FEMA Has Canceled Its Four-Year Strategic Plan Ahead of Hurricane Season

WIRED

21-05-2025

Molly Taft Vittoria Elliott May 21, 2025 3:44 PM Multiple FEMA employees tell WIRED that they did not know of another time when a strategic plan was rescinded without another in place. Photograph:Less than two weeks before the start of hurricane season, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) rescinded the agency's strategic plan, which includes a document that guides agency priorities when responding to disasters, WIRED has learned. A new plan has yet to be put into place.
In a memo sent to FEMA employees on Wednesday, acting FEMA administrator David Richardson wrote, 'The 2022-2026 FEMA Strategic Plan is hereby rescinded. The Strategic Plan contains goals and objectives that bear no connection to FEMA accomplishing its mission. This summer, a new 2026-2030 strategy will be developed. The strategy will tie directly to FEMA executing its Mission Essential Tasks.'
The four-year plan, which was issued in 2022 under then-Administrator Deanne Criswell, is not a procedural plan for specific disasters, but rather a guiding document for the agency's objectives and priorities. A link to the plan on FEMA's website returned an error message on Wednesday, and has not been live since January 2025, according to Wayback Machine.
Multiple FEMA employees say that they did not know of another time when a strategic plan had been rescinded without another in place. 'We are huge planners,' one employee said. 'Things like the strategic plan have big downstream effects, even if it's not immediate operationally.'
FEMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The plan lists goals and objectives for the agency: to 'instill equity as a foundation of emergency management,' to 'lead whole of community in climate resilience,' and to 'promote and sustain a ready FEMA and prepared nation.' Two FEMA employees, who spoke anonymously to WIRED because they had not been granted permission to speak to the press, expressed surprise that the document had not been rescinded earlier due to its emphasis on equity.
For some staff, rescinding this memo is a small step in the large-scale assault on the last administration's priorities. The strategic plan is 'primarily symbolic,' says one employee. 'There are very real changes that have been made that touch on [equity and climate change] that are more important than the document itself."
But others worry about the overall direction of the agency without these guiding principles.
'It's our guiding star,' says another worker. 'We use this to decide agency priorities and pathways to achieve them. Without it, we're adrift. It's clear that the person steering the agency, Richardson, is here to take it apart, one piece at a time.'
One FEMA employee who asked to remain anonymous as they are not authorized to speak to the press worries that rescinding the strategic plan would 'make the agency so inept that the states or tribes have no option but to assume operations and responsibilities' themselves.
'The lack of a [strategic] plan has much bigger implications for preparedness, training, exercises, and capacity building for state and local government,' says another FEMA employee. 'The move to rescind the plan is 'especially dire since the administration wants to push more onto the states.'
The Trump administration has already sought to push more responsibility for disaster response to states and local communities. 'I say you don't need FEMA, you need a good state government," President Donald Trump said at a press conference in Los Angeles following the city's fires in January. FEMA employees are also concerned that the agency is not prepared for the upcoming disaster season.The agency has made several moves to hamper mitigation strategies and downplay the impacts of climate change, including halting a program that pulled as much as $3.6 billion in funding for communities to build resilience against future disasters. FEMA has also made changes as to how it plans to respond to disasters on the ground, including ending its longstanding practice of door-to-door canvassing of survivors, WIRED reported earlier this month.
The rescinding of the agency's strategic plan comes under a broader FEMA shakeup under Richardson, who abruptly took over after former acting administrator Cameron Hamilton was fired following his testimony before lawmakers earlier this month where he advocated for preserving the agency. Richardson, a former Marine who previously served as the Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security's Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, has no emergency management experience.
'Voldemort claimed in his initial town hall meeting that he will have a plan by May 30,' says a FEMA employee. 'Voldemort,' workers say, is one of several nicknames for Richardson among agency staff.
In the weeks since he joined the agency, Richardson has held two all-staff town halls where he has shared plans for upcoming changes to FEMA. In his first town hall, Richardson emphasized the need for the agency to make sure 'that we are only doing the things that are within the law' and to 'carry out President Trump's intent' for the agency.
'Doing things outside of our mission can be very tragic,' he said, according to audio reviewed by WIRED. 'I have friends who are either dead physically or very damaged emotionally because they ran into trouble doing things that were not within their mission during combat.'