Uncommon Bonds: Remaking FEMA

Last week, Reps. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., and Byron Donalds, R-Fla., introduced legislation that would move FEMA out from under DHS, shaping it into a Cabinet-level independent agency within a year of the bill’s signing. The agency would be headed by a Senate-confirmed director who would report directly to the president and be supported by as many as four deputy directors.

Moskowitz — who served as Florida’s emergency management director under GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis before coming to Congress — introduced similar legislation back in 2023, but at that time his cosponsor was former Rep. Garret Graves, R-La. Both Moskowitz and Donalds hail from Florida, which has had its fair share of natural disasters.

“Byron and I have been talking about how we can improve emergency response since we served in the Florida state house together, and his area was just recently hit by Hurricane Ian a few years ago — so he was the first person I thought of to ask for the reintroduction,” Moskowitz told Semafor.

Both Moskowitz and Donalds stressed that it’s crucial that FEMA get out from under DHS to improve the speed and effectiveness of recovery efforts in the states.

“It is an agency that is a rapid response agency trapped in a bureaucratic labyrinth. So what happens on the ground is you’re not getting quick answers out of FEMA when you need to make quick decisions,” Donalds said.

Shifting the agency to directly reporting to the president, he added, would ensure that the White House and FEMA are “making quick decisions on behalf of what needs to happen.”

Their bill doesn’t yet have a Senate counterpart, but Moskowitz’s office told Semafor that he’s in talks with a bipartisan duo of senators about introducing a version in the upper chamber.

The disaster relief agency was created during the late 1970s under the late President Jimmy Carter. But FEMA has existed as part of DHS for more than two decades; that setup was mandated by the 2002 law that created the department following the Sept. 11 attacks the previous year.

“Removing FEMA from under that umbrella and having it report directly to the President instead just gets us back to a more efficient setup that existed before DHS,” Moskowitz said.

Despite Noem’s comments, it’s unclear precisely what the Trump administration will do with FEMA — though officials are uniformly signaling plans to scale it back.

Politico recently reported that Noem has voiced support for eliminating the agency’s role in funding long-term rebuilding projects and axing disaster preparedness grant programs that the agency administers. That would dramatically shrink the agency’s authorities.

Trump signed an order early on in his second term that set up an advisory council to review FEMA, and the council recently solicited input from the public and key stakeholders on their experience with the agency during disaster recovery efforts.

Earlier this month, Trump also signed a directive that looks to put states and local governments in the lead for disaster preparations.

Donalds said he supports the administration looking at changes to FEMA but said it “remains to be seen” whether officials are on the right course. He made clear he does not support shuttering the agency altogether.

“I think the key thing is that we have to preserve a lot of what FEMA does. It’s going to be important for states as we go through disaster recovery scenarios. The current way FEMA operates, in the current form of it, that needs to change. Let’s be clear,” he said.

Moskowitz said that doing away with FEMA would hurt “small towns, rural areas, red states, and impoverished communities.”

“We need to save FEMA. We can’t get rid of FEMA, and we won’t get rid of FEMA,” he said.

Donalds also suggested that additional legislation might emerge that would shift grant programs from FEMA to DHS that aren’t necessarily related to the agency’s core mission.