Saturday, 05 July 2025

Top FEMA Official Resigns

100 Percent Fed Up
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The head of FEMA’s National Response Coordination Center has resigned as the Trump administration moves to phase out the agency.

Jeremy Greenberg, who submitted his resignation last week, held the position since 2020.

NPR reports:

The top FEMA position is currently held by an interim leader, David Richardson, who has no prior emergency management experience. After he was installed in May, Reuters reported more than a dozen top FEMA employees resigned.

Greenberg’s resignation further hobbles the agency, as the U.S. enters its busiest season for extreme weather disasters including hurricanes, floods and wildfires. Climate change is causing more severe weather across the country.

The National Response Coordination Center acts like air traffic control for first responders after a hurricane, tornado, flood, wildfire, earthquake or other national emergency. It’s a crucial role, because responding to deadly disasters requires equipment, employees and expertise from multiple federal agencies and from state and local governments.

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The news follows President Trump saying he wants to phase out the federal agency after this year’s hurricane season.

“We want to wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it down to the state level,” Trump said, according to CNN.

“A governor should be able to handle it, and frankly, if they can’t handle it, the aftermath, then maybe they shouldn’t be governor,” he added.

Per CNN:

Trump added that the federal government will start distributing less federal aid for disaster recovery and that the funding will come directly from the president’s office. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects this year’s hurricane season, which officially ends on November 30, to be particularly intense and potentially deadly.

For months, Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose department oversees FEMA, have vowed to eliminate the agency, repeatedly criticizing it as ineffective and unnecessary. Noem reiterated those plans Tuesday in the Oval Office, saying FEMA “fundamentally needs to go away as it exists.”

“We all know from the past that FEMA has failed thousand if not millions of people, and President Trump does not want to see that continue into the future,” Noem said.

“While we are running this hurricane season, making sure that we have pre-staged and worked with the regions that are traditionally hit in these areas, we’re also building communication and mutual aid agreements among states to respond to each other so that they can stand on their own two feet with the federal government coming in in catastrophic circumstances with funding,” she said.

Noem is co-chairing a new FEMA Review Council, established under Trump, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The council is expected to submit recommendations in the coming months to drastically reduce the agency’s footprint and reform its operations and mission.


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