Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem’s directive requiring she sign off on any department expense over $100,000 has delayed tens of millions of dollars in grants, contracts and funding awards to help communities rebuild and recover after disasters, according to a report released Wednesday by Senate Democrats.
Compiled by Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the report is based on data in “an internal tracker provided by whistleblowers,” the lawmakers said. They have called on Noem to immediately rescind the directive she first introduced in June.
Noem’s policy, they said, has been implemented through an “ad hoc review process” with no firm deadlines, which has led to average delays of three weeks and sometimes far longer on decisions around much-needed disaster aid. Details in the document corroborate reports from numerous current and former Federal Emergency Management Agency officials to The Washington Post about how the policy has held up critical resources in recent months.
The report identifies what it says are “at least 1,034 FEMA contracts, grants, or disaster assistance awards” that have been delayed or remain pending, including for victims of July’s deadly flooding in Texas and the catastrophic Hurricane Helene, which hit swaths of the Southeast in the fall of 2024.
In a statement, Lauren Bis, an assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security, said there is “no evidence of such” weeks-long delays in aid decisions. “FEMA continues to actively process and release billions in aid,” she added.
“Contrary to claims in the forthcoming report, there are no systemic delays,” Bis said. “In fact, Secretary Noem’s review process was specifically designed to break through bureaucratic red tape and expedite funding requests that had previously languished for years under prior administrations.”
The lawmakers’ report provides data on disaster aid requests between June 2025 – around the time Noem introduced the directive – and Sept. 8. It identifies a range of programs it says were affected, including leasing of rental units for Hurricane Helene survivors; urban search and rescue in North Carolina; technical assistance task orders for multiple disasters in Florida; unemployment assistance for Texas, Oklahoma and Kentucky; housing inspections for storm-battered homes; and crisis counseling.
“Secretary Noem’s policy of personally approving certain contracts is putting the safety of communities in need at risk,” said Sen. Gary Peters (D-Michigan), who led the report along with Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey). “When disaster strikes, communities need critical assistance from FEMA as quickly as possible. These delays created by Secretary Noem’s directive are not only failing to make government more efficient, they are causing serious harm. The policy must end immediately.”
The report highlights more than two dozen examples of spending requests that exceeded $100,000, but were delayed for weeks or months afterFEMA officials submitted them to Noem’s office, according to the lawmakers.
They include a contract for a call center and a request for public assistance in the wake of multiple Florida disasters and for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, as well as disaster unemployment assistance for communities in Oklahoma, Kentucky, Texas and Tennessee.
Wednesday’s report also asserts that agency staff appeared to have tailored funding requests to avoid secretarial review.
Citing a separate finding last fall from the Project on Government Oversight, the report states that “the number of DHS contracts valued at $99,999 skyrocketed after the June 11 policy was implemented in an apparent attempt by DHS components to circumvent the new approval directive.”
Peters and Kim said they have written to Noem on multiple occasions requesting information about the agency’s policy on approving critical aid requests. But, they note in the report, “the Secretary has not substantively responded to Congress.”
In recent interviews, FEMA officials involved in the budgeting process, who have tracked internal reports, have repeatedly describeddelayed contracts and assistance awards. Agency officials spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution and because they were not authorized to speak with the media.
States have had to dip into rainy-day funds to pay survivors’ unemployment benefits that FEMA pledged but had not yet delivered, one current FEMA official said. Another employee detailed how grants for residents who lost their homes and belongings in disasters, such as last year’s Los Angeles wildfires, the 2025 Texas floods, and2024’s Hurricane Beryl, have still been pending since June, despite FEMA employees submitting an expedited request.
More than a year after Helene, meanwhile, multiple hard-hit counties in western North Carolina were still waiting for the federal government to make good on its promises to pay back millions of dollars that local officials have spent or allocated for recovery. The process threatened to upend local budgets and hinder reconstruction.
This is not how government contracting usually works, said one veteran FEMA official involved with the agency’s contract process. Normally, there is a rigorous process for securing, approving and doling out these awards “where everyone involved knows what’s going on,” the official said. But the official said the current DHS process leaves FEMA leadership and those in charge of working on the contracts “in the dark.”
“We had no idea when things would get approved or denied and for what reasons,” the person added.
In the days after the devastating floods in Texas last July, multiple former officials and current employees told The Post that contracts with companies that provide crucial services for disaster response had run out or were about to lapse. The agency had created work-arounds to get money out the door more quickly, according to documents reviewed by The Post.
Those contracts, according to internal communications reviewedby The Post, provided for call centers to handle calls from people who need help, housing inspectors to survey damaged homes so people can get their claims approved, IT support that enables case managers to access survivors’ information, as well as a platform that supports disasterassistance.gov, which registered millions of survivors last year.
Nearly a week after the deadly floods struck Texas, Noem signed several contracts for the disaster, including a $1.6 million obligation for housing inspection services, as well as a call center and mental health services, according to documents reviewed by The Post.
The agency had to stand up a task force to navigate a frequently changing template, which FEMA teams had to submit for contract requests.
Six employees familiar with the task force described the chaotic weeks trying to create a system to flag critical contracts and grants. Many still sat unreviewed until they lapsed, they said.
For example, right before powerful winters storms were about to hit a slew of states in January, disasterassistance.gov, FEMA’s main site for people to register and apply for federal aid and check their cases, crashed for several hours because the agency’s technical support contract had not been renewed, according to officials and documents reviewed by The Post. One official involved in the process said teams had been waiting for months for DHS to renew the contract. About 12 employees scrambled to try to fix it, and DHS had to cut a check for about $20,000 to pay contractors for about six hours of work to get it back up and running, according to two officials familiar with the situation.
Other essential tools, services and licenses that FEMA requires for some of its basic operations are also lapsing, two current FEMA officials said. Teams are still waiting for DHS to sign off on another important memo that would extend the use of a tool FEMA uses to estimate the cost of public assistance projects; it is slated to expire Thursday.
In their Wednesday report, the Democratic senators said their analysis demonstrates that Noem’s directive and the delayed spending requests also violate the Post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006, a law passed by Congress following the catastrophic Gulf Coast hurricane.
That law prohibits actions that “significantly and substantially” reduce FEMA’s missions, authorities and responsibilities.
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Watch live: Kristi Noem testifies before the House Judiciary Committee
Reporting by Brianna Sacks, Brady Dennis, Washington Post / The Detroit News
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