U.S. — The FEMA Review Council proposed an overhaul of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The proposed changes would require greater state leadership in reacting to natural disasters and would alter how federal disaster assistance is distributed.
A core element of the proposal involves raising the threshold for declaring a major natural disaster. The advocacy group Sabotaging Our Safety released a report analyzing these proposals, stating that the higher threshold would have excluded 29% of major disaster declarations between 2012 and 2025. The proposal specifies an increase in the per-capita indicator threshold for presidential disaster declarations from $1.94 to $2.99. The report states raising the per-capita indicator threshold would shift $1.5 billion in recovery costs to states, counties, and survivors.
Instead of FEMA Public Assistance grants, the proposal would implement formula-based block grants. FEMA Public Assistance grants totaled approximately $180 billion in the five-year period preceding the report. The proposed RAPID program would replace project-by-project reimbursement with a lump-sum grant calculated using a formula based on disaster metrics. Sabotaging Our Safety wrote: "The cost of rebuilding a school, a water system, a county road network, or a hospital depends on local construction costs, infrastructure age, code requirements, and supply chain conditions that the pre-set formula doesn't even attempt to capture."
Additionally, the overhaul would collapse fifteen categories of individual assistance into a single capped payment. The proposal would also eliminate FEMA's role in long-term housing assistance, shifting this responsibility to states, territories, and tribal governments. Much of the proposed overhaul requires congressional approval. President Donald Trump previously suggested trying to "wean" states off of FEMA or eliminating the agency altogether.
FEMA has lost more than 5,000 employees since January 2025, and the Government Accountability Office warned that FEMA was understaffed prior to recent workforce reductions. Acting FEMA administrator Bob Fenton stated, "The agency is ready for hurricane season."