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U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he departs the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., January 24, 2025. /CFP
U.S. President Donald Trump vowed on Friday to sign an executive order to overhaul or eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), saying he preferred that states be given federal money to handle disasters themselves.
Trump, on his first trip since reclaiming the presidency on Monday, accused FEMA of bungling emergency relief efforts in North Carolina, which was devastated by flooding from Hurricane Helene in September.
"FEMA has turned out to be a disaster," he said during a tour of a neighborhood destroyed by the hurricane, where trees were downed and homes had boarded-up windows. "I think we recommend that FEMA go away."
Experts doubt that Trump alone can shut down FEMA.
Rob Verchick, a former Obama administration official at the Environmental Protection Agency and now a professor at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, said eliminating FEMA would most likely require Congressional action.
He explained that FEMA was created by former President Jimmy Carter via executive order, but its roles and funding have been assigned by Congress for the country's emergency response programs.
FEMA brings in emergency personnel, supplies and equipment to help areas begin to recover from natural disasters, and funding for the agency has soared in recent years due to increasing extreme weather events.
The agency, which has 10 regional offices and employs more than 20,000 people across the country, was run for the last four years by Democratic President Joe Biden's administration.
FEMA was a target of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump's second term, which was prepared by his allies but distanced from Trump during the election. The plan called for dismantling the Department of Homeland Security and relocating FEMA to the Department of the Interior or the Department of Transportation.
In addition, it suggested changing the formula FEMA uses to determine when federal disaster assistance is warranted, shifting the costs of preventing and responding to disasters to the states.
Trump complained that Biden did not do enough to help western North Carolina recover from the hurricane, an accusation the Biden administration rejected as misinformation.
In a post on X on Friday, Democratic U.S. Representative Deborah Ross of North Carolina said FEMA had been a crucial partner in the state's recovery from Helene.
"I appreciate President Trump's concern about Western NC, but eliminating FEMA would be a disaster for our state," she said.
Trump was headed next to visit Los Angeles, where wildfires this month have caused widespread destruction, with three massive blazes still threatening the region.
The trip to North Carolina and California culminates a week in which Trump moved with stunning speed to meet campaign promises on illegal immigration, the size of the federal workforce, energy and the environment, gender and diversity policies, and pardons for supporters jailed for the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
U.S. military C-17 aircraft began flying detained migrants out of the country on Friday as part of what the White House called "the largest massive deportation operation in history."