FEMA employees draft formal declaration of dissent

On the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Federal Emergency Management Agency employees submitted a formal declaration of dissent to members of Congress.

WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES, August 25, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- On the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, 182 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) employees submitted a formal declaration of dissent addressed to members of Congress. The Katrina Declaration lists six "dissents," sounding the alarm on the administrative gutting of FEMA's ability to protect the Americans during emergencies. Under the direction of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, FEMA employees have witnessed the administrative hurdles with the funding, staffing, and mission authority of FEMA, resulting in reported delays such as those during the July 2025 floods in Kerrville, Texas. Meanwhile, one-third of FEMA's employees have been forced out, further eroding our nation's disaster response capacity.

The Katrina Declaration warns that the stripping of FEMA's statutory authorities places American communities in grave danger. The 182 FEMA signatories denounce the censorship of climate science, the removal of vital risk data from public access, and the improper and abrupt reassignment of FEMA employees to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

With the Katrina Declaration, FEMA employees join their federal colleagues at the National Institute of Health (the Bethesda Declaration), the Environmental Protection Agency (the EPA Declaration of Dissent), and NASA (the Voyager Declaration) who have chosen Stand Up For Science as the platform for their interagency effort to cease capacity diminishing changes at federal agencies.

"It is a privilege to support our civil servants in warning congress and our nation about the multitude of risks to the public that stem from changes at FEMA," says Colette Delawalla, Stand Up for Science Founder and Executive Director. She continued, "we must not forget about what happened before, during, and after Hurricane Katrina. Many of the current policy changes at FEMA had their roots in post-Katrina assessment. We must do better." In solidarity with the signatories of the Katrina Declaration, Stand Up For Science urges Congress to uphold its constitutional oversight duty to protect Americans by restoring the safeguards this Administration is dismantling.

For media and press, Stand Up for Science can be contacted to speak with several current FEMA employees who are willing to go on record (and additional ones who are willing to speak on conditions of anonymity). For security reasons, we have not listed them in this release, but welcome interested parties to contact media@standupforscience.net.

Colette Delawalla (Stand Up for Science Founder and Executive Director) is also available to discuss the impact of this action on the broader effort to save science, call the public to action, and encourage other federal agency employees to do the same.

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About Stand Up for Science: Stand Up for Science is a grassroots Washington, D.C. based 501(c)4 non-profit organization mobilizing the fight for science and democracy. We formed Stand Up for Science within days of executive orders breaking down federal science agencies. Weeks later, on March 7th, our first National Day of Action, we mobilized over 50,000 people at 170+ events across the world in support of science. Stand Up for Science has captured widespread national and international media attention, and federal scientists across multiple agencies (i.e., NIH, EPA and NASA) have chosen Stand Up for Science as the platform for their dissent against this Administration. An opinion piece written by our founding leadership team is also available in Nature Human Behavior: “Why we organized ‘Stand Up for Science.’”

Brian Lovett
Stand Up for Science
brian@standupforscience.net

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