A federal judge ruled that a Trump administration plan to cut FEMA staffing by 50% was unlawful, after top Homeland Security officials pushed the agency to submit a plan for the cut even though FEMA’s own supervisors objected. The order lands on an agency already battered by mass departures, disrupted grant programs and delays of disaster aid. People at the bottom keep paying for decisions made at the top.
Who Decides, Who Pays
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston wrote that the staffing plan number "appears as if pulled from thin air." That line says plenty. The Department of Homeland Security, then led by Secretary Kristi Noem, tried to force a staffing plan through FEMA leadership late last year, and the agency’s own supervisors pushed back. Illston said the government violated rules established after Hurricane Katrina that put staffing decisions in FEMA’s hands and barred DHS from "substantially" reducing FEMA’s "functions."
The lawsuit came from the American Federation of Government Employees and other labor groups. That matters because the people closest to the damage had to drag the bosses into court just to stop a slash-and-burn staffing scheme from hollowing out disaster response. Illston did not order a specific remedy and told the two sides to meet and decide on a course of relief. The staffing cuts were not ultimately carried out, and FEMA has rehired some staffers after leadership changes at FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security.
FEMA said in a statement late Saturday that while it does not comment on personnel matters and ongoing litigation, "DHS and FEMA are ready for the 2026 hurricane season." It added, "We're ensuring workforce stability and a strong, deployable force for upcoming national events and potential disasters; making the agency leaner, faster and laser-focused on supporting state, local, tribal and territorial partners before, during and after disasters," and said, "FEMA continues to maintain a roster of experienced leadership and support staff across headquarters and regional offices."
The Damage Behind the Bureaucracy
The agency has been buffeted by mass staff departures, disruptions of grant programs and delays of disaster aid. In August, the Government Accountability Office said departures of thousands of staff in 2025 resulted in a "loss of institutional knowledge and experienced personnel" and "exacerbated longstanding workforce challenges." More than 4,300 employees, or about 17% of FEMA’s workforce, separated from the agency in the 2025 budget year, with over 1,500 through voluntary reductions, and the agency also made about 2,900 new hires.
The GAO recommended that Congress "consider requiring" FEMA to base "significant workforce decisions" on a more strategic planning process, saying that without it, "FEMA cannot be assured that the agency is positioned to effectively meet its mission needs." That’s the language of reform, slow and procedural, after the machinery has already chewed through thousands of workers and left the agency wobbling. In May, a Trump-appointed FEMA Review Council submitted a final report recommending sweeping changes to how the agency supports states, tribes and territories in disaster. The final version backed away from a recommendation to cut the FEMA workforce by 50%, which had appeared in a December 2025 draft reviewed by The Associated Press, and instead recommended a "strategic review" to determine "appropriate staffing levels."
What the Midterms Are Really For
With two months until the midterm elections, Democrats are laying the groundwork to launch far-reaching investigations into the Trump administration and preparing for high-stakes court battles if they win control of the House of Representatives in November. President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, his White House ballroom project, his family’s business dealings and the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files will be among the top targets if Democrats take back the House, according to conversations with over a dozen Democratic lawmakers and aides.
They do not want to launch an impeachment process on day one, and many are eyeing lawsuits as a new tool to compel testimony and documents. Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, who is in line to lead the House Judiciary Committee, said, "We’re going to use every tool in the toolbox and we will have certainly a lot more authority to get ourselves into court in the majority than we did when we were in the minority." He added, "We are not taking no for an answer in terms of getting the evidence we need."
Raskin has already launched investigations into allegations of corrupt government contract deals at Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm and on the Trump administration’s pardon policy. Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, wants to interview the president and first lady as well as top officials like Vice President JD Vance and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles about how the administration has handled the Epstein matter. Garcia also wants to interview Kushner and Trump family members about their business dealings.
Democratic Rep. Adam Smith plans to probe the Trump administration’s decision to go to war with Iran and U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats atop the House Armed Services Committee. Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman is laying the groundwork to investigate Trump’s ballroom and other construction projects on the House Natural Resources panel. Democratic Rep. Bennie Thompson has tried to get answers on the administration’s deportation efforts and the practices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Democrats say they will also rely on requests for information from the private sector and relationships with whistleblowers inside and outside government. They are preparing an aggressive hiring push, including selecting an in-house general counsel. Emily Loeb, a partner at Jenner & Block, said, "Should Democrats get the gavel in either chamber, we expect sustained oversight across a sweeping range of issues and entities. Companies and institutions should use the time they have now to prepare for that scrutiny."
Democrats also plan legislation that would give Congress a role in the enactment of the 25th Amendment, impose stricter requirements barring a president from profiting from a foreign government and permanently eliminate the "anti-weaponization" fund. Raskin said, "I’ve not heard a single person say to me that they think our top priority should be impeachment of Donald Trump." He said, "He hasn’t been convicted, and the chances of conviction on even his most gross and undeniable offenses against the Constitution are slim because he exercises even more authoritarian control over the Republican Congress than he did in the last impeachment."
Garcia said, "Trump commits an impeachable offense every week. But our job is to stop Trump, to stop his agenda. That’s job number one. So, for us, our job is to (do) investigations and building a case as to why this is the most corrupt person ever to serve." Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari said, "I do hear a lot from my constituents about how we need to really prosecute if there are crimes that have been committed and people want to see people in power go to jail if they’ve committed crimes. It’s really that simple."
The Campaign Machine in Plain Sight
The White House held a summer contest to see who could appear in the most congressional districts and states with competitive midterm elections. Nearly every day, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles meets with Meghan Bauer, a presidential assistant who coordinates with Cabinet members, to review who has recently traveled where, who is heading out into the country and who is in a swing district at that moment. The debrief is part of the administration’s unofficial Cabinet Travel Competition, overseen by Bauer, in which the White House encourages Cabinet secretaries to traverse the country to promote President Trump’s agenda and tracks their visits to politically competitive congressional districts or states ahead of the midterm elections.
Several White House officials said no one ever loses points, and two added that a trip to New York for a cable-news hit praising the administration’s policies would still count toward the contest. Karoline Leavitt said, "I think we have seven or eight of them out on the road in targeted districts just today." The formal competition ran from Memorial Day to Labor Day, though secretaries will likely be encouraged to keep going through November.
Officials said contestants are encouraged to travel to key congressional districts or competitive states, appear with members of Congress and participate in local media interviews. Any midterm-related travel must be flagged for White House approval, and everyone is instructed to comply with federal rules that forbid certain forms of partisan politicking. Taxpayers pay for travel related to official duties, while top officials are expected to pay for personal political travel themselves. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. got approval to use a more costly military jet for some trips, The Washington Post reported.
In February, Wiles told agency heads they should limit their international travel so they could focus on helping Republicans win the midterm elections. She said the president would do the same and would spend every other week stumping through the country, ramping up to at least once a week as the November elections neared. Kristi Noem was pushed out as Homeland Security secretary for reasons that included images of her atop a camel in Bahrain and horseback-riding trips in Argentina’s Campo de Mayo and near South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore, where there are no competitive federal midterm races.
Leavitt said, "They know not to take 10-day-long vacations in Wyoming." She added, "The president is working all the time, and he expects them to as well." The White House declined to provide its tally of each Cabinet member’s political travel but sent a list of the numbers of visits made to at least 13 states over the summer. Texas led with 46 visits, followed by Pennsylvania with 42 and New York with 40. New Jersey and North Carolina each had 10, Alaska had five and Nevada had four. In a little more than three months, the White House said, Cabinet members made a total of 265 visits to those 13 states.
The report’s own tally found Kelly Loeffler likely won the competition with at least 18 trips to competitive states, including more than one stop each in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia. Brooke Rollins followed with at least 17, Keith Sonderling with at least 15, and Kennedy and Sean Duffy with at least 10 each. The report said the U.S. trade representative, the CIA director and the director of the Office of Management and Budget each took only one trip to a competitive area since Memorial Day. It found no midterm-related trips for Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said in an emailed statement, "Cabinet officials will continue to meet with everyday Americans across our country to inform future policymaking and tout these victories, drawing a strong contrast to the record of failure by radical Democrats on the border, inflation, and crime."
Democrats and watchdog groups have accused Trump officials of violating the Hatch Act, a 1939 federal law that limits federal employees from engaging in certain political activities. At least one Cabinet member, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has come under criticism for blurring the line between personal and government travel. Two decades ago, President George W. Bush’s staff similarly tracked Cabinet travel before the 2006 midterms, and the Office of Special Counsel later condemned the operation as electioneering proscribed by the Hatch Act. During the Biden administration in 2024, House and Senate Republicans investigated trips by top Small Business Administration officials to battleground states. Federal watchdogs found in 2021 that members of the Trump administration had shown "willful disregard" for the law by pushing for Trump’s reelection in their official capacities.
Donald Sherman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said, "The details do matter," and added, "But it is also hard to imagine that that compliance is being prioritized in a competition-like scenario, particularly in an administration that has been hostile to the Hatch Act in pretty much every other instance." A White House official said the administration has implemented a process in which the White House and agency ethics officials review political appearances by Trump’s appointees. The official said, "All Administration officials who chose to participate in political activity and travel have been encouraged to work with their respective agency counsels and the White House to ensure that they are in full compliance."
In May, before the official competition began, Hegseth appeared in Kentucky alongside former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, who successfully challenged Representative Thomas Massie in the Republican primary. A Pentagon spokesperson said Hegseth attended in his "personal capacity," though he appeared the same day at Fort Campbell in Kentucky in his official capacity to award Purple Hearts. In August, Hegseth appeared at the Iowa State Fair alongside Representative Zach Nunn, where he endorsed Nunn’s reelection bid and praised him as an ally of both the Pentagon and the president. Hegseth said, "According to the lawyers, I’m only here in a personal capacity."
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins traveled in early June to a farm in North Carolina, where she walked between rows of tobacco and stood in front of John Deere tractors, touting the Trump administration’s labor reforms, which she said had reduced costs for the state’s farmers. In July, she joined a radio interview in Georgia with Representative Brian Jack and described a new program for shipping meat as "so exciting" and "so important" for the state. In late August, she appeared at the Iowa State Fair, where she defended Trump’s decision to ease restrictions on imported beef, which she said was necessary to lower prices for struggling families. Energy Secretary Chris Wright traveled to Alaska to deliver "a giant thank-you" for the state’s oil exports. Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins traveled to a military event in Virginia Beach with Vice President Vance and made stops in central Michigan to meet with local veterans alongside the district’s Republican representative.
The report said the Cabinet officials understand their mission is to spread the Trump doctrine far and wide, especially to purple battlegrounds, and that they are eager to comply.