Some current and former Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) staff are celebrating the Thursday firing of homeland security secretary Kristi Noem, who they say has made the US more dangerous by micromanaging and shrinking the agency.
Since her confirmation to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) last January, Noem’s tenure was criticized for degrading Fema – the nation’s foremost agency for disaster management and recovery – and repeatedly stating her support for the elimination of the agency. Noem said the overhaul was necessary to end bloating and inefficiency.
“Kristi Noem failed as a leader of DHS,” said Michael Coen, a former Fema chief of staff in the Obama and Biden administrations. “Her micromanagement of Fema eroded Fema’s capability and withheld critical funding from states and communities across the country.”
Noem’s ouster followed her contentious testimony at a pair of Senate committee hearings, where she faced harsh criticism from Democratic and Republican lawmakers. She is the first cabinet-level official to be fired by Donald Trump during his second presidential term.
“Am I relieved she is gone? Yes,” one longtime Fema official, who requested anonymity, told the Guardian. “You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in Fema who isn’t on that spectrum from relieved to celebratory.”
Fema did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In her year in Trump’s cabinet, Noem sparked ire for insisting on personally controlling staffing and spending at Fema, which is housed within DHS..
“She was such a singularly destructive force and we will be feeling the extent of her incompetence for years,” said the longtime official. “She took arguably the only part of DHS designed to help American communities and sacrificed it on the altar of ideology.”
Amid deadly floods in Texas over the summer, for instance, Fema officials were reportedly unable to pre-position rescue crews or attend to emergency calls because of a requirement that Noem personally approve all agency spending over $100,000. Noem said the policy boosted “accountability” and that she approved all spending quickly.
“All staff watched in horror while urban search and rescue resources were delayed and call center contracts lapsed, knowing these decisions affect whether people can reach help in a timely fashion and, in some cases, whether people live or die,” said a second longtime Fema manager who also requested anonymity.
As DHS secretary, Noem also sought to eliminate thousands of Fema staff. Under her leadership, the agency also postponed billions in disaster reimbursements, with the New York Times reporting that the agency’s reimbursement backlog reached a stunning $17bn last month. And last year, she said she supported the idea of getting “rid of Fema”, shifting the responsibility for disaster recovery to states.
“The bureaucracy she invented, coupled with her inability and unwillingness to understand the agency, its mission, and workforce, has left it in its worst position since before 2005,” said the first anonymous longtime official. “We as a nation are in a more dangerous place because of her tenure.”
Trump was reportedly frustrated with Noem’s leadership, but on Thursday publicly defended her, praising her performance and reassigning her to a different role.
“The current Secretary, Kristi Noem, who has served us well and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!), will be moving to be Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas,” he wrote on social media.
Fema staff voiced their concerns about Noem’s leadership in an August open letter, which warned that the sweeping overhaul at the agency would put the risk of a disaster on the scale of 2005 devastating Hurricane Katrina. Shortly after, officials placed some of the letter’s signatories on leave.
“Fema workers are the best of us, and [they] care so deeply about their country and their neighbors,” said Colette Delawalla, executive director of the activist group Stand Up For Science, which coordinated the August letter. “When there are disasters, they are the first on the ground, and Noem showed a flagrant disregard for that dedication to the public in such an egregious way, and such a flagrant disregard for human life.”
As he fired Noem, Trump announced her successor: Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator of Oklahoma.
“With the departure of Noem, there is an opportunity to stabilize FEMA and strengthen emergency management in every state, tribe and territory of the United States,” said Coen.
The first anonymous longtime Fema official said he hopes that if confirmed, Mullin “brings some level of accountability and transparency” back to Fema.
“I’m not holding my breath,” he said, “but we will see.”
News of Noem’s dismissal spread quickly through the Fema office Thursday afternoon, the second Fema manager said, as “people gathered [and] shared high fives”. They added that though “Noem’s firing is great”, they expect Mullin’s tenure “may not be much better”.
The damage Noem caused at Fema will be hard to undo, the person said. She has left staff “tired, demoralized, mad, maybe a little spiteful”, the manager said. And under her leadership, the agency damaged relationships with state and local agency managers which take “years to build”, and lost experts with decades of experience, they said.
“I do not know how you fix or overcome that,” the manager said. “We will probably not know the scope of the harm she caused or how long it will take to undo it for years.”
Craig Fugate, who directed Fema between 2009 and 2017, wondered if controls over agency spending would change under a new DHS head.
“With the change of leadership at DHS, what else will change?” he asked.
Asked for an overall reaction to Noem’s ouster, he said: “Change is good.”
