Mass Exodus Of FEMA Leadership Ahead Of Hurricane Season 

One of the stranger aspects of the second Trump administration is its ongoing assault against the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Last month, President Trump fired the head of FEMA and replaced him with a loyalist who has zero experience in disaster management. The moves made by the Trump administration to dismantle FEMA have resulted in several key leaders departing the agency.

According to CBS News, those departures include Jeremy Greenberg, the head of FEMA’s National Response Coordination Center. He officially filed his resignation on Wednesday and leaves in two weeks as hurricane season gets underway. Greenberg is one of three senior officials to leave over the last two weeks. Tony Robinson, the regional administrator for FEMA Region 6, and his deputy Traci Brasher both announced their departures over the last week. It’s believed that all three departures are directly related to the Trump administration’s attempts to overhaul FEMA.

Greenberg’s departure is a massive blow to the agency as we head into hurricane season. 

“He’s irreplaceable. The brain drain continues, and the public will pay for it. I don’t see how FEMA will find someone who can coordinate with national, state, and local emergency organizations like he did,” a FEMA official told CBS News. 

While you may not be aware of the National Response Coordination Center, it plays an essential role in disaster response.

From CBS News:

The National Response Coordination Center is the nerve center for FEMA during emergencies. During major disasters, it serves as a 24/7 emergency operations hub, hosting experts from different federal agencies, the military and even nonprofits. When a major hurricane, wildfire or other crisis hits, the NRCC helps coordinate everything from getting rescue teams on the ground to dispatching food, water and medical supplies to disaster zones. 

Among his many responsibilities, Greenberg oversaw and approved mission assignments to the Pentagon amid major disasters and was responsible for deploying FEMA’s 28 Urban Search and Rescue Teams.

So clearly this isn’t a job you can just grab a meteorologist from Fox News and throw into the mix (I sincerely hate that this is a non-zero possibility).

The effects of the Trump administration’s approach to disaster management have already been felt in North Carolina, where FEMA declined to continue a Biden-era directive to match state funds spent on cleanup from Hurricane Helene. Adding insult to injury is the fact that Trump called FEMA’s response to Hurricane Helene “totally unacceptable” on the campaign trail. I guess he felt like they were doing too much to help.

Trump fired the former head of FEMA in May as he didn’t play ball with his vision to dismantle the agency. He then installed David Richardson, a former Marine with zero experience in disaster management, as acting director. Richardson wasted no time alienating experienced officials in the agency, saying he would “run right over” anyone who opposed the changes being made by the Trump administration. It also didn’t help when Richardson revealed in a meeting that he didn’t realize hurricane season was a thing.

Thank god the Trump administration is giving us their best and brightest and none of those DEI-hires. Could you imagine?

I’m not going to apologize for my concern mostly being for the Black and underprivileged communities who will undoubtedly bear the brunt of these changes at FEMA, but I will say, it’s more than a bit odd that the president is actively endangering the lives of the very people who put him into office.  

Hurricane and tornado seasons largely affect reliably red states such as Oklahoma, Texas, and Florida, yet President Trump has continued to hammer home his desire to remove disaster response from the federal level. “We want to wean off of FEMA and we want to bring it down to the state level,” Trump said Tuesday in an Oval Office appearance. 

One big problem with that plan is that a large number of the states most affected by hurricane and tornado seasons don’t have the funding to handle disaster response on the scale often needed. The Trump administration hasn’t outlined a plan for how a new system would be implemented, instead passing the buck onto state governors to figure it out. 

“It’s extremely expensive and, again, when you have a tornado or a hurricane or you have a problem of any kind, in a state, that’s what you have governors for. They’re supposed to fix those problems, and it’s much more local and they’ll develop a system, and it will be a great system,” Trump said. 

So long story short, people are going to die, but hey, that big, beautiful bill won’t fund itself. What better way to pay for tax cuts for the rich than pulling funds from disaster response? 

SEE ALSO:

North Carolina Denied Hurricane Relief Amid Changes At FEMA

Navigating Personal Finance After A Natural Disaster