FEMA Response in Texas: $100K Rule, Hotline, and Scrutiny

FEMA’s response to the Texas floods began with a presidential disaster declaration on July 6, 2025, two days after the Guadalupe River rose and killed at least 135 people in Central Texas. Within weeks, that response became the subject of whistleblower complaints, a senior resignation, a congressional hearing, and a Senate report, nearly all of it tracing back to a June 2025 directive from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem requiring her personal approval for any FEMA expenditure over $100,000.¹

What FEMA Approved and When

President Trump signed major disaster declaration FEMA-4879-DR on July 6, covering an incident period of July 2 through July 18, 2025.² Individual assistance was authorized for Burnet, Kerr, San Saba, Tom Green, Travis, and Williamson counties. Public assistance covered a wider group of ten counties, adding Kendall, Kimble, Llano, Mason, McCulloch, and Menard.³ Governor Greg Abbott publicly praised what he described as “swift and very robust action” on the declaration.⁴

According to the latest figures on FEMA’s disaster page, the agency has approved 3,877 individual assistance applications and obligated more than $41 million in grants to individuals and households: roughly $28.7 million for housing assistance and $12.3 million for other needs. Public assistance obligations have reached about $95.7 million, split between $76.2 million in emergency work and $15.2 million in permanent repairs.²

Survivors could apply online at DisasterAssistance.gov, through the FEMA mobile app, by calling the FEMA helpline, or in person at Disaster Recovery Centers that FEMA and the Small Business Administration opened in affected communities. A center in San Angelo opened July 15, offering face-to-face help with applications, referrals to nonprofit and government agencies, and SBA loan assistance.⁵

The $100,000 Approval Rule That Slowed the Response

In June 2025, Secretary Noem issued a directive requiring her personal sign-off on every FEMA contract, grant, or expenditure above $100,000 before funds could be released. FEMA officials described the threshold as “pennies” in disaster-spending terms and said it stripped the agency of the operational autonomy it had traditionally used to pre-position assets before a formal state request.¹

The effects on the Texas response were specific and documented:

FEMA could not pre-position its Urban Search and Rescue teams. Noem did not authorize deployment until more than 72 hours after the disaster began.¹
A Texas request for aerial imagery to support search and rescue was delayed while the Secretary’s approval on the contract was pending.¹
Contract call center workers were laid off on July 5 after their contracts expired and were not renewed in time; additional support staff could not be brought on without the Secretary’s approval.⁶
By the Monday night after the July 4 weekend, only 86 FEMA staffers had been deployed, a figure officials characterized as far below what was typical for a disaster of this scale.¹

Noem denied that the process delayed anything, telling NBC on July 13 that the allegations were “absolutely false.”⁷ DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said the administration was replacing “old processes” with a “lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors.”¹

The Call Center Breakdown

FEMA’s disaster survivor hotline became the clearest illustration of the policy’s effect. Funding for the call center was renewed in 30-day increments and lapsed on July 5, one day after the floods. Internal records show the contract was placed “on hold” that day. Acting FEMA Administrator David Richardson did not submit a memo requesting funding to Noem until July 10, noting that the service level had dropped to 20 percent of calls answered and that survivors were waiting more than 90 minutes. Noem approved the funding late on July 10, five days after the lapse.⁸

A Government Accountability Office report (GAO-26-108154) later filled in the picture. Over a nine-day period, FEMA received roughly 80,000 calls and failed to answer 58 percent of them. During the peak of July 7 through 9, the agency missed 78 percent of calls, and those who got through waited an average of 61 minutes. The GAO noted this happened at a daily volume of about 8,843 calls, far below the 75,000 to 85,000 per day the agency had handled during the 2017 and 2024 hurricane seasons. FEMA officials told the GAO they had also reduced “surge support resources” by about 50 percent earlier in 2025 after call volumes from the 2024 hurricanes subsided.⁹

DHS publicly maintained that the call centers performed well. A spokeswoman said “FEMA’s disaster call center responded to every caller swiftly and efficiently.”⁶ Richardson later told Congress that “the vast majority of phone calls were answered” within three minutes. The GAO report contradicted this; on July 7, for instance, FEMA reported answering 82.1 percent of intake calls for new registrations while missing 84.1 percent of all calls overall. Richardson resigned in November 2025.¹⁰

Search and Rescue Delays and a High-Profile Resignation

On July 21, 2025, Ken Pagurek, head of FEMA’s Urban Search and Rescue branch, resigned. Sources familiar with his thinking told reporters that the delayed deployment to Texas was the “tipping point” after months of frustration with the administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency.¹¹ In his resignation letter, Pagurek did not mention the floods directly, writing instead that the decision came “after much reflection and prayer” and that he would return to the Philadelphia Fire Department.¹² DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin dismissed the departure, calling it “laughable that a career public employee… would choose to resign over our refusal to hastily approve a six-figure deployment contract without basic financial oversight.”¹³

Former FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell argued that the Texas response showed the consequences of “added layers of administrative burdens” that reduce the agility needed for flash-flood scenarios, where there are no days of warning as there are with a hurricane.¹⁴

An Agency Already Short-Staffed and Short on Cash

The Texas floods struck an agency that had been shedding people and leaders for months. In May 2025, acting FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton was fired one day after testifying before a House appropriations subcommittee that “I do not believe it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”¹⁵ His replacement, David Richardson, was a former marine artillery officer with no prior disaster management experience.¹⁶

Since January 2025, roughly 2,000 FEMA staff had departed through resignation or retirement. Regional administrator positions for the Texas and Florida regions were vacant. On May 22, 2025 alone, 16 senior executives left the agency. Former FEMA chief of staff Michael Coen said the agency was “dangerously underresourced and overstretched” and lacked the capacity to manage multiple concurrent disasters. The administration had also canceled or frozen billions of dollars in grants under the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, which had funded projects such as stormwater upgrades and flood warning systems. Coen noted the cut eliminated funding that could have supported siren systems in high-risk areas like the Guadalupe River corridor.¹⁶

The money picture was no better. As of June 2025, FEMA’s own monthly report projected its Disaster Relief Fund would drop to $2.8 billion in July and slip into a $7.8 billion deficit by September. The administration had not sought supplemental disaster appropriations, and when Congress extended the government spending measure to September 30, 2025, no increase to the DRF was included.¹⁷ The Office of Management and Budget disputed the projections, claiming the fund held “a balance of over $13 billion,” but FEMA’s own April 2026 report estimated the fund ended fiscal year 2025 with a deficit of $7.818 billion.¹⁸

Congressional and Senate Scrutiny

On July 23, 2025, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee held a hearing in which lawmakers from both parties questioned Richardson. He defended the agency, saying FEMA “did nothing wrong” and that the response could serve as a “model.” He testified that Texas Task Force 1, a FEMA-funded asset, was in place on July 4 and that he had been in “constant communication” with the White House and state officials.¹⁹

Ranking Member Greg Stanton accused Richardson of being “missing in action” for the first 48 hours, noting he did not visit the national response center and did not travel to Texas until July 12. Members cited the call center data and the $100,000 approval bottleneck and raised the use of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut FEMA staffing, including the firing of 200 probationary workers and the freezing of over $100 billion in payments for manual review.¹⁹ Republicans were critical as well. Subcommittee Chair Scott Perry said “little seems to work or have been effective” regarding FEMA reforms and argued that a 24-hour response time to a state request was too slow.²⁰

In March 2026, Senators Gary Peters and Andy Kim released a report based on an internal DHS tracker provided by whistleblowers. It identified at least 1,034 FEMA contracts, grants, or disaster assistance awards delayed or left pending because of the $100,000 approval mandate. The average delay was three weeks, with some stretching much longer. Affected aid included public assistance, disaster unemployment assistance, housing inspections, temporary housing, and crisis counseling for survivors of the Texas floods and Hurricane Helene.²¹ The report asserted that the directive violated the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006, which prohibits actions that “significantly and substantially” reduce FEMA’s missions and authorities.²² A DHS spokesperson disputed the findings, telling The Hill that “there is no evidence of a three-week average wait for aid decisions.” A separate source told the outlet that more than $10 billion in public assistance funds were awaiting approval at the time.²³

What the Texas Response Means for FEMA’s Future

The Texas disaster unfolded alongside a broader push to reshape or eliminate the agency. President Trump had called for FEMA’s elimination and appointed a FEMA Review Council co-chaired by Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, including Governor Abbott and Texas emergency management chief W. Nim Kidd. Abbott called FEMA “slow and clunky” and argued that “states have proven that we can move more nimbly, more swiftly, more effectively.”⁴ A federal judge blocked an administration attempt to reallocate approximately $4 billion in local disaster mitigation funds in August 2025.²⁴

The Review Council released its final report on May 7, 2026, recommending that FEMA’s public assistance program be replaced by a parametric block grant delivered to states within 30 days, that individual assistance be consolidated into a single direct payment of up to $150,000 for homeowners, that sheltering responsibility shift to states, that the National Flood Insurance Program move toward private-market risk-based pricing, and that FEMA become a “leaner agency” acting as a “payer of last resort.” The most consequential recommendations require acts of Congress, and no immediate changes to existing programs have resulted.²⁵

A competing proposal moves the other direction. Representatives Rick Larsen and Sam Graves introduced the Fixing Emergency Management for Americans (FEMA) Act (H.R. 4669) on July 24, 2025. The bill would elevate FEMA to an independent, cabinet-level agency outside DHS, create a universal application for federal disaster assistance, and establish incentives for states to invest in disaster resilience.²⁶ The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved the bill in September 2025 with a bipartisan 57-to-3 vote, but it has not reached the floor. Progress stalled over concerns about getting ahead of the Review Council and was further complicated by a 76-day DHS shutdown that ended April 30, 2026.²⁷ A GAO report noted that four states affected by Hurricanes Helene and Milton confirmed they lack their own individual assistance programs, a reminder of how dependent many states remain on federal disaster support.²⁸

1
CNN. FEMA Texas Flood Noem
2
FEMA. Disaster 4879
3
U.S. Senate — Ted Cruz. Federal Disaster Declaration Fact Sheet
4
NPR. Texas Trump FEMA Flooding
5
FEMA. Disaster Recovery Center Opens July 15 in San Angelo
6
New York Times. FEMA Missed Calls Texas Floods
7
U.S. Senate — Patty Murray. Senators Murray and Peters Demand Kristi Noem Revoke Policy
8
NPR. FEMA Call Center DHS Funding Texas Floods
9
E&E News. FEMA Said It Answered the Phone During the Texas Floods. Most Callers Didn’t Get Through
10
Politico. FEMA Said It Answered the Phone During the Texas Floods. Most Callers Didn’t Get Through
11
CNN. FEMA Search and Rescue Chief Resigns
12
New York Times. FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Chief Resigns
13
ABC News. Head of FEMA Search and Rescue Resigns Over Agency’s Response to Texas Floods
14
PBS NewsHour. Former FEMA Head Responds to Praise and Criticism of Federal Response to Texas Floods
15
Politico. FEMA Chief Fired Cameron Hamilton
16
The Guardian. FEMA Natural Disasters Eroded Capacity
17
E&E News. Trump Budget Chief Said Disaster Fund Is Flush. FEMA Expects a Huge Deficit
18
FEMA. Disaster Relief Fund Report
19
C-SPAN. Acting FEMA Administrator Testifies on Improving Disaster Response
20
Roll Call. At House Hearing, Scrutiny of FEMA Handling of Texas Floods
21
U.S. Senate — Homeland Security Committee Democrats. Peters and Kim Report Finds DHS Secretary’s Review Policy Has Created Severe Delays
22
Washington Post. Noem FEMA Aid Delay Report
23
The Hill. Noem DHS FEMA
24
PBS NewsHour. Federal Response to Recent Disasters Reveals Impact of Trump’s Changes to FEMA
25
National Association of Counties. FEMA Review Council Releases Final Report Recommending Sweeping Changes
26
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Fixing Emergency Management for Americans Act
27
Bipartisan Policy Center. FEMA Reform: Comparing the Review Council’s Recommendations and Congressional Proposals
28
GAO. GAO-26-108154: Disaster Assistance High-Risk Series