A bipartisan group of senators met privately Tuesday to start building support for overhauling the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in a move meant to exert congressional influence over the office as it’s being targeted by the Trump administration.
The meeting, organized by Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), indicates heightened Senate concern about FEMA as it experiences deep cuts to its disaster workforce and faces structural changes under President Donald Trump, who has lashed out at the agency for delivering aid too slowly.
The legislative push comes as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are steering efforts to reduce the amount of federal aid for states in the wake of disasters.
It also comes after Trump has sought to politicize FEMA aid by requiring states to assist federal immigration agents as a condition of receiving the money. That policy was derided by a federal judge who called it a “ham-handed attempt to bully” the states.
Roughly a dozen senators met in Welch’s Capitol Hill office with former FEMA chiefs Craig Fugate and Peter Gaynor, in what two participants described as an unusually constructive meeting in interviews with POLITICO’s E&E News. Patrick Sheehan, who runs the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, was also in attendance.
“There is strong, bipartisan interest in improving FEMA,” Welch said in a statement. The meeting was closed to the public and not announced.
Fugate, who ran FEMA under former President Barack Obama, said the meeting was “an impressive bipartisan discussion about how to work for solutions.”
“At most hearings, people talk past each other. This event, people were talking to each other and engaging in conversations in a very collegial approach,” Fugate added. “I was just very impressed by the caliber of the conversation.”
An unusually large number of bills to revise FEMA are pending in Congress, including a sweeping agency overhaul, H.R. 4669, that the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved in September on a 57-3 vote.
The Senate has no companion bill or comparable legislation. Welch, whose state sustained major flood damage in 2023 and 2024, introduced a measure in July that would create new programs for hazard mitigation and simplify some post-disaster procedures.
Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), who led the meeting Tuesday with Welch, said he left the session confident that Congress could revise FEMA “in a bipartisan way.”
“This was just an opportunity for us to have a conversation, to hear from some experts and really try to discuss it without the cameras, without the posturing. And I was really encouraged by it,” Kim said in an interview Wednesday. “A lot of my colleagues showed up, and a lot really talked about their interest in continuing to work on this.”
Welch’s office declined to name the senators who attended. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), whose state was devastated by Hurricane Helene in 2024, confirmed that he was at the meeting. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) also confirmed her attendance.
Welch invited senators whom he knew were interested in FEMA-related legislation. He expects to have ongoing bipartisan talks similar to the House transportation committee process last year.
“There’s a lot of concern about the potential for [Homeland Security Secretary Kristi] Noem and Trump to disband FEMA or dismantle it slowly,” said a Senate aide who was not authorized to talk publicly. Senators want to “better shape the agency and support reforms before it is destroyed completely by the administration.”
Fugate and Gaynor, who led FEMA for the second half of Trump’s first term, have become leading advocates for preserving the agency, and for implementing changes that would address longstanding problems such as the slow pace of releasing disaster aid. Sheehan of Tennessee is a widely respected state disaster manager.
This story also appears in Climatewire.
