The Federal Emergency Management Agency could still support winter storm response even if a partial government shutdown begins at midnight Friday, experts and former FEMA officials said, despite warnings from the Trump administration that funding could lapse. The estimates described by experts hinge on the Disaster Relief Fund balance that FEMA draws from to pay for disaster response and recovery operations, including staffing for those efforts.
Experts said FEMA falls under the Department of Homeland Security, and DHS funding for fiscal year 2026 depends on the Senate passing a spending package that the House already approved. After federal immigration officers killed a Minneapolis man on Saturday, some Senate Democrats demanded restrictions on how immigration enforcement is conducted in any DHS funding bill—pushing negotiations and raising the prospect of a partial government shutdown by the end of the week.
Trump administration officials have pointed to the winter storm and FEMA’s role in responding as a reason to avoid a shutdown. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday, “We are in the midst of the winter storm that took place over the weekend, and many Americans are still being impacted by that, so we absolutely do not want to see that funding lapse,” according to the report. DHS did not respond to requests for comment.
One key dispute in the shutdown debate centers on whether FEMA can keep operating through the disaster response period. According to the report, two people familiar with the matter said FEMA would have about $7 billion to $8 billion in its Disaster Relief Fund if money Congress appropriated in the November spending bill that ended the longest government shutdown were to expire Friday at midnight; they spoke on the condition of anonymity because they said they were not authorized to discuss FEMA funding with the media. Experts said that remaining balance should be enough to limit impacts on winter storm response, at least in the short term.
FEMA’s support for states during the winter storm has included helping coordinate supplies and clearing efforts tied to widespread power outages. The report said the winter storm left hundreds of thousands of residents across multiple states without power, and it was tied to at least 80 deaths. President Donald Trump approved emergency declarations for 12 states, which the report said unlocked federal support for emergency measures and debris removal, while the agency positioned food, water and other supplies across multiple states and coordinated with other agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service for tree clearing and the Army Corps of Engineers for connecting generators at critical facilities including warming centers and hospitals.
The report said it remained unclear how many states, if any, would request major disaster declarations after assessing damage. Those requests, if approved, can help pay for repairs to critical infrastructure and provide financial assistance for impacted households through the Disaster Relief Fund.
Former FEMA chief of staff Michael Coen said the winter storm response should be manageable for near-term local and state needs. “The winter storm at this time is well within the capability of local communities and states,” Coen said, according to the report. Noah Patton, director of disaster recovery at the National Low Income Housing Coalition, also pointed to the calendar as a mitigating factor. “We’re a bit of a ways off from wildfire season and hurricane season, so I don’t see a huge impact in the short run in terms of FEMA operations,” Patton said.
Still, the report described potential operational pauses that could return if a partial shutdown occurs, especially for FEMA activities not funded by the Disaster Relief Fund. It said some FEMA operations—such as the ability to write or renew National Flood Insurance Program policies—would pause during a shutdown, as they did during last year’s 43-day shutdown, and that some essential employees would work unpaid.
The report also said a drawn-out shutdown could put additional pressure on the Disaster Relief Fund if FEMA has to respond to new disasters and could result in slower reimbursements for past disasters. It said several experts pointed to delays already affecting reimbursements because of a DHS policy requiring that expenditures of $100,000 or more receive personal approval by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
The spending bill before the Senate would provide more funding for FEMA and its disaster-related work, the report said, including more than $26 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund and nearly $4 billion for various FEMA emergency preparedness and security grants. But in the reporting, experts also described how the administration’s stance toward FEMA and its internal actions could shape what support looks like during negotiations, beyond the question of whether the fund itself runs out.
Coen said the greater impacts to FEMA, in his view, were not driven mainly by the potential shutdown but by the administration’s policies. “The administration has been dismantling FEMA over the last year,” he said. “Using the agency as a justification for congressional action is laughable.” The report also said Trump officials have floated phasing out FEMA in the past and often urged states to take on more responsibility for disasters, while the December release of a long-awaited report from Trump’s FEMA Review Council was canceled and not rescheduled.
The report said the proposed spending bill includes language aimed at limiting some actions by FEMA during the negotiation period. It described provisions that would rein in FEMA’s ability to pause grants and trainings and would require the agency to publicly report the status of its reimbursements to states for declared disasters. Labowitz, an author of the Disaster Dollar Database that tracks federal disaster spending, said some of the administration’s policies contributed to why FEMA did not run out of money last year, pointing to delays in major disaster approvals and reimbursements. “All last year they were slow walking spending in the DRF,” Labowitz said.