Sponsors (3)
Introduced March 24, 2025 by Jared Moskowitz · Last progress March 24, 2025
The bill centralizes and elevates federal emergency management to strengthen national coordination, operational capacity, and legal clarity — but doing so risks transitional disruptions, higher taxpayer costs, reduced local flexibility, and short-term legal and workforce uncertainty.
Federal, state, and local emergency officials and the public will face clearer statutory structure and definitions, making authorities, citations, and chains of responsibility easier to follow and reducing legal ambiguity for disaster operations.
Communities and governments will get faster, more coherent national leadership and decision-making in major incidents because FEMA is elevated (cabinet-level) with a single, Senate-confirmed Director reporting to the President.
Emergency response capacity will increase: a mandated National Response Plan, interoperable communications, continuity planning, Deputy Directors, and regional offices aim to speed lifesaving support (evacuation, shelter, food, medical care) and improve coordination across jurisdictions.
Disaster-affected communities and governments face real risk that services and responses will be disrupted or slowed during the reorganization and transfer period due to implementation delays, administrative confusion, and transitional gaps.
Elevating FEMA and creating new Senate‑confirmed positions, deputies, and regional offices will likely increase federal administrative costs and ongoing taxpayer expense.
Centralizing authority in a cabinet-level Agency and a single Director reporting to the President could reduce state and local flexibility, risk prioritizing federal over local needs, and increase potential politicization of disaster priorities.
Based on analysis of 26 sections of legislative text.
Establishes FEMA as an independent cabinet-level agency, creates a Senate-confirmed Director, and transfers FEMA functions, people, and assets out of DHS.
Creates the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as an independent, cabinet-level agency separate from the Department of Homeland Security and transfers FEMA’s functions, personnel, assets, liabilities, contracts, and records into the new Agency. Establishes a Presidentially appointed Director (with Senate confirmation) and Inspectors General office, sets qualifications and regional offices, preserves legal continuity, requires protections for transferred employees, and sets a one-year transition window and reporting requirements to Congress.