David Richardson, the acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, resigned Monday after roughly six months leading the agency, two administration officials confirmed to NBC News.
Richardson’s short time as head of FEMA came during a turbulent chapter for the agency. President Donald Trump's administration has proposed major cuts to its budget, and Trump in June publicly called for the agency to be phased out after hurricane season winds down at the end of November.
In a statement on Monday, FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency, expressed “sincere appreciation” to Richardson “for his dedicated service.”
A DHS spokesperson said that FEMA's current chief of staff, Karen Evans, will step into the acting administrator position beginning Dec. 1.
Richardson on Monday said he agreed to be acting director during a challenging time. He said he was leaving because he wanted to return to private industry.
"I agreed to be the acting administrator through hurricane season when others wouldn’t," Richardson said. "Hurricane season ends on 1 December. Since the danger has largely passed, I can now leave for other opportunities.”
The White House referred all requests for comment on Richardson’s departure to the Department of Homeland Security.
During his time as FEMA chief, Richardson was heavily criticized for his slow response to the catastrophic July floods that devastated Texas’ Hill Country. Richardson could not be reached for 24 hours after raging floodwaters killed more than 130 people on July 4, including 27 girls and counselors at Camp Mystic, a Christian youth summer camp.
It was later revealed that Richardson, who did not have emergency management experience before he became the acting head of FEMA, had been on vacation for the holiday weekend.
A former Marine Corps officer, Richardson was selected to lead FEMA on a temporary basis in May, when the prior acting administrator, Cameron Hamilton, was pushed out after just a few months in the role. Throughout his FEMA tenure, Richardson simultaneously held another position in the Trump administration, as assistant secretary of the DHS’s Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office.
As a whole, FEMA has faced fresh scrutiny this year over its ability to respond effectively and efficiently to hurricanes, floods and other disasters, particularly as climate change makes some extreme weather more likely and more intense.
In a phone interview Monday night, Richardson said when he came to FEMA, his understanding was that his role was “to shut it down.”
But he said the agency’s experience in dealing with the floods in Texas and severe flooding in western Alaska proved the need for the agency, if at a smaller scale.
“We want to push it back to the states,” he said. He said that he believes states can do more, but that he also believes Trump will reform the agency.
In an open letter in August, nearly 200 FEMA employees criticized the Trump administration’s disaster preparedness and emergency management capabilities in the aftermath of the Texas floods.
The signatories of the letter wrote that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s requirement that FEMA expenditures of more than $100,000 be reviewed by her office had slowed the agency’s response to the deadly disaster. The letter also said that Richardson and Hamilton both lacked “legal qualifications, Senate approval, and the demonstrated background required of a FEMA Administrator.”
At least 21 FEMA employees were put on administrative leave for signing the letter after it was released.
Richardson on Monday night said that the $100,000 cap did not slow FEMA's response.
"Anything life-threatening, we didn’t go by the $100,000 cap,” he said.
Richardson took over from Hamilton weeks before the start of the hurricane season, after Hamilton said during testimony on Capitol Hill that he did not think it was “in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
That position ran counter to Trump’s suggestion that FEMA should be dismantled and individual states should instead step in to respond to disasters.
In June, Noem said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that Trump did not want to completely eliminate the agency but overhaul it.
Some of Richardson’s critics gladly received the news of his resignation on Monday, including Rafael Lemaitre, a former director of public affairs at FEMA. Lemaitre serves on the advisory council for Sabotaging Our Safety, an advocacy group that focuses on disaster preparedness and emergency response issues.
“Appointing someone with zero disaster management experience to lead FEMA is like putting someone who’s never flown a plane in the cockpit during a hurricane,” he said in a statement.
Democratic members of the House Homeland Security Committee also welcomed Richardson’s departure.
“David Richardson was incompetent, inexperienced and had no business running FEMA,” the group wrote on X. “He’ll be remembered for vanishing when the families of Texas needed him most. Good riddance.”
