By Gabe Cohen, CNN
(CNN) — The Trump administration is abruptly cutting dozens of staff who are at the forefront of disaster response and recovery at the Federal Emergency Management Agency this week, according to internal emails obtained by CNN and sources familiar with the plan.
On New Year’s Eve, some employees received emails saying their positions “would not be renewed” and “therefore, your services will no longer be needed” after their contracts expire in the first days of January.
The cuts target FEMA’s Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery (CORE) teams, which form the backbone of the agency’s operations during and after a disaster, and could be just the beginning of a larger effort by Secretary Kristi Noem and the Department of Homeland Security to shrink FEMA, potentially axing thousands of workers in the coming months who deploy during hurricanes, wildfires and other national emergencies.
According to two sources with knowledge of the terminations, which suddenly ousted roughly 50 CORE staff, the decision came from FEMA’s new acting chief Karen Evans — who was elevated to the role by DHS leadership after the embattled previous agency head resigned.
The notices stunned employees, who learned they would be let go within days. “Beyond cruel to be treated in such a way,” one of the workers said.
FEMA’s CORE employees are among the first federal boots on the ground during a disaster, working shoulder-to-shoulder with local officials, helping survivors and managing the crucial aid and grants that fuel recovery and rebuilding.
“FEMA can’t do disaster response and recovery without CORE employees,” a former senior FEMA official told CNN. “The regional offices are almost entirely CORE staff, so the first FEMA people who are usually onsite won’t be there. The impact is states are on their own.”
So far, DHS, which oversees FEMA, hasn’t given the agency much guidance about what comes next, leaving employees anxious about more cuts.
A DHS spokesperson denied that the department has implemented any new policy for these workers and did not address questions about this week’s abrupt terminations or the department’s broader plans to downsize the agency.
“The CORE program consists of term-limited positions that are designed to fluctuate based on disaster activity, operational need, and available funding,” the spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. “CORE appointments have always been subject to end-of-term decisions consistent with that structure and there has been no change to policy.”
Several sources told CNN that DHS has been considering letting more contracts expire as part of a push to downsize the agency, though officials have wavered on how deep the cuts will go.
CORE employees make up about 40% of FEMA’s workforce — over 8,000 people — working full-time hours on temporary contracts. Several thousand of these workers will see their contracts end in 2026.
Traditionally, CORE workers have served on two-to-four-year contracts that were almost always renewed. In 2025, DHS limited FEMA to renewing these contracts for just 180 days at a time while they considered a long-term plan to shrink the agency.
As of January 1, DHS revoked FEMA’s authority to renew those employees without approval from Homeland Security officials, according to internal documents obtained by CNN.
Now, DHS is instructing FEMA to let at least some of those contracts lapse, forcing employees to depart as their terms expire.
Under President Donald Trump’s second administration, DHS has argued for the past year that FEMA is bloated, despite a 2023 Government Accountability Office report that found the agency was facing a staffing shortfall of more than 6,000 employees—about 35% below its target level. Thousands of FEMA’s staff of about 25,000 left in 2025 due to layoffs and buyouts, deepening the shortage.
The latest cuts to CORE are part of a broader Trump administration effort to overhaul FEMA, shrink its footprint and shift more responsibility for disaster response to the states. A task force appointed by the administration – known as the FEMA Review Council – is expected to soon release sweeping recommendations, including a proposal to cut the agency’s workforce in half.
But after CNN exclusively obtained a draft of the recommendations this month, the White House abruptly postponed the task force’s final meeting, leaving FEMA’s future in limbo.
Inside FEMA and across the country, officials are sounding the alarm about the administration’s plan, warning that most states simply aren’t equipped to handle major disasters on their own.
Billions in federal funding for communities nationwide remain stuck in FEMA’s backlog, largely because of bureaucratic hurdles imposed by Trump’s DHS. With the future of federal funding up in the air, some states are already tightening their own budgets and laying off local emergency management staff whose departments rely on money from FEMA to brace for the impact.
The FEMA Review Council is expected to recommend moving some agency staff out of Washington, DC, and into other parts of the country — a move that could help fill some gaps if the CORE workforce is slashed.
Still, it likely means fewer federal boots on the ground when disaster strikes, leaving states with more responsibility for supporting survivors and navigating access to the federal resources that are still available — a bureaucratic process the Trump administration has vowed to improve.
The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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