5d ago

FEMA hiring overhaul drives fears of agency dismantling as hurricane season nears

www.cbsnews.com

Summary

The Trump administration is overhauling FEMA's hiring process, requiring over two-thirds of employees to submit contract renewals to DHS for approval.

This affects Cadre of On-Call Response (CORE) employees and reservists who handle disaster response and comprise most of FEMA's workforce.

The agency has already fired 200+ probationary (new) workers, frozen external hiring, and directed contract renewals to DHS "for decision."

Critics fear this will effectively dismantle FEMA ahead of hurricane season, aligning with Trump's statements that "you don't need FEMA, you need a good state government" and Project 2025's goal to shift disaster costs to states.

14 comments

Who needs FEMA, when you have SHARPIE

Genuinely worried about the response to floods this summer.
It's been getting worse and worse each year for the last 5 years or so. Without FEMA, whole states are gonna crumble.
- Oh don't worry - FEMA will still be there. Only instead of providing shelter and food, they'll be arresting everyone and transferring them to "camps" in El Salvador. /s?
  Y'know back in the 80's there was a wild conspiracy theory that the government was going to take over and put everyone in camps under a secret organization known as FEMA that had the power to suspend the Constitution.
  At the time, no one had heard of FEMA and conspiracy theorists were, as per usual, mocked for believing the government had gone to the trouble of creating an agency just to ship people off to camps.
  They were also mocked for saying the government recorded all the communications going in and out of the country.
  Good times. Good times.

It's not even 3 months in and I'm almost out of schadenfreude. The only thing left in the can is a bottomless pit of worry and concern.
- Just wait until after the hurricane surprize season.

Was anyone expecting a big shipment of find out? I just got a call and they’re delivering this stuff by the truckload now.

East coast got lucky last year with hurricanes given the bonkers forecast, this year the ocean hasn't cooled down any (very alarming) and east coast might get slammed.

Any other weather nerds see the hurricane center make note of a storm that came very close to forming a tropical depression a couple weeks ago?

Shut it down! Not one more penny of my money goes to Florida or any of these other MAGA states. They are on their own.

Remembering in the elections when the Republicans accused the Biden Administration of not giving help to the victim of Hurricanes in Florida and in North Carolina.

I’m gonna be fine, most likely, way up in the northeast. Ngl I’m really looking forward to all of the face-eating that will occur down in the south, particularly Florida and the gulf coast. I can hear the leopards already.
- The leopards are hungry and this year they are going to eat.
  
  Leopards boutta get some transitive type-2 diabeetus

We're going to have a mess bigger than "Heck of a job Brownie" in 18 months.

14 comments