Just days into his second term, President Donald Trump said he was going to recommend that the Federal Emergency Management Agency “go away”, dismissing the agency as bloated and ineffective.

Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, was even blunter during a March cabinet meeting, when she said point-blank: “We are going to eliminate FEMA.”

But now, as the administration contends with the deadly flooding in Texas, Trump and his aides are no longer speaking about a wholesale demolishing of the agency. With the nation’s attention focused on the need for the federal government to effectively respond to disasters, White House officials are emphasising instead their plans to overhaul the agency, saying that was the intent all along.

“We want FEMA to work well,” Russell T. Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters on Friday. “And, you know, the President is going to continue to be asking tough questions from all of his agencies.”

The whipsawing remarks have added to a sense of confusion about the future of FEMA, which is struggling with the loss of top officials, including the departure of Cameron Hamilton as its acting director in May. Hamilton was pushed out of the job after he told members of Congress that the agency was vital to communities “in their greatest times of need”, shortly after Noem testified that “FEMA as it exists today should be eliminated”.

FEMA, established in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter, coordinates the federal response to disasters, serving as a backstop for states if they cannot meet the needs on the ground.

In his criticism of the agency, Trump has argued that states, not the federal government, should take the lead in responding to disasters, which is how the system currently works. His exact position on what should be the fate of FEMA has been hard to nail down. At some points, the president has talked about doing away with it.

During a trip to hurricane-ravaged North Carolina in January, Trump attacked the agency relentlessly. He said FEMA was “not doing their job” and described it as a “disaster”.

At other times, he and his cabinet officials have described shrinking FEMA or changing its role. In late January, he signed an executive order that created a review council to assess FEMA and recommend improvements.

At a cabinet meeting, Noem had also changed her tune, telling the President that the agency was working efficiently in its response to the floods. “We’re cutting through the paperwork of the old FEMA, streamlining it much like your vision of how FEMA should operate,” Noem said.

And during a visit to the disaster zone in Texas on Friday, Trump suggested the agency was already on a better path, thanks to his hires.

New York Times News Service