Heading Into Hurricane Season, the Trump Administration Cut More Than 4,300 FEMA Employees — 17% of the Agency Whose Entire Job Is Saving Lives in Disasters — and, the Government Accountability Office Found, Never Assessed Whether Gutting the Disaster-Response Workforce Would Leave FEMA Unable to Respond; It Also Scrapped the Agency's Strategic Plan and Never Wrote a New One
In a report published August 4, 2026 (GAO-26-108427), the Government Accountability Office found that FEMA — the federal agency responsible for responding to hurricanes, floods, and other disasters — shed about 17% of its workforce, more than 4,300 employees, in fiscal year 2025, a 55% jump in departures over the prior year, with roughly 2,500 more gone by May of this fiscal year. The finding that matters most is not the number but the negligence behind it: GAO found "no evidence that DHS and FEMA leadership assessed whether the nonrenewal of CORE employees' contracts in January 2026 would affect FEMA's ability to respond to disasters." The administration cut the people whose job is disaster response without ever checking what losing them would do to disaster response. It also rescinded FEMA's strategic plan in May 2025 and, more than a year later, has still not produced a replacement, leaving the agency with no strategic direction to guide who it keeps or hires. GAO's conclusion is blunt: FEMA "may not have a workforce capable of effectively responding to disasters now or in the future," and heading into the 2026 hurricane season it faces the same or greater capacity risks than it did in 2024, when Hurricanes Helene and Milton overwhelmed it. DHS agreed with GAO's recommendations — a tacit admission that the cuts were made without the planning that should have preceded them.