The confirmation hearing for Markwayne Mullin, Donald Trump’s pick to replace Kristi Noem as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), left disaster management officials and experts concerned about what his tenure would mean for the future of the main US disaster response agency.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), which DHS oversees, coordinates federal response efforts to disasters such as hurricanes, floods and wildfires.
“I’d welcome real meaningful reform talks, but I do not get warm fuzzies that’s what we are going to get,” one longtime Fema manager, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Guardian. “Mullin could be a step up from Noem, but that’s not exactly saying much.”
During the hearing, Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, responded to senators’ questions about Noem’s controversial overhaul of Fema, including her proposal to do away with the agency.
He said that the agency should be “restructured, not eliminated”, and pledged to revoke Noem’s controversial policy of personally reviewing all Fema expenditures over $100,000. “That’s called micromanaging,” he said. “I’m not a micromanager.”
Throughout Trump’s second term so far, the Senate has not confirmed a leader for Fema. In response to inquiries from New Jersey senator, Andy Kim, Mullin said he would find a qualified head for the agency.
“We’re already looking at some in the case we do get confirmed,” he said. “I’m going to find somebody that is capable of doing the job”
Michael Coen, a former Fema chief of staff in the Obama and Biden administrations, said these statements were positive, but remained cautious about what Mullin’s term would mean for disaster preparedness.
“A nominee for Fema and the reduction of DHS micromanagement of Fema will minimize the risk of our federal government not being prepared extremely weather and other significant risk,” Coen said. “The nation’s emergency management community and Fema employees will await his actions after confirmation.”
Over the past year, Noem has also faced widespread criticism for slashing Fema’s staff. Mullin did not commit to ending those cuts, saying some agencies’ workforces have in recent years become “very bloated”.
When Kim pressed him on whether or not Fema is overstaffed, he demurred. “I can’t answer that,” he said. “When I get there, we’ll be adequately staffed to respond to our nation’s disasters.”
The mere suggestion that Fema could possibly be overstaffed left the anonymous Fema manager uneasy. A September report from the Government Accountability Office – a nonpartisan agency which audits the federal government – indicated that Fema’s “limited workforce capacity” was compromising its ability to keep the nation safe from disasters.
“Fema lost 10% of its workforce in the first half of 2025 when we were already short staffed, and a headcount doesn’t really capture the damage of losing senior level staff that had years of knowledge and experience that is not easily replaced,” noted the manager. “That knowledge is gone. We cannot hire our way back to that.”
Mullin’s record on the climate crisis and disaster preparedness has left environmentalists and experts concerned about his likely confirmation on Thursday. Though James Lankford, an Oklahoma senator, said at Wednesday’s hearing that Mullin has “great experience” in the field of disaster management, critics note the nominee has never served on either the House homeland security committee or the Senate homeland security committee.
As recently as 2019, Mullin also questioned the existence of the global climate crisis – despite scientific consensus that it is occurring. He was not asked about those statements at Wednesday’s hearing.
Like Noem, Mullin has also suggested that US states should lead disaster response rather than the federal agency, even publicly questioning if Fema should have any role in disaster preparedness. On Wednesday, he said that the federal agency “was never designed to be the first responder”.
“Fema was designed to be the assistance to the states when the disaster reaches certain levels,” he said.
That statement, said the anonymous manager, indicated that that “he either doesn’t understand how emergency management works, which he should given he’s a Senator from Oklahoma, or he’s just parroting the narrative from the White House.”
“The foundation of American emergency management is already locally led, state managed, federally supported,” the person said. “Fema only comes in when a state or tribe asks … We certainly don’t show up uninvited.”
Mullin has also come under fire for his failure to support disaster relief measures, including his vote against a 2024 attempt to provide $20bn to Fema’s disaster relief fund. Though he said at Wednesday’s hearing that Fema “saw a lot of problems” after 2012’s Hurricane Sandy, he also repeatedly voted against the attempts to provide aid to Sandy survivors, including by opposing a $60.2bn aid package for victims.
A second longtime Fema official, who also requested anonymity, said they were not convinced that Mullin has a grasp on what the problems with the response to Sandy were.
“I would hope that anyone coming in would have a rudimentary understanding that many reforms have been passed over the last 20 years since Sandy,” the person said. “If we were serious about those fixes, the head of DHS would be giving us more support to implement them and improve, not just say we’ve failed.”
The official said that though Mullin “said some things that sounded good in front of the committee,” he is “not so sure” what his tenure would actually look like.
“I didn’t really [hear any] articulation of any vision for Fema overall,” the person said.
