Month: August 2025

When the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s urban search and rescue team resigned after the deadly July 4, 2025, Texas floods, he told colleagues he was frustrated with bureaucratic hurdles that had delayed the team’s response to the disaster, acccording to media reports. The move highlighted an ongoing challenge at FEMA.

Ever since the agency lost its independent status and became part of the Department of Homeland Security in the early 2000s, it has faced complaints about delays caused by layers of bureaucracy and red tape, leaders at the top with little experience in emergency response, and whiplash policy changes.

Now, the Trump administration is cutting jobs at FEMA and talking about dismantling the agency, which would push more responsibility for disaster response to the states.

Yet, federal emergency management is crucial in America.

I run the Hazards Vulnerability & Resilience Institute at the University of South Carolina and for years have worked with states and communities facing hazards and disasters. To better understand FEMA’s value, let’s take a look back at how the nation responded to disasters before the agency existed, and what history reveals about when FEMA was most effective.

Disaster response without the US government

Before 1950, disaster relief and response were not considered a federal responsibility. When a hurricane, flood or tornado hit, community members and humanitarian groups, such as the American Red Cross or Salvation Army, brought in food, shelter and medical aid and solicited charitable donations to help people rebuild.

State and local governments had primary responsibility for disaster response. But mostly people relied on family, neighbors and charity.

Federal aid was approved on a case-by-case basis. War Department guidelines in 1917 stated that aid would be allowed only if a senior military officer certified that responding to the disaster would exceed local and state resources.

Then the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and the 1930s Dust Bowl gave new meaning to the concept of disaster in America.

In 1927, the Mississippi River broke through its levees, submerging more than 1 million acres of land across seven states. An estimated 700,000 people were displaced from their homes and workplaces.

Herbert Hoover, then U.S. commerce secretary, was given full authority to create, coordinate and carry out the federal relief effort. The Red Cross set up camps using tents provided by the War Department. Coast Guard and Navy boats rescued people stranded by flooding. But the response drew criticism for the lack of direct federal money to help flood survivors and the treatment of Black sharecroppers and laborers.

A few years later, the droughts of the Dust Bowl era began destroying crops in the Great Plains, causing widespread damage.

Federal disaster aid begins to take shape

After the flood, the federal government began to formalize its role in disaster management.

Flood control projects became a federal responsibility with the passage of the Flood Control Act of 1928. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal provided emergency relief to farmers in the Great Plains and set up the Soil Conservation Service to help them reduce the effects of future droughts. These were among the first disaster mitigation policies at the federal level.

There was little coordination among agencies, however. Various aspects of disaster relief and recovery were handled by the departments of Defense, Agriculture, and Housing and Urban Development and the Small Business Administration. Each had its own rules and requirements.

In 1950, Congress passed the Federal Disaster Relief Act, establishing the first permanent authority for federal disaster relief.

The act gave the president the responsibility to determine how aid would be distributed and which agencies would be involved. The legislation also broadened the federal mission to include disaster preparedness and mitigation and formalized the process for issuing presidential disaster declarations.

The creation of FEMA

By the 1970s, large-scale disasters such as hurricanes Betsy (1965) and Camille (1969), and the fragmented disaster response, led the National Governors Association to call for a single comprehensive emergency management agency. Its report provided the blueprint for President Jimmy Carter’s 1979 executive order that established the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.

The new agency became the home for emergency management within the executive branch. It was intentionally designed as an independent federal administrative agency that could work across federal agencies to support state and local governments in times of crisis.

FEMA wasn’t created to lead the disaster response. Instead it helps state and local officials by mobilizing federal resources, such as search and rescue, debris removal and funding when a disaster overwhelms the state’s capacity. FEMA could do this quickly because of established federal contracts and its ability to move equipment and responders into the region before a disaster hits.

When things began to fall apart

However, FEMA’s ability to act fast changed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The agency was restructured as a unit in the newly formed Department of Homeland Security. But the Department of Homeland Security’s focus was on terrorism and law enforcement, not natural disasters.

The loss of autonomy and direct reporting to Congress, unfunded mandates outside the scope of the 1988 Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, and major increases in the number of large and complex disasters stretched FEMA’s capabilities.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, FEMA’s response drew widespread criticism. It was slow to deploy people and supplies and lacked enough experienced responders who knew what to do. Decision-makers were not familiar with new national response plans. Further breakdowns in communications and a lack of coordination among agencies led Congress to declare the Hurricane Katrina response a failure of initiative and agility.

FEMA’s reputation improved after the government brought in more experienced leadership and committed to preparedness planning and better response capabilities.

However, the first Trump administration, from 2017 to 2021, reversed those gains. Three different heads of FEMA in four years led to understaffing and conflicting directions.

As Trump took office for the second time in 2025, he and his administration talked about dismantling FEMA and pushing more disaster management to states. Job cuts and resignations at FEMA reduced the number of employees with training and experience vital in disasters. Political appointees to senior roles in the agency and in the Department of Homeland Security lacked emergency management training and experience.

A new policy that all purchases over US$100,000 be personally approved by Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem led to more resignations. For disaster response, a delay in waiting for a signature to work its way up the chain can cost lives.

What now?

Dismantling FEMA and leaving little or no federal coordination of disaster response puts states in a difficult position.

States must balance their budgets every year, and increasingly “rainy day” funds are insufficient to cover unexpected large disasters. As the federal government shifts other financial responsibilities to states, funds will diminish further.

A single disaster can cause hundreds of millions of dollars in damage and require widespread disaster response and then relief efforts. Since 1980, the cumulative cost of weather-related disasters has exceeded $2.9 trillion. With a warming atmosphere producing more intense storms, increasing human and economic harm are likely.

Members of Congress have proposed making FEMA an independent, Cabinet-level agency again. I see some distinct advantages in doing so:

• Fewer management layers would enable faster deployment of federal supplies and personnel to assist disaster response.

• A streamlined, more nimble agency could cut red tape for disaster survivors needing assistance, meaning delivering relief funding faster and more equitably.

• If an independent FEMA had responsibility for recovery beyond its current 180-day reimbursement limits, that could improve long-term recovery efforts, especially if Congress provided permanent funding streams and consistent rules and regulations.

The Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle FEMA are shortsighted in my view. Instead, I believe the best move is to restore FEMA as an independent executive agency as it was originally envisioned.

Susan L. Cutter receives funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The gerrymandering drama in Texas – and beyond – has continued to unfold after Democratic state legislators fled the state. The Democrats want to prevent the Republican-controlled government from enacting a mid-decade gerrymander aimed at giving Republicans several more seats in Congress.

The Texas GOP move was pushed by President Donald Trump, who’s aiming to ensure he has a GOP-controlled Congress to work with after the 2026 midterm elections.

Other Republican states such as Missouri and Ohio may also follow the Texas playbook; and Democratic states such as California and Illinois seem open to responding in kind.

But there are a few factors that make this process more complicated than just grabbing a few House seats. They may even make Republicans regret their hardball gerrymandering tactics, if the party ends up with districts that political scientists like me call “dummymandered.”

Democrats can finally fight back

Unlike at the federal level, where Democrats are almost completely shut out of power, Republicans are already facing potentially consequential retaliation for their gerrymandering attempts from Democratic leaders in other states.

Democrats in California, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, are pushing for a special election later this year, in which the voters could vote on new congressional maps in that state, aiming to balance out Democrats’ losses in Texas. If successful, these changes would take effect prior to next year’s midterm elections.

Other large Democratic-controlled states, such as Illinois and New York – led by Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Gov. Kathy Hochul, respectively – have also indicated openness to enacting their own new gerrymanders to pick up seats on the Democratic side.

New York and California both currently use nonpartisan redistricting commissions to draw their boundaries. But Hochul recently said she is “sick and tired of being pushed around” while other states refuse to adopt redistricting reforms and gerrymander to their full advantage. Hochul said she’d even be open to amending the state constitution to eliminate the nonpartisan redistricting commission.

It’s unclear whether these blue states will be successful in their efforts to fight fire with fire; but in the meantime, governors like Hochul and Pritzker have welcomed the protesting Democratic legislators from Texas, in many cases arranging for their housing during their self-imposed exile.

Dummymandering

Another possible problem for either party looking to gain some seats in this process stems from greediness.

In responding to Democrats’ continued absence from Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott threatened even more drastic gerrymanders. “If they don’t start showing up, I may start expanding,” Abbott said. “We may make it six or seven or eight new seats we’re going to be adding on the Republican side.”

But Abbott might think twice about this strategy.

Parties that gerrymander their states’ districts are drawing lines to maximize their own advantage, either in state legislatures or, in this case, congressional delegations.

When parties gerrymander districts, they don’t usually try to make them all as lopsided as possible for their own side. Instead, they try to make as many districts as possible that they are likely to win. They do this by spreading groups of supportive voters across several districts so they can help the party win more of these districts.

But sometimes the effort backfires: In trying to maximize their seats, a party spreads its voters too thin and fails to make some districts safe enough. These vulnerable districts can then flip to the other party in future elections, and the opposing party ends up winning more seats than expected.

This phenomenon, commonly referred to as “dummymandering,” has happened before. It even happened in Texas, where Republicans lost a large handful of poorly drawn state legislative districts in the Dallas suburbs in 2018, a strong year for Democrats nationwide.

With Democrats poised for a strong 2026 midterm election against an unpopular president, this is a lesson Republicans might need to pay attention to.

There’s not much left to gerrymander

One of the main reasons dummymandering happens is that there has been so much gerrymandering that there are few remaining districts competitive enough for a controlling party to pick off for themselves. This important development has unfolded for two big reasons.

First, in terms of gerrymandering, the low-hanging fruit is already picked over. States controlled by either Democrats or Republicans have already undertaken pretty egregious gerrymanders during previous regular redistricting processes, particularly following the 2010 and 2020 censuses.

Republicans have generally been more adept at the process, particularly in maximizing their seat shares in relatively competitive states such as Wisconsin and North Carolina that they happen to control.

But Democrats have also been successful in states such as Maryland, where only one Republican serves out of nine seats, despite the party winning 35% of the presidential vote in 2024. In Massachusetts, where Democrats hold all eight seats, Republicans won 37% of the presidential vote in 2024.

There’s also the fact that over the past half-century, “gerrymanderable” territory has become more difficult to find regardless of how you draw the boundaries. That’s because the voting electorate is more geographically sorted between the parties.

This means that Democratic and Republican voters are segregated from each other geographically, with Democrats tending toward big cities and suburbs, and Republicans occupying rural areas.

As a result, it’s become less geographically possible than ever to draw reasonable-looking districts that split up the other party’s voters in order to diminish the opponents’ ability to elect one of their own.

Regardless of how far either party is willing to go, today’s clash over Texas redistricting represents largely uncharted territory. Mid-decade redistricting does sometimes happen, either at the hands of legislatures or the courts, but not usually in such a brazen fashion.

And this time, the Texas attempt could spark chaos and a race to the bottom, where every state picks up the challenge and tries to rewrite their electoral maps – not in the usual once-a-decade manner, but whenever they’re unsatisfied with the odds in the next election.

Charlie Hunt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation