Trump’s plan to 'eliminate' FEMA would affect these states the most

The agency that manages the federal government’s disaster relief efforts may soon be shut down, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told President Trump during a meeting of his Cabinet on Monday.

“We’re eliminating FEMA,” Noem said, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has led the response to more than 4,300 disasters nationwide since it was established 45 years ago.

Trump first floated the idea of shuttering the agency just a few days after returning to the White House.

“FEMA has really let us down, let the country down,” he said while touring parts of North Carolina that had been devastated by Hurricane Helene in late January.

Later that same day, after traveling across the country to Los Angeles to meet with officials responding to the historically destructive fires that were tearing through the city, Trump argued that it should not be the federal government’s responsibility to help states and cities when disaster strikes.

“I say, you don’t need FEMA. You need a good state government,” he said. “You fix it yourself.”

In January, Trump established an advisory council to review FEMA’s performance. Then last week, he signed an executive order calling for state and local governments to “play a more active and significant role” in emergency preparedness and response.

Officially, neither Trump nor Noem, who oversees FEMA as the head of DHS, has the authority to eliminate the agency on their own. Only Congress has that power, at least on paper. But Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has already moved to shut down other agencies within the government, including USAID, which could mean FEMA is possibly destined for a similar fate. More than 200 of the agency’s employees have already been fired by the Trump administration.

Noem and other administration officials have reportedly discussed “all but eliminating” the agency’s role in disaster recovery by the beginning of October in private meetings this week, according to the Washington Post.

What FEMA does

FEMA describes its mission as “helping people before, during, and after disasters.” While the agency does some emergency preparedness work across the country and helps coordinate resources while disasters are occurring, the overwhelming majority of its budget goes toward supporting communities after disasters have occurred.

FEMA has distributed more than $189 billion through disaster assistance programs that provide aid to individuals as well as state and local governments since 2003, according to data compiled by Sarah Labowitz, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Where FEMA helps the most

Not all disasters are created equal, of course, and some states are far more vulnerable to devastating emergencies than others. Nearly 80% of the money in Labowitz’s database has gone to hurricane relief. Hurricane Maria alone resulted in more than $57 billion in total funds sent to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands after both island territories suffered catastrophic damage from the 2017 storm.

Louisiana has gotten more than $30 billion during this period, by far the most of any state. More than half of that came in response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, but FEMA has sent $1 billion or more to the state after four other hurricanes over the past 20-plus years. The other top aid recipients are Florida, New York and Texas, all states that have been hit by major hurricanes in recent decades.

FEMA has sent out billions of dollars after other kinds of disasters as well. The agency has issued 685 disaster declarations because of more traditional storms throughout the country, three times as many as any other type of disaster, and sent out a total of $18.4 billion in response.

California has received $5.4 billion to help recover from wildfires, storms and floods. Iowa has also gotten more than $2 billion following several severe storms. A handful of states have been fortunate enough to avoid major disasters. Wyoming, for example, has only been provided with $20 million by FEMA since 2003.

Looking ahead

Focusing on the past only gives a partial picture of what the potential end of FEMA would mean for the country. Climate change is already making major disasters more frequent and more severe. Scientists widely believe that this trend is only going to become more pronounced in the coming decades.

Over the past 10 years, FEMA has responded to about 130 disasters per year on average, more than three times as many as it did a few decades ago. So far in 2025, the agency has tracked 36 separate disasters across the country. That’s already more than there were in all of 1986.

Destructive — and expensive — disasters are also happening more often. Last year there were 27 individual disasters that caused more than $1 billion in damage, according to data from the National Centers for Environmental Information. Between 1980 and 2007, that figure only reached double digits once — in 1998, when there were 11.

Without FEMA’s support, guidance and — most importantly — money, states would be forced to respond to future disasters — which will likely be more destructive and happen more often — on their own.