On October 14th, the Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure and the Subcommittee on Public Buildings, Economic Development, and Emergency Management sent a letter to Inspector General Joseph Cuffari and Senior Official of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) David Richardson, addressing their “continued alarm” regarding the termination of whistleblowers at FEMA.
The letter was in reference to an open letter signed by 192 FEMA employees on August 25th, warning Congress of the Trump Administration’s overreaching imposition. The letter, entitled the Katrina Declaration, delineated the six primary ways in which the Trump Administration is “putting lives at risk by undermining FEMA’s ability to perform disaster response and recovery.”
In the Katrina Declaration, FEMA employees expressed unease over the current leadership’s lack of qualifications, the reduction in funding, and the censorship of climate research, to name a few. As CNN highlighted, the current Senior Official at FEMA, David Richardson, is “a former Marine combat veteran with no prior experience managing natural disasters.” By his side are equally “inexperienced aides,” CNN claims. Moreover, the Katrina Declaration underscores that incentives for employees to leave the service are so grave that “one-third of FEMA’s full-time staff” have thus far departed. Additionally, FEMA employees have been explicitly told to remove any information about climate change from both public-facing and internal documents, an instruction the employees claim violates The Community Disaster Resilience Zones Act of 2022.
The 192 signatories urge that each of the six statements of opposition “hinder the swift execution of our mission.” According to Fox News, FEMA workers stressed that the current mismanagement, if unchanged, paves the way for the next Hurricane Katrina.
Shortly after the August 25th Declaration, numerous FEMA employees were terminated, though the exact number remains unknown. The FEMA employees argue that their termination is “without valid cause,” citing their rights to disclose to Congress under federal whistleblower laws and to express their views under the First Amendment.
As the FEMA employees voiced their upheaval, Homeland Security issued a press release on August 29th applauding the Trump Administration for “getting FEMA Back on Track.” Having voiced “dissatisfaction” with FEMA since his inauguration, Trump regards his Administration’s reform of the Agency as bolstering responses to natural disasters.
While they urge prompt responses from Cuffari and Richardson in their letters, the FEMA whistleblowers’ future, and potentially that of all agencies, remains unclear.
