The Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) denied requests for three Kentucky counties affected by severe storms last spring, and deemed the state ineligible for hazard mitigation grants that would help prepare for future disasters .
Fema officials claimed the areas did not suffer enough damage to merit federal support, in a letter issued to the governor on Tuesday. But the move is just the latest in a series of denials from the agency, as the Trump administration seeks to shift the burden of responding to and recovering from disasters on to states.
Last week, Fema also rejected Maryland’s request for disaster assistance after near-record-level flooding in May destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses and tore into roads and public infrastructure, leaving close to $16m in damages.
“Our communities need help recovering from a massive storm,” Maryland’s governor, Wes Moore, said in a video about the denial of his disaster assistance request, adding that he “saw the devastation up close”. He acknowledged that there were specific criteria to qualify for the designations that were met. “It is an insult to Marylanders and the communities still suffering in the aftermath of this storm.”
Fema, which is responsible for an on-the-ground response during large-scale emergencies along with coordinating resource deployment, funding recovery and supporting efforts to mitigate risks, has been left critically under-resourced and unprepared for the escalating and compounding catastrophes wreaking havoc across the US with greater intensity and frequency.
Trump has called for dismantling the agency, part of the US Department of Homeland Security, and has already begun to cut funding in key areas. “We want to wean off of Fema, and we want to bring it back to the state level,” the president said, speaking from the Oval Office in June, noting his plans to promptly “give out less money” to states in recovery.
Fema has also terminated a multibillion-dollar grant program funding infrastructure upgrades that build resiliency, a move challenged in court by a group of 20 states earlier this month. Many of these states also filed lawsuits against the administration in May over directives that would link funding for emergency preparedness to immigration enforcement cooperation.
“This administration is abandoning states and local communities that rely on federal funding to protect their residents and, in the event of disaster, save lives,” said the Massachusetts attorney general, Andrea Campbell, in a statement about the elimination of Fema’s building resilient infrastructure and communities program, which was approved and funded by Congress.
But even amid growing criticism and demands for increases in federal funding, the Trump administration has continued pushing for less reliance on federal support. As the climate crisis fuels an increasing number of more costly catastrophes and creates overlapping layers of risk, concerns are rising that states and counties will not be able to prepare or respond.
Greater reliance on local resources could also leave severe recovery gaps. Many emergency management departments are small and their structures are highly variable from agency to agency, according to a new study from the Department of Energy that surveyed local preparedness.
The study, which surveyed more than 1,600 directors of state and local emergency management agencies between August 2024 and March 2025, found the understaffed and overworked offices were debilitated by funding shortages and lacking in a clear mission.
With the future of the agency in question, for now, the governors in states that were denied designations are appealing and hoping for a different outcome.
Kentucky’s governor, Andy Beshear, said he was “disappointed in the decision”, but added that the state appreciates the assistance provided to some counties more devastated by the historic flooding, landslides and a major tornado outbreak in April and May. The harm in the three counties left out of the designations, the agency said, was not severe enough to merit inclusion. “We are actively comparing damage assessments,” Beshear said, “and we plan to appeal.”
