Trump's FEMA risks "flying blind" into hurricane season

State of play: With less than two weeks until the start of Atlantic hurricane season, leaks from inside the government continue to suggest that FEMA is understaffed, underfunded and underprepared.

• Acting FEMA head Cameron Hamilton was fired earlier this month after testifying to Congress that eliminating the agency — as Trump has called for — is not "in the best interests of the American people."
• His successor, David Richardson, has no experience managing natural disasters and acknowledged in private meetings that the agency doesn't yet have a fully formed hurricane response plan, the Wall Street Journal reported.
• "As FEMA transforms to a smaller footprint, the intent for this hurricane season is not well understood," warned an internal review obtained by CNN. "Thus FEMA is not ready."

The big picture: Trump — whose budget proposes more than $646 million in cuts to FEMA — has signed executive orders aimed at streamlining the federal disaster agency and shifting more responsibility to the states.

• "I say you don't need FEMA. You need a good state government," Trump said during a tour of the Los Angeles wildfires in January. "FEMA is a very expensive, in my opinion, mostly failed situation."
• FEMA, which was created under President Jimmy Carter and is part of the Department of Homeland Security, has shed roughly 1,000 workers and over a dozen senior leaders as a result of DOGE cuts.
• DHS Secretary Kristi Noem told Trump in March that she would move to "eliminate" FEMA, though that would ultimately require an act of Congress.

Zoom in: Miami hurricane specialist John Morales warned that staffing cuts at FEMA are "yet another reason hurricane season 2025 has a greater chance of being the most tragic in memory."

• Morales — who was brought nearly to tears on live TV last year during his coverage of Hurricane Milton — told Axios he feels like he's "flying blind heading into this hurricane season."
• The FEMA cuts and reductions at the National Weather Service — as well as the elimination of disaster databases maintained by federal scientists — could potentially cost lives, he said.

As tornadoes have ripped across parts of the central and southern U.S. in recent days, local leaders pleaded for federal aid.

• St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer said Monday, days after a deadly tornado outbreak in her city: "This is where FEMA and the federal government has got to come in and help our communities. Our city cannot shoulder this alone. The state of Missouri cannot shoulder this alone."
• Asked whether FEMA was on the ground yet, she said no.

• The White House and FEMA did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment.

Flashback: Trump has a long history of spreading misinformation about natural disasters and FEMA — including during the campaign, when Hurricanes Helene and Milton impacted multiple southern states.

• He has also threatened to weaponize disaster relief against blue states, demanding, for example, that California implement voter ID in exchange for federal wildfire aid.

Between the lines: "I think we're all in agreement about [FEMA] reform, but let's do it smartly and be able at the same time to complete the mission," Pete Gaynor, who ran FEMA for about two years during Trump's first term, told Axios' Alex Fitzpatrick earlier this year,

• The frequency and extremity of disasters themselves have strained FEMA's "workforce in unprecedented ways," a U.S. Government Accountability Office report found early last year.
• The agency is on track to run out of disaster relief funds by July or August for the third consecutive year, and the administration canceled billions of dollars in grants for disaster preparedness.
• As climate change worsens the severity of storms in disaster-prone states, many of them are still reeling from one storm (Helene) when the next one hits (Milton).

But the timing of Trump's FEMA overhaul couldn't be worse, experts warn.

• "If you're serious about making a big policy change, and shifting the balance of responsibility from federal to state government, you have to give states a chance to legislate to fill the gap," Sarah Labowitz of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told Axios.
• "A lot of state legislatures are meeting now and winding down their legislative sessions before there's a clear policy landscape from the administration, and while disaster season is getting started," she added.

Go deeper: These states could suffer the most without FEMA

Axios' Martin Vassolo contributed to this report.