In the long aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Congress drew a line in the law: the nation's disaster-response agency could not be quietly dismantled from above. A federal judge in San Francisco has now enforced that line, ruling that the Department of Homeland Security acted unlawfully when it moved to cut FEMA's workforce in half — without reasoned justification, without congressional approval, and without the knowledge of FEMA's own leadership. The decision is a reminder that institutions built in the shadow of catastrophe carry a particular kind of legal and moral weight, one that does not yi
Federal Judge Blocks Trump Admin's Plan to Cut FEMA Workforce in Half
Thousands of on-call disaster-response reservists faced job cuts that would have reduced FEMA's emergency response capacity.