Dumb Luck Is Masking the Trump Admin’s FEMA Mess, But it Won’t Last Forever

Given that the “E” in FEMA does indeed stand for “Emergency,” it’s all too easy to assume whoever has been manning that top post through 2025 at least had some kind of background in the field. After all, the law quite literally requires the administrator of FEMA to have emergency management experience, which seems like the lowest possible bar to clear to be the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency—like telling an MLB manager applicant that you’d like to see a little coaching experience on the ‘ole resume. It should not surprise you in any way, however, to see that neither the newly resigned acting administrator of FEMA, David Richardson, nor the newly appointed acting administrator, FEMA Chief of Staff (and former cybersecurity specialist) Karen Evans, have any emergency management experience to their names. As in so many other arenas, the Trump administration has sidestepped the law here by merely designating each of them as “temporary” administrators, seemingly tasked with dragging such agencies down into dissolution rather than making them effective or prepared to carry out their intended function.

And it’s only an anomaly of a fortunate hurricane season—at least on U.S. shores—that has kept the devolving FEMA mess from becoming a stand-out Trump administration crisis, easy to overlook at a time when the man is busy with other matters like fending off new waves of Jeffrey Epstein-centric accusations. But it should go without saying that no string of luck lasts forever, and eventually Americans are almost certainly going to suffer in another climate-related mass casualty event, with an underprepared FEMA nowhere to be found.

Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey (D) couldn’t resist clowning on Richardson’s departure after only six months in the role, effectively implying that simply leaving the role empty would be roughly as effective at this point.

This guy has been so AWOL that it will be hard to even tell the difference. Let’s get someone who can do the job — Americans’ lives depend on it.

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• Dumb Luck Is Masking the Trump Admin's FEMA Mess, But it Won't Last Forever
• This Is Fine: Head of FEMA Doesn’t Know that Hurricane Season Exists

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— Senator Ed Markey (@markey.senate.gov) Nov 17, 2025 at 2:36 PM

Karen Evans is already the third Trump flunky, if you were keeping track, to be saddled with the acting administratorship of FEMA during the second Trump administration. The first of the “acting” administrators, Cameron Hamilton, attempted to toe the line of Trumpworld directives but ended up being unceremoniously fired anyway, for the grave sin of standing in front of the House of Representatives and saying the following, unthinkable line: “I do not believe it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” Hamilton was doing his best job as a kiss-up, even saying in the same testimony that FEMA had “fostered a culture of dependency, waste and inefficiency” and praising Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem for having “empowered [FEMA] to restore accountability and federalism to disaster relief.” But none of that mattered when he made the mistake of saying to Congress that his agency should continue to exist, at a time when the Trump admin was publicly pondering the potential for eliminating FEMA altogether, leaving each state to suffer through its own disaster response with no aid.

Subsequently, the Trump administration has instead taken to politicizing FEMA disaster aid as a reward for the states that backed Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election—just weeks ago in October, Trump personally approved major weather-related disaster declarations and FEMA aid for Alaska, Nebraska and North Dakota, praising his supporters in those states, while denying simultaneous requests from three blue states in Illinois, Vermont and Maryland. This, despite a state like Maryland demonstrating that its counties had experienced severe flood damage at more than three times the threshold required for federal assistance.

At FEMA, meanwhile, Hamilton was replaced in May by the aforementioned David Richardson, who in the space of only a few weeks drew mockery and consternation when he “joked” about not being aware that there was a Hurricane “season” for the United States. Only weeks into his tenure, the agency was put to the test via the deadly, destructive and heavily publicized series of floods in Hill Country, Texas, which ultimately killed 135 people over the July 4 holiday weekend. Richardson, who was reportedly on vacation camping with his sons at the time and forced to coordinate efforts from his truck, drew sharp criticism for FEMA’s lack of speedy involvement, which was linked by commenters to the agency’s recent cuts and layoffs. The New York Times reported at the time that following call center contractor layoffs that were unfortunately timed almost exactly to the event itself, only 35.8% of calls to FEMA were answered on July 6, 2025, and only 15.9% were answered on July 7. Richardson referred to those numbers as “fake news,” while a nameless DHS spokesperson was quoted in the NYT saying “When a natural disaster strikes, phone calls surge, and wait times can subsequently increase. Despite this expected influx, FEMA’s disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and efficiently, ensuring no one was left without assistance.”

The degradation of FEMA, however, has only seemingly continued under Richardson’s watch since, even if Trump and others have been making less noise recently about moving emergency management responses “back to the state level.” Since the start of Trump’s second term, roughly a third of the permanent FEMA work force has been eliminated, which totals more than 2,000 employees, but this is likely only the tip of the iceberg in terms of how the Trump admin will seek to remake the agency and limit its scope and effectiveness. Lest we forget, that’s in addition to deep purges at NOAA and the National Weather Service at the start of 2025, which immediately degraded forecasting abilities. At FEMA, a 12-person task force led by Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was assembled via executive order earlier this year, tasked with “studying reforms to the agency that could raise the threshold for a disaster that warrants federal intervention, change how disaster aid is paid to states, and end FEMA’s role in the long term recovery of disaster-struck communities.” Said panel, the FEMA Review Council, was supposed to release its recommendations last week but missed that deadline, and now reportedly intends to release its report by the end of the year, the results of which will inform FEMA decision making for the foreseeable future. It feels safe to say that at a time that the Trump administration is rolling back and cutting environmental protection for habitats such as critical wetlands, they’ll be equally likely to turn their backs on the human beings who are devastated by climate-driven disasters.

Hurricane season has just 2 weeks remaining, but so far, for the first time in a decade:
ZERO hurricanes made US landfall
ZERO Gulf hurricanes

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— Patrick De Haan (@gasbuddyguy.bsky.social) Nov 17, 2025 at 8:36 PM

Which brings us back to the looming threat of catastrophic hurricane damage, which the U.S. seems to have managed to dodge (along with a less intense than expected wildfire season) with sheer, dumb luck in 2025: For the first time in a decade, there was no hurricane landfall on U.S. coasts, and none are currently expected in the remainder of hurricane season. What was forecasted to potentially be a particularly prolific Caribbean hurricane season instead ended up being a fairly average one in terms of the total number of storms, although there are still plenty of worrisome signs in the data. For one thing, the storms that did form were significantly stronger on average than usual, which included extremely powerful hurricanes such as Erin, Imelda and especially October’s Melissa, which only a few weeks ago is currently estimated to have caused more than $8 billion in physical damage to Jamaica, in addition to more than 60 lives lost. The previously mentioned Texas floods, likewise, were spawned at least partially by the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry, demonstrating that by no means does a named hurricane have to hit U.S. shores in order to result in devastating loss of life. It’s not hard to imagine even the likes of David Richardson being able to observe this from atop their FEMA perch, and ultimately deciding to resign while he still can, before the embattled organization is made to deal with another true climate/weather disaster crisis that is inevitably headed our way sooner rather than later.

Because make no mistake, we are still living in the age of the flood, and it’s not a matter of if but when most places will find themselves inundated. Driven by almost universally elevated ocean temperatures–more than 80% of the Atlantic registered above-average ocean heat during this season, the third-highest mark behind only the two prior years–storms are getting stronger than ever and rapidly intensifying more often when they do form. This year’s three Category 5 storms in one season is the second highest number in a single season ever recorded, with another four storms that also reached Category 4. if just one of those storms makes landfall in the U.S. instead of veering aside, then we’d no doubt be having a much more visible conversation about the state of FEMA today, whether that’s in terms of its slashed personnel and ability to respond, budgetary limitations or the capriciousness of Trump’s required personal sign-off on doling out disaster aid to only his supporters. If Atlanta, for instance, was to suffer severe damage in the next hurricane season, who’s to say that Trump doesn’t simply choose to spurn the city, citing baseless election fraud conspiracy theories as either direct or indirect reasoning? He’s already done the exact same thing in denying FEMA aid to blue states; why not blue cities as well?

Rest assured, the storms are coming, and we’re not talking about MAGA belief in “man-made storms” being aimed specifically at their communities, a belief that somehow manages to coexist with the idea of Trump as savior and protector. Since records began being kept in 1851, there have only been six instances when two years in a row passed without a hurricane landfall in the United States, most recently in 2009-2010. Chances, therefore, are extremely high that the country will be facing a more dangerous, more deadly hurricane season in 2026—the question is if there will be anyone left to respond, or whether Americans will simply be left to wash away.