without FEMA, important elements of the agency and its work have to remain in place for now.