Kristi Noem Is Holding Up More Than $1 Billion in Hazard Mitigation Funds

Somewhere in the pile of projects awaiting Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s personal signature sits a plan to protect the town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, from devastating wildfire.

“We were approved last summer, and it’s been sitting on her desk since,” Philo Shelton, Los Alamos county’s utilities manager, told NOTUS. The county wants to bury the Pajarito Mountain power lines that frequently spark wildfires.

The plan to protect Los Alamos and the critical national security research laboratory there has been held up by Noem’s requirement that she personally approve all Department of Homeland Security-funded projects over $100,000.

Since July, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has approved hazard mitigation grants that cost more than $100,000 in only three states, according to a NOTUS review of publicly available data and internal FEMA documents.

The three states to get through the logjam: Georgia, North Carolina and Oklahoma. As of Dec. 31, before the North Carolina and Oklahoma projects were approved, Noem’s office was sitting on $1.3 billion in requested funds — all of which had been approved at the regional level, according to documents obtained by NOTUS.

This is the first time the scope of Noem’s funding hold on the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program has been reported.

In December, FEMA granted about $1.5 million in federal spending for hazard mitigation projects in Georgia, two of which are located primarily in Republican Rep. Buddy Carter’s district. In early January, North Carolina was granted at least $29 million primarily to buy out homes flooded and destroyed during Hurricane Helene. Most recently, in late January, Oklahoma’s long-awaited hazard mitigation projects received final approval for more than $12 million.

Several local officials said they were able to access the funds because Republican lawmakers lobbied the administration for it.

“We put as much pressure on them as we can, and we are in close contact with the local officials and working with them hand in hand to try to get it expedited,” Carter told NOTUS.

“The process takes a while, and it’s frustrating,” Carter said. “But that’s what we have to navigate. It’s good when it gets there. It’s just unfortunate it takes so long to get there sometimes.”

Rep. Buddy Carter lobbied the administration to unlock FEMA hazard mitigation funds for his district. Francis Chung/POLITICO/AP

Sen. James Lankford claimed credit in a Tuesday press release for the release of the funds for Oklahoma. “I’m grateful my conversations with US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem helped secure these much-needed federal funds,” Lankford said.

Meanwhile, hundreds of projects, across nearly all 50 states, four territories and two tribal nations, remain stuck at Noem’s level, NOTUS found from datasets and from conversations with local officials and elected representatives in 10 states.

Louisiana, Florida, Texas, California, New Jersey and Puerto Rico have the most money stuck in the review process, in that order. They are also the states that most frequently incur costly damage from severe storms.

DHS did not respond to NOTUS request for comment.

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When Noem’s review process went into effect in July, FEMA suddenly dropped from spending around $100 million per month on hazard mitigation to spending nothing.

NOTUS found that FEMA fell into the red on total mitigation spending for the last six months of 2025. (FEMA is still regularly approving spending for hazard mitigation below the $100,000 threshold across the country, but those amounts are small. Meanwhile, it is recouping even more money that it has spent, at least in part from approved funds states did not end up using.)

“Unfortunately, Secretary Noem has virtually frozen FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program,” said Washington Rep. Rick Larsen, the ranking minority member for the House committee that oversees FEMA.

Before Trump’s return to office, states were typically granted access to a pool of HMGP funding when the president declared a federal disaster. The states would then enter an extensive application process to receive those funds.

In March, the Trump administration stopped granting new state requests to access hazard mitigation funding for disasters. The administration previously told NOTUS that Trump stopped granting new funding because states have been slow to draw down their already existing funds, and that FEMA has been trying to help states use those unspent balances.

But FEMA has done the opposite since Noem’s review process went into effect in July. FEMA has dramatically slowed its approvals of projects that could spend the existing pool of HMGP funding, according to a NOTUS analysis and an analysis from the Congressional Research Service.

“HMGP is authorized by Congress,” said Michael Coen, the former chief of staff for FEMA during the Biden administration. “The Trump administration’s failure to execute mitigation is reckless and I believe a breach of duty. Lives will be lost during future disasters that could have been avoided. HMGP funding is one of the few tools the federal government has to reduce future disaster costs and suffering.”

Scott Simmons, director for external affairs at Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said that FEMA didn’t approve new access to mitigation funding following the state’s March 2025 tornadoes that destroyed more than 200 homes.

“We’re not able to tackle programs that would hopefully lessen the impact of disasters,” Simmons said. “Without that mitigation of money, we simply did not set out on those types of projects because we know that the money’s not available. It would be up to our state lawmakers to decide if they want to fund specifically earmarked projects that would fall into a mitigation category.”

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Across the country, federal and local officials told NOTUS that states are not able to implement critical measures that would protect people and communities in future disasters.

In Louisiana, where Hurricane Katrina caused the most damage and resulted in nearly 2,000 deaths, more than 20 mitigation grants have been stalled due to Noem’s sign-off process, Democratic Rep. Troy Carter’s office told NOTUS.

In Orange Beach, Alabama, the city requested more than $5 million following the 2020 hurricane season for a project that would provide the city with its own safe room to house first responders. The city currently uses a local elementary school as a shelter and shares it with two other cities.

“Without the Safe Room, there is no continuity of government and the problem magnifies because you have personnel spread out all over Baldwin County, and they can’t respond to rescue and cleanup efforts quickly and effectively, which can cause a major delay in recovery,” Nicole Woerner, emergency management coordinator for Orange Beach, told NOTUS.

More than 500 miles north, a different city with a different disaster problem is stuck in the same limbo. Batesville, Arkansas, is waiting for funding for the second phase of a project to alleviate repetitive flooding damage.

“It got to the point where the flooding, the drainage, was so bad it just had to be redesigned,” Carrie McIntosh, a community development coordinator for White River Planning and Development District, said. “There was a fire truck that actually went off the side of one of the roads into a culvert because of the flooding. Because it was so bad.”

FEMA told her organization that they were going to “expedite the project” last year, McIntosh said, but there has been no sign of progress since April.

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Despite his frustration with the process, Carter defended Noem’s system in a conversation with NOTUS. The agency needs some kind of approval process, and Noem’s current rule is “probably the best they can do,” he said.

Georgia Democratic Rep. Sanford Bishop, who worked with Carter and others in his state to get the funding released, was less complimentary.

“Let’s just say, I don’t think that the secretary of Homeland Security exercises her authority in the most efficient and effective way to carry out the duties and responsibilities of that office, that agency,” Bishop said. “And it goes back to the confirmation when a number of folks questioned her qualifications for the job.”

Still, both agree that the money is absolutely critical.

“Obviously, when you have a natural catastrophe like that, all of us work together to make sure that we get funding,” Carter said. “But yeah, it was very important, particularly my district, that we get that funding. Keep in mind that a lot of these tree farms are just small families — that this is their life savings.”

Debris is seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Monday, Sept. 30, 2024, in Asheville, N.C. Mike Stewart/AP

It’s not just families in Georgia with their life savings on the line. Those still trying to lobby the administration have noticed a partisan divide.

In New Mexico, Shelton, the utilities manager for the Los Alamos county government, has found himself reckoning with the fact that his congressional representatives are Democrats who do not have the power to force movement with the Trump administration.

“It’s gone through all the reviews, and most recently our senators have sent letters to her requesting the release of the funding,” Shelton said.

“Both of our Senators are Democrats,” he said. “I understand the nuance.”

Though it took several years for Shelton to get the project funding to this point through FEMA, he is beginning to wonder if he needs to look elsewhere to try to find the money.

“Secretary Kristi Noem is blocking projects that are critical to our national security and the safety of Americans — all to play partisan politics and punish states that Donald Trump lost,” New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich told NOTUS. “Cabinet secretaries should not be required to personally approve every single community safety project. Doing so is inefficient, causes significant delays, and puts lives at risk.”