5. Department of Homeland Security · Notable · Needs Congress
Terminate DHS and FEMA preparedness grant programs
Printed page 154 5. Department of Homeland Security
“DHS should not be in the business of handing out federal tax dollars: These grants should be terminated. Accomplishing this, however, will require action by Members of Congress who repeatedly vote to fund grants for political reasons.”
What has happened
- Not started
Moved the other way. Congress continues to appropriate for DHS and FEMA preparedness grants and the Department continues to award them: on 2025-09-29 Secretary Noem announced that FEMA had put "nearly $3.5 billion" of non-disaster grant money back into communities through the preparedness grant programs - firefighter grants, port and transit security, the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, emergency management performance grants - framing the awards as empowering states rather than as a program to be wound up. The FEMA Review Council's final report recommends streamlining and simplifying FEMA's grant programs, not terminating the preparedness grants. No termination bill has passed either chamber.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
A Requires-Congress ask, and the Quote concedes it: “Accomplishing this, however, will require action by Members of Congress who repeatedly vote to fund grants for political reasons.”
One negative search covered the FEMA asks on pages 151–158 of the Chapter, this one among them. No enacted law or one-chamber-passed bill terminates the DHS or FEMA preparedness grant programs; the FY2026 DHS appropriation (Public Law 119-86) funds them.
Note the direction of travel inside the administration: the grants are being used as a state-empowerment story rather than being proposed for elimination, which is the opposite of the Mandate’s argument.
- Action
- eliminate
- Object
- DHS/FEMA preparedness grant programs
- ID
- 387