DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is out at the end of March, but a replacement still leaves the fate of FEMA, the nation’s disaster response agency, in question.
Both Trump and Noem have floated eliminating FEMA entirely, though later shifted their rhetoric toward reforming the agency, saying they want to dole out less disaster aid to states and reduce the federal government’s role.
One of Noem’s policies was to review and micromanage any expeditures over $100,000, creating holdups in getting funds out the door to disaster victims.
The Trump administration is currently being sued for its attempts to cut FEMA staff, although the AP reports that cuts were halted during February’s storms.
Noem’s incoming replacement, Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who comes from a particularly tornado-prone state, said last year that FEMA “isn’t bad to work with, they’re just inefficient.” He said that Oklahoma agencies could manage disasters more efficiently because they “live and breathe that neighborhood.”
Michael Coen, who was FEMA’s chief of staff under both Obama and Biden, expressed optimism for Mullins to be an improvement over Noem.
Vocal Noem critic Thom Tillis praised Mullin as a replacement who would “refocus efforts on quickly distributing disaster aid.”
An Obama era FEMA public affairs director, Rafael Lemaitre, disagrees, suggesting that who’s driving the bus won’t matter when the directions are still coming from the White House.
“I fear it’s going to take a decade to rebuild FEMA from the catastrophic damage that she’s dealt to that agency,” Lemaitre said, referring to Noem. “It’s just been since day one, they’ve politicized disaster response. There’s been a tremendous amount of brain drain that has occurred under her reign as secretary.”
And storm season is already starting to ramp up.
Four people were killed in southern Michigan on Friday, and two were killed in Oklahoma, just south of Tulsa.