While touring disaster areas in North Carolina and California on Jan. 24, 2025, President Donald Trump said he was considering getting rid of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
“I’ll also be signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA. I think, frankly, FEMA’s not good… I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away,” Trump said.
Later that day, Trump issued an executive order establishing a council to “assess” FEMA. The directive doesn’t order any immediate changes to FEMA’s organization.
Multiple VERIFY readers texted us to ask if Trump can permanently shut down FEMA or other federal agencies by executive order.
THE QUESTION
Can the president get rid of federal agencies such as FEMA by executive order?
THE SOURCES
THE ANSWER
No, the president cannot get rid of federal agencies such as FEMA by executive order.
WHAT WE FOUND
The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the authority to both establish and abolish federal agencies to carry out the powers granted to it by the Constitution. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), is a federal agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Trump would need Congress to pass a law either eliminating FEMA or giving Trump the authority to eliminate FEMA before he could permanently shut down the agency unilaterally.
Congress has delegated to past presidents some authority to change certain federal departments, including creating and eliminating federal agencies. However, Congress must still pass a law to give the president this authority, and the president’s plan still must be approved by Congress.
Between 1932 and 1984, Congress periodically gave the president the authority to present Congress with plans to reorganize portions of the federal government, including to abolish federal agencies, according to a 2017 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report. Up until 1983, Congress delegated this authority so the president’s plan would go into effect unless Congress passed a resolution vetoing the plan.
However, the Supreme Court’s 1983 ruling in INS v. Chadha determined that the legislative veto process was unconstitutional. So in 1984, Congress made it so it had to approve the president’s plan before its changes went into effect.
If Congress gave Trump a similar authority, it would likely be similar to the authority granted in 1984. That means Congress would not only have to act to give Trump the ability to dissolve agencies in the first place, but it’d also have to approve any proposed Trump plan to eliminate FEMA.
However, Congress has not granted any recent president’s request to grant them that authority since 1984. Since then, federal agencies have only been eliminated or established directly through Congressional legislation.
According to a CRS report from 2024, Congress has eliminated at least one federal agency directly through legislation in that time: the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which it dissolved in 1995.
President Ronald Reagan first proposed abolishing the ICC in his fiscal year 1987 budget proposal. His administration then drafted legislation to do so and forwarded it to Congress. However, Congress didn’t act on this legislation, and so the ICC remained in place until Congress finally passed a law eliminating it eight years later.
FEMA was created in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter, who used the authority Congress delegated to him at the time to include it in an executive order and reorganization plan he sent to Congress. Since Congress didn’t veto the plan, FEMA was established.
Congress later wrote FEMA into law in 1984, following the Supreme Court’s 1983 INS v. Chadha decision.
In 2002, Congress put FEMA under the purview of the DHS with the Homeland Security Act of 2002. That law says FEMA “shall have the primary responsibility within the executive branch to prepare for and mitigate the effects of nonterrorist-related disasters in the United States.”