Grand Theft America / Receipt power-2026-08-04-009
A watchdog finds FEMA cut its workforce without checking what it could still do
The Government Accountability Office reports that more than 4,300 employees separated from FEMA in fiscal year 2025, a 55 percent increase over the previous year, and that the agency reduced its workforce without assessing the effect on disaster response and recovery.
What happened
The separations were about 17 percent of a workforce that averaged about 25,134 employees in fiscal year 2025. Government Executive reports that FEMA pushed staff to take voluntary separation incentives such as the deferred resignation programme and fired new and recently promoted employees still in their probationary periods. GAO also found that FEMA rescinded its strategic plan in May 2025 and has not replaced it, leaving the agency without the strategic direction on which workforce planning is based.
Why it matters
An agency shed roughly a sixth of its people in a single year and has no plan against which to measure what it can still do. Capacity removed without an assessment cannot be restored by reversing the decision, because nothing recorded what the capacity was for.
Receipt details
- Phase 1
- Purge the people who'd say no
- Fire the federal workforce en masse
