Trump to Sign Executive Order to Overhaul or Eliminate FEMA During North Carolina Visit

Jan 24, 2025, 05:19 PM

President Donald Trump announced plans to overhaul or possibly eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during a visit to hurricane-battered North Carolina on Friday. Speaking in Fletcher, North Carolina, Trump stated he would sign an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming or getting rid of FEMA, saying, 'FEMA has turned out to be a disaster... I think, frankly, FEMA is not good.' The President suggested that disaster response should be managed by individual states rather than the federal agency, adding, 'When you have a problem like this, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time calling FEMA—then FEMA gets here and they don’t know the area, they want to give you rules you’ve never heard about.' Trump further commented, 'I think we're going to recommend that FEMA go away and we pay a percentage to the state.' He is considering 'getting rid of FEMA' and handing disaster response over to individual states that already have experience and manpower in the region.