From NPR: Inside the failed mission to eliminate FEMA

” The Federal Emergency Management Agency is no longer in the Trump administration’s crosshairs, according to its former leader.

But despite his own significant efforts to dismantle FEMA, the man who ran the agency at the time says FEMA isn’t going anywhere.

“I think they’re probably in a go-along-to-get-along kind of mode,” says David Richardson, who led FEMA as acting administrator for much of 2025 and has since left the federal government. “I don’t see there being a whole lot of change.”

That shift is apparent inside the agency. In recent months, the fear of wholesale agency abolition or mass layoffs has dissipated among FEMA workers, according to multiple current FEMA employees who requested anonymity because they fear retaliation for speaking to a journalist. But the attempts to kill it have compounded some of FEMA’s longstanding problems, like understaffing and delays in getting disaster recovery money to survivors.