December 11 FEMA Review Council Meeting Cancelled Abruptly Without Release of Report

By Noah Patton, NLIHC Director of Disaster Recovery and Oliver Porter, NLIHC DHR Intern 

The final Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Review Council meeting was scheduled for December 11 but was unexpectedly cancelled without prior notification. The FEMA Review Council, which had been meeting for months to evaluate possible agency reforms and was set to make its final report public at the Thursday meeting, was supposed to release and vote on the final draft of their report recommending what some sources are reporting to be drastic and harmful changes for the agency’s future.   

The review council's report was commissioned by Executive Order in January 2025. The council, made up of mostly political appointees and emergency management officials from majority-Republican states, has held meetings throughout the year to inform its work. In recent weeks, their findings were compiled into a draft report totaling almost 160 pages. However, The Washington Post and other media reported that Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees FEMA, Kristi Noem, has edited the report down to just 20 pages in preparation for the council’s final meeting.  

While earlier leaks of the report suggested the council would contradict President Trump’s determination to minimize FEMA, by recommending that the agency become independent from DHS, more recent reviews of the report include recommendations for FEMA to be separate from DHS.  

The report is said to propose reconfiguring the agency so that its main recovery assistance program becomes a type of block grant that quickly gets aid to states (while reducing the size of other assistance programs and raising thresholds for states to qualify for aid, to make states finance a greater share of the recovery process). This block grant-style program would disperse aid in less than 30 days after a presidential disaster declaration. Meanwhile, the individual assistance program would become reformatted into giving out one-time payments to disaster survivors. Both programs seem to emphasize quick, one-time delivery of aid, yet by prioritizing this streamlining of FEMA’s assistance programs, the authors are also recommending smaller total allocations of aid.  

In keeping with this efficiency-first mindset, the report also suggests making changes to the National Flood Insurance program. It encourages the privatization of public flood insurance policies, so that households’ risk of flooding does not get artificially subsidized. Additionally, it recommends changing FEMA’s name and further downsizing its staff—potentially by more than 50%.   

If these provisions remain in the final report, it represents a significant reconfiguration of FEMA that would impede its ability to effectively rebuild communities after disaster strikes. Given last week’s cancelation of the review council’s final meeting, NLIHC recommends that the council utilize this period to revise the report so that it can best support people impacted by and recovering from disasters.  

NLIHC and the NLIHC-led Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC) of more than 900 local, state, and national members, continue to support the “FEMA Act” introduced by House Transportation and Infrastructure leadership and passed by that committee. This legislation would dramatically reform the agency so that it’s best equipped to respond to disasters effectively and equitably. In addition to implementing significant reforms long advocated for by community organizations in disaster-impacted areas, the bill would establish FEMA as a cabinet-level agency independent from DHS.  

NLIHC and the DHRC will continue to track this development and will share additional information as it becomes available.