A group of current and former Federal Emergency Management Agency officials warned Congress on Monday that the Trump administration's sweeping changes to the disaster relief agency could reverse decades of reforms made after Hurricane Katrina.

The open letter was released as the U.S. this week marks 20 years since Katrina's 2005 landfall — sparking one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history, with nearly 1,400 deaths according to a 2023 estimate and over $200 billion in damage in today's dollars.

The letter argues the Trump administration — which has sought to dramatically shrink FEMA and floated scrapping the agency altogether — had made decisions that "hinder the swift execution of our mission." It states that a change in course is necessary to "prevent not only another na

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