‘Broken System’: Trump Admin Rips FEMA Bureaucrats ‘Kicking And Screaming’ Over Reforms

FEMA employees who oppose changes being made to the long-troubled agency by the Trump administration are disgruntled bureaucrats who have overseen years of failures, the Department of Homeland Security told The Daily Wire on Thursday.

When asked about a recent letter sent to Congress lamenting moves being made at FEMA by the Trump administration and the agency’s history of mismanagement, a spokesman for Homeland Security told The Daily Wire that critics of the changes were motivated by resistance to accountability. 

“The pattern is clear: FEMA has failed to deliver aid, mismanaged contracts and funds, and burdened survivors with a maze of paperwork,” a spokesman said. “So it should surprise no one that the same bureaucrats who let these failures pile up are now the loudest critics of accountability. Those who were comfortable with a broken system are the ones kicking and screaming the hardest today.”

The letter, published on Tuesday, claimed that the Trump administration was damaging FEMA’s capacity to respond to disasters by cutting staff, ridding the agency of climate change ideology, and interfering with preparedness programs. Roughly 200 FEMA employees signed the letter.  

The Trump administration said it was bringing much-needed accountability and reforms to the agency. 

“The truth is simple: FEMA was failing the American people. DHS is finally forcing change, and for the first time in years, real accountability is on the table,” the DHS spokesman told The Daily Wire. 

For years, FEMA has been plagued by incompetence. Under President Joe Biden, the agency faced sharp criticism over its handling of both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton. Flooding victims in North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee waited for days before federal responders showed up. 

In Florida, a FEMA supervisor ordered her disaster response team to skip the homes of people with Trump signs or flags. That led to at least 20 homes in the Lake Placid area being skipped over because of their political beliefs. That employee was only fired after The Daily Wire reported on the guidance. 

Earlier this year, an Atlanta woman was sentenced to prison and ordered to pay a $1.7 million fine after she was awarded a $156 million contract in 2017 to provide 30 million self-heating meals to Puerto Ricans recovering from a devastating hurricane. Brown was convicted of fraud after only delivering 50,000 meals that were not self-heating. 

Other recent reports from independent government watchdogs have not been kind to the agency. 

A report published in February 2021 from the Government Accountability Office found that FEMA’s 2018 response to disasters in the Pacific Islands was lackluster and consistently failed to meet the agency’s goals. 

For example, it found that FEMA completed the pre-award process for its Public Assistance program within the established timeframe for only 14% of its 492 projects in its response to disasters in the Pacific. The pre-award phase took nearly 13 months, much longer than its goal of 189 days. 

The report also found that for the entirety of fiscal year 2019, FEMA obligated just 28% of all Public Assistance projects with targeted time frames. 

A later report from the Inspector General on FEMA’s handling of Hurricanes Irma and Maria found that the agency “lost visibility” on commodity shipments worth $257 million to Puerto Rico. Commodities successfully delivered in Puerto Rico took an average of 69 days to reach their final destination, the report found. 

Another report from Puerto Rico found that nearly three years after it was rocked by hurricanes and earthquakes, Puerto Rico had spent less than 10% of the money authorized for recovery. At the time, an additional $11 billion was still not approved by FEMA. 

More recent reports from the Inspector General have also found problems with FEMA’s allocation of funds. 

A report published in April 2020 found that the agency has made over $3 billion in potentially fraudulent payments since 2003. The report found that FEMA does “not collect sufficient supporting documentation or verify that applicants claiming to have no insurance are eligible for home repair assistance.”

Another report from January 2025 found major problems with FEMA’s performance during COVID. The report found that the agency over-obligated at least $1.5 billion for one state’s medical staffing grant, neglected to determine the cost allowability of $8.1 billion drawn down by a state, and made at least another $32.8 million in improper payments. 

FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program is also fiscally unstable with billions of dollars in debt. In March 2025, the Congressional Research Service found that the program was $22.5 billion in debt. 

“For more than a decade, independent watchdogs and news reports have documented systemic FEMA failures that delayed help to survivors, wasted billions, and trapped communities in red tape. These failures spanned multiple administrations and remained unaddressed until President Trump and Secretary Noem had the courage to call out these problems and fix them,” a DHS spokesman told The Daily Wire. 

 While some legacy outlets have attacked the Trump administration over the devastating Texas flooding over the Fourth of July, many state leaders have been supportive of the administration’s efforts. 

“I’ve been doing this for more than 30 years, and I can say with confidence that this was the fastest and most effective federal support Texas has ever received,” Chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management Nim Kidd told The Daily Wire. “That kind of partnership – moving the right resources at the right time – saved lives and made all the difference in our response.”

Kidd said that every Urban Search and Rescue team he requested from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was “deployed without delay.” 

President Donald Trump has taken a number of steps to reevaluate FEMA’s role and explore the possibility of shifting the responsibility of disaster response more squarely onto the states. In January, he created a council to assess the agency’s effectiveness and look at potential alternatives.