A few days before a massive winter storm dumped snow and ice on a large swath of the country, disrupted travel and killed more than 30 people, a Florida congressman warned that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is letting disaster assistance requests pile up.
“As the only former Emergency Management Director in Congress, it is my responsibility to sound the alarm that FEMA is being dismantled by (Homeland Security) Secretary Kristi Noem,” U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., wrote Jan. 22 on X. “FEMA’s backlog of unanswered disaster assistance applications has exploded to the largest in its history.” Moskowitz was Florida’s Division of Emergency Management director from 2019 to 2021.
President Donald Trump has floated abolishing FEMA, citing the agency’s struggle to deliver timely disaster assistance, and in his second term he’s used executive actions to cut staff and freeze funds. A directive from Noem requiring her sign off for any expenditure over $100,000 has also delayed billions in grants and loans.
But is Moskowitz correct that the agency has the largest backlog of pending disaster assistance applications in its 47-year history?
Taken together, the current list of pending disaster applications, independent analyses and information from disaster management experts show that the backlog is larger than is typical, with applications awaiting approval for longer periods of time compared with the last several decades.
FEMA declined to answer our questions. Moskowitz’ office also did not respond to our request for evidence supporting his statement.
Disaster declaration applications face longer limbo under second Trump administration
FEMA’s daily operations briefing provides an overview of potential weather threats and ongoing disasters.
Its Jan. 28 report shows 18 pending disaster declaration requests. Eleven are more than a month old. The requests are typically submitted through FEMA regional offices before being sent to the president for final approval.
A September analysis by The Associated Press examined how the current backlog compares with the last 37 years — covering the majority of FEMA’s 47-year history. During the agency’s first decade, the disaster declaration approval process wasn’t fully implemented and large disasters were relatively few and far between.
The AP’s analysis found that, on average, it took less than two weeks for a major disaster declaration to be granted by presidents throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. During the last decade, under presidents from both political parties, that rose to about three weeks. In Trump’s second term so far, approvals are taking more than a month, on average.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told the AP Trump was making sure federal dollars were “spent wisely to supplement state actions, not replace them,” during disasters.
“President Trump provides a more thorough review of disaster declaration requests than any Administration has before him. Gone are the days of rubber stamping FEMA recommendations — that’s not a bug, that’s a feature,” Jackson said.
Former FEMA officials, including people who helped process these types of declarations, told PolitiFact the backlog of pending applications is substantial, and was longer than average at different points in 2025.
The processing time is most important, said Elizabeth Zimmerman, a former FEMA administrator under President Barack Obama. “A reasonable amount of time for approval should really be no more than two weeks.”
Zimmerman said that could change with the type of request and how much money applicants are seeking, but even considering those factors, the current process is slower than normal.
There may be contributing factors that are out of Trump’s control. The process for assessing natural disasters has become more complex over time and disasters have become more frequent and intense because of climate change.
Still, these delays mean people have to wait to receive federal aid for temporary housing and home repairs. It can also impede recovery efforts as local governments don’t know when or whether they will receive federal reimbursements.
Significant delays in disaster payouts
News reports throughout 2025 documented a slew of delays, denials and cancellations of federal disaster funds as states waited for information on new policy proposals from FEMA.
“There’s a lot of anecdotal information that things are being held up, and it’s adversely affecting these communities,” said Michael Coen, a former FEMA chief of staff in the Obama and Biden administrations. “I have heard from multiple FEMA employees who are frustrated over a lot of projects that are being held up by the secretary’s office.”
The Wall Street Journal, citing internal government documents and conversations with FEMA employees, reported in September that many of FEMA’s core functions have ground to a halt under the Trump administration, and contracts and grants haven’t been approved because of new bureaucratic hurdles.
“A wave of senior staff departed the agency when Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency offered buyouts, taking decades of experience with them,” the Journal reported. Another 400 FEMA employees were routed to work at Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the administration started dismantling FEMA’s disaster-response infrastructure.
In a Sept. 15 report, FEMA said it withheld $10.9 billion in disaster payments to 45 states in the final months of fiscal year 2025, which ended Sept. 30. News outlets and local government groups said the money was to reimburse states for emergency costs related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
FEMA said it “shifted” the reimbursements to fiscal year 2026 but did not say when the money would be paid. In response to news stories about the funds, FEMA said in an Oct. 18 press release that disaster relief funds “do not expire” and that the outstanding payments “are actively being processed and are not canceled.”
The Hill reported in December that more than $900 million in FEMA grants and loans awaited Noem’s approval under her new policy to personally review certain expenditures. The New York Times recently reported an even larger number — $17 billion — in funds that have faced unusually long delays because of the requirement.
The bottleneck, The New York Times found, “includes money that had already been approved by regional FEMA offices for things like debris removal, and repairs to roads, bridges and water and sewer systems.”
Our ruling
Moskowitz said FEMA’s backlog of unanswered disaster assistance applications “has exploded to the largest in its history.”
We were unable to quantify whether the current backlog is the largest in agency history; publicly available data is limited, and no public database provides historical comparisons.
But the available evidence shows Moskowitz is largely on target.
As of Jan. 28, FEMA listed 18 pending disaster declarations awaiting Trump’s approval. Eleven are more than a month old and some date back to October. Disaster management experts said the backlog is particularly large compared with what’s typical and that requests are sitting longer than normal.
A September 2025 AP analysis found that over the last 37 years — which covers most of FEMA’s existence and the timeframe when it implemented its current assistance system — disaster declarations were typically approved in three weeks or less. Approvals are taking more than a month, on average, so far during Trump’s second term.
Moskowitz’s statement is accurate but needs additional information. We rate it Mostly True.
This story originally appeared on PolitiFact
