Washington, DC, August 28, 2025 — As the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina making landfall approaches, news reports say that the Trump administration has begun to place on leave dozens of FEMA workers who raised concerns of funding cuts and staffing shortages putting lives at risk in the event of another Katrina-level disaster. The agency has already lost an estimated 2,000 employees since the start of Donald Trump’s second term.

More than 180 of the remaining employees signed a letter to Congress earlier this week warning that Trump’s efforts to gut our disaster preparedness efforts at the agency have increased the risks of a major disaster and subsequent response failure. More than 30 of the FEMA workers who signed their names publicly have now been placed on leave at the

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