The Trump administration placed some staffers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency on leave Tuesday amid fallout over a letter to Congress signed by more than 180 current and former employees, who warn that budget cuts and mismanagement are putting the agency’s work at risk. The dissenting staffers singled out Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and acting FEMA Administrator David Richardson as lacking the qualifications and authority to oversee FEMA’s operations and warned that administration policies could result in a disaster on par with 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. The letter, titled the “Katrina Declaration,” came just days before the 20th anniversary of the hurricane, one of the deadliest and costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.
Jeremy Edwards, a former FEMA spokesperson who signed the letter, lays out their demands and says Katrina is a grim example of “what happens when there are people in charge who don’t take the agency’s mission seriously.”
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