Just 9 percent think FEMA should be eliminated: Survey

Very few Americans say in a new poll that it’s a good idea to scrap the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) entirely, a position President Trump has embraced in recent months.

In the latest Economist/YouGov survey, conducted over the weekend, just 9 percent of respondents say FEMA should be eliminated. Another 10 percent say they think the agency should be reduced.

But two-thirds of Americans support the agency, with 30 percent saying it should remain the same size and 36 percent saying it should expand.

There’s still a clear partisan divide in the survey results.

Among surveyed Republicans, 18 percent support eliminating the agency, while 20 percent support reducing it. Only 1 percent of Democrats, on the other hand, want to scrap the agency, while 2 percent want to reduce it. Independents find themselves in the middle, with 7 percent saying they want to eliminate it and 9 percent in favor of reducing it.

The survey asked respondents whether they support eliminating a variety of federal agencies and departments, most of which also see single-digit support for scrapping them altogether, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Weather Service.

A slightly higher share of respondents say they support getting rid of the Department of Government Efficiency, at 36 percent, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, at 20 percent — both levels driven by increased support from Democrats.

In January, Trump floated getting rid of FEMA, a frequent talking point from the 2024 campaign trail. He said at the time that he would be signing an executive order “to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA.”

The executive order established a council to put together a report with information including “an evaluation of whether FEMA can serve its functions as a support agency” and “an analysis of the principal arguments in the public debate for and against FEMA reform.”

But in March, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose department includes the agency, said “we’re going to eliminate FEMA,” without elaborating.

Over the last month, the administration has slightly shifted its tone, with Noem saying in June that Trump wants “to see FEMA eliminated as it exists today.” At the time, Trump said FEMA would “give out less money.”

And just last week, Noem said, “This entire agency needs to be eliminated as it exists today and remade into a responsive agency.”

The latest Economist/YouGov poll includes 1,680 U.S. adults and was conducted July 11-14. The margin of error is 3.4 percentage points.