As the president visits Texas to see the impact of last week’s deadly flash floods, the White House has backed away from plans to abolish the agency, officials said.

For months, President Donald Trump and his homeland security secretary have said the Federal Emergency Management Agency could be eliminated. But as the president visited Texas to view the impact of last week’s deadly floods, administration officials say abolishing the agency outright is not on the agenda.

A senior White House official told The Washington Post that no official action is being taken to wind down FEMA, and that changes in the agency will probably amount to a “rebranding” that will emphasize state leaders’ roles in disaster response.

The official and others emphasized that Trump will make the ultimate decision, but said at this point, FEMA is not set to be abolished.

“Without any official action,” the official said, “you’re already seeing the theory” of the administration’s new approach “taking place in Texas.”

“The president immediately delivered the dollars, Texas already has that money in their hands, and Gov. [Greg] Abbott is the lead decision-maker when it comes to the Texas floods,” the official said. “You should expect this structure, that has quietly taken place, to continue.”

Trump on Friday met with first responders and family members of the victims in Texas, received a briefing from local elected officials and took part in a roundtable discussion. Abbott, a Republican, joined him during the visit.

Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem in recent months raised the prospect that the agency could be abolished altogether.

In describing an executive order on FEMA shortly after he took office, Trump said it would “begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA.”

“I think, frankly, FEMA’s not good,” Trump said in January, explaining that “the FEMA thing has not been a very successful experiment.”

Administration officials are now hedging their comments, emphasizing that FEMA will undergo changes as part of a review process.

The FEMA Review Council, which Trump created by his executive order, met for the second time this week and is expected to release a report in November with recommendations to improve federal disaster response.

How those recommendations will be implemented at FEMA ultimately comes down to Trump, who has dialed up and down his aversion to the agency, depending on the occasion.

A second White House official said the review council’s meetings on May 20 at the White House were “productive,” and noted that “thousands of interested Americans” listened in to this week’s gathering in New Orleans.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement that the review council “will recommend to the president how FEMA may be reformed in ways that best serve the national interest, including how America responds to and recovers from disasters such that the Federal role remains supplemental and appropriate to the scale of disaster.”

Federal resources are intended to “supplement state actions, not replace those actions,” Jackson said, adding that “FEMA’s outsized role created a bloated bureaucracy that disincentivized state investment in their own resilience.”

“President Trump is committed to right-sizing the Federal government while empowering state and local governments by enabling them to better understand, plan for, and ultimately address the needs of their citizens,” she said.

Asked this week whether Trump was reconsidering phasing out FEMA in light of the Texas flooding, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said discussions remain underway about structuring the federal disaster response.

“The president wants to ensure American citizens always have what they need during times of need,” Leavitt said. “Whether that assistance comes from states or the federal government, that’s a policy discussion that will continue. And the president has always said he wants states to do as much as they can, if not more.”

Not everyone agrees that the process in Texas has unfolded smoothly. Current and former FEMA employees say the agency’s ability to fully respond to the flooding has been delayed by restrictions the administration has imposed on government spending and contracts. Deployments of specialized search and rescue teams were significantly delayed in the days immediately after the flood, those officials said.

Federal spending on disaster relief has risen sharply as the number of major disasters has mounted in recent years. In 2018, the U.S. suffered 14 disasters that caused more than $1 billion in damage; by 2024, that number had risen to 27, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s agency that audits federal programs. Over the last decade, the government has spent more than $550 billion on disaster relief, the GAO found.

Polling indicates that a large majority of Americans support the federal government helping communities recover from natural disasters.

Eight in 10 Americans said the federal government should have a “major role” in “providing aid to communities in the aftermath of natural disasters,” according to an Associated Press-NORC poll last month. That included 80 percent of Republicans and 87 percent of Democrats. Asked about “rebuilding” communities affected by disasters, 74 percent of Americans said the federal government should have a “major” role.

What shape that federal role should take, however, has been the subject of repeated debates.

The senior White House official said Trump’s vision for FEMA is that “the federal government provides the necessary funds, but the state makes the decisions.” The official added that it did not make sense for federal workers “from other parts of the country who do not understand the geography, who do not understand the communities in a state, to swoop in from miles away and try to control and dictate decision making on the ground.”

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of homeland security, said “it’s not a secret” that under Noem and acting FEMA administrator David Richardson, “FEMA, as it is today, will no longer exist.”

“Federal Emergency Management will shift from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens,” McLaughlin said in a statement. “The old processes are being replaced because they failed Americans in real emergencies for decades.”

The FEMA Review Council is “developing a comprehensive plan for necessary change,” she continued.

State emergency management officials have long suggested that reforms should take place to make the federal government more efficient at responding to disasters, including overdue modernization of operations.

Some argue for a sharply scaled-back federal role.

North Carolina state Rep. Jake Johnson, a Republican who serves as House majority whip, represents four counties that were battered by Hurricane Helene in September. He and his colleagues hope FEMA would be replaced by a much simpler system of block grants that could send federal resources straight to states, cutting out what he sees as wasteful red tape and bureaucracy, he said.

“What was so frustrating for us was the fact that we needed less clipboards, and we needed more people helping run missions and actually doing things,” Johnson said. “And you know, it’s good to have those advisers there, but when we’re looking for outside help, we’re looking for actual tangible assistance, and that was just not, not there at all.”

“I think we could handle, in large part, what FEMA’s job is, if we had some federal monetary help,” Johnson said. We could set up the systems here.”

At the same time, many state leaders believe a strong federal role is needed to help coordinate disaster response. Some communities and states don’t have the resources to lead all aspects of disaster responses, they note.

One state emergency management official, speaking on condition of anonymity to candidly discuss the situation, said they were now “far more comfortable” with the review process after speaking to members of the FEMA Review Council in recent days and believe the council is taking a measured approach to changes.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump sharply criticized FEMA’s response to the severe floods Helene generated.

Last month, Trump said he wanted to “wean off of FEMA” and “give out less money.”

Noem declared during a March Cabinet meeting that she was “going to eliminate FEMA.”

Last month, however, she seemed to dial down her rhetoric, saying Trump wanted to “see FEMA eliminated as it exists today.”