Trump's continued FEMA cuts put Texas in crosshairs for worse natural catastrophes, lawmakers warn

Flood waters from the Guadalupe River surround homes near Kerrville on July 4, 2025.
Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain, Unknown Author

The Trump administration’s continued cuts to FEMA and Texas’ failure to invest in disaster preparedness make it likely San Antonio and other parts of the state will be caught flatfooted in the next natural disaster, elected officials warned.

Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert joined U.S. Rep. Al Green, D-Houston, and Rafael Lemaitre, a former FEMA public affairs director, on a Thursday media call warning Texas stands to lose $74 million in disaster mitigation funds as the White House looks to further gut the agency.

“The federal government is systematically making us less prepared,” said Calvert, a Democrat representing the county’s Precinct 4. “It doesn’t matter what natural disaster we have, we’re not going to be in a good space.”

With climate change making natural catastrophes more frequent and more severe, FEMA’s importance has only increased, said Lemaitre, who served with the agency during the Obama administration.

Yet, by some accounts, FEMA has lost roughly 20% of its staff since Trump targeted it with layoffs and cuts, according to Lemaitre. He says the president is undoing decades of reforms implanted after Hurricane Katrina, whose 2005 landfall resulted in 1,400 deaths.

“I fear that we’re on a course to painfully relearn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina,” he added. “Folks on this call who saw that disaster unravel in real time on television probably remember that was a bad time for emergency management. FEMA was underfunded, it wasn’t a respected agency … . And we saw the result of that: we saw a bungled response to a major disaster.”

While coastal areas prone to hurricanes may grab the biggest headlines, Calvert warned that San Antonio isn’t immune to natural catastrophe. In addition to the July 4 Hill Country floods killed 135, a flash flood a month prior claimed more than a dozen lives along Northeast San Antonio’s Beitel Creek.

“Just in June, my precinct lost 13 people due to flash flooding,” Calvert said. “We are in Flash Flood Alley in Bexar County and San Antonio. This was in an area I grew up in. I used to ride my bike in the ditches where people perished.”

While San Antonio-area officials lobbied for state lawmakers to fund additional safety upgrades for the intersection where those people were swept away, Calvert said it’s an open question how much money they’ll see. Indeed, Republican-controlled Texas has shown little appetite for spending on disaster prevention or relief, he added.

“Texas has more money in its Rainy Day Fund than almost every other state combined,” Calvert said. “Whether it was Winter Storm Uri, the freeze we had in February 2021, or any number of emergencies that are truly rainy days for communities, we’ve seen the state benefit the bankers holding onto that money more than Main Street getting that money.”

Green, the Houston congressman, urged people concerned the pending FEMA cuts to call lawmakers and say they don’t want it dismantled. Congressional Democrats have tried to reach across the aisle to bolster the agency, he said, but added that GOP legislators are sufficiently cowed by Trump that they’re afraid to act.

“[Disaster relief] has to be an effort on behalf of the counties, the cities as well, the state and the federal government,” Green said. “Unfortunately, we have a president who’s moving in a direction that’s antithetical to the best interests of the people of the state of Texas.”

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Trump’s continued FEMA cuts put Texas in crosshairs for worse natural catastrophes, lawmakers warn

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