President Donald Trump has signed an executive order which could lead to the eradication of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The order on Sunday night demanded a task force to investigate the agency and find solutions that will transform it.
Members of the Council Review will be chosen by the president himself and will be expected to submit a final report within six months.
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But Trump has previously hinted at what he really wanted to do with the federal response agency.
“FEMA has turned out to be a disaster. I think we recommend that FEMA go away,” he told a crowd in North Carolina last Friday.
The president was touring hurricane-struck neighborhoods in North Carolina and fire-ravaged areas of Los Angeles when he suggested that states should be handed money to respond to emergencies themselves.
The wildfires that destroyed thousands of buildings in Los Angeles earlier this month spread across at least 40,000 acres and forced 200,000 residents from their homes.
Meanwhile, Hurricane Helene killed over 100 people in North Carolina alone.
FEMA, which employs some 20,000 people, faced a storm of criticism from Trump on the campaign trail for what he says is its poor handling of relief funds.
It last received a total of $29 billion in December from Congress to fund relief efforts, but Trump has suggested that states should receive the money directly—echoing a policy set out in the radical Project 2025 pamphlet published in the run-up to the election.
The president has not yet selected any official to oversee the agency, with former NAVY SEAL Cam Hamilton stepping in to act as its temporary chief and telling his staff that the agency was “critical” for national security.
FEMA has often had to go on the defensive in recent months after several of Trump’s staunchest backers have created wild conspiracies about the agency and natural disasters.
Trump himself accused the agency of diverting money to house illegal migrants, while Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has repeatedly claimed the U.S. government is able to control the weather and called for coordinated cloud seeding to end the California wildfires.
Should the task force recommend the break-up of FEMA, Trump will have to push his allies in Congress to press the red button and blow it up.
