独家报道：权力斗争与运作瘫痪：飓风季将至，FEMA迷失的一年

Exclusive: Power struggles and paralysis: Inside FEMA’s lost year as storm season approaches

2026-05-31T10:00:08.751Z / CNN

• A CNN investigation reveals how Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and aide Corey Lewandowski strangled FEMA operations for over a year.
• The dysfunction, according to sources, left more than $15 billion in disaster funds stalled and drove out roughly 20% of the workforce.
• With hurricane season starting June 1, insiders warn the weakened agency will likely struggle to respond to major disasters.

AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.

In late December, the chief of staff for Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley sent a sharply worded email to the White House, subject line “Five Alarm Fire.”Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s “ridiculous” stranglehold on FEMA was choking off funds his California district needed — a district, the email noted, that President Donald Trump had carried.

At issue was a $2.5 million grant to help fortify homes against wildfires. Stalled for months awaiting Noem’s signature, the payment was one of thousands of grants and contracts nationwide caught in the same logjam.

“It’s going to be hell to pay if this simple grant doesn’t get done,” the chief of staff wrote.

“Can you help spare the Secretary some bad press and jiggle the handle on this?”

The email came as Noem’s tenure at the Department of Homeland Security careened toward its end. Numerous factors led to her downfall in March, including her role as the face of the administration’s immigration enforcement efforts, a lavish ad campaign featuring her, and allegations of pay-for-play in the department’s handling of contracts. Her decision to withhold billions in Federal Emergency Management Agency funds didn’t help. In the days after Trump fired Noem, Vice President JD Vance suggested it was FEMA’s inability to get money out the door that truly did her in.

By the end of last year, FEMA was sitting on more than $15 billion in unspent funds, according to sources and internal figures reviewed by CNN. Lawmakers across the country, including many Republicans, were left fuming after months of asking for disaster money that had been awarded yet still awaited Noem’s signature.

During her 13 months running DHS, Noem, along with her de facto chief of staff Corey Lewandowski, waged war on FEMA, throttling operations, stalling payments, and driving out most of the senior leadership and by one count roughly 20% of the workforce. Amid the havoc, multiple sources told CNN the agency failed to make critical payments — from basic utilities to security operators that protect dangerous materials like anthrax.

Now in clean-up mode, the White House appears intent on stitching back together much of what Noem and Lewandowski tore apart at FEMA — a striking reversal for Trump, who first called for scrapping the agency. The new head of DHS, former Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin, has already moved to unwind cuts and red tape Noem put in place. The DHS internal watchdog has also launched an investigation into Noem and Lewandowski’s handling of contracts, including at FEMA.

Court records in a separate lawsuit show DHS coordinated much of the overhaul over dozens of chats on the messaging app Signal, some of which have been wiped, with lawyers raising concerns that evidence was destroyed.

In a remarkable turnaround, Trump has tapped Cameron Hamilton to lead FEMA — for the second time. In May 2025, Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL, was fired from his acting role atop the agency after telling lawmakers he didn’t support the administration’s plans to abolish FEMA. His exit accelerated an already chaotic effort to dismantle the agency — just as his return underscores the level of damage control the White House is now attempting.

“If you’d asked me 11 months ago, I would have said it’s more likely we deport him than he gets that job,” one DHS official said of Hamilton.

It’s unclear how much FEMA funding is still stalled. In an email to CNN, Kiley’s office said his district still has not received the $2.5 million grant. “It’s extremely disappointing to see government inefficiency at this scale,” the email said. Kiley is now running as an independent after leaving the GOP.

With the Atlantic hurricane season starting Monday, agency insiders warn that FEMA has been significantly weakened and will likely struggle to respond to a large-scale disaster this summer — the likes of which this administration, remarkably, has not yet faced. The agency is racing to fill vacant roles, restart halted trainings and exercises, and close gaps left by funding that was delayed or cut. But sources say it will likely take years to undo the damage that’s been done.

“All of those things made the mission more impossible,” said Pete Gaynor, who led FEMA during the first Trump administration. “And they’re going to own the wreckage.”

Noem and Lewandowski did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment. In a statement to CNN, a DHS spokesperson insisted the department is ready for hurricane season.

“FEMA is leaner, faster and laser-focused on support states, local tribal and territorial partners before, during and after disasters,” the statement said. “States and communities remain in the lead; our job is to back them up with additional capacity and resources if warranted.”

Interviews over the last year with more than 50 FEMA insiders, most of whom agreed to speak on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, provide a detailed account of the chaos that’s beset the nation’s biggest emergency management agency — revealing a story of political infighting, bureaucratic inertia, partisan favoritism and at times blatant incompetence.

With backbiting and confusion so bad it verged on the farcical, some sources compared the internal dynamics of FEMA to a real-life version of the satirical television show “Veep.”A culture of fear and distrust permeated. Leaders were polygraphed amid a top-down hunt for leakers. Communication lines across the government and with state and local partners were shut down. Sweeping plans — such as cutting staff by 50% — became frequent fire drills, with career officials repeatedly ordered to produce lists of names within hours, only for the plans never to be carried out.

Between the sporadic firings, Noem’s political appointees openly feuded, refusing to sit in meetings together.

Things were so dysfunctional that at various points, FEMA’s electricity, phone, internet and email services risked being cut off because the bills hadn’t been paid amid a hunt for wasteful spending, according to multiple sources. In numerous incidents not previously reported, secure government sites housing dangerous materials such as live viruses, anthrax and ricin came within hours of losing security coverage, two sources said. Contracts that staff had asked DHS to renew were left to expire as trained guards threatened to walk off.

“If you wrote this as a book, no one would believe it,” one senior FEMA official told CNN. “It’s completely dumbfounding how it’s all played out.”

Sixteen months into the second Trump administration, FEMA has yet to have a confirmed administrator at its helm, having cycled through four acting leaders and a rotating cast of political appointees jockeying for power and influence.

When David Richardson stepped in to replace Hamilton as acting chief last May, the hard-charging former Marine and martial-arts instructor promised on his first day to “run right over” anyone who got in his way. Richardson was ousted in November following criticism of FEMA’s response to last July’s deadly Texas floods, and a series of antics that left DHS unwilling to let him represent the agency in public.

His replacement, Karen Evans, a veteran cybersecurity official and Trump loyalist, earned the nickname “The Terminator” as Richardson’s chief of staff for her penchant for slashing grants, contracts and spending requests.

Though they rarely visited agency headquarters, Noem and Lewandowski loomed large. That was particularly true after Noem’s directive in June 2025 that required her personal approval for any expenditures over $100,000. For an agency that distributes tens of billions of dollars in rapid disaster aid, reimbursements and wide-ranging grants, senior leaders predicted it would sow chaos — and it did. Sources say Noem, Lewandowski and their loyalists held back most of the money — flat-out blocking some blue states while fast-tracking funds to allies’ states after private meetings.

As Noem and Lewandowski squeezed FEMA’s operations, a little-known contractor named Kara Voorhies accrued significant power, sources say. Voorhies reported to Lewandowki and was seen as his “eyes and ears” inside the agency. One senior official called her the “Shadow Administrator.” Sources say she restricted FEMA’s ability to talk to states, Congress and the White House, and that nothing got to Lewandowski without Voorhies’ approval. Many FEMA employees didn’t even know she existed.

Voorhies’ contract — buried inside a larger Department of Government Efficiency contract, sources say — was terminated in March after Noem was ousted. DHS investigators seized her government devices and documents she left behind. Voorhies is now part of the broader investigation into Noem and Lewandowski’s handling of contracts across DHS.

And then there’s Gregg Phillips, FEMA’s head of response and recovery who famously claimed to have teleported to a Waffle House one night in Georgia. Phillips arrived at the agency in December, having spent much of the previous decade appearing on a variety of pro-Trump podcasts where he often spread right-wing conspiracy theories.

Career officials were openly skeptical of Phillips. But after a few weeks, several of them told CNN that, to their surprise, Phillips’ support for the workforce and its mission — and his willingness to push back against Noem’s restrictive policies — eased some of their doubts.

In a sign of how bad things had gotten, Phillips quickly became one of the most trusted political appointees among career staffers.

“Gregg Phillips is FEMA’s best hope at this moment,” one high-ranking FEMA official told CNN in January. “I can’t believe I’m saying that.”

The first time Trump raised the idea of abolishing FEMA, he was standing amid the wreckage of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. He was four days into his second term. It had been four months since the storm carved a 500-mile path of destruction across the Southeast. In the final month of the campaign, Trump blasted the Biden administration for its response, claiming FEMA ignored Republican survivors and diverted disaster aid to undocumented immigrants.

“I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away,” Trump told reporters.

Noem made that a signature mission. Her argument was blunt: FEMA was riddled with waste, fraud and abuse — bloated, partisan, ineffective — and states should take on more responsibility when disaster strikes. With Lewandowski driving the effort, they skipped methodical reform and took a sledgehammer to the agency.

Hamilton, who had echoed some of Trump’s false FEMA claims months earlier, quickly came to see its mission as vital and broke with Lewandowski over how aggressively to gut the agency. That split surfaced early. Three weeks into Trump’s term, Elon Musk claimed on X that DOGE had uncovered a FEMA payment to New York City for migrant housing, accusing the agency of defying Trump’s immigration agenda.

Noem seized on Musk’s post and publicly fired four employees, including FEMA’s widely respected chief financial officer, calling them “deep state activists.”

But emails obtained by CNN showed staff were told by DHS lawyers the money should be sent. Hamilton urged DHS to retract its public accusations and reinstate the employees. DHS refused.

“That was the moment people realized the ruthlessness we were dealing with,” one of the senior FEMA officials said. “Suddenly, we were all paralyzed, and terrified to make decisions.”

After news leaked of a meeting between Hamilton and DHS about how to eliminate the agency, he and most of FEMA’s top brass were given lie detector tests.

Over the next few months, the agency’s disaster prep work largely stopped, as DHS effectively froze trainings and travel and barred most communication with state and local partners.

DHS had already paused most of FEMA’s grant programs so DOGE could hunt for waste and “woke” priorities like diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — which kept billions in disaster aid and emergency preparedness funds from going out the door, sources said. DOGE buyout offers accelerated an exodus of leaders and rank-and-file employees, leaving those who stayed to shoulder a growing load.

“You’re talking about a massive brain drain in a field where experience really matters,” another senior official said.

In May 2025, CNN reported that an internal review found FEMA was “not ready” for hurricane season. Hamilton pushed back on efforts to degrade the agency but by then, plans to oust him were already in the works.

Just hours before Hamilton was set to testify on Capitol Hill, he learned security was preparing to cut off his badge access. DHS told him it was a mistake; Hamilton believed his removal was imminent, three sources said.

He testified anyway — and when lawmakers pressed him about plans to eliminate FEMA, he broke with the administration’s script, despite warnings from senior agency leaders that doing so would guarantee his firing.

A day later, Hamilton was escorted out of FEMA headquarters. He did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Richardson arrived with a jolt, immediately making clear he would squash any and all dissent. During an all-hands meeting on his first day, Richardson said he was there to deliver on the president’s plans for the agency. Later that day, he told FEMA leaders he didn’t know what that vision was, according to sources in the meeting.

Internally, Richardson became known to some for his brash demeanor — long-winded war stories, profanity-laced rants and the occasional misogynistic comment, according to multiple officials. In response to those allegations, Richardson told CNN, “It’s typical of what you hear from recipients of white-collar welfare. There are many of them in FEMA.”

Noem and Lewandowski also installed roughly a dozen other DHS officials in FEMA’s front office and forced out most of the agency’s remaining career leadership.

As Noem implemented her $100,000 policy, Voorhies (the “Shadow Administrator”) and Evans (“The Terminator”) became gatekeepers and chief enforcers in the campaign to root out wasteful spending and shrink the agency’s footprint. They worked closely with Victoria Barton, a longtime Trump ally who was less keen on gutting FEMA and was relegated from DHS headquarters to a more contained role at the agency.

Approvals for contracts, grants and everyday operations slowed to a crawl. Officials said their days were consumed by writing and rewriting memos and pleading their case for particular expenses. The political appointees blamed career staff for being disorganized. Routine requests bounced from office to office. Feuding among the appointees deepened the paralysis.

“At some points, approval from one would mean disapproval from another,” said one career FEMA official. “It left many of the careers having to try to navigate playing the game rather than getting actual work done.”

Richardson wanted control, but DHS quietly directed the other three to babysit and even sideline him, sources said, blurring who was actually in charge.

“I sidelined them,” Richardson told CNN last week, “due to their disruptive behavior and lack of operations experience.” Others tell a different story: that DHS stripped him of any significant authority.

Eventually, Voorhies, Evans and Barton were consumed by their own power struggle, with Voorhies cementing her role as Lewandowski’s main conduit.

“There was a lot of infighting and backstabbing,” another senior official observed. “They had no idea what they were doing and no desire to understand the importance of what they were cutting.”

Voorhies, Evans and Barton did not respond to CNN’s requests for comment.

On July 4, floods inundated the Texas Hill Country, killing at least 134 people, including dozens of children. Suddenly, Noem’s FEMA overhaul was in the national spotlight.

Agency leaders told CNN that Noem’s restrictions prevented FEMA from pre-positioning search-and-rescue teams, expanding call centers for survivors or sharing satellite data with state partners.

Delays and confusion consumed FEMA’s front office — what one current official described as “bureaucratic stupidity.” Leaders asked Noem’s team to waive her restrictions so they could act, but a day later they still had no answer and were told one might not come.

“It was one of the absolute worst experiences of my career,” said one former senior FEMA official who worked on the response. “Because people were suffering and dying and we couldn’t get anybody to answer the phone to tell us that we could send help.”

Richardson eventually bypassed Noem and authorized deployments himself, despite resistance from other appointees, two sources told CNN. Noem later said it was “the fastest in history that FEMA has ever responded to a disaster.”

“I laughed out loud,” one senior official told CNN.

Richardson wasn’t invited when Noem accompanied Trump to Texas. The department had grown weary of his unpredictable behavior, multiple officials said. He went on his own a week later, showing up in a straw hat, cowboy boots and collared shirt with the top three buttons undone — refusing to wear visible FEMA insignia as agency leaders traditionally do in disaster zones.

“I went to FEMA to shut it down or transform it and to get it through hurricane season, not to be indoctrinated,” Richardson told CNN. “I’ve worn a real uniform before; FEMA’s faux one is comical.”

Over the next several months, the DHS stranglehold — and resulting chaos — only intensified.

More employees were pulled from their jobs without explanation. Abrupt staff reductions left ousted workers stranded on disaster deployments, while others were told they couldn’t leave the field for health or family emergencies without DHS approval.

Critical tools went dark. After tornadoes ripped through the Plains and Midwest, local rescue teams discovered they’d lost access to a FEMA-funded tracker that maps a twister’s path of destruction almost immediately after touchdown. The contract renewal had been sitting with Noem’s team for nearly two months, internal documents show. When rescuers asked for guidance, FEMA had little to offer and recommended they call the National Weather Service or turn on the local news. DHS approved the contract days after CNN reported the lapse.

In October, Noem released a report claiming FEMA was not just inept but systematically biased, particularly against Republicans. It contradicted the findings of an internal investigation months prior, which Hamilton himself had effectively closed.

During this year’s partial DHS shutdown, Noem brought FEMA to a near standstill, even though much of its funding for disaster work remained intact. Some staff who should have been helping communities rebuild or brace for future storms were left twiddling their thumbs at their desks — playing video games and reading because they’d been told not to work.

“It’s a huge waste of time and taxpayer money for no reason, just to make the impact of the shutdown more significant,” a FEMA official told CNN at the time.

As the disfunction engulfed FEMA, the fallout had spread beyond the agency, where the growing backlog of blocked disaster funds was fast becoming a political problem.

Some of it was explicitly partisan. DHS directed FEMA to withhold funds from states such as California and Colorado, whose Democratic leaders feuded with Trump, sources told CNN.

But the massive logjam touched virtually all states, and the anger became bipartisan. FEMA insiders, state leaders, congressional lawmakers and even some administration officials said they couldn’t tell whether the funds were being used as leverage — or simply trapped in dysfunction so severe that no one could tell the difference.

Desperate for a solution, lawmakers pressed the White House and scrambled for face time with DHS leaders to pry loose money for their states, sources said. In late January, Republican Sen. Ashley Moody of Florida met with top brass at the department and announced that roughly $500 million would promptly be released to her state.

In February, Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey secured his own meeting with Lewandowski over stalled funding. Afterward, Van Drew announced DHS had agreed to release $24 million. Weeks later, his office was, once again, emailing DHS in alarm, asking why the money still had not arrived and questioning whether Lewandowski had made good on his word.

Even some White House officials were baffled by the damage. At one point last summer, CNN learned that Noem’s team planned to slash nearly $1 billion in homeland security grants, despite warnings inside FEMA that the cuts would leave Americans less safe. When word reached the White House budget office, Director Russ Vought bluntly ordered DHS to reverse it, two sources said. Within hours, the department did.

DHS officials largely kept their moves at FEMA out of view of Congress and the White House. One source recalled a political appointee laughing over lawmakers’ mounting frustrations, even as others begrudgingly followed orders while warning that withholding funds — especially from Trump-supporting states — was not just wrong, but politically risky.

“They just didn’t think that they answered to anyone,” one senior DHS official told CNN. “Or at least Corey didn’t.” A new court filing shows DHS officials, at the behest of Lewandowski, discussed sending out “easy money” to “make people happy.”

Republican anger reached a breaking point over the prolonged hold on recovery funds for North Carolina, which was still reeling from Hurricane Helene.

The state’s senators, Republicans Ted Budd and Thom Tillis, publicly condemned Noem over the delays and even blocked DHS nominees until the aid started moving again. At a hearing on March 3, Tillis delivered a scathing rebuke, telling Noem that “you failed at FEMA,” accusing her of illegally interfering with disaster aid, and urging her to resign.

Two days later, Noem was fired.

“We needed the new leadership to hasten that delivery of resources to the people of North Carolina,” Vance said the next week. “We think it’s useful to have somebody come in and focus on some of this disaster relief and recovery stuff.”

With Mullin now entrenched at DHS, calls to eliminate FEMA have quieted. Some staffing cuts have been reversed, ousted employees reinstated, restrictive rules rolled back and hiring freezes lifted. This month, DHS reassigned Karen Evans out of the agency and replaced her with Bob Fenton — a longtime FEMA career leader — to hold the top job until Hamilton’s confirmation.

Voorhies and Evans have been deposed in an ongoing lawsuit alleging DHS illegally slashed FEMA’s workforce.

The White House insists there has been no reversal and says it still plans a broad FEMA overhaul.

“The President remains committed to getting resources to communities in need while also working with states to ensure they invest in their own resilience before disaster strikes, making response less urgent and recovery less prolonged,” a White House spokesperson told CNN in a statement this month.

The FEMA Review Council, a task force Trump created at the start of the administration to help reshape the agency, released its final recommendations this month after a five-month delay. It calls for sweeping changes to speed disaster aid and push more responsibility to states, but stops well short of earlier ideas to cut the workforce in half, rename the agency or dismantle it altogether.

Still, sources say FEMA is limping into hurricane season underprepared and faces a daunting road ahead. It’s already been an active tornado season. Widespread drought has fueled major wildfires this year. A powerful El Niño could lead to an increased risk of floods. The war in Iran has added domestic security demands, as will the World Cup and America250 celebrations.

For some, the past year at FEMA stands as a vivid example of what happens when a presidential talking point collides with the machinery of government: a rushed attempt to tear down a disaster agency that instead left it weakened, isolated and exposed.

“It could take a decade to fix what they broke,” a high-ranking FEMA official said. “And if we have a major disaster this year, we’re screwed.”

Hamilton’s nomination has raised cautious hope at FEMA. But others note his complicity in the efforts to dismantle it and argue he lacks the administrator qualifications that Congress put into law after Hurricane Katrina, when the federal government’s failures exposed the cost of weak leadership at the worst possible moment.

In the two decades since that disaster, FEMA’s veteran leaders built the agency into a force designed to surge into a catastrophe and bring the weight of the federal government with it. Many of those leaders are now gone. What remains — and what this White House decides to rebuild, reform or keep tearing down — could shape how the country responds to disaster for years.

“The end of the story is still to be written,” a senior official said. “That might be the thing that matters the most. And it could still go either way in the long run.”