As hurricane season bears down, a new layer of uncertainty is spreading through the disaster response system: a wall of silence from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that’s leaving officials from across the country scrambling for answers.
“We’ve been ghosted by FEMA,” Robert Wike Graham, deputy director of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Emergency Management, told CNN, describing repeated, unanswered requests for information on vital emergency preparedness funding for his North Carolina community.
In Wyoming, where more than 90 percent of the state’s emergency management budget comes from the federal government, officials say their requests for clarity on emergency management funds also have gone unanswered.
“It’s very frustrating not to have good, official information, with lots and lots of rumors flying around, which creates anxiety for folks,” said Wyoming’s Homeland Security Director Lynn Budd. “I believe the regional level (of FEMA) is doing their very best to support us, but they are also being asked not to share too much information with us. So, it’s very unfortunate.”
From regional offices to the national headquarters, more than a half-dozen FEMA insiders as well as state and local emergency personnel who work with the federal agency told CNN they are frustrated by a clampdown on information sharing that they say will hamper disaster response.
Internal memos seen by CNN show top FEMA officials have ordered disaster relief personnel to stop most communication with the White House’s Office of Management and Budget and National Security Council as well as members of Congress — and direct those inquiries through FEMA’s acting administrator instead.
“Effective immediately ALL engagement with OMB, NSC, and the Hill needs to be routed through the Office of the Administrator,” one memo reads. “This includes answering questions if staff call you directly.”
Meanwhile, regional teams across the country have been instructed, at times, to limit sharing information with their state and local partners until granted approval from supervisors, multiple FEMA officials confirmed. They spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
These communication breakdowns risk delaying the distribution of key federal funding, according to state and local officials as well as sources inside FEMA.
The agency is behind schedule in the process for ensuring billions of dollars in grants — the lifeblood of local emergency management nationwide — can go out to localities and states in the coming months and years, those sources say. Some grants have already been paused or canceled as part of budget cuts.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson denied any sweeping directives or policies were issued, telling CNN in a statement: “This is fake news. FEMA employees were NOT banned from engaging with external partners. It should be common practice for FEMA leadership to be made aware of decisions happening at FEMA.”
But the memos, issued last month, do more than instruct staff to keep the front office informed — they explicitly restrict certain external communications and mandate that all such inquiries be vetted by the political appointees now running the agency.
The clampdown comes as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose department oversees FEMA, asserts extensive authority over the agency, reshaping its leadership and operations since President Donald Trump returned to office.
It also comes as the Trump administration is vowing to phase out FEMA after hurricane season this summer and fall, and shift responsibility for disaster management onto states.
CNN reached out to the White House about the new orders and was directed to the DHS by a spokesperson.
Communication bottleneck
The memos seen by CNN apply to FEMA personnel at every level of the agency, from senior leaders to rank-and-file employees.
That has created a bottleneck with effects that are already apparent in Washington.
The Office of Management and Budget and National Security Council — both part of the Executive Office of the President — are struggling to obtain basic information from FEMA on a slew of emergency funding and grants. An array of routine meetings were also abruptly canceled in recent days, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Moreover, officials inside FEMA warn that these new restrictions could make it harder for Congress to obtain unfiltered information from career staff without political influence.
“It eliminates transparency,” a longtime FEMA official told CNN, adding that critical questions about policy, recovery projects and agency readiness will now be filtered through layers of political bureaucracy.
While it’s not uncommon for administrations to route some communications with Congress and the White House through political appointees, this level of front-office review is extremely unusual, several FEMA officials said.
“To narrow the number of people who can do that engagement will create a choke point for that type of coordination, never mind the fact that the people now trusted to do that have no experience in disaster management,” a former senior FEMA official told CNN, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.
DHS overhaul of FEMA
Several sources who spoke to CNN see the changes as part of a broad political shift that purposefully draws the agency into much closer political alignment with Trump and DHS Secretary Noem.
Noem and Corey Lewandowski, a longtime Trump ally who now works at DHS, ousted the president’s first acting FEMA administrator, Cameron Hamilton, after he repeatedly clashed with Lewandowski and later told lawmakers he did not support the administration’s controversial plan to dismantle FEMA — a move both Noem and Trump have publicly championed.
In his place, David Richardson, a homeland security official from the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction office with no prior experience handling large-scale natural disaster relief, was installed.
Richardson wasted no time making his mandate clear, telling FEMA staff on his first day that he will “run right over” anyone who tries to prevent him from carrying out the president’s mission.
Beyond its overhaul of FEMA’s front office, DHS is now inserting dozens of its own staffers into other parts of the agency with more on the way, filling vacancies left by a mass exodus of experienced emergency management leaders and employees, multiple FEMA officials tell CNN.
Noem also has imposed a requirement that she personally approve all DHS grants and contracts of more than $100,000, which FEMA officials warn could slow operations and severely disrupt aid distribution during natural disasters.
States lose out
These shifts come at a precarious moment for the nation’s disaster response system. Internal reviews have raised red flags about the agency’s readiness, warning that the loss of institutional knowledge and the politicization of disaster response could leave Americans vulnerable in the face of natural disasters.
As hurricane season intensifies, the Trump administration has already taken steps to shrink FEMA’s footprint. Just last week, the agency officially ended FEMA’s door-to-door canvassing of residents affected by disasters, shifting support work to recovery centers that residents can visit, according to a memo obtained by CNN.
The changes have rattled state emergency management teams, many of whom have spent months seeking information and guidance about the flow of federal funding and future of the agency.
Amid growing concerns of steep FEMA budget cuts, some local emergency management departments have started laying off staff, according to officials from the National Emergency Management Association, or NEMA.
This week, NEMA and a coalition of groups that represent mayors, state lawmakers and emergency management agencies fired off a sharply worded letter to Noem. It warned the agency still has not opened applications for a large number of key grants and is missing legally mandated deadlines to ensure the funds can be distributed. Those grants support a long list of initiatives, such as emergency planning and training, counterterrorism, cybersecurity upgrades, fire department equipment and staffing and public safety communications.
Delays, the groups say, are jeopardizing emergency response and homeland security capabilities, putting “critical infrastructure” at risk.
“This comes during a time when nation-state actors, domestic and international extremists, and the hazards of our natural environment pose a tremendous and increasing threat,” the groups wrote in the letter.
‘Muzzle’ on FEMA
Members of Congress also have grown frustrated with what they describe as FEMA’s persistent lack of responsiveness under the Trump administration.
“Under this administration, FEMA has been mostly silent to our questions or requests for information,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat and senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN. “Hurricane season is underway. Not only do we need to conduct oversight of FEMA — we need to know whether it’s ready to act. I have serious doubts.”
Sen. Patty Murray, a Democrat who serves as vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, says she’s been told FEMA personnel are being prevented from communicating with emergency management officials in her home state of Washington.
“There’s a very clear reason the Trump administration wants to muzzle FEMA staff, and it’s because they don’t want people to know about how the president is gravely undermining disaster preparedness and response at FEMA,” Murray told CNN in a statement. “These sorts of communications embargoes aren’t just outrageous – they jeopardize planning and response and, ultimately, people’s lives.”
Responding to CNN questions about the new directives for FEMA staff, Sen. Katie Britt, an Alabama Republican who chairs the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, emphasized the need for clear and consistent communication from DHS and FEMA.
“I expect the Department of Homeland Security and its components to provide my team with timely, accurate, and relevant information when needed,” Britt said in a statement. “I believe it’s critically important, especially during hurricane season, that the flow of information between DHS and my team continues, which can make all the difference in protecting our communities and responding effectively to emergencies.”
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