How will Texas handle natural disasters without FEMA?

Texans are no strangers to natural disasters. Any notion that Texas needs FEMA is misinformation at best and a blatant lie at worst.

It is important to remember that FEMA does not do any actual immediate disaster relief. That is handled by the Texas Military Department as well as local and State law enforcement and volunteers. FEMA’s primary role is logistics and administration. In short, they come in and take control of what Texas is already doing well.

In the aftermath, FEMA coordinates the distribution of some, not all, of the resources being funneled into the areas affected by the disaster. That includes cots for shelters, some bottled water, and some ice. However, this is an extremely small percentage when compared to the outpouring of donations from private relief organizations, churches, and individuals.

As anyone in Texas can tell you, FEMA gets in the way more than it helps. During Hurricanes Rita and Ike, they refused to distribute ice collected for the disaster zones until county sheriffs ordered it to be done with or without FEMA authorization. During the Bastrop wildfires, they turned away firefighters that came from all over Texas to help fight the fires. These are just two examples that show how the same bureaucratic cancer that infects every other Federal agency is at its absolute worst in FEMA.

What FEMA really does is hand out money. Looking at FEMA’s assistance in the wake of Hurricane Ike makes for a solid comparison. FEMA approved 121,666 Individual Assistance Applications and spent $532 million on individual assistance. It spent another $2.2 billion on Public Assistance Grants. In total, for Hurricane Ike, FEMA assistance in Texas totaled approximately $2.7 billion.

TNM’s 2026 fiscal analysis, “Can Texas Make It?”, found that Texans already pay for the full cost of government inside Texas, federal and state, in every year it examined, the pandemic included. Disaster relief is not a gift Texas cannot afford. It is paid for with money Texans already raise, and a self-governing Texas would direct that money itself.

The bottom line is this: every dollar that FEMA spends in Texas first comes from the pockets of the Texas taxpayers. FEMA is only in the picture to retroactively justify the theft of our tax money by the Federal Government under the guise of a natural disaster.

Texans are best at taking care of Texans. The world has seen it happen during every natural disaster. Texans could do it much better with that money kept in Texas, under the control of the people who pay it.