Olivia of Troye - The Red Flag Inside FEMA [View all]

This week, more than 180 FEMA employees signed an extraordinary letter to Congress warning that the agency is being gutted from within. Staff and resources are being diverted from its core mission of disaster response and repurposed for immigration enforcement and other political priorities. The employees are blunt: the United States is on the path to a “Katrina-level” failure.

📎 FEMA Warning Letter: The Guardian

They describe a chilling “culture of fear” inside the agency. Warnings are silenced. Expertise is sidelined. Dissent is punished. It’s the exact phrase I used when I resigned from the Trump administration to describe what it’s like to work in these circles. That culture is dangerous because it paralyzes professionals. It stops them from speaking up, even when they know lives are on the line.

I will never forget the days I spent deployed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I saw the destruction firsthand: homes reduced to splinters, neighborhoods unrecognizable, families displaced for years. But worse than the physical devastation was the human cost of delay. FEMA’s response faltered. Coordination broke down. Critical resources arrived too late. People suffered because politics and bureaucracy hindered action.

The promise that followed was simple: never again would FEMA be stripped of its independence and mission focus. Never again would our disaster readiness take a back seat to politics. Yet here we are. I’ve been sounding this alarm for months. In fact, in my earlier piece The Storm Is Coming, FEMA Isn’t, I laid out how FEMA was already being stretched and politicized. This letter from inside the agency only confirms how deep the rot now runs.

https://www.livingitwitholiviatroye.com/p/the-red-flag-inside-fema