Aid groups weigh how much more they can help if FEMA reduces its disaster response
Source: AP
Updated 1:29 PM EDT, June 11, 2025
Volunteers with the humanitarian nonprofit Team Rubicon are accustomed to filling in the gaps of disaster recovery — they chainsaw downed trees after wildfires, muck out flooded homes and rebuild roofs blown off by hurricanes. But with concern and confusion over how the federal government will respond to disasters this summer, the group is readying to possibly help in ways it hasn’t before.
“The one thing certain this hurricane season is the uncertainty of what’s going to happen at the federal level,” said Jeff Byard, Team Rubicon senior vice president of operations.
Byard and his team are evaluating how else they can help communities if the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which oversees federal response to disasters, reduces its capacity or is deployed less often. President Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his intent to overhaul FEMA, if not totally dismantle it.
“We want to wean off of FEMA and we want to bring it back to the state level,” Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office, adding he intended to “give out less money” and that “governors should be able to handle it.” Team Rubicon is good at being agile, Byard said, but nonprofits and funders are already under pressure from more frequent and severe climate events. “It’s going to be harder in a really hard situation already,” he said.
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/fema-hurricane-season-disasters-fema-application-team-rubicon-united-way-1cdd11a3f36fb7cfd37a9ea2655e99f0
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