President Donald Trump based a pillar of his second term on overhauling disaster aid. Now, he has his chance.
A panel that Trump created last year when he was threatening to disband the Federal Emergency Management Agency overcame months of delay Thursday when it approved a report calling for major changes to the nation’s disaster programs.
The most-sweeping proposal would end the decades-old system used to determine if states are eligible to receive billions of dollars in disaster aid. Instead of estimating monetary damages from catastrophes like hurricanes to decide whether aid is warranted, the agency would look at the atmospheric conditions of an event, such as wind speed or flood depth, before releasing aid.
That would help the agency meet one of Trump’s biggest complaints about FEMA — that it’s too slow to deliver money. The report says payments to states would occur within 30 days of a flood, storm, wildfire or other disaster.
“We need to refocus FEMA and get it back to what its mission originally was,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said Thursday. Mullin co-chairs the FEMA Review Council with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, replacing former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after Trump fired her in March.
The report comes at a turbulent time for the agency. Its workforce has been cut, its resilience grants were canceled and disaster aid requests from Democratic-led states have been largely rejected since Trump took office.
The FEMA Review Council has weathered its own cascade of challenges. Since it was created last year, there have been three different acting administrators for FEMA and two leaders at the Department of Homeland Security.
The report echoes some of Trump’s earliest threats to dramatically reduce the amount of federal disaster aid that would go to states. One recommendation suggests keeping FEMA’s method of disbursing aid based on the estimated damage from a disaster. But it would raise the monetary threshold, making it harder for states to be eligible for payments.
“Federal assistance should only be reserved for truly significant events,” the report says, adding that the ease of getting disaster aid “disincentives … investment in disaster preparedness.”
The recommendation reflects a growing consensus that FEMA gets involved in too many disasters, particularly minor ones that many officials say states should be able to handle on their own. FEMA administrators in the first Trump administration and the Obama administration recommended tightening the criteria for states to qualify for disaster aid. But both proposals died amid opposition from state officials and federal lawmakers.
Another proposal by the council would streamline the process by which individuals get FEMA aid, which pays for temporary lodging, emergency supplies and other expenses. FEMA gives households roughly $4,000 on average if they were affected by a disaster. The proposed change would increase the maximum amount of money a household could receive.
“We know that FEMA is broken and it needs to be fundamentally reformed,” former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who sits on the panel, said at the council’s final meeting Thursday.
Another member, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), said, “These reforms are definitely a step in the right direction.”
Many of the council’s recommendations would require Congress to pass legislation. It comes five months before midterm elections threaten to take control of the House away from Republicans.
Perhaps the most important feature of the council’s final report is that it does not recommend abolishing FEMA or cutting thousands of agency employees — concepts Trump has endorsed.
Mullin, the DHS secretary, pushed for a vote on the final report, according to a former senior FEMA official who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. It came as the council faced uncertainty after the White House abruptly canceled its December meeting, when the report was originally set to be approved.
Mullin also has vowed to push Trump to appoint a FEMA administrator. It would be the first time the agency has had one since Trump took office in January 2025. FEMA has been led by acting administrators, none of whom has emergency management experience.
As Mullin has tried to improve morale at FEMA, Trump has undergone his own transformation.
He no longer rants about the agency. He continues to approve disaster aid. And he highlighted the agency’s response during a winter storm in late January that damaged numerous states.
“The tone has shifted,” Kristen Shedd, who was a FEMA attorney for 23 years, wrote on LinkedIn after the council meeting Thursday. “It appears we’ve turned the corner from the earlier, more extreme discussions about abolishing FEMA. That is encouraging.”
Shedd, who was not on the council, said the path forward “remains unclear.”
“The report will now move to the President, but the process from there is not well defined,” she added.
It is unknown what action if any Trump will take with the review council report. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
