By Molly Claire Goddard
4:11am PDT, Jun 13, 2025
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Donald Trump wants to hand over the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to the states.
During a Tuesday, June 10, meeting with the press in the Oval Office, the president said he wants to slowly lessen the country's dependence on the government entity after the 2025 hurricane season.
Keep reading to hear what Trump said about the potential move for disaster relief…MORE:
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Donald Trump signed an executive order in January, making Homeland Security Secretary
Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary
Pete Hegseth co-chairs of the FEMA Review Council, which evaluates the agency's effectiveness. Per the order, it alleged
FEMA was working with "political bias" during recovery missions.
"We want to wean off of FEMA and we want to bring it down to the state level," the commander-in-chief said during a meeting with the press. "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."
During the gathering, the former governor of South Dakota said FEMA "fundamentally needs to go away as it exists."
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According to The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the 2025 season is set to have between six and 10 hurricanes from June to November.
Per the agency, this year's natural disasters have caused $182.7 billion in damages. Over the past five years, the average annual cost of recovery has been raised to $149.3 billion.
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Despite being in a time of extreme partisanship, Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz from Florida has supported the move of having states directly deal with natural disasters and not having it operate under the Department of Homeland Security.
"Bureaucracy at the Department of Homeland Security is getting in the way of FEMA fulfilling its core mission," he explained in a May statement. "Under DHS, FEMA has become a grant agency that also does emergency management, rather than an emergency management agency that also does grants."
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On Wednesday, June 11, the head of FEMA's National Response Coordination Center
Jeremy Greenberg submitted his resignation letter and will leave the position in two weeks.
"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 senior official explained to
CBS News. "This will be a significant loss. He led all of FEMA's planners that prepared for all hazards. He had strong interagency relationship that fostered collaboration and coordination in responding to disasters."
