FEMA suspends employees who signed letter blasting Trump-era changes, sources say

FEMA's tempest effect astatine hazard aft cuts

FEMA employees dependable alarm connected reduced catastrophe response 01:36

The Federal Emergency Management Agency connected Tuesday suspended much than 20 employees who signed an unfastened letter arguing the Trump medication had undone years of post-Hurricane Katrina advancement astatine the catastrophe alleviation agency, aggregate sources told CBS News.

Monday's open letter to Congress — known arsenic the "Katrina Declaration" — said it was signed by 191 existent and erstwhile FEMA employees. Some 35 attached their names, portion the remainder said they withheld them implicit fearfulness of retaliation.

Some of the existent FEMA employees who utilized their names received emails connected Tuesday nighttime saying they had been placed connected paid administrative permission "effective immediately, and continuing until further notice," according to copies of the emails reviewed by CBS News.

"While connected administrative leave, you volition beryllium successful a non-duty presumption portion continuing to person wage and benefits," the missive read. The staffers were told not to sojourn FEMA facilities, entree the department's telecommunication systems oregon transportation retired immoderate of their authoritative duties, speech from responding to inquiries from the Department of Homeland Security.

The bureau besides told unit that they indispensable stay disposable to enactment during concern hours.

The emails did not supply a crushed for the decision. Staffers were told the determination "is not a disciplinary enactment and is not intended to beryllium punitive."

CBS News has reached retired to DHS and FEMA for comment.

The Washington Post was archetypal to study connected the suspensions.

The "Katrina Declaration" was published arsenic the United States marks the 20th day of Hurricane Katrina, which was 1 of the deadliest and costliest earthy disasters successful U.S. history. The 2005 hurricane prompted large changes to the nation's catastrophe alleviation strategy — and Monday's missive argued galore of those reforms could beryllium reversed by the Trump administration.

The missive accuses President Trump of picking unqualified radical to pb FEMA, and criticizes the medication for cutting the agency's workforce and terminating grants meant to assistance authorities and section governments harden their infrastructure to mitigate the interaction of earthy disasters.

The declaration said it hopes changes are made successful clip to "prevent not lone different nationalist catastrophe similar Hurricane Katrina, but the effectual dissolution of FEMA itself and the abandonment of the American radical specified an lawsuit would represent."

The Trump medication has pushed for sweeping changes to FEMA. Earlier this year, Mr. Trump suggested either "getting escaped of FEMA" oregon "fundamentally reforming" the bureau by pushing immoderate of its duties to authorities governments. So acold this year, the bureau has mislaid roughly one-third of its unit done a operation of firings and voluntary departures.

FEMA acting property caput Daniel Llargues responded to the missive Monday by defending the Trump administration's grounds of handling earthy disasters and arguing FEMA was antecedently "bogged down by reddish tape, inefficiency, and outdated processes."

"The Trump Administration has made accountability and betterment a precedence truthful that payer dollars really scope the radical and communities they are meant to help," Llargues said. "It is not astonishing that immoderate of the aforesaid bureaucrats who presided implicit decades of inefficiency are present objecting to reform. Change is ever hard. It is particularly for those invested successful the presumption quo. But our work is to survivors, not to protecting breached systems."