Trump's DHS Took Over FEMA's Staffing and Demanded a Plan to Cut It in Half

DHS Chose Half the Staff FEMA Said It Needed

On December 4, 2025, FEMA's acting head, Karen Evans, sent the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) a staffing plan projecting 11,383 employees for fiscal year 2026, a roughly 50 percent cut.¹ FEMA's own analyses called for 24,812 or 23,146.¹ Her planner note that day says she "talked to Kara re: the number is 11,383"; Evans understood Kara Voorhies to be the DHS secretary's senior adviser on FEMA.¹

On September 11, 2026, Judge Susan Illston ruled that DHS had unlawfully seized FEMA's personnel authority and that FEMA had unlawfully gone along.¹ The same day she found that Evans had intentionally deprived the plaintiffs of evidence.² The full cut was never carried out.¹ The first step was: in January, 148 full-time disaster workers lost their appointments.¹

The process was Trump's: his Executive Order 14356, signed October 15, 2025, promised a government "optimally staffed to meet critical mission needs" and required each agency to prepare an annual staffing plan.³ The number came from his DHS: the evidence, Illston wrote, indicates that Voorhies and Joseph Guy, DHS's deputy chief of staff, directed Evans to submit a plan with a 50 percent cut, over the objections and analyses of FEMA's own supervisors.¹

La' Toya Prieur, FEMA's chief human capital officer, had recommended keeping staffing level and learned of the proposed cut a month after Evans submitted it.¹ Illston found that Evans submitted the number first, then worked backward to find support for it.¹

Congress Had Protected the Authority DHS Took

After the failed response to Hurricane Katrina, Congress passed the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006, which preserved FEMA as a distinct entity within DHS and barred DHS from substantially reducing FEMA's authorities or functions.¹ DHS nonetheless began requiring its own approval for FEMA's CORE renewals in March 2025.¹ CORE employees are temporary full-time disaster-response and recovery staff, historically hired for two- or four-year terms.¹

FEMA supervisors asked to renew 303 CORE employees whose terms would expire in January 2026; Prieur worked all day on Christmas to prepare the paperwork, and Evans did not submit it.¹ FEMA then let appointments expire by their end dates, without assessing individual performance or the agency's need for the work.¹ It halted the blanket nonrenewals on January 22 because of severe winter storm warnings.¹

Illston found violations of both the Post-Katrina Act and Congress's November 2025 appropriations law, which temporarily barred workforce reductions, including similar reductions of temporary positions.¹ She separately held the staffing target and renewal decisions arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedure Act.¹ Illston also found that revoking FEMA's authority to renew CORE staff impeded its ability to perform its functions.¹

148 Workers Out, Then Offered Shorter Terms

Between January 1 and January 21, 2026, 178 CORE employees had terms due to expire; 30 resigned or retired beforehand, leaving 148 whose appointments expired.¹ By May, FEMA had offered those 148 new appointments of six months or one year instead of the historical multiyear terms.¹ The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported, from a May 7 declaration, that 94 accepted, 14 declined and 40 had not yet responded.⁴

They followed far larger losses: GAO counted 4,321 FEMA departures in fiscal year 2025, 55 percent more than the previous year and about 17 percent of its average workforce.⁴ FEMA also hired 2,907 people that fiscal year; the 4,321 figure counts departures, not the net change in staffing.⁴ Those included voluntary departures and came before the December plan.⁴¹ FEMA officials told GAO the losses reduced experience and institutional knowledge and worsened existing workforce problems.⁴ They reported that 58 senior executives left between January 20, 2025, and January 10, 2026, against an annual average of just under 13 in the three prior fiscal years.⁴ For the 2026 hurricane season they expected about 240 employees through DHS surge support, down from 600 in 2025.⁴

Trump's order promised staffing for critical mission needs; GAO concluded in August that FEMA did not know what the workforce changes had done to its capacity to meet its mission.³⁴ GAO also documented a specific earlier service failure: staffing shortages left July 2025 Texas flood survivors facing long wait times and unanswered calls. FEMA officials attributed the shortage to an earlier reduction of about half its surge support resources after call volume normalized, a shift that let the agency focus on prior disaster-assistance declarations. This preceded the December staffing plan.⁴¹ FEMA had rescinded its strategic plan in May 2025 and had not replaced it as of July 2026, leaving workforce planning without overall strategic direction, GAO found.⁴ DHS agreed to develop a strategic plan and workforce planning process but told GAO that FEMA would wait for a confirmed administrator before starting, a wait GAO warned left FEMA at risk of being unprepared and under-resourced for future disasters.⁴

The Defense Won in June and Lost in September

The government's strongest defense was that the situation had changed: blanket nonrenewals had stopped, the separated workers had new offers, and DHS and FEMA had new leadership.¹ It argued that the lawsuit was no longer needed and that the unions' requested orders went too far, restricting legitimate DHS oversight without showing harm that required an injunction.¹ The Associated Press reported FEMA's response in September: it was ready for the 2026 hurricane season and was becoming more efficient while keeping experienced leadership and support staff.⁵

The defense won once: on June 26, Illston denied preliminary relief because the changed circumstances no longer warranted an injunction.¹ In September she agreed that some of the requested relief was too broad and no longer fit the facts, and found no indication that FEMA was otherwise carrying out Evans's December plan.¹ The full 50 percent cut did not happen, and the FEMA Review Council's final report in May dropped its draft's 50 percent recommendation.⁵¹

Then it lost. As far as the record showed, Illston noted, Evans's December plan had not been revoked.¹ DHS still controlled CORE renewals and employees were getting the shorter terms, so she held that the case still mattered, rejected the government's request for judgment and ruled for the plaintiffs.¹ Stopping the blanket separations limited the damage; it did not make DHS's takeover lawful.¹

Evans Sped Up Deletion After the Court Ordered Discovery

Evans and Guy discussed FEMA staffing on Signal on their personal phones; messages from the critical period were lost and could not be recovered.² On March 11, 2026, two days after a discovery order and one day after DHS reminded employees to preserve messages, Evans shortened a FEMA staffing chat's deletion timer from four weeks to one.² She had previously served as DHS's chief information officer, responsible for its records-preservation policies.²

Evans also redacted relevant planner notes herself, including the name identifying Guy as the person in a December 31 meeting about not approving CORE renewals.² Illston refused to credit Evans's account of who made those decisions: she had blamed DHS in a court declaration, claimed the decision herself at her deposition, then told Congress that supervisors or program heads decided based on whether the work remained.¹ Illston found that Evans intentionally deprived plaintiffs of evidence, exceeding even gross negligence.²

Guy had at least 26 Signal chats with FEMA in the title; on April 30, under court orders to produce his messages, he reinstalled the app, wiping his message history.² Illston found the timing highly suspect but did not find his intent to deprive proved by a preponderance of the evidence.²

The judge barred hindsight testimony denying the staffing plan, DHS's direction or implementation through indiscriminate CORE separations, ordered a presumption that the lost messages would have been unfavorable to the government, and awarded the plaintiffs their fees for uncovering the destruction.² Illston said the Post-Katrina Act and appropriations-law violations did not depend on the sanctions: DHS's control of renewals and FEMA's acquiescence were undisputed.¹

What the Two Rulings Established

The September 11 ruling left the remedy for later, directing the two sides to report remaining disagreements by October 9.¹ As of October 10, 2026, Public Rights Project, one of the plaintiffs' legal partners, lists the case as active; its last update is dated September 11.⁶

This was one of several episodes in which Trump's administration overrode agencies' staffing authority: in a separate case, Judge William Alsup found at the preliminary-injunction stage that the Office of Personnel Management had directed mass probationary firings under a pretense of poor performance.⁷

Trump ordered the staffing plans, and his DHS used that order to push a cut that contradicted FEMA's own analyses and displaced authority Congress had protected.³¹ It cost 148 disaster workers their appointments.¹ Evans then intentionally destroyed evidence the plaintiffs needed to challenge that conduct.² This was an abuse of public power: an unlawful takeover of disaster-agency staffing, followed by the destruction of evidence about it.¹²