The White House is racing to do damage control on Kristi Noem—before it turns deadly.
Donald Trump’s administration is quietly working to reverse the damage done to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, at Noem’s direction during her tenure as Homeland Security secretary. The former South Dakota governor was ousted in March, and now serves as the Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas.
While FEMA’s sworn mission is to help Americans before, during, and after disasters, a year marked by firings, re-hirings, frozen funds, and feuding among political appointees has plunged the agency into chaos. Now, after pushing Noem aside from FEMA oversight, the White House is scrambling to repair the agency—despite Trump’s repeated insistence that it should not exist in its current form.
“It could take a decade to fix what they broke,” a high-ranking FEMA official told CNN. “And if we have a major disaster this year, we’re screwed.”
In a report published Sunday, CNN detailed conversations with some 50 FEMA insiders over the past year, many of whom said the havoc wrought under Noem in just 13 months will cripple the agency for years to come.
“If you wrote this as a book, no one would believe it,” one senior FEMA official told CNN. “It’s completely dumbfounding how it’s all played out.”
Last year, as state leaders across the country spent months pleading for disaster relief funds, FEMA ended December with more than $15 billion in unspent funds, according to the report. Much of that backlog stemmed from Noem insisting on personally signing off on any distribution of funds exceeding $100,000, creating major delays in disaster relief.
At the same time, Noem and her top adviser—and rumored lover—Corey Lewandowski were focused on gutting the agency. In January, an internal document obtained by The Washington Post detailed potential cuts affecting more than 11,500 employees at an agency whose workforce is just over double that size.
Currently, the Trump administration is trying to bring back the very people forced out under Noem. Last month, it was reported that at least 15 of the 192 current and former staffers who signed the “Katrina Declaration” letter to Congress in August had been rehired. In the letter, whistleblowers accused the Trump administration of dismantling emergency response systems established after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The following day, staffers were placed on leave, but retained their pay and benefits.
What’s more, Noem’s pick to lead FEMA was quietly dumped from the role less than six months into the job. Karen Evans oversaw cuts at the agency and earned the nickname “The Terminator” among FEMA staff. “She was terminating grants, terminating contracts, terminating people,” a former senior official told CNN.
In her place, Trump has nominated former acting FEMA head Cameron Hamilton—the same man he fired last year after publicly opposing FEMA.
A White House official did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast. A White House spokesperson did not acknowledge FEMA’s change in course. “The President remains committed to getting resources to communities in need while also working with states to ensure they invest in their own resilience before disaster strikes, making response less urgent and recovery less prolonged,” the spokesperson wrote.
Newly minted Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has kickstarted funding and lifted hiring freezes at Trump’s direction.
But the president’s damage control comes after months of the agency being torn apart on his watch, stoking ire even among Republican lawmakers as their constituents waited for help that still has not come. It was less than a year ago that FEMA’s then-acting director, David Richardson, was MIA when flash floods ripped through Texas on July 4th, killing more than 120 people, including 27 campers and counselors from Camp Mystic.
The Atlantic hurricane season begins on Monday, June 1.
