The head of the nation’s disaster agency holds a second senior position in the Trump administration, raising new questions about the government’s capabilities as peak hurricane season approaches.
The acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, David Richardson, also oversees a federal program that protects the nation from weapons of mass destruction.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA and the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, confirmed to POLITICO’s E&E News on Thursday that Richardson holds two presidential appointments.
President Donald Trump in January named Richardson as the assistant secretary overseeing the weapons office. In May, Trump put Richardson in charge of FEMA and did not say anything about the former Marine Corps officer’s status at the weapons office.
Richardson himself suggested to Congress that he no longer worked at the weapons office.
“Before FEMA, I served as the assistant secretary for DHS’ Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction” office, Richardson said in an opening statement at a House hearing on July 23.
Richardson’s official FEMA bio says he “was previously appointed” to run the weapons office.
But on the same day he testified, Richardson declared on a court document related to a lawsuit involving FEMA that he still runs the weapons office.
“As the Assistant Secretary, I am the DHS official responsible for leading the Department’s efforts to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States,” Richardson wrote in the 13-page document dated July 23. He said his responsibilities include overseeing office strategies, programs and finances.
Richardson’s dual roles have raised new concerns about his ability to run FEMA amid ongoing criticism related to his lack of emergency management experience. FEMA is under intense scrutiny following Trump’s repeated statements that he plans to weaken the agency and shift disaster recovery costs to states.
“Leading one large organization is an enormous operational and management challenge, let alone leading two,” Jenny Mattingley, vice president for government affairs at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, which supports the federal workforce, said in an email. It would be “extraordinarily difficult” for one person to provide leadership “on two positions simultaneously and do either of them well.”
Former FEMA Administrator Peter Gaynor said the agency’s top job “is 24/7, every day of the year and requires your full attention every single day, every single minute.”
“There’s not a biohazard event every day like there is a weather event. The FEMA job becomes all-consuming,” added Gaynor, who ran FEMA during Trump’s first administration. “Part of the requirement of the administrator is to be present when bad stuff happens. If you’re doing two jobs, can you be present 100 percent of the time? I don’t know.”
At the same time, a new report by Argonne National Laboratory about state and local emergency management warned that many agency directors “are dual-hatted or have additional professional responsibilities that limit the amount of time they can spend on EM activities.”
Mary Ellen Callahan, who ran the weapons office in the Biden administration, argued that the office has been weakened by Richardson’s diversion to FEMA.
“Not having a full-time assistant secretary is a disservice to the CWMD mission,” Callahan said, referring to the office by its acronym.
DHS did not answer questions about Richardson’s workload.
“Dave Richardson is a Marine combat veteran, and excels in both roles, as Assistant Secretary for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction and acting FEMA Administrator,” a DHS spokesperson said in an email.
Richardson, reached on his personal cell phone, hung up on an E&E News reporter.
‘Nowhere near Texas’
The confirmation of Richardson’s dual employment comes as he faces ongoing scrutiny over his background and his performance at FEMA. During the July 23 hearing, Richardson was criticized by some Democrats for his response to the July 4 flooding in Texas that killed more than 130 people.
Although Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose parent department includes FEMA and other agencies, was in Texas the day after the flooding, Richardson was not on the scene until July 11.
“You were nowhere near Texas at the critical moments in the search and rescue and you did not even show your face for more than a week after the flood,” Rep. Greg Stanton (D-Ariz.) said to Richardson. Stanton is the top Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee that held the hearing.
“I went to Texas — I flew over. It was an absolute tragedy,” Richardson replied.
Stanton declined to comment on Richardson’s dual employment.
Craig Fugate, who ran FEMA during the Obama administration, said it’s not unusual for presidential appointees to be reassigned and retain their original position in case the new assignment ends.
“As long as they pay him only one salary, what’s the big deal?” Fugate said. “It’s more the optics of, ‘Are you doing FEMA full time or the other job full time?’”
The weapons office, created by Trump in 2018, manages programs to protect the U.S. against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks. It has an annual budget of roughly $400 million and typically about 260 employees, although many have left since Trump outlined plans in his proposed fiscal 2026 budget to eliminate the office and move its functions elsewhere in DHS.
“There’s no one overseeing this devolution,” said Callahan, the former assistant secretary. “There’s nobody who’s trying to position things … trying to explain the importance of this mission.”
The latest update on the office’s website highlights a trip Richardson took in late March — more than a month before he joined FEMA — to meet with state and local officials in Chicago.
Two programs in the weapons of mass destruction office have arisen in a lawsuit filed by Democratic state attorneys general challenging a new Homeland Security policy aimed at requiring states to cooperate with federal immigration authorities in order to be eligible for DHS grants.
Richardson’s July 23 court declaration addressed the applicability of the immigration policy to a range of DHS grants, including the weapons office’s BioWatch and Securing the Cities programs.
Trump has created dual roles for other senior officials in his administration. He made Secretary of State Marco Rubio his interim national security adviser. And he named Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy interim leader of NASA.
“It should greatly concern Congress, the public and this administration if multiple critical leadership positions are being held by a single person,” said Mattingley of the Partnership for Public Service.
