Timeline: Trump's Attacks on Disaster Preparedness and Response

The Trump administration has been criminally negligent when it comes to disaster mitigation and response. Check out our interactive timeline documenting the White House’s pre-disaster recklessness and post-disaster cruelty.

This is one part of our effort to track Trump’s disaster policy. It is based on our compilation and analysis of publicly available information. We have done our best to be comprehensive and accurate. Please contact [email protected] if you have suggestions about how to improve this resource. Last updated on July 1.

The Trump administration—including the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) spearheaded by Elon Musk—has thoroughly weakened disaster preparedness and response in the United States. The White House’s blatant disregard for the well-being of communities nationwide is reflected in the interactive timeline below.

Beneath the timeline, the highlights section provides a quick snapshot of the damage wrought by Trump et al in the past few months.

Tomorrow’s catastrophes are foreseeable. One of today’s most crucial tasks is to connect the dots between the Trump administration’s inhumane policy choices and the ensuing rise in mortality and infrastructure destruction. Officials who knowingly compound preventable suffering and death must be held accountable.

Interactive Timeline

Highlights

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

• In February, Musk’s DOGE wrecking crew infiltrated NOAA. NOAA is a world-renowned climate research and meteorology institution, providing accurate forecasts and severe weather warnings, among other lifesaving services.

• The Trump administration pushed out more than 1,000 NOAA workers by the first week of March.
  • More than 800 so-called probationary employees were fired on February 27, including more than 100 in the National Weather Service (NWS). 
  • Amid the chaos, around 500 additional NOAA workers accepted a “deferred resignation” offer, about 170 of whom worked at NWS.
    • This means roughly 10% of NOAA’s 12,000-person staff, including approximately 6% of the 4,800-strong workforce at NWS, were missing right at the start of tornado season.

• In March, NOAA announced that another 1,029 workers would be laid off later due to the Trump administration’s “reduction in force” mandate. Employees had until April 17 to decide whether to take early retirements or buyouts. NOAA approved more than 1,000 exit requests from eligible workers, including roughly 300 from NWS.

• As of May 1, 30 of NWS’s 122 weather forecast offices were missing a chief meteorologist, jeopardizing timely communications between forecasters, the media, and local emergency managers.
  • Almost the entire state of Kentucky—pummeled by multiple rounds of extreme weather this spring, including a deadly tornado on May 16—is covered by offices lacking adequate leadership.
  • All management positions at the Houston-Galveston forecast office—covering an area prone to hurricanes, flooding, and extreme heat—were vacant as of May 1.

• Due to Trump and Musk’s purge of NOAA, eight NWS forecast offices ceased overnight operations this spring, undermining the agency’s ability to monitor and communicate hazards around the clock.
  • That includes the office in eastern Kentucky, the same region that was subsequently hammered by a tornado on May 16.

• As a result of Trump and Musk’s attacks on NOAA, NWS has been forced to reduce weather balloon launches used to collect essential data, degrading the quality of forecasts.

• Experts warned in March that due to understaffing, NOAA’s “hurricane hunters” may not be able to conduct 24/7 flight operations this year, which could lead to less accurate forecasts and delayed evacuation warnings.

• In April, NWS paused the dissemination of non-English severe weather alerts after a contract for translation services was not renewed amid DOGE meddling. More than 68 million people in the U.S. speak a language other than English, according to a Census Bureau estimate.

• As of May 20, more than 200 NOAA contracts remained unsigned due to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s insistence on personally reviewing any contract over $100,000. As a result, the agency’s work “has ground to a halt,” according to one official.

• In May, Trump proposed cutting NOAA’s budget by 24% for the next fiscal year, which would eliminate nearly all of the agency’s earth system science and climate research.
  • If Congress approves Trump’s budget request, it would significantly decrease hurricane forecasting accuracy; end the long-term climate monitoring that farmers depend on; endanger coastal communities who need trustworthy information about tides, water pollution, flood risks, and sea-level rise; weaken national and global understandings of climate change; and ruin the livelihoods of scientists, with deadly downstream impacts.

• At the start of hurricane season on June 1, 15 NWS forecast offices along the hurricane-prone Gulf of Mexico were understaffed.

• In early June, NOAA lost access to a fleet of Salidrones, a key hurricane forecasting tool, because the Trump administration was delinquent in sending out a request for contract proposals.

• In late June, the Pentagon announced that it would soon stop processing and delivering data that NOAA needs for hurricane forecasts, endangering millions of people nationwide.

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

• Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem have called numerous times for the abolition of FEMA or for the devolution of its responsibilities to the states. 

• The Trump administration has taken several steps to dismantle the federal agency and force ill-equipped state and local governments to shoulder the burden of disaster preparedness and response.
  • On January 22, Trump appointed Cameron Hamilton the “senior official performing the duties of FEMA administrator” despite Hamilton’s lack of disaster management experience.
  • On January 24, the Trump administration disbanded a trio of FEMA advisory councils: the National Advisory Council, a body that was established after Hurricane Katrina to help improve the agency’s disaster planning and response; the Technical Mapping Advisory Council, a body that was established after Hurricane Sandy to help improve the agency’s national flood mapping program; and National Dam Safety Review Board, whose work updating federal standards and ensuring state compliance helped prevent hundreds of would-be dam failures. 
  • On March 19, Trump signed an executive order directing state and local governments to “play a more active and significant role” in disaster preparedness even though they don’t have enough financial resources or staff to do so, especially in an era of escalating extreme weather, and even as his administration blocks necessary funding.
  • On March 25, Hamilton sent Noem and other top DHS officials an internal memo titled “Abolishing FEMA.” Although it didn’t become public knowledge until June, the document outlined proposals for curbing the federal government’s role in disaster response.
  • On April 12, Hamilton sent a memo to an OMB official outlining how the Trump administration could make it harder for communities to qualify for federal disaster assistance. The memo proposed quadrupling the damage threshold a state would need to meet to qualify for public assistance, and it also advocated for keeping the federal cost share for disaster recovery from exceeding 75%. An Urban Institute analysis found that if these proposed changes had been in place, 71% of major disasters declared from 2008 to 2024 would not have qualified, and state and local governments would have missed out on $41 billion in aid.
    • The memo also advocated for halting the automatic approval of the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which encourages investment in risk reduction to prevent and lessen the impacts of future disasters. Governors typically request hazard mitigation funding alongside individual assistance and public assistance when they ask the president for a major disaster declaration. 
      • Trump has denied multiple state requests for hazard mitigation funding since April. He has also delayed or denied multiple state requests for public assistance and/or individual assistance in the wake of disasters. See our map for further information.
  • On May 8, Noem fired Hamilton one day after he told Congress that the agency should not be eliminated. This left FEMA in further disarray just three weeks before the start of the Atlantic hurricane season.
  • On May 9, newly appointed interim FEMA director David Richardson vowed to “push things down to the states” and threatened to “run right over” anyone who gets in his way.
  • On May 20, during the first meeting of Trump’s FEMA Review Council, Noem said that “the president’s vision is that FEMA would not be in the long-term recovery model.”
  • On June 10, Trump indicated that his administration plans to “wean” states off FEMA assistance following the 2025 hurricane season even though federal aid is a proven necessity.

• The Trump administration has gutted FEMA’s staff, pushing out rank-and-file workers as well as highly qualified leaders. The result is a decimated agency overseen by people without significant disaster management experience.
  • By the end of February, the Trump administration had already pushed out more than 1,000 FEMA employees.
    • On February 17, FEMA fired 200 workers. In addition, the White House laid the groundwork to fire more staff who have worked on issues related to climate change or social justice.
    • On February 27, more than 800 FEMA employees accepted DOGE’s “deferred resignation” offer, bringing the total number of agency workers pushed out by the Trump administration above 1,000.
  • As of late April, more than 1,000 additional FEMA employees had sought early retirements or buyouts amid DOGE-inflicted chaos.
    • This means that one-quarter to one-third of FEMA’s full-time staff—including many coordinating officers tasked with leading large-scale disaster responses—was missing just weeks before the start of hurricane season.
  • FEMA had roughly half as many staff members trained to respond to disasters in May 2025 as it did in May 2024.
  • On the first day of hurricane season, FEMA had almost 800 fewer disaster workers available compared with a year prior and about 3,100 fewer than on June 1, 2022.
  • In May, FEMA announced the departure of 16 senior executives. That included the agency’s acting deputy administrator, MaryAnn Tierney, who cited the Trump administration’s attacks on FEMA in her resignation letter.
  • By early June, following mass layoffs and the resignation of top officials, all of FEMA’s most senior positions were held by homeland security personnel with little to no disaster management expertise.
  • On June 11, one day after Trump outlined plans to phase out FEMA, Jeremy Greenberg, a career staffer who coordinated the agency’s responses to major disasters, resigned.

• The Trump administration has used multiple methods, including onerous reviews of contracts, to prevent or stall the disbursement of congressionally appropriated funds even after federal courts have ordered the White House to stop.
  • On January 28, Noem issued a memo to freeze all grants to nonprofits that “touch in any way on immigration.”
  • On February 5, DOGE agents infiltrated FEMA and reportedly gained access to the agency’s sensitive data about disaster survivors and communities.
  • Musk’s inaccurate claims about FEMA spending, made on February 10, further disrupted the flow of disaster aid.
  • On February 11, a senior FEMA official told subordinates to freeze funding hours after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to cease such pauses.
  • On February 14, Hamilton ordered the agency to review “all disaster relief programs that may indirectly or incidentally” help undocumented immigrants.
  • On February 19, Noem ordered FEMA and other agencies under DHS to cut off funding to so-called “sanctuary jurisdictions” that don’t comply with the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants.
  • On February 28, FEMA imposed a “manual review” of all grants, effectively pausing more than $100 billion in payments.
  • As of March 28, FEMA had frozen nearly $10 billion in disaster aid for nonprofits due to Trump’s unlawful impoundment of funding that could help undocumented migrants.
  • Since March, DHS has made the allocation of funding—including the Emergency Management Performance Grant program used to train and pay state and local emergency management staff—contingent on cooperation with Trump’s mass deportation blitz.
  • On June 11, Noem began requiring that every contract or grant valued over $100,000 be sent to her for approval. Current and former FEMA officials warned that the directive will paralyze the agency’s work.

• The Trump administration has quashed FEMA’s work related to hazard mitigation, climate adaptation, and resilience as well as efforts to minimize unequal disaster impacts.
  • On February 4, Trump’s FEMA said that it would stop enforcing the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard. The rule stipulates that when public buildings in flood zones are damaged, they must be rebuilt in a way that prevents future flood damage to qualify for FEMA funding.
  • On February 14, Noem ordered FEMA to halt work related to climate change and to eliminate the use of climate-related terms, citing Trump’s executive orders.
  • In February, the Trump administration ordered FEMA to halt work related to strengthening building codes.
  • On April 4, the Trump administration eliminated the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant program and revoked more than $3 billion for hazard mitigation and adaptation projects that had been approved but not completed. The agency also removed a notice announcing $600 million in Flood Mitigation Assistance funding for 2025.
  • In April and May, Trump’s FEMA removed mentions of equity, income, social vulnerability, and climate change from its Local Mitigation Planning Policy Guide and its State Mitigation Planning Policy Guide. This increases the odds that low-income and other vulnerable communities will be overlooked when disasters hit as well as when jurisdictions develop their next five-year mitigation plans.
  • On May 2, FEMA ended door-to-door canvassing, gravely endangering vulnerable populations.

• As a result of the Trump administration’s assault on FEMA, employees say the agency is ill-prepared to respond to hurricanes and other disasters.
  • One FEMA official said that “March is typically when we’re finalizing hurricane plans,” but because of the Trump administration’s attacks on the agency, “we’re not preparing.”
  • On May 12, an internal FEMA review declared that the agency was “not ready” for the start of the hurricane season.
  • On May 15, two weeks before the start of hurricane season, acting FEMA administrator David Richardson privately acknowledged that the agency didn’t yet have a fully formed disaster response plan.
  • On May 21, Richardson rescinded the agency’s strategic plan for 2022-2026, arguing that it “contains goals and objectives that bear no connection to FEMA accomplishing its mission.”
  • On May 22, an internal memo sent to FEMA senior leadership warned that the agency is at “high risk” of having “critical functions” fail due to “significant personnel losses in advance of the 2025 Hurricane Season.”
  • On June 2, Richardson told staff that he was unaware that the United States has a hurricane season.

U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and the Department of the Interior (DOI)

• Trump’s hiring and funding freezes have impeded the onboarding and training of seasonal wildland firefighters.

• The Trump administration’s unlawful impoundment scheme has hindered wildfire mitigation, neighborhood-level risk assessment, and community outreach.

• In mid-February, the Trump administration fired at least 3,400 USFS workers (later reduced to 2,000) and roughly 2,300 DOI workers. The Trump administration claimed that it fired “probationary, non-firefighting employees.” However, in addition to performing crucial support roles, hundreds of terminated workers carried “red cards,” meaning they were certified firefighters who helped battle blazes when called upon.

• As of early April, a vacancy for a key IT position supporting firefighting operations remained unfilled.

• By early May, roughly 5,000 USFS workers had accepted DOGE buyouts or retired early.

• On June 11, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz acknowledged that the agency has about 900 fewer firefighters than it had at that point last year and that there are only 37 incident management teams, compared with 42 last year.
  • Schultz told congressional lawmakers that “there’s going to be a shift to put greater reliance on state and local governments.”

• On June 12, Trump ordered the consolidation of wildfire management duties into a single new entity called the Federal Wildland Fire Service at DOI despite warnings that restructuring during the wildfire season would breed chaos.
  • Federal wildfire risk mitigation and suppression is currently spread across five agencies in two departments (USFS in the U.S. Department of Agriculture plus the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and National Park Service in DOI). 

• Trump’s budget request proposes significant cuts to several USFS programs. If Congress approves, urban tree planting and sustainable forest practices would be sidelined while timber production would be expanded. 

• Trump’s proposal to slash NOAA’s budget by 24% and NASA’s science budget by 53% jeopardizes multiple technologies that support wildfire risk mitigation and suppression. Endangered programs include NASA’s FireSense project, which helps land managers adapt to the changing climate and increase forest resilience to prevent wildfires, and firefighters battle blazes that do ignite; NOAA’s tools to detect fires remotely; NASA’s tools to model fire spread; and NOAA’s tools to monitor smoke conditions and air quality.

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

• Trump’s January 20 regulatory freeze halted several rulemaking efforts, including OSHA’s attempt to establish a federal heat standard.

• On January 22, the Trump administration placed the staff of the HHS Office of Climate Change and Health Equity on administrative leave, undermining agency-wide coordination on extreme heat.

• On April 2, HHS announced plans to lay off roughly 2,400 CDC employees, including almost everyone working with the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice (DEHSP), the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP).
  • The staff who process LIHEAP money and send it to states, where it is used to keep air conditioners running during heatwaves, were placed on administrative leave and then terminated on June 2.

• If Congress approves Trump’s proposal to slash NOAA’s budget by 24%, staff at the National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS)—created by NOAA and the CDC—could be laid off, further degrading federal capacity to address extreme heat.

• Trump’s budget request would eliminate the CDC’s Climate and Health Program, all NIOSH work to tackle extreme heat, and LIHEAP, the program that helps low-income households pay for heating and cooling. The CDC’s National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network and NASA’s LandSat program, which is used to analyze surface temperatures to better understand heat risks, are also in jeopardy.

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)

• In April, the Trump administration moved to terminate the leases of 25 USGS Water Science Centers. Those centers employ scientists who share hydrological data with NWS for flood warnings, assist FEMA with flood response, and monitor for “forever chemical” pollution as well as drought conditions.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

• On April 18, the EPA shut down a website tracking the locations of thousands of dangerous chemical plants, meaning that if one of those facilities is damaged during a tornado, flood, hurricane, or wildfire, the public may not know right away.

The above photo is licensed under CC BY 2.0.