President Donald Trump sent Democrats into a tizzy last week while meeting with Hurricane Helene victims in North Carolina. While there, he mused that it may be time to get rid of the Federal Emergency Management Agency entirely. The executive order Trump signed is much more circumspect about the future of FEMA, a relatively new entity that is in desperate need of reform.

The latest FEMA failures have been widely reported but are worth reviewing. According to data from the agency itself, FEMA failed to answer nearly half the calls for aid and assistance received during Helene. It also had failed to deliver much needed temporary housing to Helene victims in North Carolina while dozens of mobile housing units sat unused behind a guarded FEMA fence. A FEMA manager in Florida told FEMA employees not to provide aid to homes that visibly supported Trump. As bad as these recent failures were, they pale in comparison to the well-documented, decadeslong history of FEMA red tape delaying reconstruction efforts across the country.