Judge blocks DHS bid to dictate FEMA staffing cuts

A US federal judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security acted unlawfully when it directed FEMA to produce a staffing plan that included cutting the agency’s workforce by half, according to The Independent citing Associated Press reporting. US District Judge Susan Illston said the 50% figure appeared to have been “pulled from thin air,” after labor groups sued over the proposal. The cuts were ultimately not implemented, but the ruling lands amid a broader Trump administration effort to shrink the federal workforce.

The case turns on post–Hurricane Katrina rules meant to prevent political leadership at DHS from hollowing out the disaster agency by fiat. Judge Illston found the government violated those rules by placing staffing-level decisions with FEMA rather than DHS, and by barring DHS from substantially reducing FEMA’s functions. The judge did not order a specific remedy, instead telling the parties to meet and decide what relief should follow.

Even without the 50% plan taking effect, FEMA has already been operating inside a churn. The Independent reports the agency has seen mass departures, disruptions to grant programs, and delays in disaster aid. A Government Accountability Office report in August said thousands of 2025 departures drained institutional knowledge and worsened workforce challenges; it put separations at more than 4,300 employees, roughly 17% of the workforce, with over 1,500 through voluntary reductions. FEMA hired about 2,900 new staff in the same period, but the GAO argued that without strategic planning the agency cannot be sure it is positioned to meet mission needs.

A Trump-appointed FEMA Review Council also illustrates how personnel targets can migrate from headline numbers to process language. The Independent says a December 2025 draft report included a recommendation for a 50% workforce cut, but the council’s final report submitted in May backed away from that and instead recommended a strategic review to determine appropriate staffing. That shift leaves the political signal intact—FEMA is expected to do less with less—while moving the hard choice of “how much less” into internal planning documents.

The lawsuit was brought by the American Federation of Government Employees and other labor groups as part of a wider challenge to workforce-reduction efforts. DHS and FEMA did not immediately respond to requests for comment, the report says. For governors and local officials who rely on federal disaster support, the fight is less about a single staffing number than about whether FEMA’s capacity becomes a bargaining chip inside a department whose priorities are broader than disaster response.

The judge’s opinion described the 50% target as ungrounded, and FEMA is still counting the people who already left.