By U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media flanked by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, as they arrive to assess recovery efforts and tour areas devastated by Hurricane Helene, at Asheville Regional Airport in Asheville, North Carolina, U.S., Jan. 24, 2025.
Leah Millis | Reuters
President Donald Trump on Friday said he plans to take executive action to overhaul — or possibly end — the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, slamming the agency for its response to historic floods in North Carolina.
“I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away,” Trump said at a briefing in Asheville, North Carolina, which was devastated in September by Hurricane Helene.
The president later Friday is set to travel to Los Angeles, which continues to battle wildfires that have ravaged swaths of the city.
Speaking to reporters on an airport tarmac upon his arrival in Asheville, Trump said, “We’re looking at the whole concept of FEMA.”
“I like, frankly, the concept [that] when North Carolina gets hit, the governor takes care of it. When Florida gets hit, the governor takes care of it, meaning the state takes care of it,” he said.
“To have a group of people come in from an area that don’t even know where they’re going, in order to solve immediately a problem is something that never worked for me,” Trump said.
Trump added that additional aid for North Carolina and California should flow directly from the federal government.
“So rather than going through FEMA, it will go through us,” he said.
Trump’s comments on FEMA appear to align with the conservative policy blueprint known as Project 2025, which calls for reforming the agency’s spending to “shift the majority of preparedness and response costs to states and localities instead of the federal government.”
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