Spectrum News 1: Democrats grill FEMA head over handling of Texas floods, agency's fate

WASHINGTON –– During a hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, the acting Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator defended his agency’s — as well as his own — response to the July Fourth deadly flooding.

David Richardson's testimony before before a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee came amid looming questions about FEMA’s future.

Richardson touted FEMA’s actions as “a model for how to respond to a disaster” and said that a Review Councilwill determine the fate of the agency. 

His appearance came just a day after reports that FEMA’s search and rescue chief resigned over delays in federal aid following the Texas flooding and "chaos" inside the agency. Richardson, who replaced the prior acting administrator, Cameron Hamilton, a day after Hamilton told Congress members he didn't believe FEMA should be dismantled, was not specifically asked about the search and rescue head's departure Wednesday.

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers pressed Richardson about FEMA’s overall response to flash flooding in Texas that killed 136 with two people — a man and a girl from Camp Mystic — still missing as of Wednesday. 

Richardson and others in the Trump administration have been facing increasing scrutiny over the handling of federal assistance to Texas, including questions about a new funding approval process, the deployment of search and rescue teams and staffing at FEMA call centers.

Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton of Arizona grilled Richardson about his whereabouts on July Fourth and why he did not travel to Texas until nine days after the flooding. 

The acting administrator said he was on vacation with family on the Fourth of July and returned to Washington, D.C., the following day, heeding advice from Texas officials that he would best help them by “kicking down the doors of bureaucracy.” 

“I spent the entire vacation in my vehicle on my phone speaking to either the state of Texas or DHS coordinating for the events in Texas,” Richardson said. 

Stanton subsequently asked Richardson if he had warned Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about the "potential for delays” stemming from a new policy she had enacted requiring her personal signature on any request above $100,000. 

“The secretary signs anything that comes across her desk nearly immediately without undue delay, and I never had a concern about the $100,000 memo,” the FEMA head said. 

The Arizona congressman also speculated that additional search and rescue teams could have led to fewer deaths in the immediate aftermath of the flooding.

“The loss of life from the Texas flood haunts me — the pictures in my mind of people clinging to trees, some who were saved by Coast Guard or other heroes,” Stanton said. “But it haunts me that we could have had more urban search and rescue preposition in place. We could have saved more of those people.”

Richardson pointed to the prepositing of the Texas A&M Task Force 1 ahead of July Fourth, and subcommittee Chairman Scott Perry, R-Penn., added his own response to Stanton’s question.

“There are plenty of reasons to be critical of FEMA, and those criticisms are justified in many cases,” Perry said, but he noted that FEMA would need to preposition teams somewhere in the country nearly every single day if the agency were to respond to every flash flood warning.

The National Weather Service sends out thousands of flash flood warnings per year — and more than 3,000 already in 2025. In Kerr County, Texas, the flash flood warning was upgraded to a flash flood emergency just after 4 a.m. on July Fourth. 

In another exchange, Rep. Laura Friedman, D-Calif., questioned the acting administrator about how many calls were answered by FEMA in the days following the July Fourth floods, citing reporting by The New York Times that the contractors with call center companies answered 35.8% and 15.9% of the calls on July 6 and 7, respectively, after contracts with four companies were not renewed and hundreds of contractors were fired. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called the numbers “fake news” during an interview earlier this month.

“So in your mind, 15.9% of calls being answered is the vast majority?" Friedman asked Richardson. “So is that the benchmark we are looking for now?”

"I would have to agree with Secretary Noem. That's fake news. The majority of the calls were answered,” the FEMA head said in response without providing specific numbers.

"I don't see how you can deny these reports," Friedman replied.

Later in the hearing, Perry asked Richardson to provide lawmakers with more information in the future about calls fielded by FEMA in the days following the Texas flooding. 

Since taking office, Trump has suggested repeatedly that FEMA could be dismantled as part of his cost-cutting measures.

“A third of the staff at FEMA has been eliminated in the DOGE process,” said Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif. “So there's serious concerns, at least by me and I suspect by other members of the committee, about the future of FEMA. Is it even going to exist?” 

Richardson said Trump had charged the FEMA Review Council led by Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth with making recommendations for the future of the agency. He later added that those findings would be shared with the president in late fall. 

“So the answer is blowing in the wind," Garamendi replied. "We do not know, and you cannot confirm that it is the policy of the administration to maintain FEMA.” 

Several lawmakers asked Richardson about the elimination in April of the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, grant program that funded disaster preparation projects. 

Richardson responded that the program had strayed from its resiliency mission, citing allocations like funding through the Shelter and Service Program to house undocumented immigrants in New York City as well as money for bike lanes. 

Last week, a coalition of 20 attorneys general filed suit against the Trump administration for terminating the program, saying it was done unlawfully, and Richardson cited pending litigation as to why he could not provide more information about FEMA's mitigation work. 

At several points in the hearing, Democratic lawmakers pressed the acting administrator about the rise of extreme weather events in the United States.

Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., asked Richardson if he believes that the burning of fossil fuels is the “primary cause of climate change” and if he would agree that the frequency and severity of disasters are increasing. 

Richardson sidestepped both questions, answering that his agency would assist affected Americans “regardless of the origin or regardless of the frequency.”