After Texas floods, questions about FEMA's future loom large

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been exerting more direct control over the agency, which President Donald Trump has talked about "getting rid of."

The devastating Texas flooding that has killed nearly 120 people is the first high-profile disaster the Federal Emergency Management Agency has faced during the current Trump administration. But while the loss of life has been catastrophic, former and current FEMA officials told NBC News that the relatively small geographic area affected means it’s not a true test of what the agency, whose full-time staff has been shrunk by a third, is capable of doing in the wake of a disaster. The real tryout could come later this summer, they say, when there is always the threat that a hurricane could hit several states. As the agency’s future is debated — President Donald Trump has talked about possibly “getting rid of” it — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees it, has tightened her grip. Noem now requires that all agency spending over $100,000 be personally approved by her, according to current and former FEMA officials. To prevent delays on the ground, on Monday FEMA officials created a task force to speed up the process of getting Noem’s approval, according to two people familiar with that unit. While Noem has been exercising more direct control over the agency, there is a void created by the largely voluntary exodus of FEMA leaders. In May, the agency announced in an internal email the departures of 16 senior officials who took with them a combined disaster expertise of more than 200 years. “DHS and its components have taken an all-hands-on-desk approach to respond to recovery efforts in Kerrville,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News. “Under Secretary Noem and Acting Administrator [David] Richardson, FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens. The old processes are being replaced because they failed Americans in real emergencies for decades. … Secretary Noem is delivering accountability to the U.S. taxpayer, which Washington bureaucrats have ignored for decades at the expense of American citizens.”

On Wednesday afternoon, officials gathered for the second meeting of the FEMA Review Council, which the president has set up to determine the agency's future role. Trump told reporters in early June, “We want to wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it down to the state level.” As of now FEMA still has the same mandate and is managing more than 700 open disasters, according to Chris Currie, who tracks and audits the agency for the Government Accountability Office. “They are not doing anything different. They are just doing it with less people,” he said in an interview.