Less than two weeks before the start of hurricane season, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency rescinded the agency’s strategic plan, which includes a document that guides agency priorities when responding to disasters, WIRED has learned. A new plan has yet to be put into place.
In a memo sent to FEMA employees on Wednesday, acting FEMA administrator David Richardson wrote, “The 2022-2026 FEMA Strategic Plan is hereby rescinded. The Strategic Plan contains goals and objectives that bear no connection to FEMA accomplishing its mission. This summer, a new 2026-2030 strategy will be developed. The strategy will tie directly to FEMA executing its Mission Essential Tasks.”
The four-year plan, which was issued in 2022 under then-administrator Deanne Criswell, is not a procedural plan for specific disasters, but rather a guiding document for the agency’s objectives and priorities. A link to the plan on FEMA’s website returned an error message on Wednesday and has not been live since January 2025, according to the Wayback Machine.
Multiple FEMA employees say that they did not know of another time when a strategic plan had been rescinded without another in place. “We are huge planners,” one employee said. “Things like the strategic plan have big downstream effects, even if it’s not immediate operationally.”
The plan lists goals and objectives for the agency: to “instill equity as a foundation of emergency management,” to “lead whole of community in climate resilience,” and to “promote and sustain a ready FEMA and prepared nation.” Two FEMA employees, who spoke anonymously to WIRED because they had not been granted permission to speak to the press, expressed surprise that the document had not been rescinded earlier due to its emphasis on equity.
For some staff, rescinding this memo is a small step in the large-scale assault on the last administration’s priorities. The strategic plan is “primarily symbolic,” says one employee. “There are very real changes that have been made that touch on [equity and climate change] that are more important than the document itself.”
But others worry about the overall direction of the agency without these guiding principles.
“It’s our guiding star,” says another worker. “We use this to decide agency priorities and pathways to achieve them. Without it, we’re adrift. It’s clear that the person steering the agency, Richardson, is here to take it apart, one piece at a time.”
“Under Secretary Noem and Acting Administrator Richardson, FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens. The old processes are being replaced because they failed Americans in real emergencies for decades. Complaints about morale, training, and planning come from the same internal class that resisted accountability for decades,” says Geoff Harbaugh, the associate administrator of External Affairs at FEMA. “This is just another example of a long line of internal leaks from people who clearly couldn’t care less about Americans facing disaster and prefer to manufacture petty drama for their own self-aggrandizement. Under Secretary Noem’s leadership, and the efforts of Acting Administrator Richardson FEMA is fully activated in preparation for Hurricane Season.”
