The FEMA Act of 2025: An Overview

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which leads federal emergency management and disaster relief efforts, has recently been subject to numerous calls for reform. For years, state and local governments, disaster survivors, scholars, and nonprofits have called upon Congress and FEMA to modify disaster response and recovery authorities and procedures in order to simplify, streamline, and improve the provision of federal disaster assistance and increase disaster resiliency, among other aims. On the fourth day of his second term, President Donald J. Trump separately suggested dissolving FEMA in its current form and issued Executive Order 14180, establishing the FEMA Review Council to undertake a “full-scale review” of the agency. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who chairs the FEMA Review Council alongside Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, has generally echoed the President’s calls to eliminate the current iteration of the agency. Separately, the 119th Congress has introduced a number of legislative FEMA reforms. One bill incorporating fundamental reforms to FEMA and federal disaster relief, H.R. 4669, the Fixing Emergency Management for Americans (FEMA) Act of 2025, was ordered reported by the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on September 3, 2025, in a 57-3 vote. The FEMA Act of 2025 garnered support from a wide range of nonfederal stakeholders. This report briefly contextualizes the FEMA Act of 2025 and provides an overview of each title. Division A of the FEMA Act of 2025 would remove FEMA from the Department of Homeland Security (where it has been located since 2003, when the Department opened its doors) and reestablish FEMA as a freestanding agency in the executive branch. Division A would also revise the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-296, as amended) to reassign certain emergency management responsibilities from the Secretary of Homeland Security to the FEMA Administrator. It would also revise the qualifications and functions of the FEMA Administrator, Deputy Administrators, and Regional Administrators. Notable changes would include the transfer of FEMA’s existing functions, including those prescribed by the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Management Act (Stafford Act; P.L. 93-288, as amended), to the new, independent FEMA, and the reduction in the number of permitted presidentially-appointed Deputy Administrators from four to one. Further, the bill would revise the mission of FEMA and the responsibilities of the Administrator to eliminate “acts of terrorism” from the explicit purview of the agency. Division A would define the terms for FEMA’s transition out of the Department of Homeland Security and would authorize the Administrator to appoint and transfer personnel to align with FEMA’s revised mission and organization. Titles I-III of Division B of the FEMA Act of 2025 would significantly reform FEMA’s three primary disaster grant programs: Public Assistance (PA), Individual Assistance (IA), and Hazard Mitigation Assistance (HMA). PA provides assistance to nonfederal governments and nonprofits for emergency response and permanent rebuilding when authorized through a Stafford Act declaration. Title I of Division B would substantively revise the program, including by providing for expedited procedures to determine grant awards, allowing for the provision of lump-sum block grants in lieu of project-by-project awards for “smaller” disasters, and expanding the types of activities eligible for assistance. IA provides assistance to individuals and households to address their housing and other critical needs, as well as support for crisis counseling, case management, legal services, and unemployment assistance when authorized through a Stafford Act declaration. Title II of Division B would make substantial changes to the IA program, including by expanding eligibility for certain forms of assistance, adding new forms of housing assistance, and decreasing bureaucratic hurdles to applying for and accessing federal disaster assistance resources. HMA supports efforts to reduce future disaster-related risk. Title III of Division B would make significant changes to four Stafford Act hazard mitigation assistance programs, including by restructuring pre-disaster mitigation funding awarded under Stafford Act Section 203 as a formula-based grant. Division B, Title IV of the FEMA Act of 2025 includes provisions primarily related to oversight and accountability of FEMA. Under these provisions, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) would conduct research on eleven different aspects of federal and nonfederal disaster response, recovery, mitigation, and insurance uptake. FEMA would be required to publish online dashboards providing grant request and award information supplemental to that which the agency currently publishes. Title IV would also require the President to provide a detailed justification of a denial or approval to governors requesting a major disaster declaration under the Stafford Act.