FEMA email: Firings will affect 'majority of our staff' [View all]
Source: Politico
02/19/2025 07:07 PM EST
The Trump administration is laying the groundwork to fire Federal Emergency Management Agency staff who have worked on addressing climate change or promoting equity and diversity, according to interviews and emails obtained by POLITICO’s E&E News — on top of the hundreds of probationary employees it removed during Presidents Day weekend.
The already-strapped disaster agency is being directed to “come up with employee reductions far beyond the probationary list,” a top FEMA official wrote in an internal email sent recently to senior agency staff. “Direction is to make a list of anyone who worked on or works on climate, environmental justice, equity, DEIA,” the email reads, referring to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. The email obtained by E&E News was cropped to not include the name of the sender.
Another internal email, sent on Wednesday, told rank-and-file employees to “scrub” terms from agency records that Trump highlighted in his executive orders on climate change and diversity. Any document with taboo phrases will be put into an archive folder that will be deleted in three years.
“They’re trying to systematically erase everything that happened before,” said one FEMA employee who is posted at a disaster site and has been pulled away from helping survivors get their damaged homes inspected so repairs can begin. “It is taking away from time doing on-the-ground disaster-recovery work.”
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/19/fema-email-firings-affect-majority-staff-00204779
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